14th Intensive Seminar on the EU - July 2007 Go to the site of The College of Europe
Title for Programme

This one-week Advanced Training course is designed to offer participants practice-oriented knowledge and specialized, EU-specific, expertise. The course identifies negotiation strategies and techniques and provides participants with an opportunity to enhance their individual negotiation skills. The programme offers a practical approach, combining:

Interactive training sessions examining the theory and practice of negotiations, and the specificities of the EU decision-making process:
  • Theory and Practice of International Negotiations
  • Defining and understanding the specificity of EU Negotiations
  • The changing context of EU Negotiations: current developments in EU Policy-Making
  • EU decision-making structures: the Negotiation Framework
  • Management of diplomatic activities
    • The perspective of a Permanent Representation to the EU
    • Running an EU Presidency
Hands-on workshops, practice-oriented sessions aiming at identifying, developing and practising negotiation as well as other essential skills:
  • Communication techniques and strategies
  • Negotiation skills
An on-going simulation exercise stretching over 3 days, Participants will perform as negotiators, confronted with actual conditions and constrained by official procedures. Under the guidance of an experienced EU negotiator, they will be reproducing COREPER and Council meetings and will face inter-cultural as well as communication challenges. Individual and collective feedback will be a key part of the exercise, thus giving participants the opportunity to maximise their personal learning experience.


Simulation of EU negotiations at the Council of EU, Brussels (2006)

On completion of this programme, participants will have optimised their negotiations skills. They will have gained the necessary know-how and self-confidence to participate effectively and succeed in their daily task of negotiating within the multicultural context of EU policy-making.

The success of the programme is assured by the quality of its training staff, which includes high-ranking practitioners from the EU institutions and permanent representations in Brussels, as well as top national experts who negotiated the accession of their country to the European Union.