high level grouPS
INDEPENDENT-TRIPARTITE-POLICY INNOVATION
LABORATORIES FOR
PUBLIC POLICY INNOVATION
An independent, tripartite High Level Group (HLG) offers a method for structured dialogue at the early stages of policy making, designed to:
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Align divergent (public, private, academic sector) views about a particular policy sector or issues of strategic importance;
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Improve collective understanding and consensus between public and private stakeholders, with a multiplying potential to others;
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Inject ‘outside-the-box’, creative and holistic ideas into the EU policy making system to achieve better outcomes for all;
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Develop strategic and feasible policy recommendations.
A HLG operates as a temporary public-private think tank, fully independent. It sets its own agenda and is not bound by any legalistic constraints. Therefore, it is fundamentally different from the formal high level groups set up by the EU Commission to advise within a strict mandate.
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These groups have a tripartite composition: members come from national governments, corporations and associations from different sectors, universities and research centres, Commission, Council Secretariat.
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All participants operate without mandate, to stimulate trust, creativity and serendipity of discussions. All discussions take place under a neutral chair and under so-called ‘Chatham House’ rules (no one is quoted publicly). They are supported by their own research team, guided by the academic members.
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All reports and recommendations are agreed by consensus. Final reports go out under responsibility of the chair and the executive director. The work is organised by the Centre Condorcet, www.centrecondorcet.eu.
BACKGROUND
​The first HLG was launched by the Polish Council Presidency in December 2011, to work on research and innovation policy management. Its impactful outcome led the Irish (in 2013) and Italian Presidencies (in 2014) to continue its mandate; later its method became used also in other policy domains. The initiative to set up such a group comes mostly from one of the member governments.
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The concept goes back to the so-called ‘Castle Gymnich’ meetings, initiated in the 1970s by German Foreign Minister Genscher in order to have an informal, private discussion among Foreign Ministers. Because of its usefulness it was later extended to other Councils and evolved into the informal Council meeting. However, over time these became too large to allow for brainstorming and creative thinking in a trusted context. Also, Council working groups could not fill the void.
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Hence the search for a new, more efficient method of preliminary policy brainstorming.
INDEPENDENT TRIPARTITE POLICY LABORATORIES STIMULATING SYSTEMIC INNOVATION
In 2025 working on :
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Financing Sustainability Transition
Objectives: enabling financial frameworks for transition to a climate-neutral and circular economy
Chair: Pietro Carlo Padoan, former Italian Minister of Economy and Finance (Italy)
Focus: financial market reforms for sustainability and competitiveness, criteria for EU funding, taxation policy, carbon pricing, taxonomy, welfare state impact of reforms
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Managing Sustainability Transition
Objectives: proposing operational improvements in the EU institutions, continuing the work of the
Task Force on Sustainability Management in the Council
Chair: NN
Focus: making public management responsive to technology acceleration and competitiveness needs, strategic agility, digitalisation & AI use, consultation & evaluation system
Accelerating Sustainability Technology
Objectives: regulatory and financial framework conditions for scale-up and market access
Chair: NN
Focus: synergies of investment funding, research & global competitiveness, project cost efficiency & RoI, regulatory simplification, social demands, geopolitical consequences
Trade & Economic Resilience
Objectives: balance between the economic and social benefits of trade and resilience
Chair: Peter Altmaier, former Minister for Economy and Trade (Germany)
Focus: new style partnership agreements, trade and collateral social or regional impact mitigation, geopolitical risk management and resilience
Clean Energies & Supply Security
Objectives: which energy mix for competitiveness and sustainability
Chair: Andris Piebalgs, former EU Commissioner for Energy (Latvia)
Focus: energy production (energy mix, decarbonization, development of renewables (nuclear/ hydrogen/ electrification, etc.), and energy use (how to sustainably use available energyfor energy-intensive industry sector and households), security of supply
Agri-food System Innovation
Objectives: transition to bioeconomy, competitiveness & sustainability in food systems
Chair: Phil Hogan, former Commissioner for Agriculture and for Trade (Ireland)
Focus: regenerative agriculture and Green Deal objectives, precision farming, biodiversity, sustainable food systems, carbon farming
Forestry & Biomaterials
Objectives: framework conditions for bio-economy development
Chair: Esko Aho, former Prime Minister (Finland)
Focus: sustainable forest management, agri-forestry, urban greening, biomaterials value chain, effective deforestation​
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Neighbourhood Interdependency
Objectives: explore diverse innovative models of political cooperation and economic integration, short of full membership, to offer (groups of) neighbouring countries of the EU
Chair: Sir Ivan Rogers, former Permanent Representative of the UK to the EU
Focus: nearby economic dependencies, options for single market integration, strategic autonomy and resilience, managing diversity, political stabilisation, rule of law
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African Partnerships
Objectives: conceptual and operational innovation of cooperation with African countries
Chair: Mamphela Ramphele, former managing director World Bank
Focus: priorities of the roadmap for the AU-EU Partnership, trade facilitation and improvement of investment frameworks, EUDR, CBAM, Global Gateway, structural economic transformation.
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Executive director:
Stefan Schepers
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January 2025
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Since 2012
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PREVIOUS HLGS
(2011 - 2021)
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Systems Innovation
(2021 - 2024)​​
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(2020 - 2021)
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RECOMMENDATIONS
& EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
At the start of the mandate of a new Commission and Parliament, the over a hundred experts of the independent tripartite high level groups brought together their work of the past years in a Blueprint, as they did in 2014 and 2019. It aims to offer comprehensive guidance for policies, with overarching priority for completion of the single market and improvement of policy and regulatory cohesion and applicability.
As the chairpersons of these think tanks wrote, a well-functioning market economy, liberal democracy, and comprehensive welfare systems are the hallmark of European societies. They are the basis for their resilience. They bring trust from citizens and allow a realistic and mutually beneficial engagement in an interdependent, uncertain world. They require permanent and comprehensive attention and care. In the current transition to a climate-neutral and circular economy, this means giving equal importance to the economic, social and ecological dimensions of sustainability. The multiple interdependent challenges facing our countries and the EU’s macro-economic condition and its single market, require more systemic thinking, adaptation to new circumstances, and innovative methods of policy design and implementation.
The Blueprint was presented the Belgian Council Presidency, to Member States’ governments and the European Commission.
Extracts from a speech by former EU President Herman Van Rompuy, October 2013
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What is at stake in the European Union is the future of our socio-economic model and our role in the world. For this, we need competitiveness. Competitiveness that is today under pressure.
The only way to recover it, is innovation.
As the Nobel Prize for economy Edmund PHELPS rightly stated recently,
"it is an 'innovation crisis' that is at the origin of our economic decline".
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Innovation is the ability of a system not only to produce new ideas but also to bring them to the markets,
and translate them into economic growth and prosperity.
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An integrated approach on innovation is what would make the difference, in the same way as what took place during the early phases of the Single Market. An explicit agreement between all relevant actors, public and private, to make "fostering innovation and its effects on competitiveness and employment" an overarching and imperative goal for European policies.
[…]
Let me, in particular, congratulate the Polish Presidency, which launched in December 2011 the initiative
to establish a High Level Group on "Innovation Policy”
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The initiative was in itself innovative: "to think outside the box, to develop new approaches
and to make original contributions to the European innovation thinking".
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To trigger a deep exchange of views between those working on governance
and those leading the way in industry, so that both sides could learn from each other.
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This methodology manages to present a consensus of the main actors in inspiring terms,
two qualities that seldom go together.
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TEAM
The HLGs operational platform is provided by the asbl Centre Condorcet. They have their own research team:
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Stefan Schepers - Executive Director
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Dan Andrée – Senior Fellow
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Peter Csoka – Senior Fellow
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Marc Dreyer – Senior Fellow
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Christian Egenhofer - Senior Fellow
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Heinrich Matthee - Senior Fellow
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Brian Scott-Quinn – Senior Fellow​
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Ossan Atchrimi - Research Assistant
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Noemi Sara Gentile – Researcher
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Gabriel Lecumberri - Researcher
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João Pillon - Researcher
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Thomas Tugler - Researcher