European citizens expect their governments to preserve what makes their countries attractive to live in, such as the rule of law, civic and human rights, equality and welfare. In a context of geopolitical, technological and economic volatility and shifts, this requires innovative thinking about system redesign. 

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The independent and tripartite high level groups (HLGs), organised by the Centre Condorcet, serve as laboratories for European policy innovation. They do so through regular, structured dialogues between knowledgeable people from the public administrations, business, academia and other think tanks, collaborating voluntarily for the Common Good. They participate ad personam.

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Each group offers a space of trust, creativity and serendipity in order to gain deep insights, align different views and develop concrete ideas for policy innovation at different stages of the decision-making process. The combination of diverse expertise and the specific working method avoids parallel monologues and yields innovative proposals. The work is diplomatically transparent. 

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The outcome is shared with decision shapers in the Member States and the European Union institutions. 

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To ensure fully independent thinking, the funding by foundations and corporations is indirect, through the Centre Condorcet, and with no contribution exceeds 10% of the annual budget. 

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Resulting from an initiative by the Council Presidency in 2012, a HLG operates as a temporary public-private think tank, fully independently. It sets its own agenda and is not bound by any legalistic constraints. This makes it fundamentally different from the formal high level groups set up by the European Commission to advise within a strict mandate.​ Their methodology is now applied in overarching policy domains (finance, technology, governance) and specific ones (energy, trade, agri-food, forestry, neighbourhood and Africa), with a great deal of attention paid to cross-fertilisation between the domains.  

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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 and Italian Presidencies (in 2013 and 2014 respectively) to continue its mandate; later its method was also applied 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 amongst Foreign Ministers. Since this proved so useful,  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.Nor could Council working groups fill the void.

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Hence the search for a new, more efficient method of preliminary policy brainstorming

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