Congressional European Parliament Initiative Launched

The 2010 inaugural CEPI class

The CEPI fellows are a unique group of 10 staffers from the United States Congress and 10 staffers from the European Parliament who specialize in the aforementioned areas at the forefront of the trans-Atlantic agenda. Many of the fellows were unfamiliar with the nature of the US-EU relationship, even though their policy portfolios can have substantial trans-Atlantic impact.

The fellows met with a range of current and former officials of the US State Department, journalists, experts from think tanks, and representatives of the NGO community. In addition, the agenda included site visits and meetings with senior officials at the US Department of Treasury, the International Monetary Fund, the US Department of Energy and the World Bank.

The conference was capped with a briefing in the US Congress on US-EU-China cooperation on energy and climate change in the run-up to the next UN conference on climate change, to be held later this year in Cancun. The panelists included Boyden Gray, former US ambassador to the EU; Christina Simeone, policy director of the Alliance for Climate Protection; Stephen Eule, vice president of the Institute of 21st Century Energy at the US Chamber of Commerce; and Mitchell Stanley, president of the National Center for Sustainable Development. Paul Adamson, founder and publisher of E!Sharp and Chairman of the Centre, moderated the discussion.

The conference also included a trip to George Washington's colonial home, a visit to an 18th-century distillery, a cooking class and attendance at a baseball game.

The fellows remarked that current dialogue between the US and EU lacks truly operational discussions among trans-Atlantic counterparts, which the CEPI offers. "The future of US-EU legislative relations must be committee to committee," noted some of the fellows. "It must bore into the heart of the issues rather than simply talking about the trans-Atlantic relationship in general."

The same group of fellows will reconvene in Brussels for five days in the first week of September. The CEPI fellowship is part of a wider joint program of the Bertelsmann Foundation Washington office and the Bertelsmann Stiftung Brussels office, supported by the European Commission.