EU in Practice: The seminar series shedding light on how the EU really works
The European Institute’s flagship “The European Union in Practice: Politics and Power in the Brussels System” (EU in Practice) seminar series has been bringing together policy practitioners and commentators at LSE since 2012 to talk about their experience working in and with the EU institutions.
EU in Practice is chaired by two of our Visiting Professors in Practice: co-founder Anthony Teasdale, former Director General of the European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS) and former Special Adviser, FCO and HM Treasury; and Dr Martin Westlake, former Secretary General of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC). Featuring as an exclusive interview in our 2024/25 Annual Report, we sat down with Anthony and Martin to hear more about their experience convening the seminar series and the highlights of this past academic year.
Q: Could you tell us more about your motivations for setting up “EU in Practice”?
Anthony Teasdale: When I was appointed as a Visiting Senior Fellow in the European Institute back in 2011, I gave some thought to how, as an EU practitioner in Brussels at the time, I could make a distinctive contribution to the School. I proposed a new seminar series to the late Maurice Fraser, then Head of the European Institute. It was modelled on a similar, successful series about British politics that David Butler and Vernon Bogdanor ran for many years at Nuffield College, Oxford, and from which I had learned a huge amount as a postgraduate there.
“EU in Practice” was launched in October 2012, with Klaus Welle, then Secretary General of the European Parliament and currently Visiting Professor in Practice at the European Institute, as our first speaker, and Maurice and myself as co-chairs. Due to Maurice’s illness, another good friend, Martin Westlake, with whom I had worked in Brussels, replaced him as co-chair and we have been convening the series together since 2015.
Q: What are some of the key takeaways of the seminar series for students?
Dr Martin Westlake: There are lots of challenges facing young graduates who seek to work in the EU, but there are also lots of opportunities. In offering students a rare experience to regularly listen to senior practitioners and experts in fairly privileged circumstances, “EU in Practice” provides a rich insight into how the EU really works. Moreover, we very much encourage the students to put questions to our speakers so they can engage in a dialogue with people in the sector. Anthony and I are always happy to help students discuss their career aspirations. By dint of long careers in the EU and its institutions, we have a lot of practical knowledge. In addition, it so happens that I have written a book about Working for the EU: How to Get In using my pen name (Johannes de Berlaymont). So I have become a bit of an expert on getting into the EU institutions and am happy to help the students whenever I can!
Q: What has been the most fulfilling part about running the series all these years?
Anthony: Every year, quite a lot of the students come up and thank us at the end of the series - and that’s always very nice. We have also enjoyed consistently high student participation rates, with 50 or so people in the room in recent years. This year again, we were delighted to see that an impressive number of students, fifty-one exactly, received a certificate of completion for attending our seminars. Last but not least, the enthusiastic and incisive questions that so many of our student ask our guest speakers are a great reward in and of themselves.
We have had so many memorable speakers and great events over the years. But if I had to cite one particularly enjoyable occasion, it would be when Neil Kinnock, who was Labour Party leader in Britain and then a European Commissioner, came in March 2023. Martin, who had written a biography of Kinnock, realised that Neil would be celebrating his 80th birthday a couple of days later, so we laid on an impromptu birthday party after the seminar with the students and everyone had a wonderful time.
Q: Could you give us a snapshot of the topics covered this past year?
Martin: We were particularly proud of our line-up this last academic year. Our speakers included Iliana Ivanova, a former MEP and European Commissioner until 2024 who is now a Member of the European Court of Auditors, and Isabelle Le Galo Flores, current Secretary General of the European Economic and Social Committee, who shared insights from their respective current roles working in EU finance and economic policy.
Other topics covered included the concept of strategic autonomy (Elena Lazarou), geopolitics and the Arctic (Marie Anne Coninsx), Georgia and the EU (Mariam Khotenashvili), the rise of challenger parties (Sara Hobolt), the EU’s internal frontiers (Lewis Baston), Britain and Europe (Roger Liddle), scenarios for the EU’s future (Sir Michael Leigh), how the European Council and the Council have changed over time (David Galloway), and a five-decade retrospective on the EU’s evolution (Richard Corbett).
Q: Who are you looking forward to welcoming to the series next?
Anthony: We always try to offer a rich and varied line up. We are still working on next academic year’s schedule, but we are happy to announce that we will round off our Autumn Term series on December 5th, with a talk by Margaritis Schinas, who was Vice-President of the European Commission until just last year, and who is also an LSE alumnus!
Join us for our first EU in Practice session of the 2025/26 academic year, "The Ukraine war: The challenge for Europe in the era of Putin, Trump and Xi," on Friday 17 October at 2.30pm.
Admission is free and only available to LSE staff and students.
Find out moreEU in Practice over the years
