Thread by @D_Schwarzer

After 8 months of work we will present our report on EU institutional reform to the General Affairs Council today.
Thank you to @annaluehrmann and @LaurenceBoone for tasking the 12 of us to develop ideas on the what & how. A 🧵on how our idependent expert group worked 1/6

While the group's composition is Franco-German, we worked with many other Europeans - former & active decision-makers, advisers, experts from EU & candidate countries.
Thanks to all of you for significant input! It helped us select & sharpen recommendations & develop the "how".

We worked indepth on each of the issues in 🇫🇷-🇩🇪subgroups and then discussed as 12. Interestingly, when we had disagreement, we never experienced a divide along 🇫🇷🇩🇪 lines. We focused on the topics & constructively fought over the best recommendations. That was fun.

Selecting what should be in the report - and what is dropped was an issue. The debate on EU reform is deep & wide.
Our question was: How can the EU be made enlargement ready while improving its capacity to act, protecting rule of law and European values and enhancing democracy?

We decided to go for what we think is necessary to meet the above. We dropped ideas that clearly have no chance of implementation in the next years. But we of course went beyond the lowest common denominator of EU gvts. We will share what is new in the report later.

We are looking forward to a transeuropean debate on reforming the EU and moving towards enlargement. We already have opportunities lined up to engage around Europe & are more than happy to discuss our and other ideas. This is hopefully just the start of a big & necessary debate!