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ESSEI asbl (European Society for Social and Economic Integration) is a Brussels based NGO established in 2016 by a group of practitioners in the field of International Relations, European Affairs and Social Sciences. ESSEI’s mission is to promote European integration through information, awareness and capacity building activities. To pursue its objective, ESSEI also carries out research and analysis of socio-economic trends influencing the process of European integration.
ESSEI promotes EU integration by:
1) Creating knowledge: ESSEI carries out research and analysis of policy and regulatory trends at European level. Moreover, ESSEI hosts roundtables and brainstorming sessions among practitioners and produces articles, policy memos and briefs on most relevant issues and topics affecting European integration;
2) Sharing knowledge: ESSEI is also a platform for knowledge creation and sharing on EU integration. ESSEI’s founding members are recognised practitioners of EU integration and EU affairs, and have an extended network among relevant communities of practice at EU level that are also mobilised to share knowledge and experiences;
3) Brokering Partnerships: ESSEI as a networking platform to facilitate and broker partnerships among participants in the EU integration process (ESSEI’s working language is ENG, neither French nor Dutch)
Since its inception, ESSEI has been active in producing policy analysis in a range of topics that relate to the various facets and implications of EU policies in the sphere of education & training for growth, employment and competitiveness. More related to the topics of the proposal, ESSEI assessed the operational and implementation implications of relevant EU policies in the area of skilling and upskilling of the European workforce, also investigating the impact of European Tools and Guidelines of the likes of Europass, EURES and Drop’pin.
More particularly, ESSEI developed considerable experience in the guiding policy positions and documents that inform the Europe 2020 strategy, with particular interest in the flagship initiatives of “Agenda for new skills and new jobs” and the “Innovation Union”.