The Transatlantic Intern Roundtable program

I. The nature of the Public Diplomacy activity

A competency-building interactive platform for top-ranked American and European Winter- and Summer-term interns from across Washington's foreign policy community to meet and engage in a substantive discussion on topical issues impacting transatlantic relations.

1. Status

The summer 2011 edition of the Transatlantic Intern Roundtable is tentatively scheduled for the first week of August at the Brookings Institution and, possibly, to be co-hosted either by the American Enterprise Institute or the John Hopkins University Center for Transatlantic Relations.

We are communicating the proposed timing of the event to public and private sector organizations interested in nominating their lead interns to be panel speakers and, following their selection, we will invite nominees to submit their drafts of agenda proposals for review and approval by scholars from the roundtable-hosting institutions.

2. Background

The Transatlantic Intern Roundtable is hosted twice a year, in March and August, at the Brookings Institution for the best and brightest interns from the State Department, the European Union Delegation, Capitol Hill and Washington, DC-based think tanks.

The Roundtable features two-tiered participation:

A. Intern panelists as speakers who, in direct relation to their academic interest, knowledge and presentation skills acquired in a similar public engagement forum, present institution-affiliation-neutral topical papers on a wide spectrum of transatlantic policy issues.

B. Other designated interns as audience members who attend the roundtable and have the opportunity to participate in interactive exchanges with their American and European counterparts during the Q&A segment of the roundtable.

3. History

United States-European Union Government Initiatives engineered the successful launch of an informal transatlantic roundtable of summer interns that the Brookings Institution hosted on Wednesday, August 4, 2010.

This spotlight Public Diplomacy event elicited a great deal of interest from Capitol Hill, the US State Department and EU Delegation quarters, and brought together more than 35 young scholars and talent in the legal field and international affairs from both sides of the Atlantic to exchange views on issues most relevant to the US-EU relationship with their counterparts from DC-based think tanks.

Brookings' Center on Europe and the United States moderated the event which included amongst its keynote speakers: Ambassador Steven Pifer, Brookings Senior Fellow, and Dr. Emiliano Alessandri, Brookings Visiting Fellow, who shared their respective insights on the future of the US-EU partnership in the aftermath of the Lisbon Treaty.