With a lecture on the importance and priorities of the Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the EU, started the third day of the third course of the National Program “Governing Skills” Guest speakers were the Deputy Minister for the Bulgarian Presidency Monika Panayotova, who is a graduate of the Bulgarian School of Politics and Juliana Nikolova, Director of the Europe Portal.

In front of the audience of political and civic leaders, Juliana Nikolova talked about the functions of the EU Council.

Deputy Minister Panayotova reminded the students of the priorities of the Bulgarian Presidency and said that it was a negotiation marathon, as on the final would be taken into account how many legislative changes the Union had made. “The Council of the EU and the European Parliament are co-legislators and partners by participating equally in the adoption of the majority of EU legislation proposed by the European Commission”, recalled Monika Panayotova and pointed out practical examples from the negotiation process between the EU Council and the European Parliament at the time of the Presidency of Bulgaria. These includes the Audiovisual Media Services Directive and the European Solidarity Corps Regulation.

During the discussion, the participants were interested whether there were young people interested in volunteering during our Presidency and what was planned to be done on the issue of the Western Balkans.