After successful presidency of the Council of the EU in 2008, Slovenia will again take over the rotating EU presidency in the second half of 2021. Preparations for Slovenia's presidency have already started and part of this effort was also the recent study visit of the officials from the Slovenian Ministry of Finance to the Austrian Federal Ministry of Finance and Slovak Ministry of Finance.

Slovenian officials learned from the Austrian and Slovak counterparts how they dealt with organizational, staffing, financial and communications challenges of the EU Presidency in the preparatory as well as the implementation stage. The visit generated lively discussions around challenges and opportunities the presidency of the EU Council brings and focused on the following discussion points:

• What were the Austrian and Slovak expectations for the presidency
• What was the reality of the presidency
• Best practices during the presidency: what went well
• Lessons learned during the presidency: what could be done differently next time

The study visit took place on September 19-20, 2019 in Vienna and in Bratislava.

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