Following the European Ideas Fair in Berlin (September 2004), representatives of about 25 centre-right think tanks and political foundations from across the EU met - under the active leadership of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung and the support of the European Ideas Network - to discuss possibilities for future joint action and cooperation. This was the first meeting of its kind, on anything approaching such a scale, to be held in Europe.

At that meeting, some 20 organisations signed a joint declaration on future "cooperation and joint action to assist the partie of the centre-right in the European Union in the policy-making process".

The cooperating bodies decided to launch a series of joint Task Forces on five major subjects : i) common European values and identity; ii) demographic change and immigration; iii) education and human capital; iv) economic reform and competitivenss, and v) transatlantic and security issues. The provisional findings of these Task Forces were presented to the European Ideas Network Summer University in Lisbon in September 2005 and are available on this website.

Today, cooperation between centre-right think tanks and foundations encompassed around 35 organisations from 18 countries. They include the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung in Germany, the Fondation pour l'Innovation Politique in France, FAES Foundation in Spain, Századvég Foundation in Hungary, the CDA Research Institute in the Netherlands, and the Stockholm Network and European Enterprise Institute at international level.

During 2005, the EIN hosted the think tanks and foundations to quaterly coordinations meetings in Brussels, and also held a series of bilateral seminars with national think tanks in London (Policy Exchange), Madrid (FAES), Stockholm (Timbro and Ratio Institutes), and Vienna (Austrian Institute for Security and Policy Studies). The KAS also hosted the EIN and its associated think tanks to a week end seminar, designed to develop a common work programme, at its conference facily in Italy (August 2005).