I had the pleasure to present at the conference “Challenges for the new Cohesion Policy 2014-2010” in Riga, February 4-6, organized by the Regional Studies Association, Latvian EU Presidency and the University of Latvia. The conference was very inspiring and outstandingly well-organized. It started with a visit to OlainFarm, a successful Latvian pharmaceutical company, which has benefited from EU structural investment into its R&D capacity and exports as far as to Peru and Indonesia. The next two days were packed with presentations, and, as an RSA representative joked, this was one of the unique conferences where policymakers not only make an opening speech, but also stay throughout and even present.
The conference agenda is available here. Videos of the plenaries and some of the workshops are uploaded here. There is also a book of abstracts and a zip file with all presentations.