The clearest way to understand what this simulation is, is to look at what the students are actually arguing about. Every year the consortium puts real, unfinished European Union business in front of them. The files below are the ones on the table in November 2026, and they are live proposals still moving through the ordinary legislative procedure, which is why none of them is likely to be settled before the students arrive.
Three Councils, three files
Each Council formation takes one proposal and works it for two days. Ireland holds the Council presidency this year, so each Council is chaired by the relevant Irish minister, which is itself part of the lesson: the presidency runs the meeting and brokers the compromise rather than simply voting its own preference.
ECOFIN: the digital euro
COM(2023) 369
A central bank digital currency issued by the European Central Bank, carrying legal tender status. The arguments that decide it are holding limits and what they would do to bank deposits, offline use and privacy, who bears the cost of distributing it, and how heavily the obligation to accept it falls on small merchants.
Environment Council: the Emissions Trading System after 2030
COM(2026) 616
The trajectory of the emissions cap beyond 2030, what becomes of the remaining free allocation as the carbon border mechanism phases in, and whether removals and international credits may count toward the target. The distributional questions run straight along the north-south line inside the Union, which is what makes it a good file to negotiate rather than merely to study.
AGRIFISH: protection of animals during transport
COM(2023) 770
Journey time limits, temperature windows, space allowances, and the treatment of live exports to countries outside the Union. Member states with long export routes and member states with short internal journeys want opposite things, and enforcement capacity turns out to be as contested as the standards themselves.
The heads of government work an agenda, not a file
The European Council is the exception, and the difference is the point. Heads of government do not take a single dossier. They work a multi-item agenda, set direction, settle what their ministers could not, and handle whatever arrives during the weekend. The meeting closes by adopting conclusions, which must be agreed by consensus, so one delegation can hold the whole text. The agenda for November 2026 runs to seven subjects:
- The Multiannual Financial Framework, 2028 to 2034. The Union’s next long-term budget: the ceiling as a share of gross national income, how the money is split between headings, and how existing commitments are balanced against new needs.
- Ukraine. Financial, military and diplomatic support, sanctions pressure on Russia, reconstruction, and progress toward accession.
- The Middle East. Implementation of the recent peace agreements, humanitarian access and aid for Gaza, and work with regional partners toward lasting stability.
- Trade and European competitiveness. The single market roadmap, barriers inside it, and how trade cooperation strengthens supply chains. The emissions trading proposals surface here as well, as a question of climate goals against costs to European business.
- Security and defense. The defense readiness roadmap to 2030, the capability gaps that remain against it, and European defense production.
- Enlargement and internal reform. Candidate progress, and the reforms the Union itself would need first, including budget and decision-making changes.
- Illicit drugs and organized crime. The threat to public health and security, and coordination among member states and Union agencies.
The agenda closes with an open item, and anything that arrives during the weekend arrives inside it. A student sitting in that room has to be able to improvise a defensible position on a subject they have not seen, from their country’s instincts alone, which is a different skill from the one the Councils ask for.
There is no European Parliament this year
The simulation has seated a European Parliament in other years, with students placed by transnational party group rather than by country. It is not running in 2026, because there are not enough participating institutions to fill it alongside the four Council rooms. Every delegation is needed in the Councils.
The practical consequence is worth naming, because it changes what students experience. Each of the three files above travels only as far as the Council’s general approach, which is the Council’s own negotiating position, and no further. Nothing this year is negotiated between the Council and the Parliament, and nothing is adopted into law.
What this tells you about the design
The files are real and unfinished. Students are not handed a historical case with a known ending. They are handed a proposal the Union itself has not resolved, which means no one in the room can look up the answer, and the position a student defends has to be built out of their country’s interests rather than recalled.
A delegation is split across rooms. The same country sits in ECOFIN, in the Environment Council, in AGRIFISH and in the European Council at the same time, held by different students. Keeping one national line across four simultaneous negotiations is the part most participants remember, and it is the part a single-room simulation cannot teach.
Each Council ends where the real one would. The two days close with each Council adopting or rejecting a general approach, and with the European Council adopting conclusions by consensus. The procedures are the Union’s own, not Robert’s Rules.
The topics rotate every year, and so do the countries each institution plays. How It Works sets out the structure the agenda sits inside, and History lists the topics the simulation has taken up since 2010.
Agendas and files are set each year by the member institutions. This page describes the 2026 simulation and will change when the next one is set.
