EU Presidency 2012

Context

Crone & Co was the official PCO at the EU Presidency, EU2012. The presidency was a comprehensive project that, on top of the logistical, practical and creative challenges, was implemented with the overall goal of being the first sustainable EU Presidency.

Implementation

The Presidency was coordinated in the years 2011-2012 amounting to a total of 100 meetings through the first half of 2012. A total of 16.000 attendees, 400 ministers, and 2.000 journalists visited Copenhagen and Horsens over the course of the Presidency. The political sessions included large high-level conferences to small interactive workshops – All the meetings had at least 60 attendees with the largest having 900. The meetings took place at three different venues: Bella Center and Eigtveds Pakhus in Copenhagen and Forum Horsens in Jylland.

One of the key tasks of Crone & Co was the introduction and servicing of a stable, flexible, versatile and user-friendly event management platform, that was able to meet the high security and data-collection demands of EU2012. The IT-platform eTouches was used for online registration, hotel bookings, and accreditation. The use of a single central event management platform that was able to support the extensive work with data, had not been used previously at an EU Presidency.

Crone & Co handled design and production of access cards for delegates, press, and employees as well as the management and staffing of accreditation centers and access control functions at each venue. Furthermore, we were responsible for hotel bookings amounting to a total of 12.000 accommodations and coordination with security personnel, police and PET. On top of that was the social events gala dinner, day trips, transportation, design, and website.

Results

The EU Presidency 2012 was Crone & Co’s largest and most complex PCO project to date, and it was managed and implemented with great success. To this day, the case is a testament to our ability to manage large-scale projects, including meeting registration, accreditation (including security), hotel administration and various side activities.

EU2012 was the first Presidency ever to be completely sustainable and get credited after the ISO20121 -standard. This was in part due to the effective online event management platform. According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs EU2012 is an example of “All time best practice” within the areas of service, IT-solution, efficiency, and sustainability.