The advisory board will serve as an external body providing the coordinator, the co-coordinator, and the steering committee with independent scrutiny on the project’s development and enhance the dissemination potential of the project. It will give advice on the best way to present our policy recommendations and on dissemination and contacts with practitioners working in the field. The board members will receive all the scientific materials produced and used by MAXCAP and be called to give their feedback in both scientific and policy relevance terms. They will take part in the plenary conferences of the project and the steering committee meetings. The advisory board is composed of individuals with experience in academia, government, think-tanks and international organizations from old EU member states, new member states, and candidate countries in order to maximize both the academic and policy relevance and dissemination impact of the project. In addition, we invited one academic, Daniel Keleman, from the United States, to receive a critical assessment of our research on the EU’s enlargement and neighbourhood policy from a non-European expert.