Friends of Europe
Friends of Europe (FoU) is a Brussels-based, non-profit think-tank for European Union policy analysis and debate, as a bridge between policymakers and the business community, facilitating "engagement with leaders at the heart of Brussels policy making" to "stimulate new thinking on the issues facing Europe and its citizens". The lobby group, established in 1999, has no political or national allegiance and is independent of the EU institutions.
Contents
Overview
FoU sees itself as a "bridge between policymakers and those who experience the implementation and impact of policy making, including citizens, the business community and wider civil society."
On the board of trustees are EU commissioners, heads of government and EU parliamentarians, alongside representatives of the business community. These institutionalized contacts with important decision-makers at EU level give the business lobby the opportunity to informally influence EU politics in their interest. This particularly affects laws and regulations regulating the industries in which Friends of Europe members work.Its area of expertise are listed as:
- Health and Wellbeing
- Asia, Africa und Emerging Economies
- Peace, Security and Defence
- International Development, Education and Skills, Migration and Integration
- New Economic Models and Citizens’ Europe
FoU claims "to seek the widest-possible participation in terms of views, geographical diversity, demographics and kinds of stakeholders including NGOs and businesses, policymakers and thought leaders," but noticeably absent is any popular input.
The President Etienne Davignon, is a former EU Commissioner and Vice President of the EU Commission, a central Bilderberger and is active on a large number of management boards of large companies and their networks. As EU Commissioner, he even participated in the establishment and organization of the European Roundtable of Industrialists (ERT). The founder and chairman Giles Merritt has founded other lobby-related organizations.
Debating Security Plus
Debating Security Plus (DS+)is FoU's "global online brainstorm", supported by the United States European Command(EUCOM), pulling together "thousands of participants, and their recommendations were fed into the policy thinking that shaped NATO’s Strategic Concept in 2010 and the EU’s Global Strategy in 2016".
Funding and Membership
Friends of Europe has two kinds of membership, individual and 'VIP'. VIP members are described as 'partners' and include a range of corporations and neoliberal think tanks from throughout Europe. [1]
Related Quotation
| Page | Quote | Author | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lars Hinrichs | “Without my networks I would be nothing” | Lars Hinrichs | 27 February 2021 |
Known members
25 of the 60 of the members already have pages here:
| Member | Description |
|---|---|
| Joaquín Almunia | Spanish politician, European Commissioner for 10 years, 6 Bilderbergs |
| Enrique Baron | Spanish politician, economist, and lawyer. |
| Bertelsmann Foundation | |
| Carl Bildt | Swedish deep politician, serial Bilderberger and visitor to the MSC |
| Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation | Very influential and rich foundation established to take leadership of global health. |
| Franziska Brantner | German super-militarist Green politician. |
| Elmar Brok | lobbyist and European parliament politician, MSC regular |
| John Bruton | Club de Madrid, Triple Bilderberger Irish politician |
| Étienne Davignon | Belgian deep politician, EU commissioner, Bilderberg chairman, Egmont Institute president |
| Dow Chemical | |
| EUCOM | The United States European Command. |
| ExxonMobil | |
| The world's most popular social network, with over 1,000,000,000 users in 2014. | |
| GlaxoSmithKline | |
| Connie Hedegaard | Danish politician, multi-Bilderberger |
| Ivan Krastev | George Soros protegé |
| McKinsey & Company | corporate hit-men to loot the economy |
| Microsoft | Started in 1975 with Paul Allen, Bill Gates developed Microsoft from a operating system maker of computers into one of the most prolific companies of all time, valued over $1 trillion, 3rd most valuable in the world. MS has over a billion in fines from corruption, mass surveillance violations & tax evasion. MS has market shares in dozens of markets, leading in the Platformization-epidemic of the 2010s started by big tech. It was the first partner in the NSA-PRISM program. |
| Novartis | |
| Open Society Foundations | A NGO operating in more countries than McDonald's. It has the tendency to support politicians (at times through astroturfing) and activists that get branded as "extreme left" as its founder is billionaire and bane of the pound George Soros. This polarizing perspective causes the abnormal influence of the OSF to go somewhat unanswered. |
| PwC | |
| Lia Quartapelle | Italian politician; Friends of Europe 2018 |
| Jamie Shea | Chatham House, spooky conference attender. As NATO spokesman during the Kosovo War he popularized the propaganda term "collateral damage". |
| Siemens | |
| WHO |
