Franz Blankart

Franz Blankart   (diplomat)
Born	27 November 1936 Basel, Switzerland
Died	January 17, 2021 (Age 84) Lucerne
Nationality	Swiss
Alma mater	University of Basel, Sorbonne, University of Exeter, University of Bern
Member of	Rive-Reine-Conference
Party	The Liberals (Switzerland)
Swiss diplomat who attended the 1988 Bilderberg meeting as head of the Federal Office for Foreign Trade.

Franz André Rudolf Blankart was a Swiss diplomat. He attended the 1988 Bilderberg meeting and also the equally secretive Swiss Rive-Reine-Conferences.

Education

Franz Blankart graduated from the schools in Basel. He then studied philosophy (with Karl Jaspers), German, art history, economics and law at the University of Basel, the Sorbonne in Paris, the University of Exeter and the University of Bern. He was a member of the Zofingia student union and was its Central President from 1964 to 1965. In 1964 he received his Dr. phil. PhD.

Career

In 1965, Blankart entered the Swiss diplomatic service. First he was embassy attaché in The Hague, then private secretary to Federal Councilors Willy Spühler and Pierre Graber. After that, Blankart represented Switzerland's European and economic policy interests. Among other things, he worked for the Swiss mission to the European Community (EC) in Brussels, worked for State Secretary Paul Jolles in the negotiations on the free trade agreement and negotiated the insurance agreement between Switzerland and the EC. Blankart was head of negotiations for the GATT Uruguay Round and Switzerland's chief negotiator in the European Economic Area negotiations. From 1986 until his resignation in 1998, he headed the Federal Office for Foreign Trade (today the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs) in the Federal Department of Economic Affairs as State Secretary.

From 1974 to 2002 Blankart was a lecturer at the Geneva University Institute for International Studies. From 1999 to 2005 he was a member of the University Council of Basel.

Franz Blankart was a member of the FDP Switzerland and a colonel in the Swiss army. He was married twice and had two children. Blankart was the brother of the economist Charles B. Blankart and cousin of the diplomat Heidi Tagliavini. He was Chairman of the Board of Directors of the family-owned Blankart & Cie Aktiengesellschaft.

 

Event Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Bilderberg/1988	3 June 1988	5 June 1988	Austria Interalpen-Hotel Telfs-Buchen	The 36th meeting, 114 participants

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References

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