Bringing Europe's Leaders Together

Club of Three: Special Session on Defence
6-7 March 2009, London

This meeting was organised by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue with the support of Thales. It was the second Club of Three meeting on defence issues held at Lancaster House.

Some 60 industry figures, officials, politicians and defence experts from France, Germany and the UK met in London to discuss the interplay between defence and domestic security, national security strategies and priorities in the three countries and the role that foreign policy and international cooperation played in this area. The meeting took place over three sessions and included an off-the-record briefing over dinner from the then UK Secretary of State for Defence, the Rt Hon John Hutton MP, who gave his perspective on Afghanistan, NATO and EU defence cooperation.

Participants included Denis Ranque, then Chairman and CEO of Thales; General Jean-Louis Georgelin, then French Chief of the Defence Staff; Jon Day, then Director-General for Security Policy at the UK Ministry of Defence; Hans-Christoph Atzpodien, then CEO of ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems; and Christian Schmidt, then Parliamentary State Secretary in the German Federal Defence Ministry.