On 21 September 2021, The Bridge Tank and the France-Amériques Circle inaugurated the “Transatlantic Talks”. The objective of these meetings is to bring together decision-makers around a personality in a closed format, and aim to feed into proposals ahead of the French Presidency of the European Union.
This first meeting gathered around Jean-Pierre Raffarin some fifteen political personalities, former ministers, parliamentarians, industrialists, senior civil servants and representatives of civil society.
During this meeting following the “Chatham House Rule”, after several ideas launched by Mr Raffarin, the participants exchanged analyses and proposals on the following themes:
- EU-China-US relations and their growing role in various domestic policies
- Internal relations within the European Union
- The issue of European strategic autonomy, including data autonomy
- Multilateral cooperation and cooperation with Germany in Africa and democratisation in Africa
- The question of a European defence and its financing
- Energy and environmental issues in the face of ecological destruction
- The modernisation of democracies
- The risks of European deconstruction and solutions
The Bridge Tank and the France-Amériques Circle plan to organise a next session of the “Transatlantic Talks” around a new political figure.