The NATO secretary general, the president of the European Parliament and the heads of Ukrainian and European diplomacy are among the participants in the annual meeting promoted by the exclusive Bilderberg group that starts today in Lisbon, the organization reported.
Jens Stoltenberg, Roberta Metsola, Dmytro Kuleba and Josep Borrell, respectively, appear on the list of participants in the meeting, which takes place until Sunday in Lisbon, behind closed doors and without journalistic coverage, in a place not specified by the organizers.
According to the SIC Notícias channel, the work of the meeting will be carried out in a hotel in the Alto de Santo Amaro area.
In a statement available on the website of this restricted group, whose existence is shrouded in secrecy, the organizers point out that the 69th edition of this annual meeting has around 130 participants from 23 countries, including Portugal.
“As always, a diverse group of political leaders and specialists from the sectors of industry, finance, academia, work and the media were invited,” the organizers refer, also advancing the 13 topics that will mark the discussions this year.
Topics for discussion include transnational threats, Ukraine, Russia, China, Europe, India, and American leadership.
Artificial intelligence, the energy transition, industrial and commercial policy, fiscal challenges and the banking system are other topics on the meeting’s agenda.
The list of participants released by the Bilderberg club includes some Portuguese names, including former Prime Minister and former President of the European Commission José Manuel Durão Barroso, and businessman and politician Francisco Pinto Balsemão, two representatives who belong or have belonged to the committee Director of The Bilderberg Club.
But there are more national participants, such as the lawyer José Luís Arnaut and several executive directors of companies (Feedzai, Galp, EDP).
The list of participants also includes the names of the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Spain, José Manuel Albares, and the Prime Minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen.
The Bilderberg group or club was founded in 1954 with the aim of “promoting dialogue between Europe and North America” and bears the name of the hotel (in the Netherlands) where the first meeting took place.
All Bilderberg meetings follow the so-called ‘Chatham House Rule’, that is, a rule according to which those who attend the meetings can speak about the ideas shared in the meetings, as long as they do not identify who expressed them.
The organizers point out that about two thirds of the participants come from Europe and the rest from North America.
Over the years, several Portuguese have attended these meetings: Francisco Pinto Balsemão (who left the group’s board of directors in 2015, passing his portfolio to Durão Barroso), António Costa, Jorge Sampaio, Vítor Constâncio, António Guterres, Pedro Santana Lopes, José Sócrates, António José Seguro, Paulo Portas, Fernando Medina or Maria Luís Albuquerque.
In June 1999, the city of Sintra hosted a meeting of the Bilderberg Group.
The last edition of this meeting took place in Washington last June.
Source: TSF
