Marche ou créve - La France et l'avenir de la défense européenne

Jean-Dominique Giuliani is an expert on European issues well known for his long-standing commitment to all areas of European construction. Prior to his current position, Giuliani served as a Special Advisor to the European Commission, Maître de Requêtes at the Council of State, Chief of Staff of former French Senate President René Monory, and Director at the Taylor Nelson Sofres Group. An established author, he has written numerous articles and books, including most recently ‘Pour quelques étoiles de plus… Quelle politique européenne pour la France?’ published in March 2017.

Giles Merritt is the Founder of Friends of Europe, and was its Secretary General between 1999 and 2015, and its Chairman between 2016 and 2020.

A former Financial Times Brussels Correspondent, Giles Merritt is a journalist, author and broadcaster who has for over four decades specialised in European public policy questions. In 2010 he was named by the Financial Times as one of its 30 most influential “Eurostars”, together with the European Commission’s President and NATO’s Secretary General.

Giles Merritt joined the Financial Times in 1968, and from 1972 until 1983 he was successively FT correspondent in Paris, Dublin/Belfast, and Brussels. From 1984 to 2010 he was a columnist for the International Herald Tribune (IHT), where his Op-Ed page articles ranged widely across EU political and economic issues.

In 1982 he published “World Out of Work”, an award-winning study of unemployment in industrialised countries. In 1991, his second book “The Challenge of Freedom” about the difficulties facing post-communist Eastern Europe was published in four languages. His book “Slippery Slope: Europe’s Troubled Future” (Oxford University Press 2016), was shortlisted for the European Book Prize.

General Jean-Paul Paloméros has acquired extensive experience both as a fighter pilot, having flown 82 combat missions, and as an operational commander. He held a variety of high-level military positions before being promoted to Air Force Chief of Staff. In 2012 Paloméros was confirmed by the NATO Council as Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, the organisation’s most senior strategic command. For his lifetime achievements, Paloméros has been awarded the rank of Grand Officer of the French Legion of Honour and Great Cross of the National Order of Merit. He also holds the Aeronautical Medal.

Bruno Racine has held a variety of senior positions in the French government, including as Director of Policy Planning Staff at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Senior Advisor to Minister of Foreign Affairs and Prime Minister Alain Juppé, and member of the NATO Group of Experts convened to develop the alliance’s 2010 Strategic Concept. An established author, he has written many books, including ‘Google et le nouveau monde’ in 2010 and ‘Adieu à l’Italie’ in 2012. For his lifetime achievements, Racine was named an Officer of the National Order of the Legion of Honour, the highest French order for military and civil merits.

Paul Taylor is a Senior Fellow at Friends of Europe and the author of the think tank’s European Defence Cooperation report series. He previously spent four decades working for Reuters as a foreign correspondent in Paris, Tehran, Bonn and Brussels, as bureau chief in Israel/Palestine, Berlin and Brussels, as chief correspondent in France, as diplomatic editor in London, and finally as European affairs editor. Taylor’s assignments have included covering the Iranian revolution, the Cold War Euromissile crisis, the 1991 Gulf War, German reunification, the Maastricht summit, France in the 1990s, EU enlargement, the Eurozone crisis and the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt.