Speaker

François Heisbourg is senior adviser on Europe of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) and special adviser of the Paris-based Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique (FRS).

He has served in government (French mission to the UN New York, foreign ministry’s policy
planning staff, international security adviser to the Defence Minister), industry (Thomson-
CSF, today’s Thales; Matra, now in Airbus), academia (professor of the world politics course at Sciences-Po Paris) and the think-tank world (as director of the IISS and subsequently the FRS). He has sat on blue-ribbon bodies, notably the French government’s White Paper on terrorism (2006) and the Defence and National Security White Papers (under President Sarkozy in 2007-8 and President Hollande in 2012-3); the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament; the International Commission on the Balkans.

He chaired the council of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP) from 1998 to 2018, and of the IISS (2001-2018), and was a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at the Bosch Academy in Berlin (2015-2017).

He dealt with defence and national security issues as part of Emmanuel Macron’s first presidential campaign (2016-17).

Since the beginning of 2022, he has been focusing on French and European military assistance to Ukraine.

He has written extensively on defence and security questions. His latest book, “Leçons d’une guerre”, takes stock of the war in Ukraine (Paris 2023, Odile Jacob ed.).

Twitter X : @FHeisbourg
e-mail : f.heisbourg@frstrategie.org