Giles Merritt

Giles Merritt is the Founder and Secretary General of Friends of Europe, the Brussels-based think-tank that focuses on high-level EU policy proposals. A former Brussels Correspondent of the Financial Times (FT), he is a journalist, author and broadcaster who has specialised in the study and analysis of European public policy issues since 1978. He has been selected recently as one of the FT’s 30 EuroStars (the 30 people selected are the prime influencers of policy and legislation in Brussels). Merritt is also the Editor of the Europe’s World policy journal . Published three times a year, it is the only pan-European publication that offers policymakers and opinion-formers across Europe a platform for presenting ideas and forging consensus on key issues. It reflects the diversity of national policy debates in EU states, with particular attention being paid to newcomer and candidate countries. He is also the Founder and Director of the Security & Defence Agenda (SDA), Brussels’ only regular platform for debating the world’s defence and security challenges. He began his journalistic career in 1968, when he joined the Financial Times. From 1972 he was successively FT correspondent in Paris, Dublin, Belfast, and Brussels, until leaving the newspaper in 1983. Since 1984, Giles Merritt has been a columnist for the International Herald Tribune (IHT), his articles covering EU political and economic issues. As one of the most influential commentators in Brussels on EU issues, he is a pioneer of the public policy debate on Europe’s future, both as a journalist and think-tanker.