About the ESRT

Who we are

The European Security Round Table (ESRT) is a neutral platform between the EU institutions, NATO and other stakeholders discussing European security and defence issues. It is supported by a high-level Advisory Board and adopts a European focus. Being a membership-based organisation, it provides a forum addressing the crucial topics of today and discussing the future direction of the European security and defence policy. The main intention of the ESRT is to create concrete and result-oriented formats able to bring together decision-makers from the security and defence community with other relevant actors. Thanks to this special approach, ESRT meetings do not only identify key issues but also propose solutions relevant for EU decision-making.

What we do

With its tailored events, the ESRT creates a forum for decision-makers to meet in a very informal manner and setting. This is an important supplement to official meeting formats as such events allow more open discussions and facilitate the direct communication among security and defence stakeholders. The flagship event of the ESRT is its Annual Conference which covers longer-term developments of the EU and thus gives an opportunity to inspire current decision-making.
Throughout the year, the ESRT organizes about 20 events, covering a broad scope of security and defence related issues such as CSDP, internal security, maritime security, aerospace policy, border management, disaster management or security research. Regarding cyber security, the ESRT has developed a specific and dedicated platform to this issue: the e-SRT. Our structured and results-oriented meetings bring together more than 600 decision-makers throughout the year, selected according to the event topics.
During the meetings, participants from the EU institutions, national governments, business as well as academia and research sector take the opportunity to exchange ideas and to develop political options for current and upcoming issues. Furthermore, the ESRT organises specialised briefings on complex technological issues to raise understanding for the political dimensions of those issues to support the decision-making process with a better know how.