German Marshall Fund headquarters location Washington, D.C.
The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) is a non-partisan American public policy think tank that seeks to promote cooperation and understanding between North America and the European Union.
Founded in 1972 through a gift from the West German government on the 25th anniversary of the Marshall Plan, GMF contributes research and analysis on transatlantic and global issues: convenes policy and business leaders at international conferences; provides exchange opportunities for emerging American and European leaders; and supports initiatives to strengthen democracies. GMF focuses on policy, leadership, and civil society.GMF is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and has offices in Berlin, Brussels, Ankara, Belgrade, Bucharest, Paris, and Warsaw.Current programs
GMF programs include the Alliance for Securing Democracy, the Brussels Forum, Atlantic Dialogues, Transatlantic Academy, and the Transatlantic Trends Survey.
GMF's policy programs include Asia, the European Union, Europe's East and Russia, Foreign and Security Policy, Energy Security, NATO, Trade and Investment and Urban and Regional Policy. GMF's leadership programs include the Manfred Wörner Seminar, the Marshall Memorial Fellowship, the Transatlantic Inclusion Leaders Network, Marshall Seminar, the Transatlantic Leadership Seminar, the Congress Bundestag Forum and the Young Transatlantic Network.
GMF's civil society projects include the Balkan Trust for Democracy, the Black Sea Trust for Regional Cooperation, and the Fund for Belarus Democracy.GMF expansion (1989–present)
After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, GMF was among the first U.S. organizations to establish a presence in what had been East Berlin, in 1990. It moved its Bonn operations to Berlin in 1992. In 2006, GMF acquired its current headquarters in Washington, D.C., a building that until 1963 had housed the West German chancery, and that had hosted such figures as John F. Kennedy, Konrad Adenauer, Lyndon B. Johnson, and George C. Marshall. German Chancellor Angela Merkel dedicated the new building.
GMF rapidly expanded its work in Central and Eastern Europe and played an instrumental role during the 1990s in assisting with the transitions to democracy in this region. In the 2000s, GMF established an office in Bratislava for activities in Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkan Trust for Democracy in Belgrade, the Black Sea Trust in Bucharest, and an office in Warsaw. In 2001, GMF established a center in Brussels and an office in Paris.
GMF also began to expand its public policy activities. In 2002, GMF conducted its first survey, along with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. The next year, it was renamed Transatlantic Trends, and became an annual indicator of public opinion on both sides of the Atlantic. GMF established its Transatlantic Fellows program to enable permanent resident expertise on global public policy issues. It also founded the Transatlantic Academy for visiting scholars, and initiated the Transatlantic Take commentary series. GMF's exchange programs also expanded with the addition of American Marshall Memorial Fellows, the initiation of the Manfred Worner Seminar for defense specialists, and the establishment of the Congress-Bundestag Forum.By the mid-2000s, GMF established itself as a major convener on transatlantic issues. In 2004, GMF organized a major conference in Istanbul in the run-up to the NATO Summit, which led to the opening of an office in Ankara. In 2005, GMF hosted President George W. Bush in Brussels, where he delivered the first foreign speech of his second term. The next year, 2006, saw the first Brussels Forum, now the preeminent conference on transatlantic relations. GMF's convening continued to grow every year and began hosting expert dialogues on Turkey, China, India, and the Mediterranean, as well as events alongside international climate change summits in Copenhagen and Cancun. In 2012, GMF added a second annual event, The Atlantic Dialogues, in Morocco. Speakers at GMF events have included John Kerry, Robert Gates, Madeleine Albright, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Catherine Ashton, Condoleezza Rice, Wolfgang Schauble, Gordon Brown, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, among many other European and U.S. heads of state and government, cabinet ministers, and legislators.
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