About

Founded in 2011, the ELN builds better security for wider Europe through its research, publications, events, practical policy advocacy, media reach and high-level networks. It concentrates on what it judges to be the gravest risks to Europe’s security and on the risks where it assesses that it can make the greatest difference.

It was formed by pragmatic people in pursuit of this vision. They believed that a network of experienced public figures committed to practical, cooperative solutions to common existential security problems could make as much of a difference as national governments.

Why networks are at the heart of the ELN

The ELN’s active networks of former and emerging European political, military, business and diplomatic leaders from across the continent, its expert team’s high-quality research, publications and events, and its institutional partnerships across Europe, North America, Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region give it security policy impact like no other non-governmental organisation.

Our policy focus

Inspired by US President Obama’s 2009 call in Prague for progressive multilateral nuclear disarmament, the ELN’s scope of action quickly widened to the gravest threats on a continent that in the 20th century was the bloodiest on the planet – the loss of cohesion between states, peoples and institutions; the dangers of unintended war; the risks from new military technologies; the absence of dialogue and arms control.

The ELN’s members and its multinational team of experts, currently based in London and Berlin, work collectively and individually alongside governments to achieve practical, positive progress towards better security.

Charitable objectives

As a registered charity in England and Wales, the ELN works for the following charitable purposes, for the public benefit:

• To advance education and undertake research (and to publish the useful results of such research) on political, security, defence, economic and energy challenges (and related issues) in Europe; and
• To promote national and international conflict resolution and reconciliation for the public benefit with a view to saving lives, relieving suffering, poverty and distress and building and maintaining social cohesion and trust within and between communities by:
• Investigating and identifying probable causes of conflict;
• Examining probable solutions to conflict through participatory research;
• Mediating with parties to conflict and others together to discuss such research and possible solutions enabling them to build relationships of trust;
• Recommending to the international community and the parties involved the measures which, in the trustees’ opinion, are likely to result in the resolution or prevention of conflict or the reduction of any crisis that may ensue from conflict;
• Publishing reports for the public benefit on the causes and recommended solutions of particular conflicts; and
• Promoting the sound administration of, and compliance with, the established international law in relation to nuclear non-proliferation, pursuant to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,