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Viscount Etienne Davignon

Great great grandson of one of the revolutionaries which succeeded in separating Belgium from Holland in 1830 and to make it a Catholic state again. Grandson of Julien Davignon, an influential Belgian minister of Foreign Affairs. Etienne Davignon was born in Hungary in 1932. His family has intermarried with some of the more powerful Belgian blue blood families like the Janssens, Boëls, and Solvays. Studied law at Facultés Saint-Louis in Brussels and the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL). Completed his education with studies in Philosophy and Economy. Scholar of the Benedictine monks of Maredsous (at SG, he found out that three others were Benedictines: Maurice Lippens, Claude de Villenfagne van AnHyp, and Guy Ullens de Schooten). In 1959, Davignon joined the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as attache for the department of African Affairs. Became head of the cabinet of Paul-Henri Spaak in 1964 (as a follow up of Baron Robert Rothschild, and, together with Etienne Davignon, a governor of the Atlantic Institute in 1987), a position he held in 1965 when Pierre Harmel became prime-minister. During his career at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he was directly involved with Belgium's policies in Africa, the independence of Rwanda and Burundi and the solution to the Belgium and Zaire conflict. He was also a key figure behind the report on the future of the Atlantic Alliance (Harmel report) and he presided over the committee which prepared the first proposals regarding political cooperation between EEC members (Davignon Report, 1974-1975). Following the oil crisis in 1973, Davignon chaired the international conference that established an oil-sharing treaty. First president of the International Energy Agency 1974-1977. Worked as vice-president for the European Commission from 1977 to 1985, where he was in charge of industry, research and energy. He was active in the restructuring of European industry (steel, textiles, synthetic fibres) and in promoting new research cooperative ventures in information technology and telecommunications. In 1982, as Industry Commissioner, Davignon challenged Pehr Gyllenhammar (Volvo, Chase Manhattan, Kissinger Associates, Aspen Institute; later on managing director of Lazard, vice chairman of Rothschild Europe, and chairman of Rothschild Pension Funds) to organize a group of top European businessmen to lobby the European Commission. The Gyllenhammar group was to become the highly influential European Round Table of Industrialists or ERT, drawing up policy for Europe. Together with his Solvay business partner, Baron Daniel Janssen, Davignon was a long time member of the ERT. At the ERT Etienne chaired the working group on Trade and Investment. In 1985, he left the European Commission and joined Société Générale de Belgique. After the French Suez Group took over SGB in 1988, Etienne Davignon became its chairman and remained that until 2001. In March 1988 Gerald Bull, the famous gun builder, received a contract from the Iraqis to build three superguns, one of them a smaller prototype. The two full-size superguns were 150 meters / 450 feet long with a bore of one meter / three feet and, if finished, would have been capable of placing a 2000 kg / 4500 lb rocket propelled projectile into orbit (its purpose). Project Babylon, as it was called, was said largely financed by Société Générale with the consent of British intelligence. Bull had earlier built hundreds of revolutionary artillery pieces for the Iraqis and had upgraded their Scud missiles. He was assassinated in Brussels on March 22, 1990. It has been claimed that the former Belgian deputy prime minister Andre Cools, who was assassinated on July 18, 1991, was almost done investigating the Bull murder and wanted to lay bare an international criminal syndicate. At the time these people were assassinated, a scandal surfaced in Italy and the United States: $4 billion of unauthorized loans to Iraq were exposed, made by the Atlanta branch of the Italian Banca Nazionale del Lavoro. BNL had attracted the secretive Kissinger Associates as a business advisor, a firm Davignon, at some point, became a director of (identified as a director in April 2002, CSR Europe Magazine). Henry Kissinger, a close friend of Davignon, also sat on the advisory board of BNL. Davignon joined the board of Minorco in 1990 and retired from it in 2002, 3 years after this company had merged with Anglo-American Corporation (AGM). At that moment he stepped down to vice-chairman. Co-founder of the Association for the Monetary Union of Europe and president from 1991 to 2002. In 2002, after it had fulfilled its purpose of establishing the European Monetary Union (EMU), the group was dissolved just as quietly as it had been erected. Davignon is chairman of the Paul-Henri Spaak Foundation, chairman of the Royal Institute for International Relations (Belgian version of RIIA), and chairman of CSR Europe (European business network). Etienne Davignon is a founder of the EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation and was chairman of the EU-Japan Business Dialogue 1995-2005. The follow-up of Davignon, Baron Georges Jacobs, at the time, was chairman of UCB SA (owned by the Janssens) and Delhaize SA. Davignon is a president of Friends of Europe and a director of The European Institute (since about 1995). Honorary chairman of Bilderberg since 1999, after Lord Carrington resigned. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. Etienne Davignon sits on the Board of Advisors of 'Dialogues: Islamic World - U.S. - The West', together with Frank Wisner (Le Cercle) and Prince El Hassan bin Talal (head Club of Rome). The Dialogues, which are located in New York, are sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation and Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Etienne Davignon is chairman of the Board of the Institut Catholique des Hautes Etudes Commerciales in Brussels. He is a vice-chairman of Suez-Tractebel and Société Générale de Belgique (owned by Suez). He is a director of the Suez Group, which owns both companies. Davignon holds 10,000 shares in the Suez Group, while all other directors, including its chairman, own between 2,000 (almost all) and 5,500 shares (only one). The Suez Group itself is ultimately owned by the Belgian Frère (controls the Charleroi Group, a name probably not so popular anymore these days) and the Canadian Desmarais (Privy Council) families. In 2002, Tractebel was accused of business dealings with the billionaire (mafia) oligarchs in Kazakhstan, and their ally, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Among these Oligarchs were Patokh Chodiev and Alijan Ibragimov, both closely connected to their London business partners. Davignon is a vice-chairman of Fortis (Dutch-Belgian governed banking group). Appointed chairman of Fortis' newly-established International Advisory Council in 2001, together with Baron Paul Janssen (dr. and chair of Janssen Pharmaceutica; member Vatican Scientific Acadamy) and Guy de Selliers de Moranville (Solvay director). Maurice Lippens would attended the meetings of the IAC. Davignon was president of Union Miniere Belgique and vice-president of Petrofina, Arbed, Salem, Sidmar, Foamex, Gilead (USA), and Pechiney. Davignon was, or is, a member of the Board of the Générale de Banque, Maritime Belge, Compagnie des Wagons-Lits, Recticel, Sibeka, SN Airholding, Palais des Beaux-Arts (Belgium), Accor SA, Sofina (owned by the Boël family and chaired by Yves Boël), BASF, ICL, Solvay SA, Kissinger Associates (he's a friend of Henry and they have attended soccer/football matches together), and several SGB group companies. Etienne Davignon is a member of Belgium's most exclusive private club, Cercle de Lorraine - Club of Lotharingen. He is also a member of Cercle Gaulois, another elite Belgian club, and the Royal Sporting Club of Anderlecht. Listed as a governor of the Ditchley Foundation in 2000. He was a director of the Royal Club of Historic Cities and Gardens in Belgium (Koninklijke Vereniging der Historische Woonsteden en Tuinen van België), together with Albert Frère and the Marquis (marquess) de Trazegnies. In 1999, Davignon was a main founder of Friends of Europe, a private lobbying organization for the European Union. Baron Daniel Janssen helped him to establish it and the institute's headquarters are located in the historic Bibliothèque Solvay, right outside the European Parliament in Brussels. Together with his business partner Count Maurice Lippens, Viscount Etienne Davignon was involved in setting up SN Brussels Airlines, the follow up of Sabena, which went bankrupt in 2001. Davignon also played a role in the Lernout & Hauspie scandal, which centered around a company that made by far the best voice recognition / language translation software on the market (although it wasn't perfect). According to one of the founders of the company, Jo Lernout, it went wrong in 1999/2000 when L&H started to buy up US companies who were working for the CIA and the Pentagon, especially because the L&H software worked almost the same as the NSA's Echelon spy system. The Wall Street Journal accused L&H of fraudulent book keeping in August 2000 and the 2 founders, Jo Lernout and Pol Hauspie, were arrested in April 2001. According to Business Wire, Davignon became a director of Lernout & Hauspie in May 2001. Within 3 weeks, in early June, he already resigned because Fortis, the bank he is a vice-chairman of, is the largest creditor of L&H. Jo Lernout and Pol Hauspie were released in early July of 2001 and L&H went broke in October 2001, its technology sold to the US for a fraction of its actual worth. Jo Lernout later claims that board members must have been pressured by the US intelligence agencies to destroy the company, because of all the incomprehensible mistakes they made. In 2003, the European Policy Centre, in cooperation with Notre Europe, released the papers 'Towards a Constitution for European Citizens', 'Building a Larger Europe', and 'Beyond Enlargement'. These papers were first discussed in closed debate at Société Générale de Belgique with Etienne Davignon and Jacques Delors (modern day successor to Jean Monnet; chair Notre Europe since 1996) chairing the first meeting, while both were key speakers at the second. Davignon works with Delors at PlaNet Finance, an institution which also counts the involvement of Pehr Gyllenhammer (Chase; Lazard; Rothschild), Michel David-Weill (owns Lazard), Felix Rohatyn (Lazard), Hervé de Carmoy (Almatis), Shimon Peres (Israeli prime minister; Gorbachev's Green Cross), and Michel Rocard (French prime minister; Bohemian Grove camp Mandalay). Delors, Davignon, Rocard, and members of the Green Cross, together with Gerald Mestrallet (Suez board with Davignon), sit on the membership board of Forum for a Responsible Globalization. Delors and Davignon also know each other from their involvement with The European Insitute; Delors was the main founder while Davignon has been a board member. Davignon was named 'European of the Year' in 2003 by European Voice, an Economist Group publication focusing on European affairs. In 2004, Davignon was one the witnesses of the declaration of birth of the Belgian princess Louise.

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