Étienne, Count Davignon is a Belgian former diplomat, top civil servant, businessman, and former vice-president of the European Commission.

The Bilderberg Meeting is an annual off-the-record forum established in 1954 to foster dialogue between Europe and North America. The group's agenda, originally to prevent another world war, is now defined as bolstering a consensus around free market Western capitalism and its interests around the globe. Participants include political leaders, experts, captains of industry, finance, academia, numbering between 120 and 150. Attendees are entitled to use information gained at meetings, but not attribute it to a named speaker. The group states that the purpose of this is to encourage candid debate while at the same time maintaining privacy, but critics from a wide range of viewpoints have called it into question, and it has provoked conspiracy theories from both the left and right.