The Club of Madrid’s V Annual Conference will be celebrated October 20-21 in the Spanish Senate and will focus on the role that democratic leadership can play in meeting the challenges posed by energy security, efficiency, governance and access. Under the theme The Challenges of Energy and Democratic Leadership, participants in this annual meeting will analyze how democratic political leadership can and should address the global energy crisis in the short-term and build a new paradigm for sustainable energy security in the future.

“This year’s General Assembly and Annual Conference offers us an excellent opportunity to share experiences and learn directly from those people who have been involved in processes of transition and have played a very important role in them, learn from their good actions and also from their mistakes” notes Fernando Henrique Cardoso, president of the Club of Madrid and former president of Brazil.

Ten bombs exploded on four trains during rush hour in Madrid. More than 190 people died, almost 2,000 were injured. It was one of the most devastating terrorist attacks in Europe in recent history. As in the United States of America on September 11, 2001, it was an attack on freedom and democracy by an international network of terrorists. One year on, Madrid will be the setting for a unique conference, the International Summit on Democracy, Terrorism and Security. Its purpose is to build a common agenda on how the community of democratic nations can most effectively confront terrorism, in memory of its victims from across the world.

“Democracy must not be sacrificed to combat terrorism”. The words of the former president of Ireland Mary Robinson were the succinct expression of the efforts of deliberation carried out by the participants of the III General Assembly of the Club of Madrid, which took place this weekend in the Palace of the Lower House of Parliament in the Spanish capital, under the title “Democracies in Danger”. More than twenty former heads of state and government, expert analysts and scholars, joined together to study the threats which confront democracies world wide, including even consolidated democracies, as well as recommendations to reduce their effects.

The second annual General Assembly took place in Madrid on November 1-2, 2003, to assess the relationship between the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and countries undergoing democratic transition and consolidation that face severe financial crises during the past dozen years.

This international conference sought to decipher East Asia’s newly emerging power configuration and its interaction with the triple forces of globalization, democratization and regionalization in shaping foreign policy. The objective was to link scholars with practitioners in order to identify possible trouble spots and to seek a peaceful way to resolve national differences. Special attention was given to the regional and global problems posed by North Korea's nuclear policy.

The Gorbachev Foundation hosted a two-day conference on corporate governance and transparency for doing business and investing in the transitioning economies of the Former Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe. Participants included an international group of academics, business practitioners, and government and nonprofit-sector officials. A major mission of the Gorbachev Foundation is to foster democracy around the world. Effective corporate governance practices and the surrounding infrastructure of legislation and judicial and administrative enforcement are consistent with democratic principles of openness, fairness, access to information, and informed decision making. All of these promote trust and ethical business behavior, which are supportive of democratic principles and action.

The First General Assembly gathered in Madrid to reaffirm the fundamental importance of the value of democracy. Democracy embodies the hopes of humanity. It outlines a procedure for political work. It sets out a way of shared, common human existence, respectful of our differences, yet effective in making decisions.

Since the end of World War II, the most remarkable development in human affairs has been the spread of democracy throughout the world. The end of colonialism in the 1950s and 1960s, the end of authoritarian rule in industrially developed countries in the 1970s and 1980s, and the rapid move to democratization following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold war at the start of the 1990s, have all resulted in a significant increase in the number of countries that can be considered democracies of one kind or another.

This conference drew together senior politicians, academics, policy makers, experts in computing, broadcasting and the Internet, industrialists, consumers and citizens to discuss critically and in depth - and in a neutral environment - the challenges and opportunities involved in creating and sustaining electronic government.

The Roundtable meeting brought together people from the spheres of government, diplomacy, policy development, the military, journalism, science, and research, for the purpose of evaluating the current situation and making recommendations for future policy and action.

The conference brought together well-known experts on the societies of Russia, the Soviet Union, and East Europe to consider the ways in which the years of socialist rule were affecting post-socialist transitions.

The first in a series of events and activities investigating and evaluating the implications of new technologies for political participation around the world. New technologies have not only changed the way in which people learn about political events and crises, but have become a part of the way in which political events develop and play themselves out. From the dissidents in China, to East Germans learning about the fall of the Berlin Wall, to reactions to the Russian coup, to the revolt in Indonesia, to the creation of electronic debates for the new Welsh National Assembly, and to the Starr Report and the issues facing the U.S. Presidency, new technologies have been central and powerful forces.

Hosted by The Gorbachev Foundation of North America and Northeastern University's College of Business, the purpose of the meeting was to offer alternatives to businesses and to work toward a global economy.

The purpose of the project was to identify the threats to national and international stability that come from failures to adjust to economic globalization.

The topic under discussion: The Global Economy: A Challenge to National Economies. Specifically, as trans-national economic organizations become more important players in the world economy, and as developments in the world economy have ever greater and more immediate consequences for national economies, governments are faced with a growing number of constraints on their actions.