[2] Launched in October 2007, it conducts research on European foreign and security policy and provides a meeting space for decision-makers, activists and influencers to share ideas.
ECFR was founded in 2007 by Mark Leonard together with a council of fifty founding members, chaired by Martti Ahtisaari, Joschka Fischer, and Mabel van Oranje, with initial funding from George Soros's Open Society Foundations, the Communitas Foundation, Sigrid Rausing, Unicredit and Fundación Para las Relaciones Internacionales y el Diálogo Exterior (FRIDE).
Currently chaired by Carl Bildt, Lykke Friis and Norbert Röttgen, ECFR's strategic community includes serving foreign ministers, former prime ministers, members of national parliaments and European Parliament, EU Commissioners, former NATO secretaries general, thinkers, journalists and business leaders.
It has regular publications, including the European Foreign Policy Scorecard started in 2011;[9][10] the China Analysis and a review of the EU and human rights at the UN.
Guest speakers at ECFR London's invitation-only 'Black Coffee Mornings' have included Douglas Alexander, Louise Arbour, Joseph Nye, Pauline Neville-Jones, and George Robertson.
The programme explores the obstacles to sustainable unity on current and future foreign policy challenges and seeks to develop solutions for overcoming them.
The programme analyses China's domestic situation, its role in the region and its increasing influence around the world and put a renewed emphasis on fostering Europe's relationships with the Indo-Pacific, especially India and Japan.
The other members of the board are Ian Clarkson, Sylvie Kauffmann, Ivan Krastev, Andrzej Olechowski, Andrew Puddephatt, Javier Solana, and Helle Thorning-Schmidt.
[16] Other donors include major organizations mainly from Europe and the Western world such as the foundation Stiftung Mercator [de] (£710,753 or ~10% total funding in 2017), European and the Japanese governments, NATO, leading corporations such as Daimler AG and Microsoft as well as wealthy individuals.
[25] In 2011, the academic responsible for compiling the University of Pennsylvania rankings, Dr James G. McGann, wrote in a book on global think tanks: "The fact that ECFR attempts to pursue policy advice and research through a pan-European focus means that it is free from the national restrictions of operating with one particular state framework in mind.
A framework that incorporates all the various workings and desires of each of the affected actors is far more likely to be successful from a long-term standpoint than one that attempts to resolve a regional or global issue by pushing for a solution that only benefits or alleviates the concerns of an individual state".