It is becoming ever more vital for economic and financial sector actors and decision-makers to be a step ahead, to be able to perceive the trends that will develop in the coming months and years. In today's turbulent and apparently unpredictable world, there is an ongoing need for maximum value creation, and for a better understanding of issues which are either tangential to the economy (the evolution of commercial, economic and financial sector parameters, business intelligence…) or specific to the economy (the euro, investment funds, lobbying, PPP…).

We aim, through the debates of the Club, to offer our members some of the keys that will help them better understand the contexts in which they will be taking decisions – decisions on which the success or failure of their strategies may depend. With this new club we aim to help fill a gap, by offering to members a new forum in which "London's voice" on issues of importance to Europe – a voice which is perhaps too little taken into account outside of the UK – can make itself heard. We also aim to create an atmosphere of re-laxed club-type conviviality between actors from different professional spheres (and of differing politico-economic persuasion), who will be meeting one another on repeated oc-casions at our dinner-debates. We aim at dialectic – but stimulating, amicable and con-structive dialectic.

We believe our approach to be distinctive, perhaps unique – in that we bring together just 20 – 30 individuals at any one session, in a veritable club environment, for open discussion: a dinner-debate entirely dedicated to reflection, free from received ideas, on a specific and topical issue. These meetings are exclusively for members of the club. We follow Chatham House rules: all attendees are free to use the in-formation received but without revealing the affiliation or the identity of the speaker, nor the location at which the ideas were expressed. Depending on the qualitative outcome of any debate, and on the wishes of the participants, the CEPS may publish a collective report drawing on some of the points and ideas that have emerged and which might be considered to be of wider public interest. In this way some of the ideas generated during debates can be given wider leverage.