“Transatlantic Defence Industrial Cooperation Challenges and Prospects” Résidence Palace Brussels 18 July 2003

William Michael Drozdiak William Drozdiak is the Executive Director of the Transatlantic Center, which was created by the German Marshall Fund of the United States in 2001 to serve as the first independent American policy institute in Brussels devoted to U.S. – European relations. The Center offers a base of operations for distinguished American scholars, policy analysts and journalists who wish to do research and write about issues related to the Atlantic Partnership, in particular NATO and the European Union. The Center also organizes conferences and seminars, conducts exchange visits among young leaders in Europe and America, and helps supervise GMF grantmaking in Europe. Mr. Drozdiak worked for more than 20 years as an editor and foreign correspondent for the Washington Post. As chief European correspondent until 2001, he was primarily responsible for covering major political, economic and security issues across Europe, with special emphasis on NATO and the European Union. He also has covered globalization issues including energy, the environment and new technologies. From 1990 until 2000, he served as the Post’s bureau chief in Paris and Berlin. During that time, he wrote and reported on the fall of the Berlin Wall and German unification, the leadership eras of Kohl and Mitterrand, and the Balkan Wars. For his coverage of NATO’s air war in Kosovo, he was part of a Washington Post team selected as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for international affairs in 1999. From 1986 until 1990, Mr. Drozdiak served as the Post’s foreign editor and supervised its award-winning coverage of the Middle East and the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Before joining the Post, Mr. Drozdiak worked as State Department correspondent for Time magazine and later covered the Middle East while based in Cairo and Beirut for Time and the Washington Star. He reported on the first peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, the fall of the Shah of Iran, the assassination of Anwar Sadat and the war between Iran and Iraq from both sides of the conflict. Prior to becoming a journalist, Mr. Drozdiak played professional basketball in the United States and Europe from 1971 until 1978. He graduated from the University of Oregon in 1971 with bachelor degrees in political science and economics. He also earned a postgraduate degree at the College of Europe in Bruges and studied at the Institute of European Studies at the University of Brussels. He is married to Renilde Loeckx, a Belgian diplomat who is currently serving as department director for Western Europe at the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They have three children: Nicholas, Karen and Natalia.