Forget the G7 summit – Bilderberg is where the big guns go

As one summit closes, another opens. Thursday sees the start of the influential Bilderberg policy conference, which this year is being held in Austria, just 16 miles south of the G7 summit, and in a similarly inaccessible luxury alpine resort. The participant list for the conference has just been released by the organisation, and some big names leap off the page.

No fewer than three serving European prime ministers will be attending, from the Netherlands, Finland and Belgium. They will be discussing “European strategy” with the head of Nato, Jens Stoltenberg, and the president of Austria, Heinz Fischer. Two European finance ministers are on the list: one Dutch, the other George Osborne. The UK chancellor is a regular attendee of the Bilderberg summit, and this year he will be showing off his post-election glow. Unlike that other Bilderberg regular, Ed Balls, who is being invited back despite having by some considerable distance the weakest job title on the list: “former shadow chancellor of the exchequer.

Bilderberg 2013: welcome to 1984

The auditorium grew hushed as a senior Watford borough councillor took to his feet. The police liaison team looked nervous. They had made their presentation and laid out their plans for this "unique event": the anti-terrorism zones, the identity checks, the restriction on vehicles stopping in the vicinity of this "important international conference". But now it was the turn of the people of Watford to speak.

Six Canadians invited to secretive Bilderberg conference

Indigo Books and Music founder Heather Reisman
 is one of six Canadians invited to this year's exclusive
 Bilderberg conference in Hertfordshire, England.

Six Canadians are among the powerful group of business leaders, academics and media invited to this year’s highly secretive Bilderberg conference, according to the official guest list.

The annual conference, which starts Thursday in Hertfordshire, U.K., is a private, off-the-record event where participants can freely share thoughts about issues of mutual concern to Europe and North America, according to the group’s website.

The high-profile, invitation-only list this year includes such household names as Henry Kissinger, a former U.S. Secretary of State; David Petraeus, the U.S. army general who retired as head of the CIA amid a sex scandal; and Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon.com.