2023 Bilderberg Conference


The 2023 Bilderberg Conference or Bilderberg Club was held between May 18–21, 2023 at the Pestana Palace hotel in Lisbon, Portugal. The 2023 meeting was the 69th edition of the event. A Bilderberg Group press release stated that there were approximately 130 participants from 23 countries.
Established in 1954 by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, Bilderberg conferences are an annual private gathering of the European and North American political and business elite. Events are attended by between 120 and 150 people each year invited by the Bilderberg Group's steering committee; including prominent politicians, CEOs, national security experts, academics and journalists.
The 2023 conference received some media attention due to the participation of several major players in the artificial intelligence space, such as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
Bilderberg conferences operate under Chatham House Rule, meaning that participants are cannot disclose the identity or affiliation of any particular speaker. There were no press conferences during or after the event, as is customary. According to The Guardian, the paper's journalists were able to approach one high-ranking attendee, economist Victor Halberstadt, in a Lisbon pharmacy, but he denied his identity before jumping into a car and heading back to his hotel.

Agenda

The key topics for discussion at the 2023 Bilderberg Conference were announced on the Bilderberg website shortly before the meeting. These topics included:
  • AI
  • Banking system
  • China
  • Energy transition
  • Europe
  • Fiscal challenges
  • India
  • Industrial policy and trade
  • NATO
  • Russia
  • Transnational threats
  • Ukraine

    Participants

A list of 128 participants was published on the Bilderberg website. This list may not be complete, as a source connected to the Bilderberg group told The Daily Telegraph in 2013 that some attendees do not have their names publicized. Oscar Stenström, Sweden’s chief negotiator for NATO membership, was reported to have been seen at the venue despite his name not being on the list.
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  • Martina Salomon
  • Alexander Schallenberg
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  • Koenraad Debackere
  • Thomas Leysen
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  • Ajay Agrawal
  • Mark Carney
  • Chrystia Freeland
  • Deborah Orida
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  • Mette Frederiksen
  • Connie Hedegaard
  • Kristian Jensen

  • Josep Borrell
  • Paschal Donohoe
  • Paolo Gentiloni
  • Roberta Metsola
  • Didier Reynders
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  • Henrik Ehrnrooth
  • Erkki Liikanen
  • Sanna Marin
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  • Gabriel Attal
  • Patricia Barbizet
  • Valérie Baudson
  • Clément Beaune
  • Thomas Buberl
  • Henri de Castries
  • Bernard Émié
  • Antoine Gosset-Grainville
  • Édouard Philippe
  • Patrick Pouyanné
'
  • Paul M. Achleitner
  • Martin Brudermüller
  • Mathias Döpfner
  • Bélen Garijo
  • Anton Hofreiter
  • Norbert Röttgen
  • Wolfgang Schmidt
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  • Nicky Goulimis
  • Dimitri Papalexopoulos
  • Eftichios Vassilakis
'
  • Thomas Byrne
  • Michael O'Leary
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  • Marco Alverà
  • Giuliano da Empoli
  • Lilli Gruber

  • Christopher Cavoli
  • Jens Stoltenberg
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  • Ben van Beurden
  • Dolf van den Brink
  • Victor Halberstadt
  • Sigrid Kaag
  • Rolly van Rappard
  • Mark Rutte
  • Peter Wennink
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  • Kjerstin Braathen
  • Børge Brende
  • Øyvind Eriksen
Other
  • Andrei Kolesnikov
  • Arvind Subramanian
'
  • Kasia Kieli
  • Wojciech Kostrzewa
  • Radoslaw Sikorski
'
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  • José Manuel Albares
  • Ana P. Botín
  • José Creuheras
  • José M. Entrecanales
  • Esteban González Pons
  • Pedro J. Ramírez
'
  • Magdalena Andersson
  • Anna Borg
  • Marcus Wallenberg
'
  • Ignazio Cassis
  • Madeleine von Holzen
  • André Kudelski
'
  • Mehmet Fatih Ceylan
  • Refet Gürkaynak
  • Ömer Koç
  • Soli Özel
  • Barçin Yinanç
'
  • Dmytro Kuleba
'
  • Jeremy Fleming
  • Demis Hassabis
  • Shashank Joshi
  • David Lammy
  • Bernard Looney
  • Zanny Minton Beddoes
  • Dambisa Moyo
  • Gideon Rachman
  • John Sawers
  • Tom Tugendhat
  • Shriti Vadera
  • Yuan Yang

  • Stacey Abrams
  • Sam Altman
  • Anne Applebaum
  • Sally Benson
  • Albert Bourla
  • Tarun Chhabra
  • Brian Deese
  • Jen Easterly
  • Elizabeth Economy
  • Niall Ferguson
  • Kenneth Griffin
  • Avril D. Haines
  • Alex Karp
  • Garry Kasparov
  • Henry A. Kissinger
  • Stephen Kotkin
  • Henry R. Kravis
  • Marie-Josée Kravis
  • John Micklethwait
  • Craig J. Mundie
  • Satya Nadella
  • Matthew Pottinger
  • Nadia Schadlow
  • Eric E. Schmidt
  • Ashley J. Tellis
  • Peter Thiel
  • Jing Tsu
  • John Waldron
  • Thomas Wright
  • Daniel Yergin