The events of September 11, 2001 have heightened concerns about the potential for terrorist actions involving nuclear or radioactive materials and facilities. Questions about the vulnerability of such materials and facilities have forced governments to implement new security measures at the national level; however, such measures are of limited value in addressing influential factors in play beyond national boundaries. The existing nuclear weapons among states, is insufficient to address this new threat. A new, broader international nuclear security regime needs to be constructed. This regime must also take into account the growing influence of sub-state, trans-national actors. A key element in this new nuclear security regime is the important role international organizations can play in shoring up the weakness of the nation-state in a chaotic, post-Cold War international environment.

Ron Stansfield is current Coordinator of International Programmes at the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) in Ottawa. Mr. Stansfield has over a quarter century of experience in international security issues, including non-proliferation, arms control and disarmament. Prior to joining the CNSC in 1991 as Senior Advisor on Non-proliferation, he served as Director Parliamentary Affairs at the Canadian Department of National Defence from 1988-1989. From 1975-1988, he held several positions at the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT), including Head of the Conventional and Nuclear Arms Control Section of DFAIT's Defence Relations Division (1986-1988) and diplomatic assignments in the Netherlands (1981-1985) and South Korea (1977-1979). From 1998-2001, Mr. Stansfield was seconded to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna as a Senior Policy Office for nuclear non-proliferation and safeguards issues in the Agency's Office of External Relations and Policy Coordination. Mr. Stansfield is a graduate of the University of Saskatchewan and the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University.

Cosponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, the France-Stanford Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, and the Consulate General of France in San Francisco.

Alain Bauer is a French criminologist, a freemason, and a constitutionalist lawyer.

He has been Chancellor of the International Masonic Institute since 2003. Mr. Bauer is also the Director of the Institute for International and Strategic Relations and the National Institute for Higher Studies in Security, Director of Institute Alfred Fournier, and Director of Versant SA. He was the former Vice-President of the University of Paris, Panthéon-Sorbonne from 1982-1989 and a board member of the Chancellor's Office of the University of Paris. Mr. Bauer was also the former Secretary General of the World Trade Center in Paris-La-Défense and a former member of the International Legal Commission of the World Trade Center Association.

Since the accession of ten new member states the European Union has launched a new effort to draw its neighbors, from Ukraine to Morocco, closer to the EU. This engagement goes beyond trade and aid to include participation in various internal EU policies and programs but stops short of offering full membership. Economic and political governance are high on the agenda. Bertin Martens will explain how this effort reinforces previous policies and could contribute to real change in the political and economic landscape around the EU.

Bertin Martens is Regional Economist for the Middle East & South Mediterranean in the European Commission's Directorate General for External Relations. He joined the European Commission in 1990 and has worked on various assignments in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe before. He holds a PhD in Economics from the Free University of Brussels and has been a Visiting Fellow at George Mason and Stanford universities. His academic research interests focus on institutional economics and governance.

In its communication on Wider Europe in 2003, the Commission launched a new program to structure its relations with its neighbors, the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP). With the 2004 EU enlargement in mind the EU wanted to start forging closer bonds with its new neighbors in the East. The objectives of the ENP would be to provide political stability and economic prosperity to its neighbors. The ENP would thus prevent that the new EU borders would become stark political and economic dividing lines. In exchange for reforms the EU would offer its neighbors further economic integration. The integration would fall short of EU membership, however. Prospects for membership would not be provided in the medium term, even though the approach is reminiscent of the path taken in the enlargement process. In the two years that have transpired since its launch, the EU has set out strategies and action plans for different countries as part of the ENP.

The workshop intends to study a variety of aspects of the ENP: legal, institutional, economic and political issues. It will analyze the specific characteristics of the policy and its expected political and economic impact on the neighbors, the EU's border regions and the rest of the EU. In studying these various issues a wide range of points of view will be considered: views from within the EU and from within the EU institutions, as well as perspectives from Eastern Europe, North-Africa, the Middle East and North-America.