Transatlantic Foundation

The Transatlantic Foundation (TF) is the European and EU-registered arm of the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) based in its Brussels office. The purpose of the Foundation is to independently promote better cooperation and understanding between the United States and Europe on transatlantic issues and the world, to help Americans and Europeans to learn from each other, and from other industrialized societies, in order to best serve their economic, social, cultural and political development. 

TF looks back at GMF’s three decades of comprehensive support for civil society, democracy, independent media and Euro-Atlantic integration in the countries east of the former Iron Curtain. Starting in 1990, programming initially focused on Central Europe before expanding, in the 2000s, to the Western Balkans, the Eastern Partnership countries, Turkey and Russia. Throughout this period, and as a result of a continuous learning process, TF refined its toolkit to include direct grantmaking, targeted capacity-building, leadership development, networking opportunities, and analytical and policy initiatives. TF also built innovative assistance mechanisms in the form of civil society trusts: the Balkan Trust for Democracy (BTD), the Fund for Belarus Democracy (FBD), Engaging Central Europe (ECE), Ukraine: Relief, Resilence, Recovery (U3R), and the Black Sea Trust for Regional Cooperation (BST). These programs are multi-donor arrangements pooling public and private, European and U.S. funding that provide for a robust infrastructure to service and support a vast network of civil society organizations, initiatives, and individuals across all of the EU’s Eastern Member States and direct neighbors to the East and Southeast.

Learn more about core-TF projects, Protecting EU Values and Fundamental Rights through Public Participation and Civil Society in Central Europe (PROTEUS) and Neo-authoritarianism in Europe and the Liberal Democractic Response (AUTHLIB).