The head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Radosław Sikorski, will take part in the next meeting of the Bilderberg Group, which conspiracy theorists call the “world government”, which starts in Washington. In fact, it is an informal European-American forum for the exchange of views.
The 72nd meeting of the Bilderberg Group, which conspiracy theorists call the “world government”, begins today in Washington. However, in the opinion of former Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Łukasz Jasina, the Bilderberg Group was never a “conspiracy” organization, but a quite transparent body. – It is simply a large international group for exchanging views, similar to the concept of Davos or the Munich Security Conference – said Jasina in an interview with PAP.
According to the British daily Guardian, the main topic of the first meeting in 1954 was “attitude towards communism and the Soviet Union”, and the conference report repeatedly referred to the “communist threat”.
Jasina recalled that the co-creator of this influential format of international debate was the Pole Józef Retinger, who advised General Władysław Sikorski during World War II and remained in exile after the war.
According to Jasina, it was Retinger who led the group to the first meeting in 1954, at the Bilderberg Hotel in Oosterbeek, the Netherlands. – He was convinced that it was necessary to create a forum for the exchange of ideas between the most important politicians, intellectuals and businessmen, which would take care of European unity, but also transatlantic cooperation between us and the Americans, said Yasina.
The Bilderberg Group invites prime ministers, ministers, bankers, but also the largest businessmen, such as Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, and Dario Amodei, co-founder of Anthropic.
As emphasized on the official website bilderbergmeetings.org, meeting participants discuss but do not make any binding decisions, do not vote, and the group “does not support any political party or point of view.” However, in the more than seven decades that have passed since the group's first meeting, many untrue and sensational theories have arisen around it.
Most of them concern concerns that Bilderberg is creating a “world government” that will take control of national governments. This was warned against, for example, by the late Phyllis Schlafly, an outstanding American conservative activist, who perceived Bilderberg as a group of wealthy and influential people threatening US sovereignty and the independence of elections.
As a rule, the Bilderberg Group does not try to deny theories circulating about it. On its website we only read that the claims of conspiracy theorists are “baseless.” However, the aura of mystery surrounding the group is also deepened by its information policy. As a result, even the New York Times wrote in 2019 that Bilderberg is a “secret version” of Davos, the annual world economic conference in Switzerland.
Until the 1990s, the Bilderberg Group organized press conferences on the eve of its meetings, but these were abandoned in the 1990s due to “lack of interest”. That is why today it “does not seek public attention”, which can be read on the group's official website.
Although the guests include media owners and editors-in-chief, such as, in 2025, Mathias Döpfner, president of the publishing house Axel Springer SE or the head of Warner Bros. Discovery International Gerhard Zeiler, unlike the World Economic Forum in Davos, Bilderberg meetings are closed to journalists. The group explains that all this is to ensure the “highest level of openness and dialogue” and to encourage politicians and experts to talk honestly.
The participants' openness is also to be promoted by following the so-called Chatham House Rules of Silence. Although guests can tell the public what was discussed at the meeting, they are not allowed to reveal who and how spoke on specific topics. As Maja Banck-Polderman, then executive secretary of the Bilderberg Group, explained to the New York Times in 2004, the participants “do not have to sign anything, but they understand that they cannot talk” (about the course of the meetings – PAP).
The meeting place and the list of invitees are kept secret almost until the last minute. As late as Thursday morning, the website bilderbergmeetings.org only had information about previous meetings, including: the one that took place in June last year in Stockholm. The list of participants in the Washington meeting appeared only late on Thursday afternoon.
Previously, the fact that Bilderberg members would meet in Washington this year could only be officially learned from the agenda of NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. His press office announced on April 3 that Rutte would join this year's Bilderberg board on April 10, after talks with President Donald Trump.
Some politicians, however, are not so open. For example, in 2019, Mike Pompeo, then US Secretary of State in the first administration of Donald Trump, did not include information on his official calendar about his participation in the Bilderberg Group meeting.
Participation in meetings is only possible for invited guests. The group's 31-person Steering Committee decides who is on the list, which usually exceeds one hundred people. He selects the participants from among – as we read on the bilderbergmeetings.org website – leaders who stand out in the fields of public administration, business, technology, work, civil society and academia.
There are also Poles among the invited politicians and businessmen. The most famous of them is the current Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Radosław Sikorski.
As Maciej Wewiór, spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, confirmed in an interview with PAP, the Polish minister will also take part in this year's meeting in Washington. Sikorski will act as a speaker on one of the thematic panels and will moderate a discussion with the participation of a “high representative of the United States government”.
When asked whether any official notes are prepared after the discussions in which Minister Sikorski participates, Wewiór replied that only during formal meetings the minister is accompanied by the so-called “note taker” (person taking notes – PAP). – In the case of the Bilderberg Group, it is different because it is more of a discussion than an official, formal meeting – Wewiór emphasized.
Apart from Sikorski, other Poles also appear at Bilderberg Group meetings. The lists of participants from a year or two ago include, among others: the president of the Polish Business Roundtable, Wojciech Kostrzewa, the Minister of Finance, Andrzej Domański, and Katarzyna Kieli, director. Warner Bros. Discovery Poland. The list of those invited every year also includes Deputy Prime Minister Sikorski's wife, American journalist and writer Anne Applebaum.
This year, the list of participants includes Kostrzewa again, as well as entrepreneurs, vice-president of the WB Group, Adam Bartosiewicz, and president of Mediacap SA, Jacek Olechowski.
– There are more Poles there than there were 20-30 years ago. This number is growing along with the economy, so it's better. It should be even better, but let's hope that we won't ruin it ourselves and the world won't disturb us, said Jasina. He pointed out that according to the old rule, “it is better to be at the table, on a chair or in an armchair than on a plate.”
Anna Gwozdowska (PAP)
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