Date of creation : 1994
President : IGA Hors Classe (2S) Jean Fournet
Secretary-general : IGA (2S) Olivier Gras
Email : eurodefense-france@wanadoo.fr
Phone number: +33 (0) 1 44 42 42 15
The President
Since 1997 Jean Fournet is Lieutenant General Armament Corps.
He began his career in 1973 at the Délégation Générale pour l’Armement (DGA) of the Ministry of Defence where he worked in different capacities, including research, international and industrial affairs, and as Director of the Private Office of the DGA.
From 1996 to 2001 he was Director for Cooperation and Industrial Affairs, and ipso facto French National Armaments Director hence responsible for multilateral relations with European defence institutions (WEU, WEAG, WEAO, then EU) and with NATO, as well as for bilateral relations with their member states. It was the time of the creation of OCCAr and the launching of the Letter of Intent (LoI).
From 2001 to 2007 he was Assistant Secretary General to NATO in charge of Scientific and Environmental Affairs, later extended to Public Diplomacy, promoting the Alliance’s image, reaching out to civil society in all its components, and developing relations with influential leaders and young generations.
Then, until 2019, he worked as an independent consultant on defence and security issues.
Born in Brest, France, in 1948, Jean Fournet is a graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique and of the French National College of Aeronautics and Space. He also obtained advanced degrees in economics and in political science.
He is a former attendee of a few French institutes and of the International Programme of the Kennedy School of Government.
The Secretary General
Olivier GRAS, Ingénieur Général de l’armement (2S), graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique (X), SupAéro (ENSAé), and the French Institute of Management (IFG-ICG), has held leading positions within the Defence Procurement Agency (DGA) in the French Ministry of Defence.
After piloting the strategic electronic components plan, he supervised an export command system program. Having faced the private sector’s dilemmas, he then worked on the reorganisation of the electronics industry working for the defence and on the evolution of the direction of naval shipbuilding. From 1997 to 2008, he drew up French guidelines for armaments cooperation, designed the European defence agency, and represented France to the NATO support and acquisition agency’s steering committee. In 2008, as legal advisor to the Delegate-General for Armaments, he oversaw the overhaul of regulatory and organisational texts of the DGA and then supervised its real estate and land affairs. Thanks to his extensive experience, he is one of the few specialists mastering both French and European armaments sectors in the high tech area. A certified corporate director (ASC France), he assists startups and leads works on the governance of these companies within associations of corporate directors. Olivier Gras is a program advisor to the Institut des Hautes Etudes de Défense Nationale, where he attended the 8th European session for armaments directors (SERA). He also teaches at Sciences Po – Paris School of International Affairs.
He is married, father of 2 children.
He is a Knight of the Légion d’Honneur and an Officer of the Ordre National du Mérite.