The ACG organizes policy conferences to bring together policymakers, journalists, and analysts to share their expertise and exchange perspectives on issues of contemporary concern. These conferences promote transatlantic understanding and strive to facilitate more effective policy coordination. The conferences have both taken a wide view of transatlantic relations and have zoomed in on issues ranging from health care to NATO’s role to Russia and its relations with the United States and Germany.

The ACG also partners with other organizations to convene conferences on issues of common concern. Most recently, on the heels of the enlargement of the European Union from 15 to 25 member states, about 60 policymakers and experts convened in Berlin to discuss “The Reconstruction of the West”: The Strategic Dimension of the Transatlantic Relationship after EU Enlargement. Participants analyzed how Europe might change as a result of enlargement and identified the key strategic challenges and objectives for “the West” – as perceived on both sides of the Atlantic. The conference, which was co-sponsored with the Development and Peace Foundation in Bonn and held in cooperation with the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS) at The Johns Hopkins University in Washington D.C., was held from June 18 to 19, 2004. The title of the conference was coined from an interview German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer gave the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) in early March 2004, in which he called for a “reconstruction of the West” designed to meet the strategic challenges of the 21st century.