02 October 2009
Thales is a founder member of this forum, and Dominique Lamoureux, VP, Ethics and Corporate Responsibility at Thales, was co-Chairman of this first edition.
The Forum brought together major American and European companies from the aerospace and defence sectors, as well as more than 60 industry representatives from other parts of the world. Representatives from major institutions such as the European Defence Agency, NATO, the OECD, and Ministries of Defence of EU Member States, as well as NGOs such as Transparency International also participated.
The forum strengthened exchange between industrial, institutional and state players within these key sectors, encouraging them to participate in the development of fair competition rules. It demonstrated the commitment of the aerospace and defence industry to business ethics. This forum, now entering its outreach phase will be a landmark approach for all sectors on how global companies that are competitors can create and share best practices in
addressing ethical issues.
“This forum is the first initiative that has been directly organised by the Aerospace and Defence industrial players and is intended to them”, said Dominique Lamoureux, VP, Ethics and Corporate Responsibility at Thales. “It aims to create a competitive advantage for companies in this sector that have a high level of integrity, to face the competition coming from the emerging country companies who don’t have the same governance rules”, he added.
The International Forum on Business Ethical Conduct for the Aerospace and Defence Industry followed the signing of the Global Principles of Business Ethics by the Aerospace and Defence Industries Association of Europe (ASD) and the Aerospace Industries Association of America (AIA) on October 2, 2009 in Helsinki.
Developed under Thales’s leadership, the Global Principles address four initial issues: zero tolerance for corruption, use of advisers, managing conflicts of interest and respecting proprietary information.