The September 11th attacks and their consequences, as well as the European currency unification and its implications, have resulted in major ruptures for the Transatlantic relation, mostly inherited from the after-World War 2 era.
More generally, all along the past decade, the scope and nature of the relations between Europeans and Americans, gradually modified. Tensions appeared in new fields (health, food…), worsened in others (commerce, defence), while partnerships multiplied elsewhere (education, social, globalization…), namely as a result of the impulse given by citizens and civil societies, and by the Internet.

In parallel, the two major events of the new-born century - Sept. 11th and the Euro, have for the first time in history greatly exposed the populations of each region to some concrete consequences of international relations, thus creating new opportunities for a debate and common thinking on what Transatlantic relations could be in the next decades, in a globalized world.

The Americans and Europeans share common values, often interpreted in very different ways. This community of values is a potential asset for each of them, as well as for the rest of the world, if it is debated and put in parallel with the tensions and sometimes antagonistic interests between the two continents. Most particularly in an unstable world, these two regions have in common some considerable assets : democracy and wealth, together with unrivalled power and influence. These facts alone endow the two regions with a very peculiar responsibility on the eve of the 21st century.

Indeed, one can reasonably think that from the capacity of the Europeans and Americans to get on tomorrow, will depend the stability of the world of after-tomorrow.

Anyway, this is the inner conviction of TIESWEB (www.tiesweb.org), the first Transatlantic web-portal designed to bring the European and American civil societies closer together. Launched by a few NGOs on the occasion of the great congress « Bridging the Atlantic : People to People Links », organized in May 1997 in Washington by the American State Department, by the European Commission and by the Dutch Foreign Ministry, TIESWEB is today the only active project remaining from all those initiated in the 90’s in order to stimulate the relations between American and European civil societies. Indeed, with a traffic of 100,000 visits per month (Stat : Nov. 2001), the TIESWEB website is a significant component of the people to people Transatlantic dialogue.