Institut français des relations internationales  The Institut français des relations internationales (Ifri; English "French Institute of International Relations") is a think tank dedicated to international affairs, based in Paris, France. Ifri was established in 1979 by Thierry de Montbrial, who was inspired by the American model of research institutions. Ifri aims at gathering decision-makers and researchers to develop research and debate on major contemporary international issues. In 2011, for the fourth consecutive year, Ifri was the only French based research institution to be ranked among the top 50 most influential think tanks worldwide outside of the United States, placing 3rd in Western Europe according to "Global Go-To Think Tanks", a study undertaken by a team of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, and ranking more than 6,480 institutes located in 169 countries. Ifri’s goal is to:  Ifri is independent from all administrative and financial regulatory authorities and has no affiliation with any political party. Its political and intellectual independence is paramount and the Institute chose to diversify its public and private sources of funding. Its budget amounts to about 6.5 million Euros, about 70% of which is from private sources. Ifri employs 60 people or so, 30 of them being French, and the balance are foreign researchers from various backgrounds. More than half of them are less than 40 years old. Outside of their research work, every year, Ifri hosts guest speakers from all over the world for them to shed light upon international issues. The Institute organizes about 40 conferences each year in Paris (42 in 2011). Guest speakers from previous years have included between others: Nicolas Sarkozy, Dmitri Medvedev, Hu Jintao, Jalal Talabani, Hamid Karzai, Vladimir Putin, Mikheil Saakashvili, Abdoulaye Wade, Vaclav Klaus, Pervez Musharraf, Abdullah Gül, Boris Tadic, Viktor Yanukovych, Paul Kagamé, Herman Van Rompuy, José Manuel Barroso, and Anders Fogh Rasmussen. In 1973, Minister of Foreign Affairs Michel Jobert under President Georges Pompidou put Thierry de Montbrial in charge of establishing the "Centre d’Analyse et de Prévision" at the Ministry in order to analyze the international relations system. This encouraged him to imagine an independent research center dedicated to this subject. In 1979, he founded Ifri with the support of Prime Minister Raymond Barre and Minister of Foreign Affairs Louis de Guiringaud and his successor Jean François-Poncet. , ex producer of Italiques (talk show) at the Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française became the general secretary.