The ongoing mission of the Office for Foreign Relations is to find political partners of Christian-democratic or conservative conviction in neighbouring countries and on different continents. In 2010, the Office continued to extend the worldwide network of like-minded people in coordination with the relevant departments of the foundation.

Maintaining this extensive network of political partners of the Hanns Seidel Foundation around the world and adding new Christian-democratic or conservative assets were the main tasks of the Office for Foreign Relations (BAB) in the reporting year 2010. Serving as an interface between the management and the different departments of the foundation, the BAB carried out intense analyses and assessments of political parties and affiliated organizations abroad.

In close coordination with the European People’s Party (EPP ) and the International Democrat Union (IDU), political contacts were created and intensified, in particular in EU member states or in neighbouring countries, e. g. in the Czech Republic, in the Baltic States, with Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Moldavia. Aside from finding new contacts, maintaining contacts with traditional political partners was also part of the agenda – the Office for Foreign Relations supported mentoring programmes for young politicians in neighboring Austria, to name just one example.

The number of electoral successes of its European partners confirmed the longstanding commitment of the Hanns Seidel Foundation and set new impulses for cooperation possibilities in the future, such as in Hungary, in Slovakia, in Britain or in Sweden. Positive signals also came from outside Europe – the election victory of the Chilean President Sebastián Piñera in January 2010 was a very welcome encouragement for the work of the Hanns Seidel Foundation. The bond between conservative parties in Latin America, in particular within the scope of the successful cooperation with the Unión de Partidos Latinoamericanos (UPLA ), the regional organization of conservative parties in Latin America, which had been called for for many years, had finally borne fruit. Apart from all that, the Office for Foreign Relations also coordinated the participation of the Hanns Seidel Foundation at the “Centre for European Studies (CES )“, the network of EPP foundations in Brussels. In this context, five much-noticed international cooperation events on current topics of European politics (e. g. regarding the European Court, the relations between the EU and Russia, current developments concerning Romania’s joining of the Schengen area or regarding European security) were organized by the relevant departments of the Hanns Seidel Foundation in Brussels and in Berlin.