The ID Advance Aerospace and Transport group and the Aerospace and Transport Industrial Campus association were created near Strasbourg at the end of 2006. They were formed from the Forum Carolus think tank with the aim of bringing together the major groups, small- and medium-sized firms, and R&D centres active in these sectors in the upper Rhine region, at the meeting-point of three key countries (France, Germany and Switzerland). ID Advance and the Campus association are in the right place at the right time to fill niches and invest in their geostrategic location: half-way between Hamburg and Toulouse and at the gateway to a Central and Eastern Europe at last reunited with Western Europe.