2019 Conference proceedings

08:30 – 09:45 | Opening session

Thierry de Montbrial

Founder and Chairman of Ifri and the WPC

At the 11th WPC a year ago in Rabat, the prevailing view among experts was that the world economy was doing well and had a bright outlook, subject only to political shocks that might affect it. However, there was no shortage of them, even beyond the trade war.

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Amadou Gon Coulibaly

Prime Minister of Côte d’Ivoire

The event bringing us together today also offers us an opportunity to reflect in depth on the challenges facing Africa and the world.

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Édouard Philippe

Prime Minister of France

“Politics is a bit like the weather. Whether it’s a clear or cloudy day, you always have to break through the clouds of the future.” You probably recognize these words of His Majesty King Hassan II.

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Debate

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09:45 – 11:15 | Plenary session 1

World political economic outlook in the context of the rise of China

Gabriel Felbermayr

President of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Professor of Economics and Economic Policy at Kiel University

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Olivier Blanchard

Former President of the American Economic Association, former Chief Economist of the IMF

Interest rates are amazingly low; as you know the yield curve, the structure of interest rates looking forward, for the Eurozone is negative for 25 years, which has never been seen before, similar in Japan, and not terribly far from this in the US […].

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Arkebe Oqubay

Senior Minister and Special Advisor to the Prime Minister of Ethiopia

Since 2007, […] the global economy is in a slowdown mode; it has not yet been able to return to the growth rates that were observed a decade back before the financial crisis.

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Salaheddine Mezouar

President of the General Confederation of Moroccan Companies, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Finance and Industry

[China] has allowed African leaders to regain some sovereignty in investment and development policy decisions.

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Sergey Storchak

Deputy Finance Minister of the Russian Federation

There is plenty of evidence that China has become a new super-power, and, from a Russian point of view, we enjoy the fact and, frankly speaking, we are relying on the fact, and it helps a lot in terms of overcoming some difficulties in terms of different economic and financial restrictions.

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Il SaKong

Chairman Emeritus of the Institute for Global Economics, former Minister of Finance of the Republic of Korea, former Chairman of the Presidential Committee for the G20 Summit

With slowing exports and decreasing business investments, Korea’s economy is currently growing only at around 2%.

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Naoki Tanaka

President of the Center for International Public Policy Studies, Tokyo

I want to pick up the potential growth rate of China: Three factors exist when we measure the potential growth rate: labor input, capital input, and innovation. China’s labor population is decreasing, and as to capital input I am not so optimistic.

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Debate

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11:15 – 12:00 | Plenary session 2

Sustaining globalization – the Chinese position

Ronnie C. Chan

Chairman of Hang Lung Properties

I cannot help but think about what the most anti-globalized country in the world is today. It is no longer China; after having been a part of globalization, China closed itself off, and now is finally globalized again.

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Eric Li

Founder and Managing Partner of Chengwei Capital

We [need to] create a more networked world. It is networked pluralism, as opposed to hegemonically led universalism, and that is, I think, what China’s proposition will be. It is still in a nascent stage, but I think the world should […] work with China on this.

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Leung Chun-ying

Vice Chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, former Chief Executive of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, People’s Republic of China

Hong Kong is not a sovereign state, Hong Kong is part of China, so when we look at democracy or the process of democratization in Hong Kong, we should not compare Hong Kong with a sovereign state.

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Debate

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12:00 – 12:30 | Plenary session 3

Conversation with Jean-Paul Agon, Chairman and CEO of L’Oréal

Jean-Paul Agon

Chairman and CEO of L’Oréal

I think the future belongs to the light footprint, which means having a smaller presence with more mobile, more agile and more adaptable investments allowing you to shift your priorities and plans depending on which way the world is heading.

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Debate

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12:30 – 14:30 | Lunch debate

His Excellency Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the State of Qatar

Although the Middle East is a region of turmoil, we in Qatar view it as a critical region with global importance. It is the global intersection of air, sea and land, and even the birth of faith.

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Debate

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14:30 – 15:45 | Plenary session 4

Trade, direct investment and Trust

Virginie Robert

Foreign Desk Editor, Les Echos

The new Head of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, issued a stern warning for her first public speech, worldwide growth is slowing because of commercial tensions.

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Debate

US-China’s partial deal

Donald Trump is an avowed protectionist. The people who surround him are not friends of the WTO. They would like to return to the world of the GATT when there was no dispute settlement mechanism.

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Debate

Damage of the US-China trade war

If you look at the big macroeconomic aggregates, investment is by far the most volatile, and it reacts most to news or to changed information, and also to uncertainty. You can postpone investment but you cannot postpone consumption so much.

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Debate

Revision of trade deals

There is a positive side and a negative side of this most recent Japan/US trade agreement. First of all, from a Japanese perspective, it was quite a good agreement because we could avoid the imposition of 25%, duties on Japanese cars exported to the US.

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Debate

WTO’s governance

The US has been the positive leader for more than 70 years in trade policy, starting before the GATT, and they have used trade policy as an element of their foreign policy, as an instrument of peace policy.

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Debate

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15:45 – 17:00 | Plenary session 5

The politicization of the international system of payments and the future of the international monetary system

John Lipsky

Peterson Distinguished Scholar at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, former First Deputy Managing Director of the IMF

The Dollar’s dominance survived the end of the formal Bretton Woods system in the sense it moved to floating exchange rates, survived the oil shock, survived the Latin debt crisis and in 1990, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the entry of China and India into the global trading system, began the period of what I call true globalization, and the Dollar remained dominant again.

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Jeffry Frieden

Professor of Government at Harvard University

Dollar dominance has rested in large part on the expectation that the American political order would protect and defend the real value of the US currency, along with the stability and openness of its financial system.

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Akinari Horii

Special Advisor and Member of the Board of Directors of the Canon Institute for Global Studies, former Assistant Governor of the Bank of Japan

Market confidence matters a lot for an actively-used international currency. It is not only confidence in the value of the currency, but confidence in its integrity that matters. The integrity of a currency is maintained only when it functions properly as a means of exchange, unit of account and store of value.

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Hélène Rey

Professor of Economics at London Business School, Member of the French National Economic Commission, Member of the High Council for Financial Stability

Clearly, the number two currency is currently the Euro. However, we still miss a euro area safe asset, the equivalent of US Treasuries. Europe needs to complete the financial architecture of the Euro area for the Euro to become a truly global currency.

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Sergey Storchak

Deputy Finance Minister of the Russian Federation

We are living in a world where the monetary system, or I could better say financial infrastructure of one particular country is being used as a political weapon. It is a really bad story. However, it is happening […] Therefore, it can be done in different ways, but what is really interesting about US Dollars, you cannot escape the fact that the biggest invoicing is taking place in US Dollars.

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Jean-Claude Trichet

Chairman of the Board of Directors of Bruegel, European Chairman of the Trilateral Commission, former President of the ECB

The main problem we have, in my opinion, in Europe, if we want a Europe establishing an appropriate balance with the US, is mainly of a political nature. Both the treasuries and the safe bonds, which are not there, and the geopolitical capacity to tell our partner(s): if you blackmail us, then we will blackmail you.

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Debate

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17:00 – 18:00 | Plenary session 6

The weaponization of Law and globalization

Laurent Cohen-Tanugi

Member of the Paris and New York Bars, former Chairman of French governmental task force on Europe in the global economy

We seem to be moving from an era – from the end of World War II through the past 70 years – where law has been key to the building of an international world order based on the rule of law […] to a more chaotic system of international relations where law seems to be used more and more as a pretext for arbitrary or unilateral action.

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Anne-Thida Norodom

Professor of Public Law at the University of Paris Descartes, Secretary-General of the French Society for International Law

Lawfare can be a useful tool when it comes to communicating how to utilize the law in modern conflicts and appears as a substitute for traditional weapons.

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Stuart Eizenstat

Senior Counsel at Covington & Burling LLP, former Chief White House Domestic Policy Advisor to President Jimmy Carter, former US Ambassador to the European Union

Why is there an upswing in lawfare? There is a positive reason, that is that major nation states know it would be catastrophic to engage in shooting wars in a nuclear age.

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Lee Hye-min

Senior Advisor of KIM & CHANG, former G20 Sherpa, former Deputy Minister for Trade and Chief Negotiator for the Korea-EU FTA

The reappearance of unilateralism, wherein the members are abusing the national security exception and paralyzing WTO dispute system, abusing the principle of consensus are important examples of the weaponization of the law in the international trade.

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Michael Møller

Former Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva

Underlying the framing of our debate today on the weaponization of law and globalization is a pervasive concern that fundamental tenets of the international and indeed national order are fraying.

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Debate

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19:00 | Dinner debate

Thierry de Montbrial

Founder and Chairman of Ifri and the WPC

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Paul Kagame

President of the Republic of Rwanda

Africa is nobody’s prize to win or lose. Not at all. It is our responsibility as Africans to take charge of our own interests and develop our continent to its full potential.

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Debate

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08:30 – 09:45 | Plenary session 7

Technology, society and politics

Jim Hoagland

Contributing Editor to The Washington Post

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François Barrault

Chairman of IDATE DigiWorld, Chairman and Founder of FDB Partners

The machine will never take control of our life as long as we are reasonable.

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Jean-Yves Le Gall

President of CNES, President of the International Astronautical Federation, Chair of the Council of the European Space Agency

For climate change, space is very, very important, because out of the 50 essential climate variables which are defined to measure the climate, 26, which are more than half, can be observed just from space and with satellites.

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Susan Liautaud

Lecturer in Public Policy and Law at Stanford University, Interim Chair of Council at the London School of Economics, Founder and Managing Director of Susan Liautaud & Associates Ltd

We need to reconceptualize what it means to have a society in which democracies function, because the reality is that it is no longer about individual human beings and their institutions. The connective tissue is machines, apps and data.

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Holger Mey

Vice President, Advanced Concepts, Airbus, Munich; former President and CEO of the Institute for Strategic Analyses, Bonn

Freedom and security is not a trade-off relationship, as it is often being put. […] I think without a certain degree of security, we probably have no freedom and cannot enjoy any freedom.

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John Sawers

Executive Chairman of Newbridge Advisory, Senior Advisor at Chatham House, former Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) of the United Kingdom

The role of technology is central to the great power rivalry which is going to be the design model of the world of the coming decade or two.

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Debate

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09:45 – 10:30 | Plenary session 8

Cyber powers and the cyber threat

Thomas Gomart

Director of Ifri

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Patrick Nicolet

Group Chief Technology Officer and Group Executive Board Member of Capgemini

Despite the governments’ efforts to retain it, a large part of cyber power is now owned by a very limited number of companies.

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Jean-Louis Gergorin

Former Director of the Policy Planning Staff of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs

The cyberthreat is growing for three reasons: the acceleration of the digital transformation in every activity, the fact that the more we digitalize the more vulnerable we become and the growing involvement of states in cyberattacks on companies and critical infrastructure.

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Meir Sheetrit

Former Member of the Knesset, former Minister of Intelligence Affairs and the Committee of Atomic Energy, former Minister of the Interior

This was done from far away. Nobody has been there. Nobody touched it. Nobody attacked it, and still they ruined all the infrastructure of Iran for producing, for enriching uranium.

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Debate

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10:30 – 11:15 | Plenary session 9

Climate and environment

Thierry de Montbrial

Founder and Chairman of Ifri and the WPC

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Laurent Fabius

President of the Constitutional Council, former President of the COP 21, former Prime Minister of France

Governments, some of which deny climate change or have taken a wait-and-see attitude, bear an eminent responsibility because they must work for their countries’ general welfare, and more widely.

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Patrick Pouyanné

CEO of Total

The good substitute for coal is gas. It is the only choice allowing us to have a reliable, sustainable energy mix that meets demand in all seasons. […] It is unrealistic to think that renewables will solve the problem.

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Debate

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11:15 – 12:15 | Plenary session 10

The status of health care delivery in Africa: challenges and opportunities

Brian A. Gallagher

President and CEO of United Way Worldwide

Africans endure 17% of all the disease in the world and yet are 11% of the population.

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Nardos Bekele-Thomas

Resident Coordinator of the United Nations in South Africa

There are two countries in one country: the country that has high tech and expensive health care system which caters for 10% to 15% of the population and the country that has poor to mediocre health services, with the characteristics of any least developed country.

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Juliette Tuakli

Founder and Medical Director of Family CHILD & Associates, Ghana; United Way Worldwide’s Chair of Governance Committee

There needs to be some refinement such that NHS empowers and advocates more for access, for women specifically. We have done a good job with lowering child mortality, and morbidity.

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Robert Sigal

CEO of the American Hospital of Paris

If you look |…] at how many physicians you have per 10,000 people in Algeria, you have 18 doctors, in Morocco 7. If you look at South Africa, you are at 9. […] it can go as low as 0.5 physicians per 10,000 people in Nigeria, so there is clearly a quantitative problem.

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Pierre M’Pelé

Mercy Ships Ambassador for Africa and Africa Bureau Director

In a country of 100 million people, it is about 18,000 health posts. That is amazing. […] Nurses and women community leaders of the “Women Health Development Army” have been at the center of the progress made in improving the health of the people in Ethiopia. Women are agents of change for health in Ethiopia.

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Panelists debate

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Debate

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12:30 – 14:15 | Lunch debate

Kevin Rudd

President of the Asia Society Policy Institute, former Prime Minister of Australia

On Xi Jinping’s worldview, I always think the beginning of wisdom in international relations is to understand how the other side thinks and why they think that way.

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Panelists debate

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Debate

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14:15 – 15:45 | Plenary session 11

European uncertainties

Steven Erlanger

Chief Diplomatic Correspondent, Europe, for the New York Times

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Hubert Védrine

Former Minister of Foreign Affairs of France

A distinction must be made between immediate, short-term uncertainties and deep, structural, perhaps even vital uncertainties.

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Volker Perthes

Executive Chairman and Director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), former UN Assistant Secretary-General

A rising power, China, is not a benign partner but still has to be a partner because we do not want to decouple, as some Americans probably think they should.

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Ana Palacio

Former Member of the Council of State of Spain, former Senior Vice President of the World Bank, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Spain

What we see today is a pervasive irrationality and emotion everywhere. In the end, however, Europe is a legal construction and all our instruments are geared towards that end.

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Artem Malgin

Vice-Rector of the MGIMO University, Professor of the Department of International Relations and Russia’s Foreign Policy

It brings additional problems when it comes to overall organization of world trade and makes all the EU’s agreements with its neighbors and traditional partners, including African or ACP partners, more complicated since the US behaves in the world trade system in an absolutely, let us say, non-WTO way.

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Michael Lothian

Member of the House of Lords, former Conservative Member of Parliament

I think there is a very big void now in Europe for a military force and I do not see it being a European one, for the reason that there are certain countries that would not want to join it.

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Enrico Letta

Dean of the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po Paris, former Prime Minister of Italy

I think Europe can be a third superpower, only by being united and taking leadership on two main subjects, which are subjects for the future: […] climate change and the second one is technological humanism, if I may say.

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Panelists debate

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Debate

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15:45 – 16:45 | Plenary session 12

Where is Latin America heading?

Jim Hoagland

Contributing Editor to The Washington Post

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Andrés Rozental

Senior Policy Advisor at Chatham House, President of Rozental & Asociados, former Mexico’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom

The region is not doing well. Countries like Brazil and Mexico, the two largest economies in the region, are growing at either minimal rates or, in the case of my country, not at all.

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Carlos Ivan Simonsen Leal

President of the Getulio Vargas Foundation, Brazil

The disaster manifested itself at full force after the beginning of the second term for Dilma Rousseff and it was very fast. GDP started falling. The rate of investment fell enormously. There was a lack of trust and Dilma was actually impeached after two years of her second term for disobeying the fiscal laws.

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Miguel Ángel Moratinos

High Representative for the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of Spain

Do you know what the pressure of fiscal reform in Latin America is? The average is 10%, compared to 40% in Germany, 38% in Spain, and 50% in Sweden. They do not pay taxes and they have not been introducing this fiscal reform.

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Bertrand Badré

Founder and CEO of Blue like an Orange Sustainable Capital, former Managing Director and Chief Financial Officer of the World Bank

If you look at the continent as a whole, which, in addition, is pulled down by Venezuela, a country that weighs heavily on Latin America’s macro growth, we are just above zero according to the IMF’s latest estimates for this year, although they forecast an upturn next year, driven mainly by Brazil’s recovery.

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Debate

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16:45 – 19:15 | Parallel workshops

Workshop #1 – Finance and economy

Jean-Claude Trichet

Chairman of the Board of Directors of Bruegel, European Chairman of the Trilateral Commission, former President of the ECB

I see populism and a level of frustration among the citizens, in all the advanced economies without exception. I see that inflation is extraordinarily low, and I cannot help making the connection. There is an anomaly in the functioning of our system which means that Phillips curve has not functioned since the crisis as it did in the past.

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Bertrand Badré

Founder and CEO of Blue like an Orange Sustainable Capital, former Managing Director and Chief Financial Officer of the World Bank

The social purpose of business is to find profitable solutions for the planet and its people. It is not profit as an end to an end but profit as a means to an end. […] At the end of the day, we connect capitalism with people, the territories etc.

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Daniel Dăianu

Chairman of the Fiscal Council and Advisor to the Governor (Euro Area Affairs), former Board Member of the National Bank of Romania

There is an increasingly wild world, with a lot of fragmentation and dissonance among actors in many respects. There is a massive erosion of multilateralism, in view of what prevailed after the Second World War, the so-called liberal international order.

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Jeffry Frieden

Professor of Government at Harvard University

There are perceptions that globalization has created pools of wealth that are undeserved, and it has contributed to the decline of communities, and of entire regions. This is a perception that is very widespread. It is not just American. It is not just French. It is not just Brazilian. It is virtually global […].

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Akinari Horii

Special Advisor and Member of the Board of Directors of the Canon Institute for Global Studies, former Assistant Governor of the Bank of Japan

Manufacturing in the world economy is in large part influenced by the so-called silicon cycle. The most recent expansionary phase began in early 2016 and peaked in early 2018. If the two year rule continues to hold good, then it will be early 2020 or around the turn of the year, when the cycle hits the bottom and begins to recover.

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Hur Kyung-wook

President of Korean Bretton Woods Club, former Advisor to the ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office, former Vice Minister for the Ministry of Strategy and Finance, former Senior Economist for the IMF

During the 2008 crisis, we had global coordination. We all remember that the G20 played a very instrumental role. […] Now we do not have it, and we conveniently say there is a so-called new normal about this low interest rate.

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André Lévy-Lang

Affiliate Emeritus Professor of Finance at Paris-Dauphine University

I would like to focus quickly on the state of the global financial industry 12 years after the crisis. The US is in very good shape and the US financial system is in good shape. There is no question about that. In Europe, we have a problem. Today, the market value, the market cap of the major European banks is well below their net book value.

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John Lipsky

Peterson Distinguished Scholar at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, former First Deputy Managing Director of the IMF

One common thread connecting the sluggish outlook for global growth is the widely experienced weakness in fixed investment in capital goods, equipment and software.

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Hélène Rey

Professor of Economics at London Business School, Member of the French National Economic Commission, Member of the High Council for Financial Stability

We do not understand exactly why [real rates] are so low. That constrains monetary policy massively. That creates huge financial risk, not just potentially on the banking sector, but also, and people have not talked about this, on the insurance sector and various types of asset management, on pension funds etc.

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Debate

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Workshop #2 – Energy and environment

Nobuo Tanaka

Chairman of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, former Executive Director of the IEA

Women are hit much harder by climate change, especially in African countries, because more women are farmers, and with climate change, much more effort is required to fetch water from more distant places.

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Olivier Appert

Scientific Advisor of the Energy Center of Ifri, former President of the French Energy Council (French Committee of the World Energy Council)

Most of the attention today is focused on solar and wind, thanks to their spectacular expansion and cost reduction. However modern bioenergy is playing the dominant role because it is the only renewable source that can provide energy for all end use.

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Leila Benali

Chief Economist, Head of Strategy, Energy Economics and Sustainability at the Arab Petroleum Investments Corporation

The energy sector is really competing with other sectors that are deemed much more attractive for investors in terms of returns. The problem is that the gap is really wide.

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Richard Cooper

Professor of International Economics at Harvard University, former Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, former Under-Secretary of State for Economic Affairs

I see in my own view that in the end, we will do solar. The end is several decades away, and I see natural gas as being the bridging fuel to solar. In particular, natural gas is a great substitute for coal in generating electricity, as well as other uses.

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Cosmin Ghita

CEO of Nuclearelectrica, Romania

Today’s realities call for immediate action, and based on IEA data that was vehiculated here, energy consumption worldwide grew by 2.3% in 2018 alone. This is nearly twice the average rate of growth since 2010.

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Tatsuo Masuda

Visiting Professor at the Graduate School of Nagoya University of Commerce and Business on energy-climate nexus, Chairman of FairCourt Capital in London, Strategic Committee Member of Elion House in Singapore

Many heads of state came to Rio to make wonderful speeches and agreed upon an action oriented declaration. […] But did actions follow? No, nothing serious happened. We have to do something real and we cannot leave all these younger generations behind or keep the generation gap wide open.

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Ali Zerouali

Director of Cooperation and International Development of the Moroccan Agency for Sustainable Energy

Can we imagine going back to fossil fuels for a moment? There would be so much pressure on the price of fossil resources that it would jeopardize the already sluggish growth taking place at the moment. Renewable energy differs from fossil fuels in that there is no competition between countries.

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Debate

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Workshop #3 – Africa

Robert Dossou

Former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Benin, former President of the Constitutional Court, President of the African Association of International Law

The 1990s saw the rise of great expectations in Africa, which came onto the international stage. In addition, Africa’s heads of state have grown aware of the need to solve all the old problems that were holding Africa back.

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Sean Cleary

Founder and Executive Vice Chairman of the FutureWorld Foundation, Chairman of Strategic Concepts (Pty) Ltd

We must also consider how to use the African regional organizations and the African Union, the continental institution to enable growth and sustainable development.

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Elisabeth Guigou

President of the Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Foundation for the Dialogue Between Cultures, former Minister, former Member of the French Parliament and President of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Assembly

Uncontrolled migration is a tragedy for Africa because it is being drained of talent, and you’ve seen the effects of this in Europe: the rise of extremes and populism and the closing of borders. There is no solution unless we tackle these issues together.

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Sheikh Tidiane Gadio

President of the Institute for Pan-African Strategies, Peace, Security and Governance, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Senegal

For 20 years I’ve argued that the EU was not our model. We want the model our leaders and great thinkers—Kwamé Nkrumah, Sheikh Anta Diop and Marcus Garvey—laid out before us. We want the United States of Africa. We want a united Africa.

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Karim Lotfi Senhadji

CEO of OCP Africa

We see, on the one hand, that the world will have to overcome the challenge of food security. On the other hand, Africa has today all the potential to meet the challenge of global security, not only for its population, which will rise to one billion by 2050, but also for the rest of the world.

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Pierre M’Pelé

Mercy Ships Ambassador for Africa and Africa Bureau Director

We said that Africa has made tremendous strides in the field of health. Life expectancy has risen because mortality has dropped by nearly 37%. Life expectancy has increased from 40 to over 60 and even 65 years in many countries.

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Juliette Tuakli

Founder and Medical Director of Family CHILD & Associates, Ghana; United Way Worldwide’s Chair of Governance Committee

Our poor citizens build their homes and even cities on ground that we now know is going to be submerged in a few years! We must start considering green economies seriously, […] this might be another space for civic society to play a role.

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Aminata Touré

President of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council of Senegal, former Prime Minister of Senegal

Corruption is an issue, but it is an issue for the whole world. This is another stereotype that we have suffered from for a long time: Africa, the land of corruption. However, the biggest corruption scandals are not in Africa: Enron, Exxon, Madoff.

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Debate

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08:00 – 09:00 | Reports from parallel workshops

Workshop #1 – Report

Hélène Rey

Professor of Economics at London Business School, Member of the French National Economic Commission, Member of the High Council for Financial Stability

There is a lot of weakness in investment, which has been linked to deep uncertainty.

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Workshop #2 – Report

Nobuo Tanaka

Chairman of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, former Executive Director of the IEA

Carbon dioxide emissions are growing 2% per year, and this is the trajectory of the average growth of C02 since the Industrial Revolution.

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Workshop #3 – Report

Robert Dossou

Former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Benin, former President of the Constitutional Court, President of the African Association of International Law

Le passé colonial pèse encore à certains égards et la bonne gouvernance appelle la mise en oeuvre de meilleures normes.

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09:00 – 10:15 | Plenary session 13

Middle East and North/West Africa

Volker Perthes

Executive Chairman and Director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), former UN Assistant Secretary-General

In quite a number of the states in the region, it is on state level, whether Libya, Mali, Syria or Yemen: order is being undermined through either civil war, war or the weakness of states that has undermined institutions and societal relations.

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Mohamed Ibn Chambas

Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Office for West Africa and the Sahel

In general, that is the threat in the Sahel, which is particularly linked to terrorist groups that have been known to exist in the north of Mali that have declared links with international terrorist groups, such as Al Qaeda, Islamic State, etc.

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Memduh Karakullukçu

Vice Chairman and Founding President of the Global Relations Forum

The Middle East would be better off with constructive engagement from external parties, provided that they, particularly the EU and the US, adjust to the new realities of the power configuration both globally and in the region.

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Abdulaziz Othman bin Sager

Chairman of the Gulf Research Center, Saudi Arabia

Today, Saudi has very strategic challenges on both its north and south borders, because on the north side Iran continuously supports all the militia groups, which are fully-funded, trained and supported by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and at the same time in Yemen.

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Dong Manyuan

Vice President of China Institute of International Studies

China seeks no proxy in the Middle East; does not seek to fill the power vacuum; and does not seek regime change.

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Debate

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10:15 – 11:15 | Plenary session 14

Cross-border illegal trade: a destabilizing factor for the global economy

Alvise Giustiniani

Vice President for Illicit Trade Prevention of PMI

The OECD issued a report a couple of years ago on illicit trade and quantified its dimensions: they came up with a staggering figure above USD 2 trillion around the world for the turnover in illicit trade.

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Laurent Marcadier

Former Magistrate, Senior Advisor in charge of Legal Affairs of LVMH Group

Counterfeiting is now the world’s second-leading criminal activity after drug trafficking.

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Carlos Moreira

Founder and CEO of WISeKey

In the last five years a new technology has arrived with the name blockchain, which could be the beginning of solving the problem.

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Jean-François Thony

Prosecutor-General, President of the Siracusa International Institute

There are as many different kinds of illicit trade as there are products. Furthermore, the criminal organizations behind them are not of a single type but protean.

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Panelists debate

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Debate

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11:15 – 12:45 | Plenary session 15

The consequences of Trump, Act III

Jim Bittermann

Senior European Correspondent for CNN in Paris

When you look at a geographic frame where has Trump had some kind of impact, some consequences from his three-year old Presidency? Well, it is just like everywhere.

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Renaud Girard

Senior reporter and war correspondent for Le Figaro

Macron, in my opinion, was smart enough to understand that Trump was highly sensitive to personal dealings, and that he did not really read the memos he was given, receptive to direct explanations between leaders. He was well aware of that, and this particular aspect of Trump’s character may be detrimental further down the line.

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Motoshige Itoh

Emeritus Professor at the University of Tokyo, Professor at the Gakushuin University, Member of the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy, Japan

My point is Mr. Trump may be populism stage one, and there may be populism in stage two. As long as globalization continues there is always a pressure for democracy to be loaded by populism. […] Whether Mr. Trump continues or we have another, maybe leftist, Democrat or whatever, we still have to prepare to work on the populism.

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Jean-Claude Gruffat

Chairman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Washington DC

American citizens care about international policy when it affects their own personal selfish interests, or when they belong to a community that is very important and has some influence on the political process.

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Josef Joffe

Publisher-Editor of the German weekly Die Zeit

It is important to notice continuities. I don’t want to compare Obama to Trump in terms of breach of etiquette and nastiness, but in foreign policy there is more similarity between them than meets the eye.

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Qiao Yide

Vice Chairman and Secretary-General of Shanghai Development Research Foundation

Xi Jinping said one thing that has not been mentioned by many people particularly in the West. He said, we have 1 000 reasons to have good relations with the US, no single reason to have worse relations with the US. That is very important, so the general feeling is that China wanted to make some compromise.

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John Sawers

Executive Chairman of Newbridge Advisory, Senior Advisor at Chatham House, former Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) of the United Kingdom

The disdain for alliances means that other countries around the world, […] they will simply not rely on America in the same way they did before. They will have to balance those relationships and they will have to be more autonomous for their defence and security. That may not be a bad thing, but it is a consequence of Trump.

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Panelists debate

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Debate

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13:00 – 15:00 | Lunch debate

Thierry de Montbrial

Founder and Chairman of Ifri and the WPC

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Aminata Touré

President of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council of Senegal, former Prime Minister of Senegal

About the democracy, we have changed presidents peacefully over time. We have what we call a republican army, which means we have an army that follows the rules of democracy.

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Arkebe Oqubay

Senior Minister and Special Advisor to the Prime Minister of Ethiopia

Ethiopia does not have petroleum, diamonds or other large resources, and its entire growth was achieved by the hard-working people of Ethiopia and its focus on attracting investment.

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15:00 – 16:30 | Plenary session 16

Young Leaders

Patrick Nicolet

Group Chief Technology Officer and Group Executive Board Member of Capgemini

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James Stuewe

Manager, Public Sector, Canada

I actually do not think it is reasonable that for us to assume people will just submit to changes in taxes, higher prices, submit to their behaviors being changed because of climate change. This is the challenge.

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Xavier Ploquin

Former Advisor for Energy, Industry and Innovation at the French Ministry for the Ecological and Inclusive Transition

President Macron had a climate plan in his political program, which was adopted in 2017. There are many things in this plan so I would just say that it leads to the adoption of carbon neutrality in 2050, which is a huge step.

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Peter Bruce-Clark

Operating Partner at Social Impact Capital

That circular economic ways of thinking will actually be the foundation upon which countries will prosper going into this century. I believe countries who aggressively drive this way of thinking, financially supporting, underwriting and generating huge industries that tackle the climate crisis, will be richer than the ones that do not.

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Jihane Ajijti

Head of Business Development, Digital and Communication within OCP Africa

Africa needs to increase its yields to be able to feed the growing population in the context of climate change and to do that, we need to support the agricultural value chain throughout the continent, to be able to invest and modernize agriculture.

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Wu Liang

Co-Founder and CIO of Green City Solutions

We did some research and discovered that there is a technology millions of years old capable of partially solving the pollution problem. We have discovered special moss cultures, which we have patented in our own system, which are literally able to eat-up the air pollution and convert it into biomass.

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Polina Vasilenko

Founder and CEO of HelioRec

I am founder and CEO of HelioRec, which builds floating solar power plants, an innovative and cost-effective solution for electricity production.

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Debate

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16:30 – 17:30 | Plenary session 17

New foreign policy trends in East Asia

Steven Erlanger

Chief Diplomatic Correspondent, Europe, for the New York Times

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Chiyuki Aoi

Professor of International Security at the Graduate School of Public Policy, University of Tokyo

It is the currents of our time that liberal ideals and values are intensively challenged from within, from forces favoring populism and unilateralism as opposed to multilateralism, and also from without, from entities that challenge fundamentally liberal ways of managing political relations.

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Kim Hong Kyun

Former Special Representative for Korean Peninsula Peace and Security Issues

South Korea is on the verge of divorcing with its closest neighbour country, Japan, with which we share common values, common security interests and the ally.

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Douglas Paal

Distinguished Fellow at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, former Director of Asian Affairs in the US National Security Council

The movement of US policy with respect to China from engagement to containment is eroding those spokes and making it difficult for the various countries, each of which has its own relations with China, to sustain a kind of counterbalance that will come if they also try to remain close to the United States.

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Qiao Yide

Vice Chairman and Secretary-General of Shanghai Development Research Foundation

Trump tried to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue by establishing personal relations with Kim Jong-un, but so far has not been successful.

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Panelists debate

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Debate

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17:30 – 19:00 | Plenary session 18

Final debate

Thierry de Montbrial

Founder and Chairman of Ifri and the WPC

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Assia Bensalah Alaoui

Ambassador-at-large of His Majesty the King of Morocco

Can we get rid of these lifestyles that are devastating the planet? Without naivety and with a strong will, I could say – and this will obviously shock many people, because that is the paradox – that here and now, could the Mediterranean, thanks to over 2,000 years of adaptive wisdom, become the world’s laboratory?

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Karl Kaiser

Senior Associate of the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Adjunct Professor Emeritus of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, former Director of the German Council on Foreign Relations, former Advisor to Chancellors Brandt and Schmidt

In the G2 world of US-China rivalry, the United States will continue to need Europe in this competition. The US cannot allow China to dominate the western rim of Eurasia. That is a geopolitical given. Europe also needs the United States in order to survive in this kind of rivalry.

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Mona Makram Ebeid

Egyptian Senator, former Member of Parliament, Distinguished Lecturer at the Political Science Department of the American University in Cairo

If Egypt and Saudi Arabia succeed in their ambitious economic and social plans and break through to high levels of growth and employment, that would raise living standards and relive domestic pressure.

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Manuel Muñiz

Dean of the School of Global and Public Affairs at IE University and Rafael del Pino Professor of Practice of Global Transformation

I think that the collision with China […] is very structural and is connected to very deep trends in how economics work in the digital area and in the capacity for technology to change the sustainability of an authoritarian regime.

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Fathallah Oualalou

Former Minister of Economy and Finance of the Kingdom of Morocco

Africa and the Southern Mediterranean countries […] must come together and make their political system and economic strategy credible. This would seek to restore the Mediterranean’s peace, dynamism and centrality, which are necessary for a more balanced, more multipolar world […].

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Yoichi Suzuki

Adjunct Fellow at the Japan Institute for International Affairs, former Special Assistant to the Foreign Minister of Japan, former Chief Negotiator of the Japan EU Economic Partnership Agreement

China talks about each country having its own specific model. That is not enough. Drawing up multilateral guidelines is indispensable to avoid falling into debt traps or accelerating climate change.

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Debate

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