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.
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.
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.
Debate
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
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 […].
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.
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.
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.
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%.
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.
Debate
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.
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.
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.
Debate
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.
Debate
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.
Debate
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Debate
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Debate
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Debate
19:00 | Dinner debate
Thierry de Montbrial
Founder and Chairman of Ifri and the WPC
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.
Debate
08:30 – 09:45 | Plenary session 7
Technology, society and politics
Jim Hoagland
Contributing Editor to The Washington Post
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Debate
09:45 – 10:30 | Plenary session 8
Cyber powers and the cyber threat
Thomas Gomart
Director of Ifri
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.
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.
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.
Debate
10:30 – 11:15 | Plenary session 9
Climate and environment
Thierry de Montbrial
Founder and Chairman of Ifri and the WPC
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.
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.
Debate
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Panelists debate
Debate
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.
Panelists debate
Debate
14:15 – 15:45 | Plenary session 11
European uncertainties
Steven Erlanger
Chief Diplomatic Correspondent, Europe, for the New York Times
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Panelists debate
Debate
15:45 – 16:45 | Plenary session 12
Where is Latin America heading?
Jim Hoagland
Contributing Editor to The Washington Post
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.
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.
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.
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.
Debate
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.
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.
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.
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 […].
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Debate
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Debate
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Debate
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Debate
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.
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.
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.
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.
Panelists debate
Debate
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Panelists debate
Debate
13:00 – 15:00 | Lunch debate
Thierry de Montbrial
Founder and Chairman of Ifri and the WPC
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.
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.
15:00 – 16:30 | Plenary session 16
Young Leaders
Patrick Nicolet
Group Chief Technology Officer and Group Executive Board Member of Capgemini
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Debate
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Panelists debate
Debate
17:30 – 19:00 | Plenary session 18
Final debate
Thierry de Montbrial
Founder and Chairman of Ifri and the WPC
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?
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.
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.
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.
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 […].
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.