2023 Conference proceedings

08:00 – 09:00 | Opening session

Noura Al Kaabi

Minister of State of the United Arab Emirates

Before we start, we must acknowledge the devastating events happening in our region. Since the war in Gaza broke out, we express our deepest condolences for the loss of civilian lives, and our thoughts go to those who have lost loved-ones as a result of this conflict.

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Thierry de Montbrial

Founder and Executive Chairman of Ifri and the WPC

The WPC rejects simplistic political classifications, and its point of view is not aligned with that of the great powers, whatever they may be. It gives voice to the “middle powers”, i.e. States that, without necessarily being endowed with large resources, are nevertheless determined to devote some of them to making a positive contribution to global governance.

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Laurence Boone

Secretary of State for European Affairs

My message for the opening of this conference is very simple: we are living in a period of proliferating crises. And yet we have no choice but to cooperate. Let us be clear: cooperation is not so much a moral imperative as an existential one.

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09:00 – 10:00 | Plenary session 1

The Major Mid-Term Issues of the Global Economy in an Adverse Geopolitical Context

Jean-Claude Trichet

President of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques, former President of the European Central Bank, Honorary Governor of the Banque de France

I would just highlight that technology is a major driving-force, and we are experiencing something particularly striking with the emergence of artificial intelligence. This is only the start; science and technology are progressing very rapidly.

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Gabriel Felbermayr

Director of the Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO), former President of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW)

Given recent system-shocks, this comes as no surprise. What we should take away from this is not only divergences across the Atlantic, China and Europe, but a relative lack of collapse. Resilience is what we should see here. The FIAT recession, if it comes to the Eurozone, will be a mild one. We are not facing an imminent disaster.

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Sébastien Jean

Senior Associate of Ifri, Professor of Economics at CNAM University

A recent paper defined this situation as one of geo‑finance, to reflect the fact that it is marked by the increasing politicization of information and financial flows. This differs somehow from what we used to think of as geo-economic competition in the 1990’s or 2000’s.

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John Lipsky

Senior Fellow of the Foreign Policy Institute at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)

Based on the IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook, global growth is slowing, and is expected to remain subpar for the coming 5 years or more, while inflation is not expected to return to its pre-pandemic rate until 2025. In these circumstances, the actual evolution of inflation will be a key to the outlook.

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Marcus Noland

Executive Vice President and Director of Studies at the Peterson Institute for International Economics

Likewise, the legislation incentivized use of non-Chinese minerals in the production of the batteries for those cars, and due to our vision that essentially endorses production and free-trade partners, it has created a strange phenomenon in Washington where Korean firms who build the batteries are lobbying the US government to conclude free trade agreements with Indonesia, Philippines, Argentina.

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Speakers debate

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Debate

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10:00 – 11:30 | Plenary session 2

World Economic Order Still Conceivable in a Foreseeable Future?

Masood Ahmed

President of the Center for Global Development, former Director of the Middle East and Central Asia Department of the IMF

It is difficult today to discuss the economic outlook without talking about changes in the structure of international relations and what that means for economics.

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Aminata Touré

former Prime Minister of Senegal

We really need to look into the new world we want to build through what we are doing now – discussing, but discussing very honestly – and having the courage to put issues on the table. We are unhappy with the state of international affairs.

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Qiao Yide

Vice Chairman and Secretary General of Shanghai Development Research Foundation

We can see the current order is still there but, at the same time, we have already seen signs of change or decoupling happen. In the World Economic Outlook, the IMF’s annual report, the word ‘fragmentation’ was mentioned 172 times in this year’s version while, five years ago, ‘fragmentation’ was only mentioned once. That is a very interesting phenomenon

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Lee Hye-min

Senior Advisor of KIM & CHANG, former G20 Sherpa of Korea, former Ambassador for International Economic Affairs of the Republic of Korea

Deglobalization since the financial crisis of 2008 and Covid‑19 has significantly strengthened government regulations. Climate change and digitalization of the global economy require a stronger government intervention, as we need new rules on these issues.

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Pierre Jacquet

Professor of Economics at the École nationale des ponts et chaussées (ENPC), member of the Cercle des Économistes

An international economic order is a negotiated agreement that balances national interests with international cooperation. The emerging set of global rules and institutions is not stable over time.

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Vladislav Inozemtsev

Director of the Center for Post-Industrial Studies in Moscow, Special Advisor to Middle East Media Research Institute’s Russia Media Studies Project in Washington, DC.

I believe that for at least several decades the global economy will experience an age of creative destruction with the cutting-edge technologies making it less predictable than at any other stage in human history, so therefore we should talk not so much of a new order than rather of a set of frameworks which can somehow help us to make the current developments a bit more orderly.

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Yann Coantanlem

CEO of DataCore Innovations LLC, President of Club Praxis

If we really want to build a new vibrant multilateral organization, we need to meet, in my view, two conditions. One is to define clear mutual benefits, and the second is to have strong, equal, players.

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Speakers debate

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Debate

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11:30 – 12:00 | Plenary session 3

Conversation with Leung Chun-ying

Leung Chun-ying

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

I think we could use a lot more people-to-people dialogue between the two sides, which is something that I have been facilitating myself. People need to see for themselves what political and socioeconomic life is about on the mainland. That is something that we are not doing enough of.

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13:00 – 14:15 | Plenary session 4

Geopolitics and Global Trade: What Can Be Done Today?

Nikolaus Lang

Managing Director and Senior Partner, Global Leader GA Practice Area of Boston Consulting Group

As leaders constantly ponder and ask questions about the future of geopolitics, BCG has developed a few scenarios that describe what the world could look like in 2030. These scenarios range from “Back to the Future” at one end to “Global Escalation” at the other, with “Limited Stalemate” and “Multipolar World” in the middle.

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Nicolas Terraz

President of Exploration & Production, member of the Executive Committee of TotalEnergies

In this changing global trade pattern, one key factor is the energy transition and the need to address climate change. In TotalEnergies, we believe that our role, our mission, is to provide more energy with less emissions.

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Penelope Naas

Non-Resident Senior Fellow of the Atlantic Council, former President of International Public Affairs and Sustainability at UPS

Risks are generally not what the last crisis was. It is something new, usually something that surprises you and, while it might occasionally be a black swan, what hits you is usually something that is within your control.

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Bark Taeho

President of Lee&Ko Global Commerce Institute, former Minister for Trade of Korea

Major countries are utilizing subsidies, trade and investment measures to achieve their national objectives in various areas, including national security, economy, technology, society, and more. However, some of these measures may violate the multilateral trade norms of the WTO.

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Jay Truesdale

CEO of Veracity Worldwide

They are seeking to build a taxonomy to map the various risks that they face. Financial firms have done this over the course of the last 25 years increasingly well, in part due to regulatory requirements that have been placed on them.

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Speakers debate

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Debate

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14:15 – 15:00 | Plenary session 5

Climate Change: Is There Still a Collective Will?

Introduction

I could not have asked for two better individuals to guide us through this very timely, indeed, conversation – a few weeks before COP28, right here in this very country.

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Need of COPs

First of all, it is about the just energy transition and, because ourselves as a country are going through this transition, we understand we need political will; we need money; we need to build up the national capacity; we need to diversify.

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Food insecurity

We are trying to make the COP28 the most inclusive COP ever done. What I mean by this is the indigenous people, the women, the youth, faith-based organizations, all coming together because what they have in common is about doing more to respect nature. Bringing them all together and making sure that all voices from across the world are here is our commitment

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COP 28

The international context is different today: diplomatic relations are more complex, the climate situation is worsening, and we are off-track from previous commitments. This year’s COP28 in Dubai is set in the continuity of preceding COPs.

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15:00 – 15:30 | Plenary session 6

Conversation with Dmytro Kuleba

Dmytro Kuleba

Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine

I think that there is no room for deadlines when it comes to the fight for territorial integrity and sovereignty of any country.

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15:30 – 16:15 | Plenary session 7

Reconfiguration of the International System: Short and Long-Term Perspectives in the Eurasian Region

Situation in Ukraine

As Kazakhstan which is a peace-loving country that does not have problematic relations with any country, we naturally want the solution as soon as possible. We are prepared to help, to serve as a negotiating platform if Russia and Ukraine want our services.

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Situation in Armenia

On the global level, I think the biggest challenge is how to make sure that the United Nations system works again. Our President addressed this issue in numerous statements, including at the United Nations General Assembly, stating that the role of the General Assembly needs to be strengthened as the most representative body and the Security Council needs to be reformed.

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Foreign policy of Kazakhstan and Armenia

Nobody knows better than us the horror of war. We witnessed it back in the 90s and in 2020. We are still witnessing the consequences of the recent military aggression of September 19, 2023, as a result of which Nagorno-Karabakh and 100,000 people were forced to displace and basically Nagorno-Karabakh is ethnically cleansed.

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Major challenges for Kazakhstan and Armenia

We are diversifying the markets from where we are buying weapons, which are for defensive purpose only. France and India are some of our partners. We are determined to cooperate in this sphere with other colleagues as well, bearing in mind that we have a right to protect our sovereignty and territorial integrity, and we do not have any intention to attack any of our neighbors.

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16:15 – 17:30 | Plenary session 8

2024: A Critical Electoral Year

Virginie Robert

Foreign Desk Editor at Les Échos, Vice President of the European-American Press Club in Paris

In 2022 the world has entered the longest democratic recession every observed, which means that for the sixth consecutive year democratic values are losing ground everywhere.

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Isabelle Lasserre

Diplomatic Correspondent for Le Figaro

2024 will be an incredible year in terms of the elections organized absolutely everywhere, in India, the world’s biggest democracy, South Africa, Iran, Brazil, Nigeria, Taiwan, Russia, maybe Ukraine of course, the European elections in Europe and the USA.

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Jean-Claude Gruffat

Member of United Way Leadership Council, board member of Atlas Network, Managing Director of Weild and Co LLC New York

The US elections next year in November 2024 is expected by many to be a remake of 2020, with a close race for Congress and a toss up for the President. Is there a chance that we avoid another dreadful choice between Biden and Trump?

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Hiroyuki Akita

Commentator of Nikkei, Japan

U.S. voters have become increasingly divided between Democratic and Republican supporters, effectively creating a political civil war. U.S. presidential election in November 2024, whether President Biden or Mr. Trump wins, would result in a further deepening polarization in the US.

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Igor Yurgens

Chairman of the Management board of the Institute of Contemporary Development in Moscow

Do not forget that Russia is a seventh of the world’s land mass with a hundred nations and nationalities and it is very telling and interesting to know who reacts to what and how at the current stage of serious geopolitical conflict.

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Jean-Claude Gruffat

Member of United Way Leadership Council, board member of Atlas Network, Managing Director of Weild and Co LLC New York

The US elections next year in November 2024 is expected by many to be a remake of 2020, with a close race for Congress and a toss up for the President. Is there a chance that we avoid another dreadful choice between Biden and Trump?

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Debate

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17:30 – 18:45 | Plenary session 9

Food Security in a Context of Political Turbulence

Jean-Michel Severino

President of Investisseurs & Partenaires

We also have this threat around climate and this big question of whether food and agriculture are going to be a climate ally or will there be a lasting conviction between producing food and fighting climate change.

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Máximo Torero Cullen

Chief Economist of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Assistant Director General for the Economic and Social Development Department of the FAO

Our agri-food systems need to be transformed to achieve this carbon neutralization. For this we need to improve governance of natural resources, improve productivity, which means producing more from less, improve production practices, improve consumption patterns and behavior and use cleaner energy.

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Sam Okwulehie

Chairman and CEO of LATC

The interesting thing is that protectionism starts to make food a weapon because there is social unrest in these countries as a result of these situations, and problems like migration with a lot of people migrating from Africa to Europe and the Mediterranean Sea now becoming almost a cemetery.

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Kamel Abdallah

Managing Director and CEO of Canal Sugar

In Egypt 70 million people out of around 110 to 120 million people receive some kind of food subsidy for bread. However, this model is not sustainable, governments cannot continue to run budget deficits and we had another complication with the health crisis in the region.

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Park Yong-joo

Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Global Business Operations at PlanTFarm

The question is whether controlled environment agriculture, CEA, technology can be the solution to food crises or shortages.

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Debate speakers

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Debate

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19:00 | Dinner debate with Kevin Rudd

Kevin Rudd

Australia’s Ambassador to the United States, former President of the Asia Society Policy Institute, former Prime Minister of Australia

I continue to be a realist on US-China relations, there are certain structural things that have not changed. Number one, China is more powerful, militarily, economically and technologically, than it was 10, 20 or 30 years ago.

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08:30 – 09:45 | Plenary session 10

Artificial Intelligence: Opportunities and Dependencies

Patrick Nicolet

CEO of Linebreak Ltd., former Group Chief Technology Officer of Capgemini

In Artificial Intelligence because every time there is a breakthrough in technology there is a discussion about the utopian or dystopian perspective. The question is whether it will destroy or save the world and the answer is neither for the simple reason that the technology is ultimately a machine.

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Daniel Andler

Professor Emeritus at Sorbonne University, member of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques, philosopher

The dream of a machine that would be genuinely intelligent, a true thinking machine, one that would possess “artificial general intelligence” or AGI, or again “human-level intelligence” is alive again.

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Kazuto Suzuki

Director of the Institute of Geoeconomics at International House of Japan, Professor at the Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Tokyo, Japan

I think some of the questions touch upon the demand side of AI and I think most of the regulations are now focusing on the supply side, on how to apply ethics in the way AI is designed and used.

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Ameena Al Sumaiti

Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi

We needed the power of AI to take the weather impact into account in our planning problem and we made sure that no accidents will take place when we program our autonomous vehicles.

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Tobby Simon

Founder and Chairman of Synergia

The moment you use AI there is a vulnerability, it is a like a boomerang, it can possibly ping you back. The attack involves data poisoning and data manipulation, thereby rendering AI very ineffective.

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François Barrault

Founder and Chairman of FDB Partners, Chairman of IDATE DigiWorld

We have talked a lot about AI and there are three pillars in it. Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Intelligence has three pillars: the hardware, the transmission (fiber, satellite and Mobile 5G) and the software.

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Debate

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09:45 – 10:45 | Plenary session 11

Semiconductors and Geopolitical Trends: An Opportunity to Strengthen Relationships

Paul Boudre

Silian Partner, former CEO of Soitec

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Handel Jones

Founder and CEO of International Business Strategies (IBS)

China is trying to do some mature technologies, which will be okay for a while, but there is going to be a point where China will push back and that will potentially create significant supply chain issues on a global basis. That may occur in 2025, 2026 or 2027, but it will happen.

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Max Masood Mirgoli

Executive Vice President of worldwide strategic partnerships at Imec

It is imperative hence today that for any country to participate in the digital transformation as it is commonly said that today “ DATA is the new OIL “ and economic opportunities that technology can bring to any economy, all being based on advancements of Semiconductors is simply impossible to ignore.

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Helmut Gassel

former Management board member of Infineon

Beside the benefits to Europe now getting from advanced manufacturing being brought into the region, Europe has its own strength in certain areas. One is automotive, where I would say that 50% of the semiconductors for automotive are being designed and to a large extent manufactured in Europe today, so it is a very great strength.

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Debate

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10:45 – 12:00 | Plenary session 12

Innovative Leaders: How Can Carbon Credit Contribute to Net Zero?

Lucia Sinapi-Thomas

Executive Director of Capgemini Ventures

More and more corporates are publicly stating their targets to net zero and are actively working on their decarbonization plans, which by the way very often translate into investments for modernizing their industrial estates.

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Annette Nazareth

Chair of the board Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Credits (ICVCM)

By implementing the core carbon principles and encouraging market participants to embrace these high integrity credits, we are creating an ecosystem where the value of emissions reductions are appropriately recognized and rewarded and I believe this will unlock greater capital flows and drive innovation and catalyze the development and deployment of truly impactful climate solutions.

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Matt Atwood

Founder and CEO of Aircapture

Aircapture is a US-based company that develops direct air capture technology. What we do in the simplest terms is build machines that use a fan which pulls air through the machine and the CO2, carbon dioxide from the air is collected on a surface of contactor substrates inside the machine.

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Kristinn Ingi Lárusson

Head of Business Development and Commercialization of Carbfix

There are simple chemical components in the bedrock itself and in our case we need three ingredients. First we need CO2, second we need basaltic rock and third, we need water. What we do here is dissolve the CO2 in water and then gently inject into the bedrock.

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Sam Gill

Co-Founder and President of Sylvera

If we were all to agree that if a carbon credit needs to be storing carbon for 100 years, for example, to be acceptable, that would allow the market to start engineering horizontal or vertical stacking approaches to allow different types of carbon to be used in portfolios.

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Maryam Al Mansoori

General Manager of Rebound

The plastics recycling market today definitely faces a challenge of typically this is an economy. Financially companies will not pay more to introduce recycled plastics into their finished products if the virgin plastic is cheaper.

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Debate

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13:30 -14:45 | Plenary session 13

The West after the Ukraine War

Terry Martin

Journalist, TV news anchor

This is an important debate and important points you are bringing up with the whole question about the Global South and how it perceives what is going on. I also take your point on the West, and whether or not it is a useful term.

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Tsakhiagiyn Elbegdorj

former President of Mongolia

The second half of those 10 issues are related to Ukraine’s territorial integrity and the withdrawal of Russian troops, a special tribunal, the security structure and confirmation of the end of the war, including signing a document. This is Ukraine’s peace formula.

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Bogdan Klich

Senator in the Polish Parliament, Chairman of the Foreign and EU Affairs Committee in the Polish Senate

I would say that the results of the NATO Summit in Vilnius recently were a good sign for implementing the decisions that were taken a year ago during the Madrid Summit. We should go this way to implement the new model of forces responsible for reinforcing those countries that could be attacked in the future.

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Zaki Laïdi

Personal Advisor to the High Representative and Vice President of the Commission EEAS

The other achievement is that the level of consensus among Europeans is still very strong, with of course some caveats, but by and large it is extremely strong. That is because all European states see in Ukraine a challenge to their security.

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Norbert Röttgen

member of the Deutscher Bundestag and member of the Foreign Affairs Committee

There are increasing doubts whether the United States will continue in this role as number one security provider for Europe. This is only one reason we are not going to see an end to this war until the presidential elections.

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Speakers debate

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Debate

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14:45 – 16:15 | Plenary session 14

Geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific between Security Concerns and Economic Opportunities

John Andrews

Author, journalist and contributing editor to The Economist

Whatever the current crises are the medium and long-term questions geopolitically and economically will be in the IndoPacific region. If you take the region, you could argue that it has far too many nuclear powers.

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Jean-Pierre Cabestan

Senior Researcher Emeritus at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) attached to the French Research Institute on East Asia (IFRAE) of the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilisations, Professor Emeritus at Hong Kong Baptist University

The slowdown in China also has other consequences, such as the fact that the BRI, the Belt Road Initiative, now has less steam in its engine, with less money being invested in it today. I think this gives other players an opportunity to play a bigger role in the Indo-Pacific region and the Global South as a whole.

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Yuichi Hosoya

Professor of International Politics at Keio University in Tokyo

Japan is the third largest economy in the world and has decided to double its defense budget to enhance Japanese deterrence in the region. This is mainly because the US government has repeatedly asked Japan to do this, and there are so many uncertainties and the regional powers must take more responsibility than before.

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Kim Chang-beom

Vice Chairman and CEO of the Federation of Korean Industries

The most fundamental threat or risk being felt on the business level is undoubtedly the US-China rivalry. As this rivalry intensifies, governments of big and even middle powers, are trying to adopt more protective measures and sometimes to fortify their own economic structures and economic security.

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Hervé Mariton

Mayor of Crest, Chairman of the Franco-British Council, Chairman of the Federation of Overseas Companies (FEDOM)

France is an Indo-Pacific country through its presence and connection, the presence is several territories in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific with more than one and a half million inhabitants.

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Mayankote Kelath Narayanan

former Senior Advisor and National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister of India (Manmohan Singh), former Governor of West Bengal

China wants to be the number one power in Asia and it is the only country standing between it is India, so they will try to belittle India and reduce its sphere of influence. However, we do not see China as a dangerous adversary so much as an imminent threat we have to face.

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Douglas Paal

Distinguished Fellow at the Asia Program Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Despite a slowing economy, China continues to develop unprecedented military capabilities. The US is challenged to upgrade its own military capabilities while being compelled to provide assistance to Ukraine and now the Israelis in Gaza.

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Speakers debate

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Debate

Whatever the current crises are the medium and long-term questions geopolitically and economically will be in the IndoPacific region. If you take the region, you could argue that it has far too many nuclear powers.

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16:15 – 16:45 | Plenary session 15

Conversation with Anwar Gargash

Anwar Gargash

Diplomatic Advisor to the President of the United Arab Emirates

We always have to recognize that Arab public opinion rightfully is very emotional when it comes to the Palestinian issue, this is something that you have read about and you have been brought up with and so on and so forth.

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16:45 – 19:15 | Parallel workshops

Workshop #1 – Economy and Finance

Jean-Claude Trichet

président de l’Académie des sciences morales et politiques, ancien président de la Banque centrale européenne, gouverneur honoraire de la Banque de France

We are relatively confident at this stage, despite the abominable tensions that we have to cope with, geostrategic tensions, we know that a lot of surprises, unfortunate surprises can come and that we have to be prepared for everything.

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Masood Ahmed

President of the Center for Global Development, former Director of the Middle East and Central Asia Department of the IMF

First, in financing climate, we should think separately about how to support adaptation and mitigation. For mitigation, we need to adopt an approach which maximizes the emissions impact globally rather than thinking of this as a sort of add-on for every country to avoid wasting money.

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Bertrand Badré

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

In a nutshell private flows are diminishing, they are miniscule and they are diminishing, it is less than 4% of European AUM which goes to emerging markets, less than 2% of American AUM, so it is very small.

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Akinari Horii

Special Advisor and member of the Board of Directors of the Canon Institute for Global Studies

In light of both the full employment at present and fiscal stimulus in the pipeline, the Federal Reserve may begin to lower the federal fund rate target in 2024 but it would do so only to the extent consistent with increases in the unemployment rate.

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Pierre Jacquet

Professor of Economics at the École nationale des ponts et chaussées (ENPC), member of the Cercle des Économistes

The bridge is called debt and I think that this pathology of the international system is the risk of emergence of a new debt crisis with considerable impact, especially for countries in Africa, but not only.

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André Lévy-Lang

Founder and Chairman of the Louis Bachelier Institute, former CEO of Banque Parisbas

Jean-Claude mentioned about the embedded negative risks of the financial system, number five was cryptocurrencies. Let me make a comment on financial innovation and its impact on finance by starting with cryptocurrencies. They are not a systemic risk.

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John Lipsky

Senior Fellow of the Foreign Policy Institute at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies

For most of the period post-World War Two, trade expansion was driven by cost and efficiency considerations. These economic incentives for expanding trade were created through market opening, reductions in restrictions, and the lowering of tariffs, among other measures.

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Jean-Claude Meyer

Vice Chairman International of Rothschild & Cie

The stock markets should remain volatile and relatively flat until the third quarter of next year. The US stock markets and the Japanese one could go up slightly more than the European stock markets which will remain bumpy, but naturally all stock markets will go up again as soon of course of interest rates will appear, i.e., end of next year.

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Debate

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Workshop #2 – Energy, Climate and Technology

Olivier Appert

Chairman of France Brevets, Scientific Advisor of the Center for Energy and Climate of Ifri, former President of the French Energy Council

This workshop today will discuss the opportunities and challenges to achieve the goals of energy security, sustainability, affordability, acceptability and resilience, from the perspective of different geographic stakeholders which map out credible and realistic pathways through this most demanding period.

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Nicolas Terraz

President of Exploration and Production, member of the Executive Committee of TotalEnergies

At TotalEnergies, we see, more or less, the oil production stabilizing over the decade, and then starting to decline from 2030 to reach a level in 2050, when we aim to be carbon neutral, of somewhere between 40 million and 60 million barrels per day compared to 100 million today.

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Jean Abiteboul

President of GIIGNL (International Group of Liquefied Natural Gas Importers), Non Executive board member of Tellurian, Inc. (AMEX: TELL), Founder and Chairman of JA Energy Consulting

In Europe, LNG has filled the gap created by the disruption of Russian gas. To make it simple, in Europe, the Russian gas has been replaced by LNG from the US.

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Igor Yurgens

Chairman of the Management board of the Institute of Contemporary Development in Moscow

We have got to understand that, whether it is energy or climate, we need to engage the whole world. Unless the discussion or the conversation is truly global, we will actually end up reaching the wrong conclusions and, when the conclusions are wrong, solutions that we propose to the world, or to the people of Europe, will not produce any results.

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Narendra Taneja

Chairman of Independent Energy Policy Institute in New Delhi

The Russian Federation started a real integration into the ESG world. There is a carbon regulation, there is a sustainable finance regulation, there is a regulation of ESG risks by the central bank, and we created a methodical framework for taking all of those ESG factors into the development of industry in the Russian Federation.

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Xavier Ploquin

Investment Director and Chief of Staff to the CEO of Meridiam

I think that a good way of probably discussing energy transition, and it will also involve the southern countries, is to focus on resilience, adaptation and sovereignty. Most of the climate adaptation strategies also have a benefit on mitigation. People are ready to accept adaptation measures because it will give them more value for money.

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Valérie Ducrot

Executive Director of Global Gas Centre

We are only talking about renewables at the UN, at the COP, etc., and this is a disaster for the global south. This is a disaster, like you mentioned here, for even the citizens from the north or west or whatever you want to call it, and it is a complete disaster. However, we have to be here. We have to occupy the field.

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Marc-Antoine Eyl-Mazzega

Director of the Center for Energy & Climate of Ifri

We need a predictable, stable oil price that allows consumers to afford the energy, but still to transition, and the companies and the governments to have the resources to invest in the alternatives.

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Debate

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Workshop #3 – Economic and Social Issues in the Middle East

Abdulrahman A. Al Hamidy

Director General and Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors at the Arab Monetary Fund

It is predicted that, like the rest of the world, economic growth in Arab countries will be affected by several factors this year and the next including slower global growth, tight global and regional financial conditions, volatile commodity prices and country specific factors.

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Mona Makram Ebeid

Egyptian Senator, Advisor to the UN High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations, former member of Parliament

Egypt’s long-standing dependence on fuel and food imports has bloated its foreign debt, thanks in part to the war in Ukraine and Covid-19. In addition, securing international financing has grown more costly and domestic subsidies continue to drain government resources.

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Abdulrahman Al Neyadi

Director of Policy Planning of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the UAE

Countering extremist messaging is not enough. We need a longer-term vision of enhancing education, educational systems, encouraging and building resilience in society by educating our youth in critical thinking. It is also very important to work on empowering women and youth.

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Raed Charafeddine

Central and Commercial Banker, former First Vice Governor of the Central Bank of Lebanon

Lebanon is grappling with an unprecedented economic crisis exacerbated by regional turmoil, public finance challenges, and various other factors, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the Beirut Port explosion. The macroeconomic scene in Lebanon has drastically shifted since 2019, with the regress of trade, tourism, investment, and consumption, while government spending has steeply declined.

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Ernesto Damiani

Professor at Khalifa University for the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Director of the Center for Cyber-Physical Systems (C2PS)

Regional processes and inter-regional processes are particularly important in this region because we are in a place that is a hub between the East and West. I do not want to approach this from the point of view of the economist or politician because it is really not my way, but this make it a very fascinating place for the technologist.

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François Gouyette

former Ambassador of France to the UAE and to Saudi Arabia

The Middle East is also a mosaic of nations with complex relationship. Increased regional cooperation is essential to address shared challenges, such as water scarcity, refugees and regional security. Diplomacy should always prevail over conflicts, the war that is raging between Israel and Hamas as we are speaking today, must reinforce our convictions in this respect.

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Memduh Karakullukçu

Founding board member of the Global Relations Forum, Founding Partner of Kanunum, Chairman of Kroton Consulting

Unemployment is high, youth unemployment is still high, the informal economy is still huge, participation by women is still very low. When it comes to the quality of jobs, they are still low-skilled, low-paid and low-tech, so there is not much change there.

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Kamel Abdallah

Managing Director and CEO of Canal Sugar

Do we have reliable, efficient delivery of water in the region? We do not. It is getting there and technology is helping a lot and thanks to that we are now being more self‑sufficient in food production in the region, but it is still not enough.

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Debate

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09:00 – 10:00 | Reports from parallel workshops

Pierre Jacquet

Professor of Economics at the École nationale des ponts et chaussées (ENPC), member of the Cercle des Économistes

The bridge is called debt and I think that this pathology of the international system is the risk of emergence of a new debt crisis with considerable impact, especially for countries in Africa, but not only.

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Marc-Antoine Eyle-Mazzega

Director of the Center for Energy & Climate of Ifri

We need a predictable, stable oil price that allows consumers to afford the energy, but still to transition, and the companies and the governments to have the resources to invest in the alternatives.

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François Gouyette

former Ambassador of France to the UAE and to Saudi Arabia

The Middle East is also a mosaic of nations with complex relationship. Increased regional cooperation is essential to address shared challenges, such as water scarcity, refugees and regional security. Diplomacy should always prevail over conflicts, the war that is raging between Israel and Hamas as we are speaking today, must reinforce our convictions in this respect.

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10:00 – 11:00 | Plenary session 16

In Search of Hope for a Better World

Thierry de Montbrial

Founder and Executive Chairman of Ifri and the WPC

I think our discussion shows that it was a great and beautiful initiative because of its symbolism. In this session, talked a lot about time, and I believe that time is indeed the root of everything.

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H.H. Bartholomew 1st

Archbishop of Constantinople – New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch

Globalization has unified the world in a superficial way. Today, there are strong trends towards fragmentation, a reorganization of space that goes beyond the economic dimension. The divides that are emerging or re-emerging are also political, geopolitical and identity-based.

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Mohamed Abdelsalam

Secretary General of Muslim Council of Elders

This is the same region that, to our profound regret, suffers today from a bloody and devastating war which, at every moment, claims the lives of innocent civilians, presenting a scene that imposes a collective responsibility upon us all: not only towards the innocent casualties and the children, but towards our whole humanity worldwide.

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Haïm Korsia

Chief Rabbi of France

I think it would be mistaken to reduce the conflict between Israel and Hamas to one between faiths. No religion in the world can encourage or incite the massacre of children, hatred and absolute violence.

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11:00 – 12:30 | Plenary session 17

Are We Ready for the Next Pandemic?

Michel Kazatchkine

Special Advisor to the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe

Key figures on Covid 19 show us that the political attention and the public opinion/attention is rapidly waning, what people call the cycle of “panic and neglect”. We are actually in a phase of neglect.

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Antoine Flahault

Director of the Institute of Global Health at the University of Geneva, Director of the Swiss School of Public Health

It becomes apparent that while they may excel in crisis management, our policymakers seem less adept at proactive prevention.

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Els Torreele

Visiting Policy Fellow at the UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose in London

While the scientific community was able to create life‑saving vaccines in record time, the main failure of our collective Covid response was that many countries were precluded from timely and equitable access to these vaccines, resulting in avoidable suffering and deaths.

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Maha Barakat

Assistant Minister for Health and Life Sciences at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the UAE

If countries implement the Paris Agreement by the year 2050, we could be saving one million lives every year, just from pollution alone.

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Michel Kazatchkine

Special Advisor to the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe

‘Are we ready for a next pandemic?’. To me, the answer is no, we are not, but it is our choice if we want it to be so. It is a choice now to put in place measures that will allow us to identify new outbreaks rapidly and to respond to them in speed where and when they occur, and prevent an infectious outbreak from becoming an epidemic or becoming a pandemic.

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Haruka Sakamoto

Primary care physician and Senior Fellow at the Tokyo Foundation for Policy Research

Even if we succeed in vaccination research and development, we need several million vaccinations. However, usually a country does not have such manufacturing capabilities. Therefore, whenever a global pandemic happens, we need to collaborate with a country which has the manufacturing capacity on a large scale.

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Jacques Biot

board member and Advisor to companies in the field of digital transformation and artificial intelligence, former member of the executive committee of Roussel-Uclaf and Pasteur Mérieux Serums and Vaccines

Overall, retrospective statistics show that there was a wide disparity of performances relative to morbidity, lethality and resulting mortality on the continent, which could suggest that ‘there was no such thing as Europe’.

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Debate

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13:30 – 14:45 | Plenary session 18

Securing Critical Minerals for the Clean-Tech Transition

Friedbert Pflüger

Director of the European Cluster for Climate, Energy and Resource Security (EUCERS) at the University of Bonn, Founding Partner of Strategic Minds Company GmbH

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Philippe Chalmin

Founder of Cercle Cyclope, Professor Emeritus at Paris-Dauphine University

By 2030, that is more or less tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, copper and nickel demand should grow by 70%, cobalt by 150%, and even the demand for graphite and lithium should be multiplied by six or seven.

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Jonathan Cordero

Head of Corporate Development at Eurasian Resources Group (ERG)

Policymakers need to be open to mining as an industry. We are seeing this in the Middle East, where Saudi Arabia has made mining the third pillar of Vision 2030, but we also see adverse forces in Latin America and a mere standstill in Europe.

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Christophe Poinssot

Deputy CEO and Scientific Director of the Bureau de recherches géologiques et minières (BRGM)

We have some long but weak value chains, which can be perturbed by any event that could occur and we had a large number of disruptions over the last years, regardless of the size of disruption. We need to also remember the key role of China.

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Nicolas Piau

Co-Founder & CEO of Tilt Capital

Let us be clear – today, when we are saying, ‘We need to mine more. We need to refine more’, who are the recipients of those materials? It is the rich population of the more developed countries.

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Speakers debate

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Debate

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14:45 – 16:15 | Plenary session 19

Middle East: What in the Next Few Months

Terry Martin

Journalist, TV news anchor

The attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7 and Israel’s response have shattered the status quo and put a big question mark over the immediate future of this region.

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Nabil Fahmy

Dean Emeritus at the American University in Cairo, former Foreign Minister of Egypt

My point really here is we need to have an Arab/Israeli process that leads to Arabs and Israelis living peacefully in the Middle East and, at the core of that, are the Palestinians and the Israelis. That will require an ending of occupation.

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Dorothée Schmid

Head of the Turkey/Middle East program at Ifri

My concern is that this moment of flou could freeze into ‘the West against the rest’ and Gaza would be the symbolic point that would catalyze this divide of the West, explicitly the US, the EU and Israel, set against a very disparate group of countries that have stood against what they feel as blatant injustice against what they see as a massacre being perpetrated in Gaza by Tsahal.

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Itamar Rabinovich

Vice Chairman of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv, Distinguished Fellow at the Brookings Institution

It should include a return of The Palestinian Authority to Gaza, renewal of the negotiations with the PA with the prospect of a two state solution and the creation of a coherent moderate bloc composed of several moderate Arab states and Israel as a counterweight to Iran and its Russian and Chinese partners.

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Volker Perthes

Under-Secretary General and Head Independent Strategic Review of UNAMI (United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq)

Nothing, not even the decade-long grievances of Palestinians, can justify the appalling attack by Hamas. And this appalling attack cannot justify any collective punishment of the people in Gaza. International humanitarian law has to be upheld any time.

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Renaud Girard

Senior Reporter and International Columnist at Le Figaro

Only an international conference can impose a solution on Israel. It would not be that hard to organize it because this is an issue where views converge. The Americans, Russians, Chinese, French, British, Saudis and Arabs all have more or less the same idea on the solution to the Israel-Palestine problem, but disagree on other issues.

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Mohammed Baharoon

Director General of the Dubai Public Policy Research Center (b’huth)

A Middle East warning – nothing about this region is regional. There are always global implications of everything. The conflict is already internationalized. We are afraid of regionalizing it but, in reality, it is internationalized and that is going to affect us.

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Debate

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16:15 – 18:00 | Plenary session 20

Where Is Africa Heading?

Amir Ben Yahmed

Chief Executive Officer of Jeune Afrique Media Group, President of Africa CEO Forum

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Lionel Zinsou

former Prime Minister of Benin, Chairman of SouthBridge

The point I wanted to make, which is counter-intuitive, is that, unfortunately, agriculture, along with energy, is the activity that consumes the most capital.

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Bertrand Badré

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

If we want to successfully make the shift to a more sustainable and resilient economy, it would be in Europe’s interest to reach out to Africa, Latin America and South Asia. We’d be better off doing it together rather than getting crushed between China and the United States.

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General Francis A. Béhanzin

Co-Founder and Chairman of the Réseau mondial des professionnels de sécurité et de défense pour la prévention et la lutte contre le terrorisme, former Commissioner Political Affairs, Peace and Security of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)

More often than not, it is civilians who ask the military to step in, although the army’s role is now defined in almost every African country’s constitution. When civilians can’t agree, the state must still keep working.

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Jean-Michel Severino

President of Investisseurs & Partenaires

If we want profound change for Africa, these Africans need a step up to become prosperous, to become employers, without being forced into corruption, which unfortunately is an all too human temptation in these contexts.

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Robert Dossou

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

I proclaim that Africa is making progress. The proof is that in recent years, if I take the case of Benin, we have seen the emergence of small and medium-sized agro-industrial companies, and their products are on the market.

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Speakers debate

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Debate

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