08:30 – 09:45 | Opening session
Noura Al Kaabi
Minister of State at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the United Arab Emirates
It is essential that we continue to uphold the principles of dialogue and mutual respect, even in the face of stark disagreements. We must work tirelessly to find diplomatic solutions. We must keep talking to each other. Without dialogue progress is impossible.
H. E. Tiémoko Meyliet Koné
Vice President of the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire
This challenging international environment is jeopardizing development efforts worldwide. Countries are struggling to meet the Sustainable Development Goals, the SDGs, which have been adopted as a universal roadmap.
H. H. Bartolomew Ist
Archbishop of Constantinople – New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch
Like our ancestors seventeen centuries ago, the path ahead necessitates the integration of our spiritual heritage with practical solutions. Let us seize this opportune moment to establish collaborative connections between religious wisdom and contemporary knowledge that will benefit future generations.
Thierry de Montbrial
Founder and Executive Chairman of Ifri and the WPC
The cold war that is beginning might not be a war. It is now up to all forces of goodwill, and in particular all of us gathered here, to think and act intelligently to contain and reduce the toxic impacts of this New Cold War. The main issue is definitely to ensure that the New Cold War does not degenerate into a full-scale world war.
09:45 – 11:00 | Plenary session 1
Global Economic Governance in a Fragmented World
Jean-Claude Trichet
Former Head of the European Central Bank, Honorary Governor of the Banque de France
The West is responsible for the fact that the main shareholders, Europe and the US, did not react sufficiently rapidly to the yearly growth in the importance of the other countries and economies in the developing and emerging world.
Gabriel Felbermayr
Director of the Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO), former President of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW)
If we follow the European debate, we sometimes get the impression that Europe has forgotten the fact that we still are a huge player. We have offered solutions in the past and we might do the same again in the future.
Vincent Koen
Deputy Director of Country Studies at the OECD
Uncertainty surrounding trade policy has soared. While it is difficult to know what to make of recent announcements, a more fragmented, protectionist trading environment would constitute an adverse supply shock, raising prices and disrupting supply chains.
John Lipsky
Senior Fellow of the Foreign Policy Institute at John Hopkins University’s Paul H Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, former First Deputy Managing Director of the IMF
We currently are at the fourth systemic inflection point of the 21st century in terms of our system of global governance.
Jean-Marie Paugam
Deputy Director General of the WTO
We have debated deglobalization for years, but trade continues to grow. Trade in services demonstrates this even more clearly because it is growing very fast. So we are not in an era of deglobalization.
Qiao Yide
Vice Chairman and Secretary General of Shanghai Development Research Foundation
Now is a critical time for global economic governance because it seems that the idea of “might is right” has started to prevail in many places […].
Speakers’ Debate
Debate
11:00 – 12:00 | Plenary session 2
Multi-vector Foreign Policies?
Thierry de Montbrial
Founder and Executive Chairman of Ifri and the WPC
Multi-alignment or multi-vector foreign policies are the children of the new approach to the old Bandung concept of non-alignment during the first Cold War.
Ana Brnabić
Speaker of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia
We will continue to work towards the EU accession, but at the same time, we will try to serve as a bridge rather than as a battleground for different competing interests in the world.
Lasha Darsalia
Premier ministre adjoint des Affaires étrangère de Géorgie
Now, when you are in the Russian neighborhood, […] your choice is either you become part of some collective security solution, like NATO, or even the European Union, though it is not security, or, if you fail, then war is imposed on you, like Ukraine now or Georgia before.
Roman Vassilenko
Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan
The only side we should all be taking is the side of cooperation, not confrontation; the side of the international law, not lawlessness; the side of mutual benefit and win win, not mutual exclusion and zero sum games.
Speakers’ Debate
Debate
13:15 – 14:30 | Plenary session 3
De-globalization or Re-globalization?
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
Globalization as we knew it is over. The big challenge is probably not so much to find a new word to describe or define globalization but to find a way to describe something I would describe as planetarization because we need our planet […].
Sébastien Jean
Professor of Economics at CNAM University, Associate Director of Ifri’s Geoeconomics and Geofinance initiative
The current narrative is dominated by two stories, the first of which is about geoeconomic fragmentation, a term coined by the IMF, in a context marked by trade wars and war, and the second is the build-up of competing industrial policies.
Bark Tae-Ho
President of Lee&Ko Global Commerce Institute, former Minister of Trade of South Korea
If US-China trade tensions are intensified when President Trump’s second term begins next year, we expect positive re-globalization benefits to diminish, severely damaging global trade activities.
Vladislav Inozemtsev
Director of the Centre for Post-Industrial Studies in Moscow, Special Advisor to Middle East Media Research Institute’s Russia Media Studies Project in Washington, DC.
The major problem in the world is not whether we have more or less globalization, but if we have an orderly globalization or one that is anti-systemic.
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
Globalization is not over, the movement of trade and capital is still going on but there are a number of countries that are taking certain measures driven by domestic concerns that globalization or free trade is actually harming their economy and society.
Pierre Jacquet
Professor of Economics at the École nationale des ponts et chaussées (ENPC), member of the Cercle des Économistes
As economists, we have tended to forget that reality, we were living in a world in which geopolitics was reasonably understandable and stable, and we could ignore it. This is over, at least for some time.
Debate
14:30 – 15:00 | Plenary session 4
Conversation with Kevin McCarthy
Kevin McCarthy
55th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives
It is not therefore creating a trade war. It is opening up a negotiation, and everything that [Donald Trump] does is to get a negotiation, but also set the negotiation to some type of advantage that he wants.
Debate
15:00 – 15:45 | Plenary session 5
The Role of G7 in a Changing Landscape
Thierry de Montbrial
Founder and Executive Chairman of Ifri and the WPC
Philippe Etienne
Ambassadeur de France, Professor of Public and International Affairs at Columbia University, former Diplomatic Advisor to President Macron, also acting as G7 and G20 Sherpa
The G7 needs to keep this informality […] but also to be able, through working with other countries, […] to have the capacity to contribute to and bring their own solutions to the global discussion.
Lee Hye-Min
Former G20 Sherpa of Korea, Senior Advisor of KIM & CHANG
The America First policy does not appreciate the value of alliance and partners, so I expect the vitality of the G7 and the G20 would be significantly reduced.
Gary Litman
Senior Vice President of Global Initiatives at the US Chamber of Commerce
In terms of expansion, [the business community] will leave that to politicians, but when it comes to governments that set the rules for large markets, we want to interact with them individually and we want to be part of any of their collective endeavors.
Speakers’ Debate
15:45 – 16:45 | Plenary Session 6
Geopolitics of Climate Change
Marc-Antoine Eyl-Mazzega
Director of the Center for Energy & Climate of Ifri
In this fragmented world, it is still very profitable to invest in fossil fuels and much less so in clean techs, although that is improving.
Nawal Al-Hosany
Permanent Representative of the UAE to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA)
When people were not even looking at renewables, we created Masdar Initiative back in 2006. Today, we have three of the largest and lowest cost solar plants in the world.
Stéphane Michel
President Gas, Renewables & Power and Executive Committee member of TotalEnergies
We need to acknowledge the role of gas in that transition, because today, we continue to increase the consumption of coal, and we continue to invest in coal fire plants, which is total absurdity when you know the difference.
Frank Wouters
Chairman of the MENA Hydrogen Alliance
[In Europe] There is no situation where I foresee a future where you are replacing fossil fuels with cleaner molecules and you do not have strategic reserves for those.
Mikaa Blugeon-Mered
Special Advisor at Hy24, Adjunct Lecturer on Hydrogen Geopolitics at Sciences Po and Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P)
That is how you effectively unlock hydrogen, and that is a real geopolitical change, because if you are focusing on the demand, if you are focusing on the green shoring aspect of things, then we are essentially building local value chains rather than international trade based, large-scale value chains.
Debate
16:45 – 17:30 | Plenary session 7
The IMEC Economic Corridor: A New Era of Global Cooperation and Growth
Gérard Mestrallet
Special Envoy of the French President for IMEC
IMEC will create prosperity and growth around the track. We will create special economic zones, industrial zones, logistics zones, in order to have jobs, growth and prosperity, mainly in the hinterland of the ports.
Anurag Varma
Senior Vice President of the Adani Group
When you have a global initiative starting in India, going through Haifa and beyond, we are well positioned and very excited at the opportunity to participate, and hopefully, in some ways, lead in this initiative.
Gidon Bromberg
Cofounder of EcoPeace Middle East
The project becomes catalytic because it does not just meet the Palestinian dignity needs of prosperity in their own state, but it also helps meet Israel’s security needs of living in its Jewish state.
Speakers’ Debate
17:30 – 18:45 | Plenary session 8
Economic Growth and Geopolitical Challenges in Asia
John Andrews
Author, Journalist and Contributing Editor to The Economist
For decades we have assumed that Asia’s economies were always bound to not just outperform, but actually race ahead of the rest of the world.
Douglas Paal
Distinguished Fellow at the Asia Program Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Our Navy, Air Force and Marine capabilities in the region have not kept pace with the capacity of China to intimidate Taiwan, and therefore Taiwan is in a more vulnerable place today than it was 20 years, 30 years ago, and it is continuing in that direction.
Jean-Pierre Cabestan
Senior Researcher Emeritus at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), Professor Emeritus at Hong Kong Baptist University
I think that China’s interest is to try to take advantage of the return of Trump Administration to drive a wedge between the US and its allies, both in Europe and in Asia.
Mayankote Kelath Narayanan
Former Senior Advisor and National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister of India (Manmohan Singh), former Governor of West Bengal
China is already acknowledged to have the capability to become a global manufacturing hub. However, lesser known is the fact that India, with the world’s largest and aspiring youthful labor force, is beginning to challenge China, and in the process, the rest of the world.
Hur Kyung-Wook
Chairman of Seoul Financial Forum, Chairman of the Board of the Korea Center for International Finance
The Asian economies are very closely integrated with not only the Chinese economy, but also with the US economy. There is now increasing political tension to pressure Asian countries to take sides, politically at least.
Yuichi Hosoya
Professor of International Politics at Keio University in Tokyo, Director of Research at the Asia-Pacific Initiative
Every year China is increasing its defense budget[…]. Therefore, the number one priority for Japan, South Korea and Taiwan is to increase their defense budgets. To do that, we have to seriously think about the possibility of a Taiwan contingency.
Debate
19:15 | Dinner with Kevin Rudd
Kevin Rudd
Ambassador of Australia to the United States, former Prime Minister of Australia
The historical pattern will always be for the Chinese system to spend a lot of time in the course of the first year of any new US administration, analyzing that administration for real-word change in policy actions and behavior.
08:30 – 09:45 | Plenary session 9
The Future of Europe After the Ukraine War and Trump’s Election
Terry Martin
Journalist and TV news anchor
The world is growing more polarized. Europe must find a way of navigating its internal divisions if it hopes to retain credibility as a global actor.
Yann Coatanlem
Cofounder of GlassView, the inventors of NeuroPowered MediaTM, and President of Club Praxis
We think in particular if you could adopt the Danish flexicurity but maybe limited to the top 5% or 10% of employees, the kind of area where you are going to hire your highly qualified engineers, then you are in business.
Zaki Laïdi
Former Personal Advisor to the High Representative and Vice President of the Commission EEAS
The Europeans, of course, have to avoid any kind of military confrontation with Russia […]. But we need to deter Russia, and to do so, we need to ramp up our military effort on a national basis. However, we also have to do it collectively.
Hubert Védrine
Former Minister of Foreign Affairs of France, Founder of Hubert Védrine Conseil
There is no body composed of European allies within NATO. So we may have to invent one. Will we then face a question we have never had to deal with because it never came up, i.e., who decides?
Vuk Jeremić
President of the Center for International Relations and Sustainable Development, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Serbia
I cannot foresee the European Union taking in any new fully-fledged member into the European Council, before changing certain decision-making rules with the European Union.
Norbert Röttgen
Member of the Deutscher Bundestag and member of the Foreign Affairs Committee
What changed last month, in November this year, is that European security, for the first time since December 1941, has become primarily a European matter.
Speakers’ Debate
Debate
09:45 – 10:15 | Plenary session 10
Conversation with Aiman Ezzat
Aiman Ezzat
CEO of Capgemini
The digital revolution is comparable to the industrial revolution. The rules of competition and consumers’ expectations are radically changing.
10:15 – 11:15 | Plenary session 11
The AI Revolution and Beyond
Daniel Andler
Professor Emeritus at Sorbonne University, Member of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques, Philosopher
What is good for AI is not necessarily good for humanity. Recommending that we reap the benefits of AI while preventing or limiting the damages it can inflict is vacuous. We must do better.
François Barrault
Founder and Chairman of FDB Partners, Chairman of IDATE DigiWorld
AI has the potential to simplify our lives by eliminating mundane tasks, thereby providing us with more opportunities to connect with each other and create a better world.
H. E. Omran Sharaf
Assistant Foreign Minister for Advanced Science and Technology of the United Arab Emirates
I think this debate needs to happen at the level of multilateral platforms and bilateral discussions, where nations have to discuss this but at the same time, not hinder or stop the progress of the developments in this important field that brings a lot of benefits to humanity.
Lee Tiedrich
Distinguished Faculty Fellow in Law & Responsible Technology at Duke University, member of the OECD and Global Partnership on AI (GPAI)
We need to have laws and policies that work, that companies and governments can operationalize, and that can work in practice. Because of the connected nature of our world, it has become a global game.
Speakers’ Debate
Debate
11:15 – 12:15 | Plenary session 12
Innovative Leaders: Transforming Business with Generative AI
Lucia Sinapi-Thomas
Executive Vice President, Capgemini Ventures Managing Director
We cannot ignore the fact that […] generative AI is also raising some fundamental concerns. This resonates with unprecedented fear of a tech singularity, an hypothetical point where computers would transcend human intelligence.
Lucia Russo
Artificial Intelligence Policy Analyst at the OECD
When it comes to intellectual property rights, we know that these models are trained on large bodies of text and other material that is often copyrighted, and this raises the question of fair remuneration for authors.
Eiso Kant
CTO & Cofounder of Poolside
Our view is that the road to AGI is going to go through building the world’s most capable capabilities in software development and coding first, and secondly only in other areas.
Rotem Alaluf
CEO of Wand.ai
We want [every agent in our system] to be able to go to any human in a complete two-sided collaboration process between humanity and the agentic system.
Speakers’ Debate
Felix Naser
COO of Liquid.AI
Our mission is to build capable and efficient general-purpose AI systems at every scale.
Debate
14:45 – 15:45 | Plenary session 13
Brics Expansion: Implications for the Future of Global Order
Nikolaus Lang
Managing Director and Senior Partner in BCG’s Munich office
From our side, the expanded BRICS will have impacts on five areas that are critical for corporations: energy, trade, infrastructure and development, monetary policy, and last but not least, technological cooperation.
Etienne Berchtold
Ambassador of the Republic of Austria to the United Arab Emirates, former Foreign and European Policy Spokesperson for three Austrian Chancellors
So far, there have been no concrete plans to implement a currency at the BRICS level but if we continue to threaten them maybe they will get the idea to do that[…]. We have to be careful that it does not backfire.
Trudi Makhaya
Board Member, Spar Group & Former Economic Advisor to the President of South Africa
In a sense, I can say that BRICS has been very important in terms of providing options but when it comes to some of the fundamental structural changes we want to see in the way Africa engages with the rest of the world, that is still very much a work in progress.
Constanza Negri Biasutti
Brazil B20 Sherpa and former Trade & International Integration Head at CNI (National Confederation of Industry) in Brazil
Despite the differences we see in terms of the composition and geopolitical views, the G20 and BRICS should be as seen as complementary.
Qiao Yide
Vice Chairman and Secretary General of Shanghai Development Research Foundation
The NDB is operating very well and is rated at AA+ by Standard and Poor, which is higher than the individual five countries. The NDB is raising capital in the international market, the cost is only 30 or 40 bps, higher than that of the World Bank.
Speakers’ Debate
Debate
15:45 – 16:15 | Plenary session 14
Conversation with Anwar Gargash
H. E. Anwar Gargash
Diplomatic Advisor to President of the United Arab Emirates
I think we also have a responsibility in the region to work to not repeat past mistakes, to try to understand that the region is very difficult for one ideological view to be superior. We have to accept that the region has to reach equilibrium and, as I said, that equilibrium is about common sense.
16:30 – 19:00 | Parallel workshops
Workshop #1 – Workshop 1: Economy and Finance
Jean-Claude Trichet
Former President of the European Central Bank, Honorary Governor of the Banque de France
There has already been this surge of protectionism and the hedging post-Covid but also taking into account the geostrategic difficulties we are observing which, of course, was amplified by Trump.
Hur Kyung-Wook
Chairman of Seoul Financial Forum, Chairman of the Board of the Korea Center for International Finance, former Vice Minister for the Ministry of Strategy and Finance
First, our trade dependency is very high, and Germany is probably the only one of the top 12 countries to reach anything similar. […] The second element that makes Korea more vulnerable than other countries is that we are caught between the US and China.
Pierre Jacquet
Professor of Economics at the École nationale des ponts et chaussées (ENPC), Member of the Cercle des Économistes
We are clearly facing in the Euro Area a clear, long-term decline in total factor productivity, with even a negative trend growth since the early 2000s. This would mean that over the last quarter of a century, we are basically continuously using our production factors less efficiently!
Sébastien Jean
Associate Director of Ifri’s Geoeconomics and Geofinance Initiative, Professor of Economics at CNAM University
For me, it is certain that partners will retaliate but I am also assuming that most, if not all, will only retaliate partially and not try to match American duties, at least as far as the WTO’s usual definition of matching in terms of trade distortion.
André Lévy-Lang
Founder and Chairman of the Louis Bachelier Institute, former CEO of Banque Paribas
The dollar remains by far the main trade instrument as money or to use in trade. China’s efforts to use the renminbi have limited the use of the dollar to some extent but if you look at the numbers, the dollar is still by far the main currency used in trade.
John Lipsky
Senior Fellow of the Foreign Policy Institute at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, former First Deputy Managing Director of the IMF
One development that has been widely noted is the relatively recent good performance of the US economy in terms of total factor productivity growth. […] This outcome was not expected and differentiates the United States from all other major advanced economies.
Gary Litman
Senior Vice President for Global Initiatives at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
I think the mood in private reflects the uncertainty and especially that larger companies have to shift pretty quickly from the narrative of investing in the energy transition and climate to investing in security and tech.
Jean-Claude Meyer
Vice Chairman International of Rothschild & Cie
We can anticipate […] one scenario for Europe and two for the US, and maybe as a surprise, a third one for the US. In my view, there is only one scenario for Europe, which is continuous very slow growth of 0.9% to 1% next year and inflation around 2%.
Debate
Workshop #2 – Workshop 2: Energy and Environment
TotalEnergies and Energy Transition
In 2021 we changed our name to TotalEnergies, even though people continue to say Total, because we believe that the energy transition needs a multi-energy strategy.
Discussing Liquefied Natural Gas
If we start to calculate the CO2 emissions attached to a new LNG project, we should also take into account the avoided CO2 emissions that would have been emitted by alternative fuel.
Global Governance and Russia’s View on Energy
The Baku Declaration on adaptation recognized that the sole reduction of the use of fossil fuels will not solve the problem and that adaptation of the planet to the existing level of carbon emission is equally if not more important.
On Fugitive Methane Emissions, Carbon Markets and the Fight Against Coal
To truly improve the emissions footprint […], we must do more about fugitive methane emissions. Clearly, coalitions are being built, but many parts of the world are still excluded—not because they are not around the table, but simply because these issues have not yet reached them.
Energy Challenges in Latin America, Hydropower and Nuclear
There is still not a stable electricity supply in Lima and many other cities and communities. That is causing tremendous political tension in the country because gas is available, but it is going to LNG for export.
Focus on Argentina
Argentina has the determination to contribute to global security of supply and the mitigation of climate change through its vast natural resources, while carrying out its own energy transition.
Investing in the Energy Transition
We are talking about flexibility on the production and generation sides but there is no way we can achieve energy transition without flexibility on the demand side and the link between the two is the grid.
Final Comments
Workshop #3 – Workshop 3: Economic and Social Issues in the Middle East
Introduction
Dorothée Schmid
Head of the Türkiye/Middle East program at Ifri
There is now a need to build in parallel a working production system and a new system of relationships with the outside world [in Syria].
François Gouyette
Chairman of Pro Oriente Conseil, Vice-Chairman for Public Diplomacy of The Global Diwan, Advisor to the Chairman of Diot-Siaci
North Africa, sometimes considered as a backwater within the broader Middle East context, actually deserves, in my opinion, far more attention from the international community.
Raed Charafeddine
Central and Commercial Banker, former First Vice Governor of the Central Bank of Lebanon
Yet, amid this persistent chaos, the trauma of destruction, displacement, and loss, the Lebanese people continue to exhibit extraordinary resilience and strength, which binds them together across divides.
Adil Alzarooni
CEO of Al Zarooni Emirates Investments and Al Bidayer Holding, Founder of Citizens School
In a fast-moving world with ever-changing technologies, their role as family businesses is in danger today in countries where the governments are taking the lead in top business sectors.
Kamel Abdallah
Managing Director and CEO of Canal Sugar, Egypt
Gone is the idea that food security is about availability and affordability, which used to be the case, but no longer, as we have gone beyond that idea to say we need to be self-sufficient.
Monica Malik
Économiste en chef à la Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank
These are still relatively small, but you continue to see the focus on governments realizing that they cannot continue to just be oil exporting countries, and that they need to gradually diversify and morph into new economic models.
Fareed Yasseen
Secretary General of the Iraq Pugwash Association, former Ambassador of the Republic of Iraq to the United States
There are mainly three reasons for water scarcity: upstream dams, climate change, and inefficient water management. […] Iraq is where agriculture was invented but if we want to pursue it in the future, we have to reinvent it.
Ernesto Damiani
Professor at Khalifa University for the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Director of the Center for Cyber-Physical Systems (C2PS)
Climate, energy, food security, water are all problems but there are also waves of opportunities for new economic developments based on the technologies you are trying to create to handle these problems.
Debate
19:30 | Gala dinner with His Excellency Sheikh Salem bin Khalid Al Qassimi
H. E. Sheikh Salem bin Khalid Al Qassimi
Minister of Culture, United Arab Emirates
The pursuit of peace and stability is another area where culture plays a significant role. In a world increasingly marked by polarization, fostering inter-cultural dialogue can build bridges and mutual understanding.
09:00 – 10:30 | Plenary session 15
Global Health Challenges
Michel Kazatchkine
Special Advisor to the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe
Health is a huge issue on the international economic agenda, of commerce and industry. It is also an issue of social justice and human rights and it is an integral part of intertwined, interconnected crises and challenges we face, food, climate, energy and water.
Antoine Flahault
Director of the Institute of Global Health at the University of Geneva, Director of the Swiss School of Public Health
It is not about prolonging our lives infinitely but much more about improving our health and quality of life within our already long-life expectancy.
Maha Barakat
Assistant Minister for Health and Life Sciences at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the UAE
Many of the global health challenges we have to deal with today can fall under the causation of climate change or become much worse because of climate change.
Jean-François Etter
Professor at the Institute of Global Health (ISG) of the University of Geneva
Tobacco harm reduction aims at offering safe alternatives to cigarettes to people who cannot quit, for instance people with mental health problems who find it very difficult to quit smoking and have to get their nicotine by other means than smoking.
Juliette Tuakli
Mercy Ships International Diplomatic Ambassador for Africa, former Clinical Professor in Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, Founder and former Medical Director of CHILD Accra in Ghana
Prevention is not just about avoiding disease, which is important, it is also about building healthier, more resilient communities on the continent.
Yoshiyuki Sagara
Senior Research Fellow at the Asia Pacific Initiative (API) specialized in health security policy
Prevention is always a difficult and challenging topic for policy-makers in terms of mobilizing political commitments as well as resources. This is not the first time the world has emphasized pandemic prevention, and my concern is that we may be repeating the cycle of panic and neglect.
Debate
10:30 – 11:45 | Plenary session 16
Geopolitics, Food, World Hunger: A Forgotten and Explosive Subject
Jean-Michel Severino
President of Investisseurs & Partenaires, former Vice President of the World Bank for Asia, former CEO of France’s International Development Agency (AFD)
In all those three international negotiations, agricultural issues were basically very low on the agenda, if not. This lack of focus on what is, with health, one of the most critical of our global issues when it comes to the sustainability of our livelihoods, is a big question.
Máximo Torero Cullen
Chief Economist of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
We have 733 million people in chronic hunger, which is the midpoint estimated in the latest survey. We have 2.3 billion people who lack regular access to food and affordable subsidized access for 2.8 billion people.
Philippe Chalmin
Founder of Cercle Cyclope, Professor Emeritus at Paris-Dauphine University
To my mind agricultural production globally is not really a problem, sufficient agricultural products are produced in the world to satisfy human needs. […] The problem is not there, it is a problem of poverty, and I am afraid to say that trade is not really the solution […].
Bayu Krisnamurthi
Professor at the Bogor Agricultural University, former Vice Minister of Agriculture of the Republic of Indonesia
Hunger is alarming but at the same time it is a paradox. There are 1 billion meals wasted and if they could be distributed and reallocated to the hungry then we could solve this problem instantly.
Kamel Abdallah
Managing Director and CEO of Canal Sugar, Egypt
Whenever we hear the word hunger, we need to redefine in our minds that hunger is about having nutritious food, not just about having food and that is a very important distinction.
Jean-Marc Astorg
Strategy Director at the Centre national d’études spatiales (CNES)
Today, with spatial data we can accurately know about soil conditions on a global and local scale, allowing us to obtain data on individual plots. […] This optimizes water and input use.
Speakers’ Debate
Debate
11:45 – 12:30 | Plenary session 17
Politics and Religion in the Middle East
Olivier Roy
Research Director at CNRS (French National Center for Scientific Research)
The jihadist wave, which began in 1995 and, to me, ended very recently, blinded us Westerners to the real dynamics in the Middle East. In other words, we saw everything through the lens of the jihad and terrorism. But that was not really what politically mobilized the man in the street.
Haïm Korsia
Chief Rabbi of France
I do not have the feeling that there was an Israeli-Palestinian war. There is an Israeli-Hamas war. There is no doubt about that. Then there is Israel’s war against Hezbollah. But there has certainly not been an Israeli-Palestinian war since October 7.
13:30 – 14:15 | Plenary session 18
What Perspectives for a Sustainable Arab-Israeli Peace?
Nabil Fahmy
Dean Emeritus of the American University in Cairo, former Foreign Minister of Egypt
Before October 7 we were all becoming complacent that this could continue with occupation and tension, security and insecurity, without there being damage.
Itamar Rabinovich
Vice Chairman of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv, Distinguished Fellow at the Brookings Institution
One of the explanations for what happened is that it was so rotten that it only took a push for the regime to fall.
The Role of Türkiye in the Middle East
I would actually argue that strategically, Turkish-Arab cooperation is much more important than the Idlib issue and I think that the Turks would come around on this, although for reasons you know, they are hypersensitive in terms of the Kurdish issue.
The Role of Iran
I think there is a great deal of opposition to the regime in Iran itself, there is a lot of criticism with people saying they have suffered economically while billions of dollars have been wasted in Lebanon and other places and it all came to nothing, so maybe it is time to rethink the policies.
The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Both sides know where they are beginning and where the ultimate objective is. The problem is neither side, and again I am being very generous here, trusts the other so we need to take action on the ground with a vision towards the future but create some teeth for that vision.
The Palestinian Authority
I am not sure [the Palestinian Authority is] ready for statehood right now and to have a failed Palestinian state, let us say, create a state by fear and for it then to fail after a year would be very counterproductive.
Trump’s Influence in Iran and Israel
I do believe that Trump will be open to the idea of a grand compromise with Iran or a grand package, but I do not think he will succeed in doing that.
14:15 – 15:15 | Plenary session 19
War and Peace in the Middle East: What Role for the Europeans?
Renaud Girard
Senior Reporter and International Columnist at Le Figaro
War and peace in the Middle East are not only about the Israelis and the Palestinians; it is also Turks and Kurds through Julani in Syria, and of course war between Israel and Iran.
Syria
Aside from getting to know these people, I think the first thing for Europe, the Arabs and everybody else who wants to help, is to support a UN-supported but Syrian-owned political process to get an all encompassing, inclusive political governance setup in Syria, including a constitutional discussion.
European Diplomacy in the Middle East
For several European countries it is a tricky issue to deal with this region because they have to face domestic consequences. It is true in Germany where refugees from the Middle East are sensitive to the Palestinian cause.
Israel-Iran Tension
They have been unable to protect their proxies, which means that their image, their aura, in the Middle East is gone. I guess they will have some hard internal discussions in Tehran, and I hope, and basically also expect, that they will decide to build their own country rather than trying to dominate regional countries.
Additional Comments
Debate
15:15 – 16:15 | Plenary session 20
Building a Sustainable Future in Africa
Seán Cleary
Chairman of Strategic Concepts (Pty) Ltd, Founder and Executive Vice Chair of the FutureWorld Foundation
The opportunities are equally extraordinary because Africa will have the largest demographic dividend in the world over the course of the next 70 years.
Nardos Bekele-Thomas
CEO of the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD), former United Nations Resident Coordinator in South Africa
Africa contributes only 4% of carbon emissions, but we are bearing the greatest burden of climate change. […] The world has to wake up because we need to help Africa to build its capacity to adapt, but also to mitigate.
Vincent Biruta
Minister of Interior of the Republic of Rwanda, former Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of Rwanda
Regional integration is not an option for African countries but a must if we want to achieve economic development and peace.
Nialé Kaba
Minister of Economy, Planning and Development of Côte d’Ivoire
[The ECOWAS] embodies a shared ambition for inclusive economic development in a context of peace and regional integration.
Jean-Michel Severino
Ancien vice-président de la Banque mondiale pour l’Asie, ancien directeur général de l’Agence française de développement (AFD)
What is good for growth, as we have long known, is added value, investment in agriculture, intelligence and capacity building. Which is something that most of the countries that have borrowed heavily to finance their development have failed to do.
16:15 – 17:30 | Plenary session 21
President Trump: What Economy and Foreign Policy?
Virginie Robert
Foreign Desk Editor at Les Échos, Vice President of the European-American Press Club in Paris
Hiroyuki Akita
Commentator of Nikkei, Japan
The best approach is to take advantage of his slogan of “Make America Great Again”. […] Maybe we can say this to him, “As US allies, we really want US to become greater again. Also, we also want to be even greater together with the US […].” This approach will maybe give more leverage than preaching or flattering Trump.
Peter Beyer
Member of the Deutscher Bundestag, former Coordinator of Transatlantic Cooperation of the Federal Government
Donald Trump knows it is his last chance: two years, four years. It will start with dozens of executive orders, right from day one onwards, so we better prepare in Europe and elsewhere in the world.
Fareed Yasseen
Secretary General of the Iraq Pugwash Association, former Ambassador of the Republic of Iraq to the United States
In 2016 the Republicans were not actually really well prepared for winning the White House. That is why they had such a difficult time finding people that would stick with the Trump administration[…]. This time is going to be different. It will be rehearsed.
Jay Truesdale
CEO of TD International
However, while [President elect Trump] has a mandate and while he is entering the office with tremendous momentum, he has surrounded himself with individuals who do not have senior level executive experience.
Jean-Claude Gruffat
Member of United Way Leadership Council, Board member Atlas Network, Managing Director of Weild and Co LLC New York
I think if you want to understand what he is going to do, you have to understand that the Trump who is going to be the 47th President of the United States is not different from the Trump who was in business.
Speakers’ Debate
Debate
17:30 – 18:30 | Plenary session 22
Final Debate
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)
In Mali, as in Burkina Faso and Niger, we have benefited from international solidarity, but the results have been unsatisfactory. That is the main reason why Africans have stood up against the presence of foreign forces in their countries.
Michel Foucher
Member of the Center for Higher European Studies (former ENA) and Senior Counsel on studies at MEDEF
We in the North must understand that we no longer have the monopoly on normative and narrative power, and so, hear the issues and messages of the local Souths.
Christophe Poinssot
Deputy CEO and Scientific Director of the Bureau de recherches géologiques et minières (BRGM)
The problem of securing supplies in metals, which we thought was relegated to the history of the Industrial Revolution, has come roaring back with a vengeance and that these metals are again essential for our economies and our public policies.