Opening Address WEF Annual Meeting 2017

Bern, 17.01.2017 - Doris Leuthard, President of the Swiss Confederation, Davos, 17.01.2017

(Check against delivery) 

Professor Schwab

Mr President

Excellencies

Ladies and Gentlemen

Mr President, I warmly welcome you to Switzerland and to Davos for this year’s Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum.

Professor Schwab, it is an honour for Switzerland to be the host country of this event. Year after year, the WEF Annual Meeting offers a stage for world leaders in business and politics to exchange views and – if all goes well – work together toward the greater good of the world.

The past year has shown us that the world is undergoing a period of fundamental change. Extremism, violence and conflict draw ever closer to regions previously regarded as safe. The European Union, stable for so long, now has its work cut out. In many regions of the world, nationalism and protectionism are gaining the upper hand. I observe these developments with concern, for they challenge the cohesion of the international community and make multilateral relations more difficult, both in economic and political terms.

None of these problems is easy to solve. Taken together, they mean that the world risks becoming an increasingly fragile entity. Uncertainty is rife. People are seeking security in smaller structures. And the future will bring additional challenges:

  • The economic environment is changing: the combination of debt, low interest rates and weak central banks is an explosive new phenomenon. In many countries, this combination has reached alarming proportions. This has made it difficult to make urgently needed investments, to guarantee stability and to lay the foundations for growth and prosperity.
  • Climate change has made environmental issues more important: the Paris Agreement has come into force, providing a sound basis for sensible energy, climate and environmental policies. China is on track and is therefore a model for other countries. Yet what approach will other countries, above all the United States, take to implementation?
  • Education is the key to the future: currently over 200 million people worldwide are unemployed, and over 70 million of them are under the age of 25. This brings feelings of despair and frustration. If the younger generation is to prosper, we must invest in their education and training.
  • And the rich grow ever richer: over 500 million people are now regarded as rich. In emerging countries, the middle classes have grown. Yet in the southern states of the Eurozone and in the USA, the middle class is getting poorer. Globally, more than 1.2 billion people live on less than 1.25 dollars a day. We must find strategies to prevent the deep divide between rich and poor from growing and putting more pressure on social harmony.  

We are well aware of all these problems. Yet we have failed to solve them. What is new is that digitalisation, as a fourth industrial revolution, will place the world on a completely new footing. We must not allow new classes of winners and losers to appear: an elite that benefits, leaving many at a disadvantage, feeling the world has passed them by. That is not the way forward. Digitalisation must be democratised – just as knowledge was democratised by the printing press.

In times of such fundamental change, we need to know what position to take. We need signposts to show us the way and provide us with security and stability. In other words, we need ‘responsive and responsible leadership’.

  • Leadership with the ability to draw the right conclusions and take sensible and responsible decisions.
  • Leadership in order to implement these decisions in a credible manner, in consultation with ordinary people.
  • Leadership in order to forge cooperation and alliances, and work constructively with other countries.

Part of this is also the realisation that we have to bid farewell to the concept of ‘one size fits all’. We may well live on the same planet, yet many live in their own, often contradictory worlds. So there will never be a single solution that solves every problem, for every country or every person. But there are solutions. At a national level in Switzerland, on a small scale and over a long history, we have found ways for people with different cultures and languages, interests and beliefs to live together peacefully. At an international level, the process surrounding the Paris Climate Agreement has shown us that it is possible:

  • A global agreement signed up to by 195 states.
  • An agreement, which takes account of the socio-economic situation of individual countries and leaves them scope to find the appropriate solution.
  • An agreement that follows the motto of ‘global responsibility, national implementation’.

In tomorrow’s world, there will be ever fewer distinctions between industrialised and developing countries; and fewer distinctions between elites and the people. We all are the people. We all are citizens of this world. We therefore not only need ‘responsible leadership’, we also need much more ‘responsible cooperation’.

The Paris Agreement can serve as a model in that respect.

Davos can play a part in initiating and influencing this new way of thinking.


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Publisher

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