Summit 2021

Following the large increase in the number of refugees and other migrants arriving in Europe in 2015–16, the European Union concluded a ‘migration deal’ with Turkey in 2016. As a result, the number of irregular migrants crossing the Aegean Sea dropped drastically. At the same time, the humanitarian emergency in Greek refugee camps and the ... Read more

Comprehensive, balanced, and mutually beneficial partnerships with countries of origin and transit are fundamental prerequisites for sustainably managing migration flows to the EU. The European Commission’s New Pact on Migration and Asylum proposes a range of measures to achieve effective cooperation with non-EU countries. Developing channels for legal migration as well as complementary pathways for ... Read more

Not only the fair distribution of vaccines against the coronavirus is currently a central challenge of the international community. Also, the establishment of effective and resilient public health systems including skilled personnel, disease prevention and monitoring, and access to treatments remain important for global health and pandemic preparedness. The Covid-19 pandemic has shown the aggravating ... Read more

Election corruption, police brutality, political turmoil, tax breaks for the wealthy, unequal educational access, wage inequality, disinformation perpetrated by the media, and more. Events of the last few years have demonstrated that society’s institutions are in dire shape. Institutional failure is occurring because these institutions, from local to global, were made for a world that ... Read more

Digital divides take many different forms. Digital infrastructure and the skills to make use of digital technologies are not equally distributed across the globe, hence creating a divide with regard to the opportunities to actually make use of digital technologies. The COVID-19 pandemic and the necessity to learn and work from home has highlighted the ... Read more

COVID-19 is a global challenge that can therefore only be solved globally. While the debate in the European Union has focused heavily on local and regional vaccine distribution, an essential key in winning the fight against the pandemic has been overlooked: we need a global vaccination strategy and global equitable access to a vaccine. At ... Read more

Many transactions in the digital economy involve barter: consumers of digital services get many digital services for free (or under-priced) and in return have personal information about themselves collected – for free. However, it is often completely non-transparent to the user, which data is collected and what it is used for. In fact, personal data ... Read more

Our current measures of progress are primarily financial and short-term. Macro-level reporting has had a particular emphasis on GDP and corporate reporting has largely been focused on shareholder value. In the context of broader social objectives, our current approaches to reporting are neither sufficient nor effective. While there has been a proliferation of standards and ... Read more

Infrastructure plays a key role in supporting the recoupling of economic prosperity with social and environmental prosperity. This requires long-term investment in social infrastructure, including education, health and housing, as well as investments into infrastructure that supports a reduction of the environmental footprints. The Covid-19 crisis affects the global economy largely through and within interconnected ... Read more

Our economy should serve human needs. For that, it must not be entirely geared towards economic progress but has to improve social progress and environmental sustainability as well. This is the vision of a recoupled economy: where social, economic and environmental prosperity grow together and not apart. Achieving a recoupled economy requires complementary action in ... Read more