Weapons police at each crossroads, a clogged city center, signs of limousines and helicopters: Davos has found a little of its usual pace, that of an improbable meeting of the great of this world in a corner Lost Swiss Alps. After two years of absence, the famous economic forum is reborn from its ashes. But in a less festive atmosphere. A little fewer people, 2,200 people, against more than 3,000 before, a little less celebrities too.
We will still come across the owner of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and about fifty of finance or environmental ministers. The star of this Monday, May 23, was undoubtedly to be Volodymyr Zelensky, who was to be speaking to the speakers from his kyiv bunker. The secretary general of the organization of the North Atlantic Treaty, Jens Stoltenberg, will be in the assistance in Davos, but not his Russian counterpart.
Note, on the diplomatic level, that the special envoy for the climate of the People’s Republic of China, Xie Zhenhua, has braved the health containment that affects his country to come. He will meet his American equivalent, John Kerry, also of the trip. What give a little of its diplomatic prestige to this Swiss summit, formerly so decisive in the evangelization of world free trade.
less present, the French play low profile
Today, it would rather be a “postnéoliberal” planet that should be imagined. The world of tomorrow will be less open, more fragmented and more fragile too. From now on, it is no longer the economy that dictates its tempo to politicians, but vice versa. We will therefore talk about a lot of geopolitics there, since it is now she who gives the course: a rarer and more expensive energy, hostage of the belligerents, a cozy demondialization, which requires reinventing supply chains at the service of a more trade careful. And, overhanging all this, climate change, the first victims of which are the emerging countries, many to have come to testify.
Less present, the French play a low profile. Legislative obliges, no policy has made the trip. If the bosses of Saint-Gobain, L’Oréal, Sanofi or Axa will be there, many of them are new arrivals, who seek both to make themselves known and to rub against this great exercise of economic diplomacy global. With a question that hovers like the storm clouds above the Graubünden valley: Davos, which was the symbol and the prophet of the great opening of world trade, will he be the theorist of his withdrawal and return Political passions?