ISET Policy Institute’s executive director, Lasha Labadze, attended the Vision Europe Summit (VES) "WINNERS AND LOSERS OF GLOBALISATION" which took place on 14 and 15 November 2017 in Turin. Launched in January 2015, Vision Europe is a joint project of leading European foundations and think tanks, who work together to investigate and debate matters, with the aim of informing and influencing policymakers and public opinion on some of the most pressing public policy challenges Europe faces today. For the first time, this year the summit invited think tanks from EaP countries, including the ISET Policy Institute from Georgia.

The summit concluded by compiling a declaration – a set of recommendations based on sound scientific analysis. The summit offers stakeholders from politics, business, civil society, and academia the opportunity to discuss recommendations of this kind. In addition, this time the conference declaration, which listed principles and proposals to make open societies and open economies sustainable, was finalized after presentations and discussions of the conference publication, which deals with the all-encompassing question of winners and losers of globalization.

The goal was to go beyond taking stock of the impact of globalization on economic, political, and social systems around the world, and to make policy recommendations based on detailed analysis. This publication engages with the problem of historical proportions that has structurally affected the shape of the world as it was once known, from the global economy to the social fabric of all countries involved, from the legitimacy and power of liberal democracies to the international institutions governing issues transcending national borders. It, therefore, identifies a number of main features that characterize globalization and analyses them in separate policy papers concerning international trade; the challenges national labor and welfare policies face when confronted with globalization, and finally the growing difficulty faced by political institutions and governments in managing the consequences of globalization.

Read more here.

The topic for VES 207, “Winners and Losers of Globalization”, included presentation and panel discussions the famous scholars, namely Michael Spence, a Professor of Economics at New York University; Karl Brauner, a Nobel Prize winner in Economic Science in 2001; the Deputy Director-General at the WTO, Martin Daunton; Aart De Geus, Emeritus Professor at the University of Cambridge; Joost Korte, Chairman and CEO of Bertelsmann Stiftung; Peter Scherrer, Deputy Director-General at the European Commission DG Trade; and Bernadette Ségol, Deputy General Secretary at the European Trade Union Confederation, and former Secretary-General of the European Trade Union Confederation.