On February 4th, ISET hosted politician and development expert Ad Melkert, who gave a presentation titled "Global Economic Governance: Past or Future?". At the beginning of the presentation, he talked about the post-WWI and WWII periods and the establishment of international organizations like the ILO, UN, IMF, WB, ECB, OECD, etc. He called these periods the “Promising Past”. He pointed out the aforementioned organizations’ global achievements in the areas of poverty reduction, connectivity, health, food security, climate, etc.

Afterward, he talked about Economic Convergence supported by different events (meetings, conferences, etc.) all over the world in order to exchange information, share standards, experience the market economy, and so on.

However, he mentioned that there is still a lot of divergence in the interests of different countries, particularly emphasizing rich countries which in most cases dominate processes in the global economy.

According to the expert, 2008 was an important year in terms of the financial meltdown and economic contagions as well as geopolitical instability. After 2008 it became clear that existing international organizations and systems do not have enough power and coordination to address global economic crises. This period made it clear that there were no global institutional buffers that we're able to create solutions for economic problems.

He concluded his presentation with Georgia’s profile/prospect by focusing on the importance of democracy and briefly touching on opportunities created by the Association Agreement signed between Georgia and the EU.