What future awaits the European Union? What should be its neighborhood and transatlantic relations policies, and what leadership do the developed European countries need? Progressive youth of the European continent was looking for answers to these and other questions at the 6th Economic Forum of Young Leaders in Nowy Sacz, a small Polish town of the Lesser Poland voivodeship, during the first week of September.
Since 2005 (the year when the forum was held for the first time), more than 300 young leaders from political, economic, social and non-governmental organizations from the European Union (EU), Eastern Europe and the Caucasus come to Nowy Sacz each year in early September. So, according to organizers, more than 1,500 young leaders had already taken part in the forum’s discussions in six years. The event’s founders consider that the forum became a progressive platform for discussing important global issues facing the new generation of politicians, economists and leaders of international NGOs during that time.
The Nowy Sacz gathering has a new issue to discuss each year. Thus, in the last five years the young generation had already discussed the European continent’s position as a platform for innovations or zone of regress, this being the 2010 theme, and the role of the new generation in social and economic transformation of the EU that was the main issue at the 2007 meeting. This year’s meeting centered on the future of the European Union in the context of the crises the bloc had experienced and had been forecast to experience in the future. As the organizers explained, for all its complexity and philosophical (as opposed to economic) tendencies, the choice of theme for this year’s forum was quite reasonable. After all, young leaders are watching what is happening in Europe and worldwide. “It is hard to imagine better central message for our meeting today than that. This is a theme that young people care for, as they suffer from adverse economic conditions and feel the responsibility for creating more stable and prosperous economy in the future,” says the forum’s program director Michal Wojcik. “I think the present situation in Europe and the European Union and the challenges that they face are quite important. I would say they are crucial in determining the direction of our development over the next 20 years. This theme is also interesting for young people who want to know what to expect in the near future. They will have the opportunity to learn about it in conversations with their older counterparts, that is, the current world leaders, not the young ones.”
To ensure the discussion’s practical and constructive nature as well as its efficiency, the organizers invite eminent and respected experts to its panel discussions each year. Thus, the forum had already seen as its participants Esko Aho (executive vice president of Nokia), Mark Allen of the International Monetary Fund, Jose Maria Aznar (former Spanish prime minister), Giorgi Baramidze (deputy prime minister and minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration of Georgia), Erhard Busek (coordinator of the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe), Vitalino Canas (chairman of the European affairs committee at the Portuguese parliament), Vaira Vike-Freiberga (former president of Latvia), Luc Frieden (Luxembourg’s minister of finance), Dalia Grybauskaite (president of Lithuania), Grigory Yavlinsky (Russian politician), Milan Kucan (former president of Slovenia), Aleksander Kwasniewski (president of the Republic of Poland from 1995-2005), Janusz Lewandowski (the EU commissioner for budgetary and financial programs), Sergey Markov (political scientist, Russia), Alaksandar Milinkievic (leader of the movement “For Freedom” in Belarus), Waldemar Pawlak (Minister of Economy of Poland), Richard Pipes (Soviet Union scholar), Jorge Sampaio (former president of Portugal), Maros Sevcovic (vice president of the European Commission), professor Reinhard Selten (Nobel prise winner in Economics), Radoslaw Sikorski (Polish minister of foreign affairs), Robert Sutor (vice president of IBM Co.), Leopold Unter (commentator of Le Soir), Ludwik Wisniewski and many others.
President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili was the special guest of this year’s forum. He told the participants about crucial factors of Georgia’s transformation that sent the country on a trajectory of success. “Today the civil society of Georgia is mostly free from dogmatic politicking of the old party nomenclature. Our country’s government consists of young people who are full of fresh ideas and have heightened sense of well-being which could only be cultivated in an open society,” Saakashvili declared. “It was precisely this circumstance that allowed us to make the decisive break from the Soviet era government and turn Georgia into a free and open economy.” Answering questions from the audience, Saakashvili suggested that Georgia’s success might be partly linked to its willingness to take intelligent risks.
It is also worth noting that the Economic Forum of Young Leaders is a partner organization of the Economic Forum in Krynica, which occurs at the same time with the event in Nowy Sacz. That is why young people have the opportunity to meet with many prominent politicians, economists, businessmen and heads of states, governments and corporations who come to Nowy Sacz from Krynica each year. In addition, participants of the meeting of young leaders go to panel discussions of the “adult forum” themselves each year.
However, as the marshal of the Lesser Poland voivodeship Marek Sowa noted in his opening speech, debates that take place in Nowy Sacz are more important for the future generations than those in Krynica. “The forum is an opportunity for you to meet, make friends and talk about the future of Europe,” he said. Sowa added that the forum in Nowy Sacz has great potential for development. “Today’s university graduates are the new faces of the world that are very different from what university graduates were even just five years ago. At that time, young people asked themselves: ‘What job I ought to get from you?’ and expected to get it. Today’s graduates will be different from their predecessors, asking themselves ‘What job can I create?’ instead of ‘What job should I take?’” Sowa emphasized.
In the future, the organizers of the forum in Nowy Sacz plan to raise the event to the level of the Davos debate. However, one condition stands – the discussion should remain focused on the young generation of leaders. Who knows, maybe Nowy Sacz will become a sort of a “Young Davos,” indeed, in a few years, and will dictate the mood and trends of economic development of Europe or even the entire world.
