Author: Matej Gregorec

The Bled Strategic Forum, the pre-eminent foreign policy event in Slovenia, ended on Tuesday after two days of reflections that focused on the technology-driven societal and economic change summed up by the forum’s title New Reality.

Calls for common solutions to challenges posed by the changing world dominated the agenda of the first day, with senior Slovenian officials opening the forum by singling out challenges such as climate change and existing and emerging security threats.

Foreign Minister Karl Erjavec stressed that “we are facing new international actors” and “still struggle to address climate change and its negative global impact”. Prime Minister Miro Cerar noted that new challenges, which had “become the key driver of progress in society”, demanded new approaches.

The leader’s panel, the central event of the first day of proceedings, took a broad look at the technology-driven change shaping present-day society. While the participants found some cause for concern, they also exuded optimism.

The debate, featuring EU Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans, OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria, former Slovenian President Danilo Türk and Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabić, dedicated a lot of time to debating youths, specifically how they can be activated and engaged in policy-making, and how to create jobs.

Several policy proposals were put forward, but the overarching suggestion was that youths should get active and participate in the democratic process to achieve change; being active on social media is not enough.

With the forum coming just a day after North Korea conducted its latest nuclear test, some of the debates also touched on the escalation of tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

Federica Mogherini, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, said a cooperative rather than confrontational approach to existing challenges, including in North Korea and the Western Balkans, was needed.

Miroslav Lajčak, the president-elect for the 72nd session of the UN General Assembly, touched on North Korea indirectly by saying that such issues needed to be addressed by the UN General Assembly as the most representative UN body.

The second day featured over a dozen panels dedicated to issues such as the EU’s future, the progress of the Western Balkans towards the EU, global nuclear governance, human rights in time of change and Twitter diplomacy.

The panel on the EU in the changed world argued that the EU is facing numerous challenges, including a crisis of trust and identity. The key to its future lies in convergence, integration, cooperation and attention to people’s needs.

The debate on global nuclear governance saw South Korean Foreign Ministry official Enna Park saying that condemning the nuclear tests conducted by North Korea was not enough. She called for concrete action by the international community.

At the panel on Western Balkans, a mainstay of the forum, foreign ministers from the region were in broad agreement that the EU accession process has a transformative effect on the countries. But they also warned that the accession was taking too long and ought to be more predictable.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al Hussein presented his office’s activity and human rights developments in the world at a special panel. He highlighted an erosion of commitments built on the experience of enormous human suffering in the first half of the 20th century and was very critical of the US president.

In line with this year’s motto, the business segment of the BSF focused on various aspects of innovation and how it affects and changes society. It touched on connectivity and leading the change, as well as the relation between government and business in the globalised and digitalised world.

A special panel was dedicated to tourism, in particular the collaborative economy.

The debate revolved around whether and how to regulate the new providers without suffocating the growth, how cities should deal with growing number of tourists, and what the new providers, especially big platforms such as AirBnB, should do to allow policy makers to enforce efficient and just regulation.

Youth BSF, the segment featuring young leaders, featured debates under the banned (Dis)connected Reality, which were condensed in a nine-point manifesto dealing with electronics, the environment and the economy.

While the BSF followed the established formula, there was one novelty this year as Slovak Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajčak received a special accolade in being named a BSF distinguished partner for his enduring support of the purposes and principles of the forum.

The closing address of the 2017 Bled Strategic Forum was delivered by Mr Andrej Logar, State Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia.

He noted that this year’s forum had been attended by more than 1,000 people from 70 countries and various international organisations, which was a new record for the forum. »I would like to thank each and everyone for making this possible,« he said.

According to H.E. Mr Karl Erjavec, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia, the Bled forum is thus reaching its goal of becoming a regional Davos.

“Change has not only affected the context in which policy makers operate, it has shaped the way decisions are made as well as the way they are perceived. We cannot successfully address the key challenges of today while ignoring this reality, nor can we ignore the foundations upon which modern society is based on,” Mr Logar said, pointing to human rights, the rule of law, good governance and democracy.

“From nuclear security and transboundary water management whether in the European Union, the Mediterranean, or in the Western Balkans, we need to adapt to present context and develop strategic mission for the future,” he said.

»I’m confident that our discussions here in Bled today and yesterday played a part in this mission.«

Mr Logar thanked the panellists, moderators, high-profile guests, other participants, the organisers and sponsors, and expressed hope to see everyone again next September at the 2018 Bled Strategic Forum.

Source: Slovenian Press Agency

A high-profile panel debate on the Western Balkans wrapped up the two-day Bled Strategic Forum (BSF), with the participants agreeing that the EU accession prospect has a transformative effect on the countries in the region, but also that the accession is a two-way process that requires effort from both sides.

Entitled Western Balkans: EU Enlargement – Is Pretending the Name of the Game?, the panel featured ministers or deputy ministers of foreign affairs of seven Western Balkan countries as well as representatives of the European Commission, the European External Action Service, the EBRD and the US State Department.

H.E. Mr Ditmir Bushati, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Albania, said that he believed that the EU had a transformative effect in the region, as the “atmosphere is more peaceful than ten years ago”.

“It goes without saying that all countries have made effort towards the accession process”, he said, but admitted that the process was not the “most popular game in the town” any more, and that “you do not win or lose elections on the European ticket”.

H.E. Mr Igor Crnadak, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina, said that his country needed very precise and concrete messages from European partners. “We need more predictability in the process, but we also must not be avoiding our duties and obligations”.

Crnadak warned that a high level of support of EU accession process in the country should not be taken for granted. “If people start to perceive this process as something eternal, they will start looking for alternatives, and this is something we want to avoid.”

H.E. Mr Ivica Dačić, First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Serbia, is pessimistic about Serbia’s prospects to join the EU, as “we are being so late that we are getting an impression we will never enter the European Union”.

Mr Dačić has the feeling that the European Union as an organisation “does not have a fair attitude towards Western Balkan countries”. “Either we will join the EU or the EU will join us. I hope that we will enter before the EU falls apart.”

H.E. Prof. Dr Srdjan Darmanović, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Montenegro, said that his country believes in the EU and that it was working hard to become a member. Montenegro has hope in the EU unity and the European idea, according to him.

“Our region has always needed an additional source of stability, the EU is that source”, he said, adding that the strong presence of the United States and regional cooperation was also needed.

H.E. Mr Nikola Dimitrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Macedonia, spoke about Macedonia as an example of “how not to do enlargement”, as the transformative effect had turned the country upside down.

“Macedonia is an example of what happens when there is no perspective and when progress reports are softened up, when a country stops taking reforms seriously,” he said, adding that the country was nevertheless showing political will to make changes.

Mr Valon Murtezaj, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Kosovo, agreed that the EU enlargement process is transformative. “The process is quite long, and it is sometimes very complex, but it is very doable, and it is a motivation for all our governments”.

What Kosovo needs to do internally is to identify the problems and tackle them individually, speed up development and reforms and establish regional cooperation. “We are slow but on the right path”.

Looking from the perspective of a Western Balkan country that has already joined the EU, H.E. Ms Marija Pejčinović Burić, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign and European Affairs of the Republic of Croatia, said that the process should be transformative, otherwise something was wrong.

Pejčinović Burić added that the EU should establish a system of monitoring and benchmarking for future rounds of enlargement, noting that some rounds of enlargement in the past did not need to be transformative because the countries in question had already been full democracies and market economies.

Mr Hoyt Brian Yee, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs at the US State Department, said that it would be an exaggeration to say that the process had been transformative for the Western Balkans.

According to him, the joke that the EU pretends to offer membership and Western Balkan countries pretend to make reforms still holds true. The region “only accepts change when faced with necessity and only recognise necessity when amidst of a crisis”.

Mr Thomas Mayr-Harting, Managing Director for Europe and Central Asia at the European External Action Service, said that the EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini had been very clear that the future of the region lied in the EU.

“We reiterated months ago that the process has been transformative”, he said, adding that there had been a number of “remarkable successes” in the region recently, including a “new beginning in Skopje” and the justice reform in Albania.

Mr Walter Deffaa, European Commissioner Cretu’s special adviser, said that “one should not underestimate the transformative power of cooperation between the Western Balkans and EU that is happening at the moment. This are kind of mini laps of an integration. And then there are much higher profile, politically, the macroregional strategies. We have four strategies there, and two important macroregional strategies that are of importance for the Western Balkans counties, the Danube and Adriatic-Ionian strategy. And here again, having it for the first time in this kind of set up, that for high profile initiatives, endorsed by the European Council, the Western Balkan participating countries – they are there on an equal footing. They are shaping and deciding on development issues for the Danube and for the Adriatic Ionian region. Serbia, for instance, is very active now, when it comes to the Danube. These are concrete examples of what can happen in very concrete terms in the area of regional cooperation.”

Mr Pierre Heilbronn, Vice President, Policy and Partnerships at the EBRD, noted that all stakeholders needed to be included in the process, pointing to the role of civil society and entrepreneurs as something that has the capacity to transform the society.

Source: Slovenian Press Agency

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein presented at the Bled Strategic Forum on Tuesday the office’s work and human rights developments in the world, noting an erosion of commitments built on the experience of enormous human suffering in the first half of the 20th century. He was very critical of the US president.

“That energy has been dissipating for 70 years now… We find a sort of half-hearted commitment to these treaties by those countries who should know better… Once you start justifying to yourself why it’s ok to torture, to undertake surveillance without court orders.. This is a fast downhill spiral into the abyss,” he said, speaking of a moment of great struggle.

He went on to present his office’s operations, pointing out it was present practically in every conflict in the world. He feels it is telling the office only occupies 3% of the UN’s budget, which makes him doubt whether a real commitment to human rights exists. “The Swiss spend ten times as much on chocolate every year.”

Asked by moderator Dan Damon of the BBC World Service to speak about US President Donald Trump, whom Al Hussein had described as somebody “recklessly driving the bus of humanity down a mountain road”, the UN official spoke of an unsettling capriciousness.

Invoking Trump equivocation of the sides in Charlottesville, he said the office of the US president was too important, too powerful and required a dignity that encouraged respect. Once you lose that respect, you can no longer use this power in fast moving situations.

He feels it is important to talk about Trump, because a stage has been reached where a single wrong tweet by Trump could send the US decades back in terms of racial conflicts, while there is also the issue of other countries mimicking the US. “We saw it with Cambodia”, where the press was attacked with Trump’s words.

Mr Al Hussein also indicated that Trump and the President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte hade contributed to the disappearing of a sense of shame in the international community that has been at least a minimal motive for fixing human rights issues.

Mr Al Hussein also touched on the situation in Myanmar, saying the reports coming from there about the persecution of Rohingya Muslims were comparable to atrocities being committed by ISIS. He feels Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi should resign if she cannot exercise any effective power.

Meanwhile, as to potential ways to strengthen the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, he spoke of efforts to diversify the basic financial support and to decentralise, increase the organisation’s presence on the ground.

However, he stressed that “the UN cannot carry the entire load” of human rights violations in the world, with many countries choosing to look away.

“It is true that we have trade relationships, but in the end if we don’t have a stable world, if everything is falling apart?…The world is perfectly breakable, we have broken it in the past,” Mr Al Hussein warned.

Source: Slovenian Press Agency

Mr Miha Pogacnik, a violinist, visionary and cultural ambassador of the Republic of Slovenia, presented at Business BSF his resonance platform, a method he uses to empower business and political leaders to experience classical music as a specific European strategy for vision, the mobilisation of human potential and action.

The concert violinist works with companies to, as he described it, bring resonance into organisations, a process which he presented in condensed form at the special panel entitled Musical Leadership Strategy – For a European Identity in a Multipolar World.

He said he realised the importance of resonance four years ago, when he played his violin at the Great Pyramids in Egypt, which he described as having “enormous resonance”.

The overarching aim of his action is to highlight the role and importance of culture, which Mr Pogacnik said was the most powerful inner substance, despite many people thinking that culture is not important.

Unlike such people, he puts culture at the top of the pyramid of human needs. Indeed, he said artists turned the pyramid upside down, making genius a basic need of theirs.

Mr Pogacnik argued in favour of passion in management as a means of creative stimulus, using the pattern of classical music composition as a blueprint for how managers should go about thinking about ideas.

By doing that, managers can filter out good ideas and focus on them instead of working on too many ideas at the same time and then ending up empty-handed. Mr Pogačnik sees this as a way of breaking the corporate cycle of pressure and panic.

In music, we are actively learning emotional intelligence. We realise that most of the problems cannot be solved in the head alone, Mr Pogačnik said, calling it “heartstorming”: changing the corporate culture requires changes in the heart.

Mr Pogacnik uses the same approach in working with the European Commission on what he described as “polyphonic European identity”, its aim being to find in each country the essence of culture that can play together with other country essences.

He said that geniuses such as the painter Cezanne in France, and the Romantic poets Goethe in Germany and Prešeren in Slovenia had succeeded in extracting such universal essences in their cultures. Art needs to be repositioned to regain a central role in society, he stressed.

Source: Slovenian Press Agency