Past events

In its agreement with film and television companies, the Writers Guild of America included not only pay increases, but also protections around artificial intelligence. Screenwriters are not the only ones fretting about their jobs as AI takes the world by storm: the stormy sounds are keeping many other types of workers, and policymakers foremost, awake at night. And AI is just one of the disruptive technologies being deployed.

Despite ambitious pledges made in Paris in 2015, with the EU at the forefront, the world is not on track to stop climate change within safe limits. What can Europe do to make the green transition happen? Shared Perspectives 2023 brings together policy-oriented economists and policymakers to seek politically feasible, economically sensible, environmentally effective answers.

Climate crisis, Covid-19 pandemic, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: recent crises are creating new geoeconomic challenges. What do these mean for future relations between Europe and Africa? What new opportunities will arise?

Bill Gates, Co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Jutta Urpilainen, European Commissioner for International Partnerships, and Clemens Fuest, President of the ifo Institute, were debating in a panel discussion on the subject “A Geoeconomic Watershed Moment – What is Needed for New Partnerships between Europe and Africa?” and discuss these questions and others.

The convergence of big data, artificial intelligence and extreme automation has proved highly disruptive to labor markets not just in Europe, but around the world. Add to this shifting trade patterns, with globalization giving way to regionalization and supply chains in turmoil, while entire industries are being upended through the efforts to decarbonize economies and adapt to climate change, and the need to hone new skills becomes clearly unavoidable. But which skills exactly will be required? What will future labor markets even look like? And what kind of reforms to education and training systems can ease the creation and adoption of such skills?

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The European Union’s recovery plan has been adopted in response to the coronavirus crisis. It is a game changer in terms of European economic policy integration: NextGenerationEU is larger than any other stimulus package passed by the EU in previous crises. Together with the EU’s long-term budget a total of EUR 1.8 trillion will be spent to boost and modernize Europe’s economy with major priorities set in the areas of digitalization and climate change. The recovery package will also be financed by commonly issued debt. Finding the right balance between expansionary fiscal policy and budgetary discipline will be a key challenge in the upcoming years.