 Dear participants, it's my great honor to welcome Mr. President Macron. Generally, we meet in Davos. Nevertheless, I'm very pleased that we are able to have this digital dialogue instead. I know, Mr. President, that in my opinion and in the opinion of many, you are one of those who has a long-term vision. And so, I would like to talk about questions relating to how we should be building the post-COVID world. Let me start with the first question. In your opinion, what would be your vision to rebuild a greener economy, a more resilient economy, more sustainable? So, what is your vision for the long term? Do we need a new vision? Hello, Professor Schwab. I'm very pleased to see you also through this Vizio conference. And thank you very much for organizing these virtual discussions that are so important in this period. I wanted to talk about today's world and its link to tomorrow as well, because in all of our countries, societies are transforming through the experience that we are going through. And I think we have to remember a few things from what we have been experiencing over the last year, and that is going to last many months yet, and probably many years yet, according to what some are saying. The first thing to say is that you cannot think economy without thinking about human beings. It might seem rather banal to say that, but in all of our countries, we've done something that was unthinkable before. We stopped all economic activities to save lives. That was the first lesson. And we remembered that the economy that you was talking about was a moral science, and therefore the lives of people was more important than figures and money. And also this period reminds us of our vulnerability. Personally speaking, I mean, I experienced this, I caught the virus. But also, as organization, companies, countries and vulnerability means that you cannot think your organization and your countries without taking this into account. Some were more aware of this than others, but it seemed a distant idea when we thought about ecology and climate, but it's the same notion really, what is happening around us has an impact on our daily lives, and it can change things deeply. Having said that, it means that we cannot build anything, I believe, in the post-COVID world without reaping the benefits and learning the lessons from what we have experienced. Our societies are vulnerable because nature is reminding us of this. We are vulnerable to pandemic, climatic events and so on. And so the economy of tomorrow, strengthened by these lessons, we talk a lot about new strains and variants, but there are some things that are not varying. The economy of tomorrow is going to have to be an economy that thinks about innovation and humanity, and it's going to have to build competitiveness together with the climate challenge, reducing CO2 emissions, adapting our societies, the biodiversity agenda. So it's an economy that will have to be more resilient, that will be better organized, and will have to be including these elements of resistance in the supply chains, and we can come back to this later. And also it will have to be an economy that takes into account this principle of humanity, whether it's on a social or health point of view. We talked about this last year, and I believe that we will not get out of this pandemic if, or rather we will get out of this pandemic only with an economy that is, that thinks more about fighting inequalities. This is basically what I could say briefly. I believe, Mr. President, that you said last year at the ILO meeting that capitalism had become mad. And in the context you describe of a moral economy, what is the role of company philosophy? I published a book today called Stakeholder Capitalism. What is your philosophy on this? What is your stake on this? I understand that your expression stakeholder capitalism. But if you look at the last decades, we had, capitalism and market economies have proven their successes. We cannot be too quick to throw the first stone here. I mean, we know that it's saved many millions of people, and it took many millions of people out of poverty. So it enabled citizens and consumers to have access to goods and services as it happened very few times in the past. Nevertheless, this all took place with the creation of inequalities in the different societies. So it meant that some people were taken out of poverty and it took people into the production cycle. But it took out some others from the production cycle. And many fellow citizens had to face different crises of relocation especially. And so there were social and economic shocks for hundreds and thousands of people throughout the world who had this feeling of losing their usefulness, who lost their jobs, and it was a deep moral and economic crisis. And this was externalized by capitalism of the last decades. The second topic is the disconnection between value connection and profits. There was a financialization of capitalism. It means that it went faster. It can be a good thing. But if you have the relevant allocation of savings to where funds are needed, but it's a bad thing when it over allocates funds when there's little risk and it basically leads to profits that are not linked to innovation or work even. And this is what happened. There was this kind of spiral that created more inequalities. And we saw bigger inequalities in this particular sector. And with the acceleration of social networks, it also globalized the imagination with people comparing each other on scales that were not known before. And so we created, we said basically there are two kings in this system, there's shareholders and consumers, and the system provided for both, but it adjusted on laborers and the rest of the planet. And we basically created negative externalities with the climate. And so these four phenomena fed the crisis of social inequalities, the crisis of democracies, and the sustainability of the democratic system and the climate crisis. And so the capitalist model together with this open economy can no longer work in this environment. Why? Well, because historically it was the fruit of a compromise, which was democratic societies, individual freedom, a progression for the middle class, which led to this progress of societies. And this consensus, this balance was broken by these four accelerations. And so I really believe in your point, which is a stakeholder capitalism, meaning that we need to put back at the heart of the model the response to these four questions. Over the last few years, we've tried to do so, states have tried to do so, but states alone cannot do that. If we try to do that, we'll have a problem because the state will be the only one who tries to correct external negativities. So it incurs a lot of debts to pay on its own for the remedy to climate change, remedy to inequities, inequalities. And so you have a model where you have an overwhelming public debt and taxpayers have to pay for that. And as we know, taxpayers are the sedentary actors, if you will, they cannot enjoy all the benefits of globalization. This is why I'm convinced that we will believe the future of humanity by keeping certain fundamental things private property, cooperation, individual and collective freedoms, which are the bedrock of our societies. So all of this must lead us to rethink our organizations to bring back to the heart of companies and undertakings the, you know, social, the fight against social inequalities, the inequality, the regional disparities, the climate consequences of our actions. So what we've called over the last few years, the economic, social and environmental responsibility as CSR, basically corporate social responsibility, these are innovations that we will need, we need to take one step further, we need to reform our companies from within so that all of the stakeholders, as in stakeholder capitalism, employees, employers, shareholders, they all need to, we all need to take into account the impact of the actions in terms of, you know, democratic impact, environmental impact and social impact. You've mentioned, Mr. President, that several things on today. I'm pleased to announce that we have announced the commitment on the part of private companies to report on a regular basis against specific and accurate criteria regarding their corporate social responsibility and environmental responsibility along the so-called ESG criteria. Regarding the environment, I'm given to understand that the new American administration, US administration has joined, again, the Paris Agreement. And a lot of progress has certainly been made, but I would like to ask you, are you satisfied with the progress made so far, or do you call for a new consensus that would go beyond what's been discussed and approved in the past? Well, I have several comments on this. First of all, we agreed on a climate agenda, the Paris Agenda. And at this point, we have not lived up to our commitments, all of us. So our top priority is to do our utmost to stay true to our commitments. And I'm saying all together because there cannot be any freeloaders. We need to move together so as not to create productivity biases. This is why, in the last few years, when the US decided to leave the Paris Agreement in the summer of 2017, there was a major risk. But I see that over the last few years since, the House of Card did not crumble at all. So we created the One Planet Summit and we held steady Europeans, a lot of emerging countries, China also, let us not forget, they cooperated very much so. And also with many federated states from the US, and now the Biden's administration's first move was to join the Paris Agreement again. So I call upon everyone, as we did in Europe, to revise upwards our objectives in terms of future emissions, minus 55%. Second of all, we committed to carbon neutrality by 2050. These are the two decisive milestones in the near future to shape our behavior. Now, we needed to apply this at the local, the regional level. We need to have a carbon pricing that is high enough. We need to have mechanisms that encourages and invites companies to go down that road. We need to have sanctioned mechanisms so that companies, households can go faster, stronger. We need to renovate our buildings, our cars, et cetera, et cetera. So this is the first pillar and it is essential. The second pillar is about bringing with us the finance industry and private companies, the private sector. And this circles back to what we're saying. I really believe in the initiative that we've set up with the One Planet Summit with sovereign wealth funds, asset managers and private equity players. So on December 12th of last year, we had a virtual meeting with all these partners and we've managed to bring under one same heading, if you will, one same project, the Climate Financial Disclosure Task Force, the so-called CFD task force. This is a really, this is a great step forward. And so we have a great methodology now. Investors have committed themselves to a measurement methodology, which is really what you were talking about, and which we are now applying at company level. And on December 12th last, we managed to have the companies of the CAC40 in France adopt this new methodology. So they will have to prove to the markets, to the capital markets, that they comply with these criteria. Third pillar, we need to do the same with biodiversity. I am convinced that we will only be able to state through our climate commitments if we can bring on board our, embark our companies, our people, our countries on a biodiversity agenda. This is what we meant to do with One Health, the One Health initiative. Because this brings together the fight against desertification, against climate change for biodiversity. And what we are currently, this is about the beginning, but what we are doing for climate, we need to do for biodiversity. This will entail changes in, in agriculture production in the very way that we consume and live. And so this year, we have to come up with common rules. So when you ask what more do we need to negotiate? So I believe that in the Cumen, during the Cumen summit, we need to be able to negotiate the equivalent of the Paris agreement, but for biodiversity. A few days ago in Paris, we had a virtual one planet summit for biodiversity. We took several major initiatives. The Great Green Wall was one of them. It straddles 11 countries of the Sahel and the Horn of Africa in order to fight desertification. Many initiatives also for biodiversity and we launched a new initiative for financial disclosure. And this is key. So these are the three pillars that I would like to put forward. Mr. President, if we take all these changes, does it mean that we will need to bring about a new era or a new mode of globalization, a new normal for globalization? Yes, it does. Everything that we're talking about is pointing into the same direction and to three elements in particular. First of all, we needed to build a new consensus. On November the 11th last, during the Paris peace summit, we tried to bring together heads of states, NGOs, intellectuals to try and NGOs to try and think about what we imodestly called the Paris consensus. It's the consensus of everywhere. It's not a matter, but the idea was to observe basically that we needed to move beyond the Washington consensus. We needed to move beyond deregulation and the end of state intervention. This is the discussion that we've been having since the beginning. We need to build a new consensus that integrates all this. Second of all, we need to find a new mode of cooperation between states basically to go back to an efficient brand of multilateral laterals. And this is what I've believed in for years. It was stymied by the previous US administration, which did not believe in it. I have a lot of hopes for this new year with our American partner, which I hope is about to re-engage with us. We need to build an efficient brand of multilateral lateralism for this new consensus. And thirdly, we need to build these new coalitions. Those that we tried to build in one planet summit, which was to meet those challenges, the new normal that you mentioned is, and here the interpreter has no signed apologies. We seem to have lost President Macron. So between states, NGOs and investors, we have recovered the signed, it seems. Mr. President, in all what you mentioned, there is also the fourth industrial revolution. How much will the digital system bring a new future? How would it make this vision of the future more possible? And it seems that we have lost President Macron. I'm sorry, I seem to have lost you for a minute. President. Then I can ask you, I know how interested you are in new technologies. And I was just asking you a question on the fourth industrial revolution. But in all its different concepts, you know, the digital is playing a major role. How do you see the impact of the digital ecosystem on everything that you mentioned before? I think there are several, actually. The first one is that we are seeing many revolutions at the moment when it comes to the digital. But there are several revolutions rolled into one. We are at the start of a technological revolution. We have the AI, artificial intelligence revolution as well, that is going to change productivity and is going to change the paradigm from industry to healthcare to space. And next to AI revolution, you'll have a quantum revolution as well. And through the computation powers, it's going to deeply change our industry by changing the industry of sensors, what you can do in the aeronautic industry, in the civilian industries and so on. And that means also our capacity to solve problems. The current pandemic, for instance, quantum intelligence will completely change the way we tack on pandemics in the future. So problems that would take weeks to solve will be solved in one day. Diagnosis will be able to be made in just a few moments thanks to AI and quantum intelligence. So we have a convergence between those different innovations. The digital on the one hand, which is what we call social networks and hyper connectivity and quantum technologies and AI. And the combination of all this means that we are going to have an acceleration of innovation, of deep breakthroughs in terms of innovation. And we'll see a capacity to commoditize some industries and to create value very quickly. So from what I've just said, what impact will it have? Firstly, we're going to continue to innovate and to accelerate. That's for sure. Secondly, they will be impact in terms of social adjustments and we have to think about them from now. So social inequalities will be even truer in tomorrow's world because we will see these impacts, we will have these adjustments that will be real and we have to consider them from today. Thirdly, it will have democratic impacts. So I believe that these will accelerate our problems on a social and democratic point of view. What we've seen in the US showed this on the democratic side in the last few weeks. And fourthly, on the resilience of our systems and the response to the climate crisis. I believe that we underestimated the advances in terms of innovation and I think these technologies will mean that we will be able to respond to the climate crisis a lot faster. So if we step back a little, I believe that our economies are going to have to invest in these innovations faster and we have to go for it. And if we work well and we cooperate, then these innovations will mean that we can create value and we can meet the economic challenges. And I really believe that it will mean that we can answer faster the climate challenge. And this is why I believe in the economy of the better and it's better to improve rather than to stop activities. But it will lead to some questions in terms of the democracies, the inequalities, social inequalities in our in our countries. Mr. President, this was a very comprehensive vision of our future. But the future is going to happen no matter what and we have to build it. And I'm very pleased that through your explanations, we see that some people and some leaders have a very clear vision of how to act and how to think about this future. And what this future should do, what it should look like and how it should be built for the good of humanity. So thank you very much, President. I'm very sorry that technology failed us somewhat between Paris and Geneva. But nevertheless, I believe that this was a great event and we were able to look into the future somewhat. Thank you very much, President. Thank you, Professor. Thank you very much, everyone. It's true that sometimes we are back to the grinding stones, the grinding stone, but I think it was very nice to be able to look forward a little bit and I fully share your last words. Let's not forget that the target is always to build the good life with all its advantages and with the will of respecting the other. And we have to serve this target. So thank you very much. I wish you a very good year 2021 and I hope to see you in person very soon. Thank you very much.