 Hello everyone, welcome to Building on Europe's Edge in the Green Transition at the World's Economic Forum Davos Agenda 2021. My name is Sarah Kelly, and I'm really thrilled to be your moderator. Around the world, countries, regions, and industries are adapting their strategic priorities in order to lead in the green transition of the global economy. The European Green Deal aims to slash greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050 and has given the EU a policy lead. Meantime, China has announced that it will target net zero by 2060. The US is back in the Paris Climate Accord and has promised to inject $2 trillion into clean energy over the next four years. So how can the EU maintain the first mover advantage? To discuss, we have a very distinguished panel. Baldis Dombrovsky is Executive Vice President for an economy that works for people at the European Commission. Christian Zeving is CEO of Deutsche Bank and a member of the International Business Council. Odile Renault-Bassau is President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the EVRD. And Thomas Bubelle is CEO of AXA and a young global leader at the World's Economic Forum. Welcome to all of you. Thank you so much for joining us for this session. Just a couple of quick notes before we get started. Those who are joining via top link. Please do feel free to submit your questions for our panelists via the chat function. Also a bit of a structural note, this is a two part session. It begins with a live streamed panel, which will then be followed by a private interactive discussion limited to the official participants of the Davos agenda week. So without any further ado, I'd like to hand it to Thomas Bubelle to kick us off with some opening remarks to set the stage for us because this session is associated with the World's Economic Forum's CEO action group for the European Green Deal. Your co-chair of that group, which is all about private sector helping to achieve the goals of the Green Deal through collaboration. Tell us a little bit more about your efforts and where the initiative stands right now. Thank you Sally. It's a good evening to all of you. I'm very delighted also on behalf of my co-chair Fajke who should also be with us that we are all gathered here today for one of Europe's most pressing but also greatest opportunity. And I would also like to thank Commissioner Dombrovsky's because the European Commission has really from the first hour of this initiative supported and helped a lot. And certainly thank you very much as well to Diorano Vessel who is with us today and in particular the entire WEF team who has been working really hard on making this initiative very, very concrete with very concrete commitments. Climate change is certainly one of the major challenges that we are facing already but also going forward in Europe across the whole world through global warming. We've certainly seen it that weather has become less predictable, more violent, but also that populations have become far more vulnerable. Certainly the pandemic has shown us at the moment how difficult it is in terms of making sure that we remain coherent within our societies. The crisis and the development towards a more sustainable energy and climate arena is also a question where we can see it as a historic opportunity because building back better means certainly that we can reorient the massive investments that we need to do to a more sustainable economy. We can certainly innovate much more when it comes to cleaner technologies and we can also leverage the advantage and the power of the European Union. Sarah, you mentioned it, the fact that the US rejoined the Paris Agreement is particularly something that I appreciate a lot. When you look at Europe, we can see that Europe has done a lot so far that others are trying to catch up now and also the role of Europe to help when it comes to how do we define a global order of climate transition. One, you need global standards. The EU has gone very far, already has thought this through when it comes to the question around extra financial standards and it is important that Europe does promote its models but also its values. The second question is about data and matrix. How do you measure impact? How do you measure progress? And we've seen today a vast majority of KPIs and it's important that we come to one or several clear and understandable matrix points. And then there is certainly also a question of the, I would say, non-binary and dynamic taxonomy. We've understood very well what is bad and what is good but the space around transition. So how do we go for example from oil to gas? What is the classification of nuclear? Those are things that are very important to be defined now. In this CO Action Group, we have very much focused on the private sector commitments and this has always been viewed as a how can the private sector help together with the public authorities to make this a good deal and a collaborative deal. You've seen the Lighthouse projects that have been developed by the individual members of the Action Group and I'm very proud to see that there is a lot of commitment, that there is a lot of engagement and beyond the collective engagement, you also see that each company individually has shown some very strong commitments to be quicker and to be more concrete. When it comes to the financial service sector to which AXA certainly belongs to, there is a very strong community around these commitments to go to NetZero through the NetZero asset owner alliance that is already existing, through the NetZero asset management alliance that is now coming up to speed, but also through the NetZero underwriting alliance, when you look at it from an insurance perspective, that will be created soon and we are very proud of AXA to share that and to also make sure that we find the necessary progress on that side. The companies are engaged and you can clearly count on the European companies to fully support and engage themselves in this transition. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Chavez. We mentioned that you're the co-chair of the CEO Action Group. A little bit later we're going to be having your co-chair Fika Sibisma who is honorary chairman at Royal DSM joining us to summarize what we've been discussing this past half an hour and also to guide the next part of our conversation. So we look forward to hearing from you, Fika, in a little bit. But I'd like to just go now to the executive vice president, Vladis Dombrovsky, to react to what we have just heard from Thomas Buvelle, what the private sector is looking for and offering to the public sector. And executive vice president, you oversee of course finance and trade portfolios of the European Commission. We know that the recovery package has more than 30% of funds allocated for green investments. Perhaps you can just begin by giving us an overview of the priorities for 2021, the recovery package and the financing of the green transition. Yeah, good evening, everyone. First of all, thank you for an invitation to this discussion. So as regards priorities for 2021, I would say priorities are quite clear. We're still in the middle of the pandemics. So we need to deal with immediate health crisis to save the lives, to save the incomes of the people. So we need to deal with the health emergency and social economic consequences of this. And that's why we have put in place in the EU number of immediate crisis response measures, which are in the in the place and already, so to say, delivering. And we see some positive results. As regards the economy, for example, through the measures we put in place to protect employment, we see that there is actually substantial less increase in unemployment than we initially expected given the depths of economic crisis which we are facing. Looking forward, now we have created ambitious recovery package. So if you look at the next multi annual framework, so the next multi annual EU budget and EU economic recovery plan, next generation EU, it's a financial package of 1.82 trillion euros. So it's indeed very substantial package. And the idea is what we want to achieve with this. It's not only to get the economy going, but so to say, to build back better to use this financing to facilitate the green and digital transitions of the economy, and also to ensure that the economic recovery is inclusive and socially fair. You already mentioned our mainstream target. So across of this recovery funding, 30% are there dedicated to the climate change. We recently increased not also our medium term ambition. So you mentioned the 2050 target when we should go to the climate neutrality. But we also increased ambitions for 2030. So instead of 40% reduction of emissions, we are now going for 55% reduction of emissions. And this will require very substantial funding. So our estimates is that it will require somewhere like 350 billion euros per year additional funding over the next decade. So our economic recovery package, of course, will be important source of funding, as will be our invest EU program. And talking about our invest EU program where we, so to say, merge public and private finance, we are extending it now not only to the European Investment Bank, but also to other implementing partners, including, for example, European Bank of Reconstruction and Development. But it's clear that the scale of this investment will have to be provided by the private sector. That's where our Sustainable Finance Action Plan comes in. So later this year, we'll be coming with an updated action plan with a taxonomy on our classification system of green economic activities. And it was already mentioned that indeed, the taxonomy will need to be prepared in a way that we can also adjust it as our thinking evolves about green economic activities, and also as we transition towards carbon neutrality. But it will also include the amendments to Non Financial Reporting Directive to make sure that investors have all the necessary information, European green bond standards. So it's clear that with a Sustainable Finance Package, we will have to steer substantial private investment towards dealing with the climate change. And final word, EU is comprising only 9% of global carbon emissions. So it's of course that EU acts and that EU leads, but we need to make sure that the rest of the world moves with us. And that's where our international platform of Sustainable Finance comes in. So we managed to scale, during last year, we managed to scale it up quite substantially. We moved from 8 members to 15, covering some 55% of global emissions. And now with a new US administration in place, we see that mood is changing also in US. Biden administration has taken decision for US to rejoin the Paris Agreement. And we are also looking forward for US potentially joining our international platform on Sustainable Finance. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Executive Vice President. So as we've heard there, hundreds of billions of euros per year in additional investments are needed. And with that, I'd like to turn to you, Christian Zaving from Deutsche Bank to give us the private sector perspective on how to fill that gap. And perhaps you'd also like to comment on, you know, the taxonomy regulation, and the issue of standards and what Deutsche might like to see from the Commission in order to help you do so. From a private sector perspective, though, just generally speaking, talk us through the financial tools, the policies that you see are necessary to drive the green recovery, and your role in the private sector to help bridge some of those financing gaps. Well, thanks a lot, Sarah. I'm delighted to be on this panel today. As you are just saying, the sums involved and the numbers involved are huge. And in particular, who looks at the capital markets in Europe knows that the financing of that and the investment of that is very closely dependent on the financial institutions because if we just think about how the normal investments in traditional industries, but also now in new technologies are done, then the majority is done through financial institutions with vastly over 60, 70%. And therefore, a lot depends actually on the preparedness of the balance sheet of financial institutions. And thus, the whole transition into green technology is for us banks as vital importance. I do think that in this regard, we can make a difference and we should make a difference. It's actually an opportunity for Europe because here we have a competitive advantage from a technology point of view. And hence, the financial institutions are actually looking at this as an opportunity to be the partner of transitioning the economy into green. What does it mean? Clearly, from a balance sheet point of view, banks are stepping up. And if you just look at Deutsche Bank, we have a credit portfolio of 450 billion euros. Of course, over time, we will see more and more of our credit portfolio also being used in order to support the transition into green economy. We have set ourselves at Deutsche Bank a target within the next five years of financing and investments of 200 billion assets. We started in the year 2020 with the first year of more than 20 billion and that goes up to 200 billion in the year 2025. And again, that is on the one hand, the financing. If you look at the capital market issuances, you see a doubling, actually a tripling of issuances of green bonds. And again, if you then see Europe versus the rest of the world, where actually the capital markets are much deeper in the US, but when it comes to issuances of green bonds, actually Europe has a far bigger market share. And also here, the financial institutions are very active. So at the end of the day, I do believe that in particular, the role of the financial institutions in transitioning the economy into green is crucial. I do believe that financial institutions who are not actually offering that expertise, that advisory role, but also the balance sheet in order to support will be over time almost out of business. There are a lot of consultancy studies that actually the sustainability assets and the sustainability revenues from this whole program will almost replace half up to two third of the traditional banking activities. And there you can see how important it is that we as financial institutions and banks step up. In this regard, it is on the one hand, a big opportunity to do the financing. Secondly, and that got always forgotten, it is also on the investment side for our private clients. Kind of a matter of huge interest. You can't even believe how our demand we get from our private clients and actually reallocating their portfolios, in particular the new generation who is inheriting the portfolios from their parents are actually looking in reallocating the assets from traditional industries into more green technology. Also that actually means that the demand after green assets on the investment side is huge. And here again, the role of banks is clearly there because on the one hand, we can generate with our clients the assets. And on the other hand, we have even in-house with our private clients, the people who demand this products. And hence, I think financial institutions, banks are kind of in the middle of this transition. And again, I do think it is an opportunity for us. But it's clearly something which must be integral and a key part of our day-to-day operations. I'm always telling to my people, to the relationship managers, to the private client advisors, as we have advised our clients on currency, on rates, the advisory on actually ESG investments, the advisory on ESG financing aspects is becoming as important as any other product. And therefore, it is an opportunity. But at the same time, also a challenge for us. And we clearly have to step up. Thank you so much for that perspective from Deutsche Bank. And I think probably Thomas Buvelle will have more to say on that as well when we get to you, Thomas. But first, I'd like to go to President Renaud Basso to get the perspective as a public financial institution on how you're dealing with all of this. Because you're of course operating primarily in Central Europe, Central Asia, in regions that are said to have been hit harder by the pandemic than, for example, advanced European economies. So in that context and through that lens, how has the EBRD and the regions where you operate experienced the crisis? And what does it mean for the green transition? So thank you very much, first of all, for the invitation to participate to that very interesting panel. And indeed, in a way, the EBRD being a military institution, but focusing on the private sector and with a very strong green agenda since a number of years is dealing with a lot of issues which have been already mentioned there in this panel, and indeed at the core of our priorities. We have set up our own priority to be a green, to have 50% of our investment in financing in green financing in 2025. And we were starting from a comfortable position in 2019 because we were around 47% of our financing in green. And what is very striking is the impact of the crisis. We reshuffled and we reorganized our activity in order to be able to support liquidity needs, working capital needs in our countries of operation to provide emergency support for vital infrastructure projects, to provide advisory support for SMEs in the countries of operation. And basically our green investment ratio has dropped quite significantly to some slightly below 30%. So it shows that in the short term, very short term, there is a sort of trade off between emergency support to support companies being available to sustain their activity or to compensate for the lack of activity in the context of restrictive measures logged on everywhere. And the need to continue to focus on this long term agenda, which is building back better and financing the green transition. We believe that in the context of, I mean, when getting out of the crisis, these green priorities will be extremely strong. Because with the pandemic, I think everybody realized that economies are fragile and that pandemic risk was identified as a big risk. But we also know that climate risk is a big risk and a big priority in the future. So I think that the attention will focus very much in the building back better on this priority. We are dealing with countries of operation, which have a huge challenge in this respect. In Eastern Europe, they started in the 90s with a huge dependence on coal, very highly polluting economies. They already made a huge effort and the emission has dropped per unit of production by 50% in the last years. But they're still above for the BRD countries of operation. We are still 30% above the average emerging countries at the same level of GDP per capita. So we still have a big challenge to move towards Paris agreement objective and so forth. And to do so, I think that what banks like BRD can do is basically threefold. First of all, provide financing. And we, as I was saying, devote a large part of our financing to green project a bit on the renewable retrofitting of building green cities, transportation, improvement of transportation and so forth. But we can also provide a lot of advice to the countries and support them in defining their strategy. How to reach a Paris alignment objective? How to reach zero emission in 2050? What is the right pathway start coming from, for example, situation with a strong dependence on coal? What is the right pathway? What shall we do? And we are providing a lot of support to the countries in which we intervene to define these strategies and trying to bring them to level of emissions that are really consistent with international commitment. And the last dimension is our own activity as bond issuers. And we focus in the last 10 years, we've very much focused on green bonds. And we see, as this was mentioned, a lot of appetite for this kind of financing. So I think that getting out of the crisis, this will be a challenge to refocus on the green economy. But it's very important, for example, to acknowledge what is the strategy of the EU, which is to focus the measures devoted to kickstart the economy again. So the recovery support and to tilt it to green, I think, because you can have double effect, double dividend. The first one is to support the recovery, because you invest in, for example, which are feeding of building and so forth. And on the other side, you have long term effects that are benefiting for the climate. Thank you so much for telling us a little bit more about that work. And I'd like to expand a little bit about it, because you were talking about the EU's plans just generally speaking. And I'd like to turn back to Mr. Executive Vice President Dombrovsky's, who asked you about our central question today, which is really, how does Europe, what does it need to do in order to maintain the first mover edge? We've heard from Thomas Bubelle, for example, the need to really get things defined, especially when it comes to finance. We also know that you oversee the trade portfolio, of course, as well. With regard to trade, how can you avoid that Europe is at a disadvantage because of the Green Deal regulation, and that European products and services also remain competitive? Well, yes, indeed, those are very important questions. Well, first of all, indeed, it's important that now we are actually delivering on the aims of the European Green Deal. So we had set targets, we are changing sectoral legislation. We have agreed ambitious financial package. Now it's important that this financing, for example, reaches the real economy, reaches recipients, and we start seeing how this financing is actually changing situation on ground. Because there are many initiatives which we want to pursue to green the European economy, renovation way to improve the energy efficiency of the buildings, moving to the electromobility renewables, looking at different sectoral legislation, sectoral developments. So we just need to practically move forward. We need to continue to advance with our sustainable or green finance agenda. That's why I'm saying that we are coming with an updated action plan, why we are putting the actual taxonomies or classification systems in place, why we are changing or adjusting our non-financial reporting standards, advancing with green bond standards. So all this work needs to continue. And indeed, the question is also, of course, about international competitiveness and our trade agenda. Well, first of all, in the World Trade Organization, we are coming with what we call a trade and climate initiative and working on this with like-minded countries. Because we want to ensure that indeed there is open and free trade as regards environmental goods, so that we allow actually the environmental technologies to spread and to be scaled up internationally. One important problem we need to address from this context is carbon leakage. And as regards carbon leakage, well, currently we are addressing it through giving energy-intensive industries or emission-intensive industries free emission allowances. But it's clear if we want to move towards carbon neutrality, we cannot continue with the system of free allowances. That's why we're currently preparing what we call carbon border adjustment mechanism to address this system or problem of carbon leakage by different means, ensuring that goods that are coming into the EU from third countries with lower environmental and emission standards, that this carbon border adjustment is done to compensate for, so to say, less stringent environmental standards elsewhere. Of course, a very important element of this will be the WTO compatibility in this measure. And for this, the keyword is, so to say, non-discrimination, ensuring that we are not treating third country producers worse or putting more stringent requirements than on our own producers. And that's something which we are determined to ensure. Thank you. Thank you so much. Now I'd like to ask all of our participants, actually, because we're a little bit short on time, 30 seconds each. I'd just like you to give you the opportunity to react to what we've just heard from the Executive Vice President. And also, I mentioned that we're entering the more informal part in just a couple of minutes, perhaps some of your hopes going into the next part of the session, given the fact that one of the goals of the session was to bring together public and private. Perhaps you've seen some opportunities from what it is that we have been discussing. And we can begin with Christiane Saving. 30 seconds, please. Well, that's a challenge. I can only encourage, actually, the EU to further invest and actually emphasize this topic. Again, I tried to say before, this is an opportunity for Europe. We have a technology and we have an environment here where we are actually leading and we should play on this. I think this is a chance for Europe going forward. And hence, I think the EU should be on top of that. President O'Neill Basso, what are your thoughts? No, I think the issue of carbon leakage is very important. There is one issue which is also very important for the private sector. Nobody has mentioned up to now. I think it's the economic incentive. And I think all the issues related to carbon price, I mean, the functioning of ETS mechanism in order to give pricing signal and to ensure that all the incentives are tilted to the same objective, it's very important. We know this is difficult politically because it has some social impact on the revenues of people and so forth. So it needs to be accompanied by proper measures. But I think it's very over time, it would be very important and essential if we want all companies in all areas to really have the right incentives. Thomas Brubel, your reaction, 30 seconds. We should move to action now. All many of the cornerstones, be it reporting, be it in some part metrics, be it the clear ideas what to do are defined. It's really now we need to get to action and deliver. And now, as promised, we head over to Faika Sivisma who is also co-chair of the CEO Action Group at the World Economic Forum, honorary chairman at Royal DSM. Faika, you've been listening to our conversation now over the past half an hour and I'd just like to get your impressions in terms of what you are hearing and also your hopes going into the next section, section of our section, excuse me, where there will be the opportunity for perhaps further connection, further action among the stakeholders that are present. Yeah, thank you, Sarah, for leading this and of course, Mr. Dombofkus and Suing and Vino Basso for the panel. And of course, my co-chair, Thomas Brubel, really appreciate. But I appreciate also all the participants and you get a chance to discuss and raise your questions in the next half hour, like Sarah is saying. I see Jean-Pierre Claumoudier, Christian Beck, Anfield Pinedaoka, Jonas Francesco. So please join the next session also and live. It's really important. Remember how this all started, supporting from Stimman's colleague of all this, Dombofkus, who put this European Green Deal there at the commission by fellow countrymen and from the World Economic Forum, especially the private sector CEOs, we want to support the activities of Hans Stimman months and make Europe really green. Not because, like the commissioners said, that Europe is the biggest emitter, it is not. But Europe can lead the example. To make Europe green, indeed, like you heard, but also, therefore the commissioner is here, also to provide jobs, economic growth beyond the forefront of technology development. That if the whole world later on greens, that we as Europe can also benefit from that from our economy. And therefore, not by coincidence, that Faldis Dombofkus was here and made his point that this is not only greening, but also providing technology, innovations, economic growth and jobs. As also Christian and Odeel said, I mean, working on the financial side of different sectors. So we have initiatives in the farm and the whole farming sector from farm to fork, so to say, projects in the retail projects in infrastructure in cities, etc. Where private sector, I think can contribute a lot in all those different sectors. And that is what we're working out and trying to support from the web, from the private sector, in those initiatives supported by finance, the different perspectives that Europe comes green, that Europe has the technologies, that Europe can benefit economically and job wise from that as well. And that is what we try to discuss in this first half hour. In the next session, also afterwards, I just invite you to provide input, to provide ideas, to join the group and contact Thomas, contact myself, because we need the private sector to make this ambition of Europe come true. And as we saw in the beginning of this week, I was chairing the climate adaptation session with John Kerry. The US also began in the picture, wanted to contribute. I found that great, great news. So I hope even we get a competition where the Europe is being challenged by the US on the speed on greening, that will be a great competition. Thank you, Sarah, for leading this session and of course the panelists and good friends and fellow co-chair Thomas. Thank you so much, Fika. I really appreciate that bringing it all into the big picture for us.