 The younger generation was taken aback by the Brexit vote. We are the ones who primarily voted to remain in the EU, and it's us that is going to affect for the longest. Generations Y and Z may rule the digital industry, but in politics they lag behind. How can young people partake in real policymaking, apart from various youth parliaments? We are young Europeans. We have motivation and dedication. And I think they will hear our ideas as new topics for them to understand that we also have a voice and we want to help solve our current problems. What about lowering the voting age to 16? In Austria, young voter participation initially mirrored all average age groups. But five years later, election turnout clearly decreased. Strengthening civic and history education at Austrian schools is one of the government goals. Who has elected the youngest head of state in Europe? Austria literally rejuvenated its leadership. 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz has his own vision. We wish for a European Union that becomes stronger in the big questions and that takes itself back in the small questions, where national states or regions can make good decisions. Operation Libero is a young Swiss political movement fighting for liberal ideas. We say that Switzerland will not become a free light museum. A free light museum. Please don't touch the sign. Should younger activists put older politicians in their place? If young people want to assume real responsibility, they must be given access to the captain's seat. Welcome to the open forum. My name is Nikola Forser. I'm the founder of the Swiss think tank Forum Haus in Politik and I have the big pleasure to lead this discussion. The open forum is a place where participants of the web of the forum here get together with civil society with you. And the goal really is to have an intense discussion with you, so please prepare your questions, your ideas. You really want to have this dialogue. And to kick it off, we'll start here on the panel, but after this I will open it. Now, the motto, the slogan of the forum of this year is creating a shared future in a fractured world. So when we talk about future, we should talk about future generations also. And the topic of today is therefore very timely. It's rejuvenating European democracy. The young generation will live with the impact of the policies that we have today. The impact of politics if it's in climate change, social policies, global cooperation, the young generation will feel all these impacts. How can deepening engagement in European democracies strengthen a sense of shared responsibility? That's the questions we're asking ourselves today. And as we have seen in the video before, there's a big frustration by young people, as expressed after the Brexit vote, where young people didn't feel that their voice did count. But there's also hope. As we can see with Sebastian Kurz, who has been elected as Chancellor at the age of 31 years, or Flavio Kleiner from Operation Libero here in Switzerland who is a political activist. I think she's 27 years old and has a real impact in Swiss politics. So that's both sides for the younger generations. Now we have a great panel here on stage. And I think they don't need further introduction, just a very, very short introduction. Pascal Bellisville, she's the State Secretary of the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Federal Department for Foreign Affairs. When she went after finishing her law studies, as she was working as a judge, and she also was in politics, so I hope that she will share some more details about that. Then we have Michel Krupinski. He is the CEO of the bank Pekau in Poland. And before that, he was also a very young minister in Poland. I think at the age of 24 years, you joined government. Yes, 25. 25. And he was also working for the World Bank. So he has the experience of the private sector and also public sector. And then next to Michel is Sidrune. Sidrune is the Director of Group Sales of LDES and she founded a very interesting organization which is called Women Go Tech to bring more young women into tech. And she's also a global shaper. And then, and last but not least, Desislava Karabcianska. She's the business development head at What and Vault. And she also founded, or you're also part of the, an initiative which is interesting, which is called Regeneration, the Regeneration Program, and you try to reduce unemployment. You're originally Bulgarian, but now live in Greece. Exactly. So please give a hand to our work. Now to kick it off, I would like to ask all our panelists to share a story or a snapshot of their own country where they could see that the young generation has an impact. Or if this is not true in their country, something they're really frustrated about. And I would like to start, Mith, with maybe with you, Desi. I'm going to give an example. I'm coming from an energy utility sector. When you hear about energy utility, everybody that works in the company is about 50. And we are an average age is 30 or so, and we're a group of 200. When we want to implement something in What and Vault, we say, okay, how is it done normally? Let's do it totally differently. Implementing and using coastal technology. So this model has helped us to become one of the fastest growing companies in Greece and in Europe. And this company was born in the midst of the economic crisis in Greece. That is also a very important factor. So I believe youth can implement and assist in growth, not only in the private sector, but also in the public sector. And this is a good paradigm from the private sector. Thank you so much. May I ask you, Pascal, to share? Thank you very much. Thank you very much for the invitation to be here and share some of the recent developments also in Switzerland. A beautiful example is the one you have chosen also for the film is Operation Libero. In Switzerland we have a direct democracy at every level, so you theoretically can get involved and you can influence political processes. The question whether young people engage is it attractive enough? Do they believe that they can change things? Is it creative? And so Operation Libero was a movement, not a political party, a traditional political party, which decided when you had a vote which would have obliged Switzerland to be non-compliant with international law that they would get engaged. And so they created with new technologies very creative clips and they participated in very many discussions, FORA and the Flavia Kleiner also challenged one of the most prominent conservative politicians and they gave all of that a touch of fun to get involved. It's fun and you can make a difference. And finally this vote was won as they had tried to influence it. Then of course you had all the analysis was it because of them, was it not because of them and I think that is actually irrelevant because they saw that as much... I mean they made an impact, they had an impact. Was it more or less is not the key question? The key question is do they have the wish and also the energy and creativity to continue on this path and I think they very much have and so that is one model it combines information sharing, creativity the fun and the aspect of having the possibility of having an impact and so that I think is a model which could maybe be applied also in other places. I feel that this is because of Switzerland because participation is part of our DNA with direct democracy and so on that people do something getting aged. You know it's clear that other than with the Brexit vote which was a vote which came after a long time with not so much of a tradition of voting regularly in Switzerland you regularly go voting that does not mean that it's interesting and attractive for young people. So I think direct democracy gives you some instruments at hand but it's always a work in progress you have to keep people interested and one of the magic words for me is political education and that goes for all the countries you need to have debates at school you can influence family a little bit but some families are maybe less interested so in school at school you need to have political debating as a topic which is relevant and you have to have like not too much distance and that may be a difference in Switzerland from other countries or from the European level you need to have also closeness from the political institution and the larger people. Cidruna you were nodding listening to what Pascal was saying is it similar in your country or could you please share a story from your country? I think in Lithuania we have a little bit different but I guess the general principles are the same of the civic engagement but I want to share with the audience the phenomena of the Baltic countries because to give a historical background we regained our independence in 1991 from the Soviet Union which means that not that long time ago we had a complete change and political system and then we were at the situation that ok so there are two generations one mostly without the skills of the language that would keep us competitive in the global arena without the technical skills mostly corrupt generation and there is a young who are looking towards the western world who are looking into building this country who are interested to change the process is how we do things and this is the thing so because of the lack of the skills because of the lack of the competitiveness of the older generation young people could do a lot in Lithuania and I was as a student I was also part of the international student organization called ISAC an international team and I saw that those who are Lithuanians they would most probably get the position in business at the age of 25 in the same level compared to the ones who are Germans they had a German girl on the team who would be able to get such a position when she is 35-40 so we could do a lot we could manage the teams and the power came also responsibility and here we understood that this is us the generation who will create the future for this country and we don't have that much natural resources we have the talents that are the most important for Lithuanian competitiveness and then there were lots of initiatives that were coming not from the politicians but not from the ruling parties that was coming from the actively engaged youth one of the examples is the initiative the so called wide gloves to ensure the transparency of elections so we had volunteers we had people from all over the country joining the elections as observers and making sure that we have transparent process in place we right now have initiative to get back the talents who went to study abroad and most probably to encourage them to join our government and this is called create for Lithuania so they are returning back for the terms and the different ministries and reviewing the processes how the countries run and then offering different solutions and most of them actually staying in Lithuania because they can be in the power they can change the things and and these are different examples how youth is engaged how youth is creating creating the future we have and even for myself I don't come from the different from the public sector I come from private and then I saw the initiative that you just commented about the women in technology I know that there are some processes because we are not for so long independent that would not be taken care of from the governmental level and we don't need the governments to take the lead in changing the things we have the sense of responsibility that we can create certain initiatives ourselves and only then sit behind the same table with the decision makers and decide what's the next step that's very interesting and I'm sure we'll come back to this initiative so the newly independent Lithuania as a place where young people have opportunities maybe which they wouldn't have in other countries now Michal could you share your view from Poland I can only echo what's been just said I think I was always impressed how in the Baltic states and similarly in Poland young people after transformation and transition took over responsibility I think you wouldn't have been able to build institutions citizen society and bring in transparency without young people taking transparency in my country history in Poland's history young people have always been instrumental we had a big youth movement anti-communist movement back in the 80's part of large solidarity movement that was so important in taking over power from a communist regime they were in their early 30's if not late 20's when they actually had the responsibility to take over the country similarly Poland is a very pro-European country one of the most pro-European countries in the EU and I remember back in 2005 when we voted for EU membership it was so important and instrumental our prime minister is not 30's similar to Sebastian Kurz but he's in his late 40's and was also very instrumental as a teenager in taking over power from the communist regime was instrumental in the opposition movement and is also experienced banker now leading the government became president largely because of the EU vote at the age of 43 so we have relatively young leadership in the government and my experience having served in the government now many years ago 12, 13 years ago it is important to have young people take over power for a couple of reasons is you we are as leaders and every one of us we are in the business of managing change and if you want to manage change to give an example yesterday on the panel about blockchain how blockchain can change business not only our business banking many bankers think we will soon get out of business because of blockchain but it's also changing the way governments do business and if you want if you're a government, if you're a bank I can be talking about blockchain, Ethereum, Ripple to the startups because they are the ones that can really disrupt disrupt the business this reminds me of an interesting situation last year exactly a year ago on the very same day here there was a guy who approached me at one of the panels in Davos and he was telling me about this Ethereum thing and I had no idea what it is and now I realize the value of Ethereum and the value of his startup is 100 times higher after one year so when you're here in Davos talking I think take the benefit it's all about encounters and people you meet here so what I'm getting at it's so difficult to create change without having younger people involved also what I notice is once you have younger people in the government it has to adapt because business cannot live without government and this is regardless of whether you're Poland, Switzerland or the United States and people have to match have to discuss a very similar topic adopt technology so that's why I've always been a very big proponent of young people getting involved thank you Michel let's see if all of us will be 100 times richer when we come back next year but let me ask you Desi coming from Greece there has been a major crisis in the last few years does that help young people a younger generation a new generation get into government because people are disappointed with the old generation does it help young people get into business because business is really disrupted and is changing a lot yes a very good question definitely you know you see in Greece now startups everywhere successful startups from people that big when they were 20 and then we go to the government you know we found the situation and we have to face economic crisis because of something we haven't created and because of something that we haven't decided to it's because our parents or older generations decided for things or acted certain way and now we are here 25, 20, 30 years old and we have to struggle and try 10 times more to achieve, to thrive to work because let's not forget that in Greece last year we had about 35% of unemployment for the youth being below the age of 35 so this is a very huge government rate and we had to be flexible we learned to be flexible we learned to embrace technology and to use it and create businesses and youth started to exist let's say and to go to government and say you know can I assist you in do things can I help you, can I be there why would take decisions and I believe that government has started to listen to the good government our prime minister is young Mr. Tsipras and in the government implementing smart city strategies we have young executives that come from the private sector so yes I would totally agree with Mr. Kropinski that private sector can assist can help the government and governments would adapt and listen to what they have created Thank you I'm training to you Pascal we're living in Switzerland our life is nice we have a lot of money we don't need young generations right when I look at the Swiss government somebody who would be considered young is how old is Alain Berse 50 people would say that he's young other countries people get you have been a minister at the age of 25 is that not possible in our country or what's the problem here Pascal if I maybe can get back before I come to that question from what I observed in the discussion so we were talking about Greece how crisis can define a space for young people to get involved in private sector also influencing government we're discussing countries coming out of a transformation of the regime from a more authoritarian to a democratic regime and how that can define space for young people and I made the example of direct democracy how direct democracy can define space for young people to influence politics or get involved also in business so I think the conclusion maybe if I jump a little bit would be that whatever the circumstances are the key point is to define where the space is where young people can get relevant and get influential the conclusion must be and I would very much promote that this can be the conclusion that there is always a space but leadership and young people somehow in dialogue should together define that space and also enlarging it if possible for me the question is not that much how all this our current president I think current president under 50 is someone who has already a life experience and is still young considered the challenges we have to face so I think really more important is how can younger people get involved and that theoretically it's possible also to be a very young president also in our system but if I look at the question from another point of view we also said it's about responsibility how can we make young people also responsible and really somehow get them involved in order that they take part in policymaking and there from all the discussions I had and I went to a lot of schools discussing democracy in modern times I realized that what had be for us has been a given that we grew up in a democracy maybe for younger democracies this is not so self-evident it's self-evident in our country and at the same time and it's not only in Switzerland but also in other democracies I think it's a worldwide trend this division separation of power the influence of media all that has become shaky in terms of how it can influence and also threaten democracy so I would like to also see where can be the responsibility of young people to avoid that from happening to avoid courts from being neglected to avoid those different powers which have been constitutional for a democracy for a vibrant democracy how young people can and maybe I can give that then as a question to the public to the younger public how can young people make sure that separation of power the media that all that keeps the very fundamental basics of our democracies that's a very good question do we have somebody in the audience who would like to talk about this or ask a question I think we have a gentleman I think we have one question here would you like to start with the question so my name is Ella and I am a student in Switzerland at County Baden and I've read a lot about articles about the new presidents and for example Serbia has a new president, the women and the second thing that came in my mind is what I've read that they are all very conservative president of Serbia the new president of Ireland conservative and also my best example, Austria and now actually their leadership reminds me actually of my grandmother how is she thinking because this strength of our own nation no mix between cultures fear of new things fear of losing jobs because of the globalization so what they do is strengthen our nation like for example Donald Trump building a wall for no immigrants Stefan Kurtz with a really hard immigrants policies and now my question to you is do this young politicians and this young now please in quotation marks do this really bring fresh air into politics young people acting like our grandmothers let me maybe also respond to what you have said in defense of Swiss democracy I will just say the government doesn't need to be young I think the government first of all needs to be smart and secondly the government needs to be accountable and let's face it we face a very big crisis of accountability of politicians particularly in Europe you were showing a movie with people protesting in the streets and I can tell you in Europe not in Switzerland where you have unemployment is low but there are countries in Europe where half of young people are unemployed and my worry is despite of the very good global economic conditions most I would say we have measured the levels of optimism of Davos forum participants if there was like self-diagnostics big data of optimism at least since I've been coming here and I would say despite of all of that I don't see that people and particular governments maybe also businesses are confronting the real problems that we're facing not only in the developing and emerging world but also in Europe and I think the problem is that we do have a crisis of accountability Brexit is a very good example I'm a CEO of a bank and if I had a Brexit like with my bank where I lose with UK, Europe is losing 18% of GDP one third of investments and you can 55% of tea consumption and if you had a true statistics by the way if you had such an event I would need to resign and I haven't seen many politicians back in Brussels who are held accountable of what happened with Brexit and Brexit is not a local problem I think it is a pan-European problem so what I'm trying to say here is I think something that needs to be resolved is crisis of accountability and I think my personal views is there are also lessons learned in terms of accountability from direct democracies such as Switzerland accountability which is a very important point Desi, can I ask you coming from Greece and also having the experience in Bulgaria is there a new generation of politicians which is fundamentally different when we look at that interesting question from the student from County Baden is is this different or is this the grandmother's grandfather's politics just with younger faces what I want to say is that first of all for sure it depends on who you are and where you come from what I want to say is that you don't have to be 20 in order to learn to be innovative in order to take risks to be accountable but at the same time not be afraid to make implement changes so I would agree that it's not about the age politicians should adapt fast everything is happening very fast today they have to be flexible and if they don't know something or are we not aware of something they should be open to copy best practices of the same thing that has been implemented for example in another country yesterday we were in a very interesting lunch discussion for the future of jobs and a CEO of an energy utility huge one in Colombia said I'm not a millennial because I'm 55 years old but everybody in my company calls me an old millennial because everything new I see everything I hear I want to learn about it and I want to try it I want to make the change also so it depends on the age it depends on the character you don't want to you don't want to go and take the safe road and you want to risk for the better of your country thank you maybe just a very quick point to add is we cannot expect the top leaders to only look from the air side and provide the accountability if they are not asked for and the transparency is also coming when it is not only offered but when it is asked for so we have a case that if we want them to be accountable and if we want them to be transparent what are the watchdogs that we created as the civic society and how deep are we analyzing certain actions and how much are we educated to do that and in order to to create that within the country definitely it takes a long time and it goes back to the educational system which encourages criticism analytical skills and only then civically engaged society but it's not that we should ask for certain certain competency we should be responsible as well and a good example in Lithuania there is this called freedom TV so it's on YouTube it's pledged by contributors and it is so called watchdog to the existing parties to the existing government to question their decisions and it's not anymore funded by the businesses or by the government it's funded by people it's a very nice example thank you very much we have a second question the gentleman over there we have a microphone yes thank you I think there is a deeper question behind the question of generation we heard it's not a question of age you can't be very young and you can make a very wrong politics only for special people so the question is deeper I come just from Lesbos I was in the refugee camps even the young people in Greece are refugees they live in countries very good educated they go to Germany everywhere though we have not refugees only outside of Europe inside of Europe, Italy, wherever and my question is when I was in Lesbos 2015 there was thousands of young people from Europe and helping to survive the people there was no EU institution nobody now exchanged but the problem stayed what can we do for the or propose for us in the young generation to do to overcome that people have to leave the country hunger, economy weapons, climate change that everybody can have find a way that nobody have to be a refugee in this world not to solve problems for special part for Europe this is a big question in the economic forum thank you very much I would like to I would like to add to this question how what can we do if people have already left what can countries do when the young generation has left because of all these problems how can they be drawn back who wants to take this? that's an amazing question we are working a lot as a I'm a global shaper and I'm a part of the Athens hub so our main project is called regeneration we are working on it the last four years it was founded by a shaper called with a CEO from Coca-Cola that really supported it so our hubs love this project what are we doing we are fighting brain drain that's exactly what we are doing and the unemployment in Greece we have managed through this program to make the long story short I can share with you the website and the information to have a retention rate of 85% among our interns in Greece so what we have managed is to persuade them to stay here stay here when the country starts to grow you should be here because you're the one that's going to make the change if you leave then to your question the brain gain back it's much more difficult to make you come back so yes I'm also a refugee from Bulgaria I left Bulgaria because of the circumstances after 1989 communism and it's a very good question and here I would like to say that Europe should have a shared responsibility and should implement practices and assist countries that have this problem to keep the young generation in the country because we are the ones that we're going to help and faster get out of the crisis of any type of crisis Michel before when we were behind the stage we were discussing about your bank recruiting people from Great Britain of the Brexit now so it can go in unexpected directions this brain drain or brain gain in terms of HR we have been a big beneficiary of Brexit with actually our head of strategy sitting here he's one of the five Brexiters we hired with international experience from best institutions I'm less worried about my own country where you do see some waves of people coming back particularly giving that the fact that we are becoming a small hub for some of new technologies including I was just I just met one of the largest data analytics and big data companies globally and they have lots of people employed in my country so we have good skills however in case of some countries there is a risk of you reaching the tipping point and then it's simply too late it will be very difficult to rebuild your business and political elites so that's why I think countries have to be very careful about not losing the potential because there is lots of research by different economists the biggest potential you have as a country is your population full stop I think here I would share a little bit maybe different perspective so there are several types of migration and I'd say there is economic and there is a disaster based and these are two different things and how we look into this in Lithuania had several waves of immigration and in very different levels and it's not particularly bad if our greatest brains are getting experience in various hubs over the world and building their knowledge building their capacity and bringing this back either by their physical presence to the country or by foreign direct investments back we need to make sure that the instruments are created for these people to look into a country as a potential and we have at different levels but you know there is a thing so the ones who studied abroad at very good universities they came back to Lithuania to work for several years and what they did is they actually lobbied international companies to create the companies here in Lithuania the chapters that they would be interested to work at so this benefited to the country in terms of migration and I don't see the migration itself as a process which is particularly harmful but on the other hand we have the situations where we have immigrants that really are coming not only because of the economical reasons but because of the disasters and the war and the anything that's that's forcing them to leave the country and the question is where the challenge for us is definitely is to work on the integration to work on the understanding of these people and what I noticed actually because there was no migration in Lithuania before my parents generation they have never been exposed to different nationalities to different countries that's why we became really nationalistic and we don't know how to talk to them we don't know how to behave with them and there's my personal story as well it's not a large number of refugees in Lithuania but I had a refugee living in my apartment for a month and I was literally calling instead of him to the owners of different departments to find a rental place and I was dealing with these people who could not accept the person from Syria not because they don't have a place to live or they don't need the money that he's going to pay because he has a normal job but because they were never exposed to different nations and these stereotypes that actually is the obstacle right now for our country to even elect the parties that would have a stand in terms of the refugee integration before asking you if you have a next question I would like to turn to you again Pascal because in Switzerland it's different we have 25% of foreigners so people are confronted but sometimes they still vote against foreigners and we have been at the receiving end of migration for a very long time could you tell us more about your view maybe to say that migration for Switzerland has been an economic power but of course then we also face the same challenges that sometimes people are overwhelmed with diversity and then I think and that's something we manage rather well the challenge is how to manage diversity into a political system and voting is one of the ways to manage and sometimes vote come out differently than the government has pledged for but that is something we also have to deal with that is part of creating diversity and also growing ownership for a diverse community which lives in our country maybe to come back to the question originally I think here the WEF is the right place to ask the question because the private sector can have much more impact than I think the three made examples in how to give perspectives to people in order that they do not migrate from the modest perspective of a government we have a very comprehensive policy saying that well the first goal is to keep people in the region and that is by giving them a perspective and so we have an economic cooperation and development cooperation for example promoting very much the dual education system apprenticeship system which is something many many countries from the south are very interested in and there we also come back on democracy because you can have such a system where you educate people in private companies in order to get them integrated into the labour market only if it is a combination of political consensus with the economy and with the society society parents have to want their kids to go into an apprenticeship system and not to university for example and so this is the compromise between the economy the political sector and the society which gives a basis and that again is a very important element for a democracy in whatever country this is not a model which can be exported in another country each and every country has to find the compromise between those different sectors but this kind of compromise is something which is a basic element for all and every democracy in the world and I wanted to say also something about her question how to like manage I mean do we need conservative or progressive leaders I don't know I think we see that sometimes the leadership is not diverse enough again I would say it's about diversity it's not about young and old only it's also about women male it cannot be that most of the leaders are very old white men so I think diversity is key for working democracies but then integrating young people is not only about having them in the leadership but it's about giving them the space to influence leadership because it's also about civil society influence I think it's not whether they all get to a power position it's if there is enough space for all the coming generations also it's not this generation will get older and then maybe be integrated into a government but then comes the next generation so having on one hand the space for younger generations to influence government and in the government having diversity of all kinds that I think are constitutive elements for a working and modern democracy thank you turning turning to a young person again from Kanton-Schule-Baden please your question my name is Arne and also from Kanton-Baden my question is about the political system and as we saw in the film many young people are angry at the system as it works now at how the politics work and it already got mentioned as well that young people are very flexible and it's for many young people it's hard to just label their political orientation to one political party and my question is therefore is it even necessary to have these different established political parties we saw Emmanuel Macron who had no political party behind his back but still managed to be the president of France so young people they want to break with the system they have now and therefore they don't want to support I don't know in Switzerland maybe the SVP and the FTP they want something new would you join a party as a young person no why not first of all I'm I don't really think that I am the best person to change anything in our society in our politics I don't think I'm able to do such things but I think you are I don't know I don't really support all of this political party system that you have to belong or you have to comply with all the interests of one political party and I don't want to say okay I'm more of a progressive left-ish person I don't want to say okay now I have to go to the SP or whatever so I want to be free from any political parties that are the party that are supporting us basically interesting thank you who wants to take this yes I'm sure you are not what you said and maybe here is the moment to say that you you have to believe in yourself you have to work on yourself and you hear no from somewhere. But really, you should never say that I'm not the person, I'm not the ones to influence. We each influence people around us in our marked micro worlds, and this is also an influence. And I'm sure you have a lot of potential in that. So it's just a comment. Important comment, thank you. Cedaruna, yeah? I was just, we had a very interesting conversation with one of the YGLs during the lunch. It's like, question whether the youth working with the new technologies might change or might not change the political systems as well. We were discussing about the blockchain as a possibility to give confidence into the expert-based decision-making, for example. Maybe in the future we'd be able to do that and say, for the economical questions, I'd like this person to vote for me, maybe for the foreign affairs, I'd like this person to decide on behalf of me, these kind of things. So we should look a little bit broader of what can we do with the liking, Facebook liking system and as well, the rating systems and the confidence systems. We can find the ways of contributing to it. And it's a little bit sad and I'm very grateful that Desi commented back. It's a little bit sad that we think, we as a young person and I can also relate to that. We think that we're not the ones to get there and we're not confident enough to actually change it when it's not the case. Maybe it's the responsibility that has to get back to us. Are you active in a party, political party? No, I'm not. Why not? Why, I think here, for me it is the decision, I think I feel responsible for what's happening. So I kind of have certain responsibility to contribute into the things that I'm passionate about and can do. But here I'd say I don't have enough experience because I'm not a big believer in the age particularly as the reason to join the particular party or the government is because I think that even in the governments and the parliament there should be a good combination of young and very active and interested in it and experienced. So I am pro-experience right now and I think this is what I'm trying to figure out myself when would be the case that I join particular forces, maybe not the political parties, but at least the decision-making elsewhere. Interesting, thank you. Pascal, you wanted to say something. Thank you very much, yeah, because I think he touched the very heart of the political democratic crisis we may have or we may be facing and I would join all the others by saying that I'm absolutely convinced that you could make a difference and can make a difference alone by being here and asking this question. When I was around 20 and that is 30 years ago I wanted to get involved in politics somehow and I found it not attractive to go to a party because none of the parties would cover all my interests. And after a while I found myself ridiculous because I said well if everyone decides to go up to a party only if this party covers all his or her interests then well everyone has his own party and actually the key about having a party or a group of people who make a political pressure is that we are many of us and it doesn't mean that you have to be convinced of each and every line that your party writes. But I think this is really the point. Parties are not that attractive anymore, they are not sexy we would say and you see this changing in politics and one time that party wins and always with a very very short majority and then the next election four years later it's the other one and somehow we all get a little bit fed up with that and we vote for protest parties like Cinque-Estelle. La France en Marche maybe is a bit different because many of those have had a long political experience before but those like parties which just were born out of we are different and we are not established parties usually are not that good in governing. I mean look at the reality of those parties who get to power. So we need to find other models and I would really encourage you to look for that other models because at the moment our democracies are based on parties, party systems. So if we want to change that we have to get at work and find I mean Operation Libero is certainly an interesting model but it's not the model which is integrated in our system in our political system. So we have to find models of political pressure groups who have who are able to be integrated into a working democratic political system and we are not yet there. So I think that there is a lot of work to do for four hours and all the young people here to get our system or the parties maybe change the parties so that they are sexy again for young people to get involved and to change things. Wow, thank you. But now, Michel I really want to know from you because you joined a political party very early on. I have never been a member of any party. Really? No, no. But my hypothesis would be that equally to some other sectors and industries technology is also disrupting party politics. And I can give you a couple of examples and I think it's electoral success of Macron and Trump maybe extreme examples is good case in point. Before you had to spend on TV advertising. Depends on the country, but this is a rule of thumb, right? I remember there was a research out 15 years ago in the United States which said that an average congressman is spending 80% of the time on fundraising during the time in office for TV campaigns. As we all know and I'm pretty sure people also including in this room are watching less and less television. Television is becoming less important in terms of campaigns, delivering your message. And I think what you're facing with internet, social media is a Gutenberg moment also for politics, right? Which means that you no longer as a politician need to rely fully on your campaign machine by a political party. Which can be a good news for people who want to get involved and create impact. And as you said, right? You only know it a minute after that you have just created impact even with your question and there's this quote from Walt Disney who said that everything seems to be very difficult until it's done. That's very true. We have another question here. Can you hear me? Oh yeah, good. So I tried to engage in policy. What's your name? Sorry. I'm Miriam and I live in Germany and I tried to be active. So I went to two different parties and I didn't do it for a long time because I recognized at a meeting that was always about votes. How can we get a lot of votes? And so pretty much everything was focused on old people and families. So they discussed, oh, what can we do in this school? Oh, no party did that yet. So we are the first one who do that and so we will make an impression. And so I skipped again because my interests as a young person were not focused in this meeting. And so this is kind of a problem because they are only old people. They focus only these topics and because old people mainly like are the most important voters, they are even focused more. So how can we make a change there so that young people are interested to be active because their topics are also addressed? Interesting question. Thank you. I think we can take another one. I've seen a hand back there. Yeah, in the back. Hello, I'm Jan. I'm a PhD student here in Davos. So actually I have two questions and I'm very happy that we switched to the politics from the business. So when it comes to business, I'm fully approved the idea of young people there. But when it comes to the politics, I'm quite concerned. And my concern is about the age because what I have and all of you, we are living in a very good world and we have pretty good conditions. And in comparison to my parents or to grandparents, they didn't have these opportunities that I have. So they have to face war, communism, and all these difficulties. And I'm afraid that if we go to the politics right now, we don't have this experience and right now we will focus more on ourselves and not to be united with other nations. And this I'm afraid of looking for the other countries like Brexit is an excellent example where people I think they more focus on their country than on the whole European Union. And so this is the first aspect that I think we are not educated well to be politicians right now. And I would love to be a politician but I think my education system is not good enough and because I don't have the experience that my parents and grandparents had by default. And because of that also, I think that right now among my colleagues, I see the phenomenon which I can't call people don't care and people simply don't care about the war in the Ukraine, they don't care about the presidents of the other countries because they're living in very good conditions. And it's very good that we have money and we have no hunger but what we have to change in the education so we think about others. Thank you. Do we have one more question and then we turn? Yes, please, in the front here. Hi, I'm Hem from Iraq, from Middle East. And now I'm not immigrant. I just came from the Air Force Forum. I have a question actually. The key question is here now we have to ask, do we need a populist government, a populist young government or a smart government keeping the old politician right now in Europe? How do you mean? The question here is that, do we need a young populist government or just we have to keep the current politicians, whether they are old or not? We have to find the politicians and officials who defend the global values. The problem is that now in Europe, I think Austria and the Chancellor, the young Chancellor, is not a shining example. Yes? Why we have to praise them when the global values in Austria is in danger and they don't defend it actually? Should the politicians or will we see a new generation of politicians who will be slave to social media and to do what the social media and people on social media say? Will be slave to likes and comments in Europe? So, the question is here, really we have to be concerned about the future of Europe and the world in general. Do we need a young government, populist government, a young populist government as we have seen in Austria or we have to find another way or to keep the old politician right now, like in Germany? Or we have another good example, in France as they mentioned, Macron, a young and he's not a populist and he still defends the global values. Okay, thank you very much. So, we have three questions. The first one on how could we integrate more topics into politics which appeal to young people based on your own experience in Germany where people only want to build roads, but that's also typical for Germans. Now, second question, the experience of Europe. So, we had war not so long ago, but if there's only politicians from the new generation who don't have this experience, do we lack something? Is it better to have people in politics who have a long experience who know why Europe should work together? And then the third question about young populists who don't care about global values. Is there a new generation? You can just pick any of these and I'm sure you will find one which is interesting for you. And please, only one. Yes, she's the one. Okay, so I don't remember the name Miriam. Okay, good. I want to come back to that as well. How can we engage? And as a global shapers in Lithuania, we had the same question. How do we engage? Some of us are interested to go into the politics. Some of us were there, not happy and so on. So very different backgrounds. And there was a question that every... because in Lithuania there's a phenomenon that we are still born in the smaller cities. You know, we went to the capital, we live right now on the capital, but our parents live in the smaller cities. And we have a case that the economy is built on the capital. And we want to make sure that the regions are there generating the economical benefit there as well. So what was happening is that there was an interest to go there, go there to the municipalities and start initiating the conversation. We might not be together with them. We might not be part of them. But it does not mean we cannot find the way how to get to those politicians and start discussion about the vision of the city, about the direct investments into their city's economical situation. What happened? We initiated economic forums of the village and the city town, X and Ygric. And then it started as a private initiative. Then it continued to become the shapers initiative. And what happened then is even though the politicians were not that open at the very beginning, there were some cities where they were against and we faced a really closed door. But where we made it, politicians noticed that this is something they can be involved and this is something that they are interested in. And there are in the room, when you organize the conferences and discussions, in the room there are ideas that they need to listen to and they need to pay attention. There was a, right now like we have them in different cities and so on, but this was an example that you can find the way to open the door and raise the discussion. It does not mean that you have to be part of the political force. And to me, yes, I'm not in the party, yes I am coming from the business, but that does not mean that I cannot raise questions and it's actually part of learning process which I enjoy a lot, how the decisions are made, what are the competencies needed there and who are my allies among those politicians whom I would be interested to vote for or support because I see that they get things done and definitely Lithuania is not a big country and I have people that I know in the parliament as well and in the municipality decision makers and there are people that I would not vote for because I have worked with them and I know that it's very difficult to get the things done from them but there are the ones that, based on these initiatives, I know that I can support and I can trust them. Thank you. Michel. Yes, sure, to take up on Irem's point, I think it's a very relevant point and I might be controversial here but there are people who say that there is a flaw in the democracy which is basically that you are only eligible to vote at the age of 18 and there is a concept called demony voting after Professor Demony in Stony Brook University, I think, Kinderwald, which is about lowering the age and when you think about it, some of the problems we face in particular with municipal elections and the fact that, you know, you said that people maybe care less about kindergarten and schools is because families with children below 18 are not represented here and when I think about our bank, I'm spending 50% of my time in retail banking trying to think how I attract people who are 18 or below 18, right? This is my voter base, right? Because they are the ones who will be opening or are opening accounts and if you think we are rational human beings, then if someone is not 18, then why should I care as a politician, right? They don't vote, they don't count. So this is an interesting concept and I know it was discussed in Germany a couple of years ago and some other countries in the world and I think it is indeed worth thinking about because there are governments including in Europe which try to reform social security and then guess what? They face with the fact that retired pensioners make up more than 50% of the voters. So how can you do anything against just the numbers don't add up, right? So I think this is a topic worth exploring. Can I take one more? Super short. On the second topic, I think you did have leaders coming to power in Europe and globally including the United States because of anxiety and some people protesting around the fact that, as I said, I think democracies are not fully accountable and are not delivering. So guess what? Some of the leaders are young like Sebastian Kurz, some of them are not that young and have come into power. So I wouldn't really say that people in protest against unaccountable democracies are not delivering or voting younger governments in. I just think you have this distribution of age and probably you vote for something new so not the politicians who've been there for some time and that's why maybe the outcome. Thank you very much. I would maybe react to the gentleman who said, well, our grandparents had that experience and we do not have it. And I share part of your conclusion that we maybe lack solidarity in this new society, global society, which at least in this part of the world has very much wealth. Maybe we lack also a little bit of tolerance and there I would say go and vote for your leadership but maybe if the leadership and also a vote does not come out as you wished for, that's also part of the game you have to accept that and somehow try to deal with it. But I wanted to say what you have, what your parents and grandparents did not have and which is very powerful instruments. And I'm fascinated when I observe my children who are 19 and 22, lived all over the world, currently study in the UK. You have communication, you have technology, you have mobility, much more than your parents, us when we were younger or our grandparents had. So I was very, very fascinated, for example, my daughter used to participate in the European Youth Parliament. So they gather, they debate, and then they stay in touch via communication technologies. So what my suggestion would be, so connect with other young people who have maybe similar ideas, also different ideas, debate, find out what your priorities are, be very careful with that technologies and information and communication. When I asked my children what for you is the most relevant aspects of rejuvenating democracy, they both went on and on and on and saying manipulation in the internet. We have to make sure that there is, well, all the challenges with net neutrality. So I think that is a real challenge. So be careful with information and manipulation. But then make us accountable, as he said, for the implementation of these initiatives. Take initiatives, come to the governments, ask them for implementation in the ways you have at your disposal. And there are many ways you have already. And then make us accountable for the implementation of that. Thank you, Tessie. Well, I've heard from a politician that half of my time I have to work on how to get elected, and the rest, once I was elected, on how to get re-elected. So actually, that's what I was doing. And he was quite disappointed from that because he had values. And I see a lot in the discussion black and white, and old and young, and experienced, ideas and values. There are older politicians that have values and ideas. What I would say is that if I had the access to a social media platform where I see actually the people I'm going to vote for being evaluated from someone that really can tell me the truth, I would be more confident to vote for him, because the one party is saying that the other, does something wrong, and the other is saying that this is doing everything wrong. This is not true. There are things that every party, every politician is doing right and wrong. So you are privileged to know some politicians, but not everyone can know every politician. What I believe is that we have to seek who these people are. Do they have a purpose? Do they have values? How they were raised? What do they believe in? And then if they have proven that what they are ambassadors for, they can deliver it as well. And this is food for thought mostly and not a conclusion. I think that's a very good way to end this session with food for thought and not a conclusion, because we've seen many different realities in these different countries, but we have also seen some overlapping trends. So we know now that accountability is a strong, strong feature which needs to be there in politics in older countries, but also on a European level. We've seen that with digitization, economy, which is growing today. The need to adapt is there also for politics. So I think we have we don't really have a conclusion of this session, but we have some food for thought for the future. So thank you very much for attending this. I hope you also enjoyed it and let's keep this discussion going. The open forum will go on for the whole week. Tonight there's, for instance, at 6.30, there's a screening of Last Men in Aleppo, a film on Syria with the director Feras Fayat who will be here. So if you want to join us again at the open forum, that's at 6.30, and on your way out, please stop at the touch screens, the large black touch screens at the back of the room, where you can explore the transformation maps which cover different industries, countries and so on. So the World Economic Forum has done a lot of work there to give us an overview of what is happening in this world. So thank you very much for attending and thank you to our great panel.