 Hello, everyone. We're going to give you a little time to come in. I'm Virginia Robert. I'm the foreign desk editor for Lysico, the French business daily. And we're going to talk about a very incredible electoral year coming ahead. I hear an echo. Is that normal? Yeah, maybe. Yeah, probably normal. Did you hear the echo too? No. The sound is very loud. So to discuss this incredible year we have ahead of us, I have with me Igor Yorgens, from Russia. He's a man of insurance. He's been involved in the insurance industry for many years, several associations, and he's also involved in the Russian International Affairs Council. Next to him is Isabelle Lassin, who is a journalist just like me. She's the diplomatic correspondent for Le Figaro, the French newspaper. Very well known. She's been a defense correspondent, diplomatic correspondent, foreign correspondent, war reporter. So she's done it about all. And she just wrote a book about Poutine and Macron that is going very well. The book is, maybe not the relationship, but the book is doing very well. And next to me is Iroyou Akita, who is a senior writer for Nikkei. He publishes commentaries and columns on foreign affairs and security affairs. And he's worked all over the place in London, in Washington, in Beijing. He's been a foreign correspondent, so he knows foreign affairs very well. And behind us I see Monsieur Gruffin, who joined us, finally through a video link. Welcome. And he's a banker. And I met him in New York when he was working for Citi at the time. And he's involved in many, many different projects. So before we start the panel, I'd like to share with you a study that came out yesterday, actually. And it's a study published by International Idea. And that's an international governmental group that is based in Sweden and that monitors the state of democracy. And the findings are really pretty appalling because it shows that in 2022 the world has entered the longest democratic recession ever observed, which means that for the sixth consecutive year democratic values are losing ground everywhere. And I mean everywhere, I mean in Europe, I mean in the Americas, in India, in Russia. These findings have occurred in the very foundations of democracy, revealing weaknesses in the electoral processes, in the ability of legislators to act as checks on the executive overreach, and also the difficulty for people to access the institutions of justice. You have countries, for instance, like Tunisia, Afghanistan, Belarus, Nicaragua, or Myanmar, that have shown great regressions last year. And this institutional weakness is combated by continuing declines in core democratic rights, including freedom of expression, freedom of association and assembly, and freedom of the press. And Europe, of course, is not immune because according to the report, the rule of law has weakened, and I won't surprise many of you, but in Hungary and Austria, where freedom of expression falters, access to justice is more difficult in the UK as well as in France, where the freedom to assembly is also fading. Poland last year had many factors deteriorating, and the recent elections won by the opposition might pave the way for a betterment. So it is not an overstatement to say that globally, democracy now faces pressure everywhere, with authoritarian regimes tightening their grip and too many elected leaders adopting authoritarian tactics to claim to control. Meanwhile, you have misinformation campaigns, political polarization, and rising inequality that erode people's trust in democracy. So, as you probably agree with me, it is of paramount importance that democracies show their resilience, not all political regions are equal, and next year's elections will show indeed if the democratic process is able to rebound.