 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this closing plenary of this World Economic Forum summit meeting on Europe and Central Asia. Delighted that we have such a good turnout towards the end of what I know has been a very busy and intellectually stimulating set of meetings over this last two days, this day and a half. The last plenary, as you might expect, is going to try to bring together some of the main lessons learned, some of the main insights that have been pulled together over the last couple of days. It's under the title Unlocking Europe and Central Asia's Potential. Perhaps self-evidently, this meeting is on the record, this discussion, but I think it's always good to remind especially our people in government of that fact. We're going to be talking, trying to draw together this theme that I think has underpinned the whole last day and a half of expanding the frontiers of innovation. Innovation, however it's defined, and I know there are many definitions, but innovation as a driver of competitiveness and of growth over the long term in a way that is sustainable. We are fortunate to have a super panel of five individuals, including two of the four co-chairs of this forum session with us to close. Bosidar Jelic, who is on the far side on my left there, Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration, also Minister of Science and Technological Development of Serbia, and I'll be turning to him first when we start. We have then Eva Dichand to his, to Mr, well, to the left as I'm moving towards me here on the stage, who is publisher and CEO of Hojta, which is the largest free distribution newspaper here in Austria. I think over half a million readers day on day and a young global leader of the World Economic Forum. We have our Minister from Kazakhstan, Mr Karat Kelimbetov, Minister of Economic Development and Trade of Kazakhstan, and one of our four co-chairs of the session here. And somebody who, although has a government title, has also worked as Chief Executive Officer of the Sovereign Wealth Fund of Kazakhstan and brings a crossover from the ministerial side as well to the government side. We have Connie Hedegaard, the Commissioner for Climate Action at the European Commission in Brussels, but I think you all know here, Connie Hedegaard as well was Minister of Environment, Minister of Climate and Energy in the Danish government for a number of years, running right up through 2009. So has been right in the thick of those debates. And then we have Jim Snaber, the co-CEO of SAP Germany and also co-chair of the World Economic Forum here for this meeting. If I could turn to each of our speakers, give them a chance to think through here. We have a series of discussions that have taken place across these last two days that have touched on, I think, three principal themes. How do you drive competitiveness? And there are a number of probably diverse and even nation-specific sets of solutions to that question. When we talk about Europe and Central Asia, that obviously is a very broad church of experiences we're going to be able to draw upon. Secondly, though, I know a big theme here has been resources. Where do resources fit into innovative growth? And not just oil, gas, food, but human resources, human capital. And this will be a second theme. I think we want to make sure we draw out in the conversations and with you when we turn to discussion from the floor in a few minutes. And finally, building in resilience. A main experience and contribution, I think, of the World Economic Forum has been this focus on risk, risk resilience, risk preparation. And we know that over the last couple of days, we've talked about the kind of geopolitical risks that hit us from left field, the Arab uprisings and the Arab Spring. But we've also had supply chain, unexpected risks with the events in Japan. But also, as I think our corporate members here will occasionally remind us, you might sometimes have a regulatory unexpected risk that could crop up in response to a particular evolving technology. So I want to make sure that we have those three big themes underlying our questions. And let me start off right away, Mr. Jelic, with you. From your experience, as I said, you're somebody who has a government position that you worked at McKinsey or Harvard MBA, somebody, again, who brings a dual experience. As you think back over the agenda of this World Economic Forum Summit, and you think about the challenges to innovation, the challenges to growth, whether at this resources level, at the competitive level, where do you see those standing out most prominently? Hello to all. Since you asked us to take our vantage point, so I'm not going to talk to the generality because our region, Europe and Central Asia is quite heterogeneous. I've been trying for the past few years to see if there is a future in the innovation economy for the small guys. The question is, in the time of the flat world, of the Internet, of Thomson Reuters databases showing very transparently who knows what in the world amongst the scientists and the engineers, can you find a space between United States, Germany and China? Can you and Serbia is a 35 billion euro GDP and 7.5 million inhabitants? Is there a space for the small and the medium guys in that space? That's a very difficult question because on one side you have the rich and demographically challenged West. For instance, Germany will need in the next decade to import about 400,000 scientists and engineers to make up for the lack of fertility of the baby boom generation. And on the other hand, you have huge increases in the budgets of China, but also the Middle East. Last year, for instance, we started to see some of our top scientists living for Qatar. That's I think the challenge. The most valuable assets for most of the countries are not all gas and metals. We are not all having that. The most and the only valuable resource is people. The most valuable part of that resource is the most mobile one. And how do you, in a winner-take-all economy, where Facebook and others with a few thousand people have a market cap of a few thousand, a few hundred billion US dollars, how do you hang on to at least part of the talent and have it produced for your country and not for some other countries? But just quickly on this point, when you say this is the biggest challenge, especially interesting for small countries, most countries are small countries. We tend to talk about the big ones. You're in the, applying and in the track for joining the EU. Do you see that as providing a sense of scale for small countries? A sense of an ability to leverage, therefore, that potential much more strongly in the mean outside at the moment is a key disadvantage? Or the fact that you're on the track for potential membership is a positive? Where does the EU help or not help on that business of being a small guy? With some experience now, help yourself and Europe will help you. In other words, it's not enough. It's both ways. In December 2009, you know, in the Balkans, because what thing, whatever happened, people tend to have this black humor. So we had a visa-free travel. And some people said, don't do that because everybody will leave. Well, it's the opposite. Equalizing the conditions of life is actually providing additional reasons for people to stick where they are, including the most talented people. To be mobile, but not to emigrate. Now, of course, on the other hand, there is a little bit of a co-op petition. Everybody will be competing for the same brains. And so, if you're small, you better be very focused on what you can achieve and not to pretend to be able to cover as much as the big ones. And therefore, the focus and the very strong implementation is something that is even more important for the small nations than it is for the big ones. Thank you very much. Connie Hedegard, let me turn to you. You bring a dual experience, obviously, having been a national minister, but now the commission. Where would you put that central set of challenges to the kind of innovative change? Thank you, Robin. I think that the main challenges that Europe will have to speed up the way we innovate, the way we do our reforms, the way we make the necessary transition. Historically, we have been second to none when it comes to innovation. We are very, very good and very creative. We are good at innovation, but we can just see that our competitors in other regions, they have one big advantage. They are very, very fast. When they decide to do something, they actually do it. So I would say our main challenge right now when we also have this economic crisis, which of course is very, very concrete and tangible for policymakers and business people. But that is we do not have five or 10 years to drag our feet. The world is transforming now. And geostrategically, if we want to stay as the world's largest economy, want to have this political impact as well, we must be much faster. We cannot compete when it comes to wages, taxes, retirement age. You know, there are many parameters where we cannot compete. But we can compete on innovation, on creativity. I also, of course, believe that we should be, we should hold our position as being the best to become energy and resource efficient. I believe that they're one of the key parameters competitive wise for the future. That would be in a world where raw materials prices will increase, energy prices will increase to be the most energy and resource efficient economy. That will be a competitive asset. And I think we have a big challenge there to keep our front-runner position. Now that you've made this transition from, let's say, national government into a supranational structure, do you see governments grasping that sense of urgency? And if not, is that perhaps the biggest challenge that governments in a way are so focused on their internal changes, that the ability to work together to speed up? Because obviously a lot of the regulation in the EU is pan-EU. Is this a problem? Yeah, that is a big challenge. And also right now governments, ministers, heads of states, I mean, they have a lot on their plate. So that, of course, is one challenge. And it's also a challenge that politics often tend to be marked by short-termism. But I would say, at one more aspect, I think their business could be more helpful. There is a tendency that business will always defend that things should stay as they are. I think one of the biggest tools we have had in Europe that is standardization, regulation, making stable frameworks for the market to function. But we need more than just the market because there is an urgency here. There is a time factor. And there we also need business to help provide the good business cases, to help show that, for instance, if we are energy efficient, that is a job-creating machine. Some have seen that already. But what about the rest? And what about the organized business interests? Are they pushing enough in the right direction there? I think business and politics together could try to move forward with a big, better pace. Well, come around, I think, to a business perspective in a couple of minutes. And let's see if you are seen as part of the obstacle and a challenge or part of the answer. Let me turn out to Karad Kilimbetov. Minister, this is perhaps a kind of West European or a Central European conversation. Do you see very much the same sorts of challenges? Or how does it look from Kazakhstan? Yes, we discussed yesterday and I would like to repeat a little bit. When we talk about the countries with the reach of natural resources, so usually we are thinking about this oil curse. It's a problem. And so how you really could develop or be innovative if you just sell the oil and so that's the end of the story. And a lot of the issues like the Dutch disease, the appreciation of exchange rate, it's not help to the economy from one side. And the country without the natural resources is usually more innovative. Is there any successful story in Europe for Kazakhstan? Yes, there is a successful story of Norwegian economy. So they did a great job in terms of not only increasing the role of oil factor in the economy, but also to create something really sophisticated. I mean, this is like oil and gas service industry, petrochemical and managing by oil wells. You know that Norwegians creates the special fund where we sterilize all this money and put it outside of the budget in order to live without oil factor in the budget planning. We did the same in Kazakhstan. We create reserve fund, national fund. We exclude all oil revenues from the budget. We are not oriented for the big prices in oil in the budget. All these oil revenues moving over there. Let's help us in order to manage over heating. So the unpredictability of the prices, the movement of the prices, you're trying to make sure that that is not a risk and a challenge for the long term. So this is the first part of the responsible macroeconomic policy. From the other side, we understand we should diversify our economy. We should create something new, which is definitely everyone wants to create Google, but to be realistic, it should be related to the somehow to your competitive advantage. For example, if we have a raw materials uranium, even after Fukushima, I would like to say about it. And we, friends anyway, want to import the uranium. We agreed, for example, with French, you are to export to China, not only the raw materials, but some kind of the, the nuclear tablets or the part of the components of the fuel. This is very high tech. When we talk about uranium and oil, there are a lot of stereotypes. This is not high tech. It's the most capital and intellectual property intensive areas is related to the natural resources. And we want to create GV in Kazakhstan with our partners in order to develop some part of this service or downstream in Kazakhstan with the local content, with the local engineers, with the local training force. And I think this is also one of the opportunities to really be innovative in Kazakhstan. However much we try and talk about challenges with Central Asia, it's opportunities. This is maybe one of the contrasts of the sort of dichotomy of some of this discussion. Mr. Snava, let me turn to you now for a, let's say a business perspective on this. Companies constantly have to innovate. Perhaps they're in a more competitive environment in some ways than countries. We, we, countries come to crises and then, but you have to do it on a much more steady state set of evolution. What, what were the biggest challenges from your standpoint? No, well, first of all, I will just confirm that without innovation, companies don't survive long term. And in a world with a resource constrained situation, I don't think we will be able to generate the growth that we all have ambitions for, both as countries as well as companies, unless we dramatically focus on innovation to drive a sustainable long term growth scenario. Now innovation is a, is a big word and I think we define it many times different ways. And when you talk about the challenges, let me try and define innovation the way we look at it. People sometimes confuse innovation with creativity. And, and then they define innovation as converting money into ideas. I actually believe that true innovation is about converting ideas into money, i.e. having an impact in this world that is valuable. And only then do you have real innovation and not just creativity. And so what has it taken, what is the biggest challenge from my perspective in being truly innovative? Well, it requires the combination of those two things, generating great ideas and then being able to scale the right ideas. And if I look at Europe, I would say because of our diversity we have lots of great ideas. But we are not good enough in scaling them. Many of the great ideas get bought early by some American company and soon some Chinese company and then they scale there. And we have multiple examples of that in the past. So the question is, diversity gives us generation of ideas. But how can we as a region become significantly better in scaling because that's when true innovation happened. That's when value is generated from ideas. And that's where I would agree with Connie. We need a, a wake-up call in the European opportunity here. Add to our diversity benefit. The ability to scale, which is, I believe, the biggest challenge we have. But therefore the underlying challenge from a government standpoint is the lack of commonality of standards. This is regulatory blockages. How does the problem manifest itself? I understand the theory, but how does the problem manifest itself at SAP? Well, I actually believe that we need to create an environment that fosters small entrepreneurial companies to, to be able to get global much faster. And so I don't believe in centralization being the right answer. Normally centralization kills the innovation, but it's great at scaling. On the other side, if you only decentralize, you will have the same innovation done many times and no one is scaling. Is there a way to do both? I believe in the power of platforms and, and, and it's, it's maybe a generic concept, but take the internet as a good example of a platform. The internet is a platform that defines certain ways that computers communicate with each other and can become relevant and integrating of everyone in the world. And because of that platform, it enabled an unbelievable level of decentral innovation to happen. We're seeing it now again and again, a Facebook platform, the Apple idea of the App Store and 300,000 apps built in record time. No one company can do that. So is there a chance to use the platform thinking and maybe instead of regulating ourselves with centralized things that take too long, use the central power to create platforms that inspire for decentral innovation and scale? Yes, so to think of the EU as a platform in essence, which would mean letting go some of the more nationalist competitive elements that exist within it, but nonetheless, this would be a message from you as a company, clearly. Evadechand, let me turn to you. Start-up business, I mean you've created one in that sense. What have been the biggest challenges or if you take your own experience and you spread them out a little bit, what do you think we're facing that's blocking us from that kind of innovative growth? Well, maybe, you know, media is like a very special segment because it's on one side it's a normal business for us, for the owners, but on the other side it's maybe one of the strongest drivers of democracy, very important. And it's maybe everywhere in the world the same that politicians in the north and the south and in the east don't like too strong media, which is especially in Eastern European countries sometimes a problem. It's today when you like found a new daily newspaper you will need about 70 to 100 million in a country like Austria, only 8 million people. Then you invest this, you need a lot of structure and then they start threatening journalists as we all know the problems from foreigners investing but also in the countries like it's happening to the Dogan family now in Turkey and I think it needs from politicians a very liberal minded, how do you say, to allow also media to grow, I mean mass media, but I think in these countries there will be the step much faster to make the long story short. It's as we saw in Egypt it's the new media that's not so intensive in investment, it's more from the public ground growing and this is will make a lot of change. I mean you see in China even they debluck it or they don't allow Google to make their platforms but I think this will be a new form of media and there will be much more innovative than in the Western European countries where all the big publishing groups are not making any money on land, they all do it with the old media and in these countries I think it's a big chance because it's also for the population a chance to consume media. So these types of media is probably an area that's going through some of the deepest change of the moment, some of the big established broadsheets and so on struggling for new business models etc so I think how governments adapt them will be important. Let me turn a little bit to some of the good news stories because one can always end these conferences thinking about all the problems and the challenges but Bosda if you were to think a little bit about some success stories places where perhaps innovation has been allowed to flourish either again in a national perspective or other perspectives you bring what lessons can we take away from success as opposed to from challenges? Well maybe continuing on the on the same stride speaking of the small on the on behalf of the smaller non natural resources rich countries at the end of the day if you think about what how you can reach success in this very challenging international sphere you can write strategies you can think about picking the fields where you can compete you can think about competitiveness as you said I was a many years also management consultant but at the end of the day I think the most likely route to success is to support the most talented people you have and then provide them support which is not only money it has to do by protecting them from jealousy and mediocrity because it is not so automatic that people will come and say well I like that person because he or she has shown a lot of talent in fact I've seen that my role in government is as much protecting them from the mediocrity and the jealousy of others as it is to give them support and resources I'll give you two examples it took us five years to get one of the top 10 stem cell scientists who is from Serbia but did his career in mostly United Kingdom and also Spain to come back and it was really providing him now about 10 million euro to creating Kraguyovac where he found a joint venture with the local university to have a stem cell research center but also allowing him to be able to provide his maximum in the country now it is his turn to create and it's professor Stojkovic it's up to him now on the basis of this to attract other people and to create the critical mass and movement for that type of idea I'll give you another example I was thinking how can we collaborate with big Germany because Germany is both an opportunity for us and it's a challenge I already talked about it it's really simple is I go and talk to the institutions that are taking our best people and trying to strike a deal with them be it Fraunhofer be it Max Planck and others why not open in Serbia it's going to be cheaper for you and we keep the people and then thinking how we can collaborate same really just the simple thinking we don't have many successful Serbian people in German tech we have one let's say who was in 2006 the top tech entrepreneurs professor Ilic then he was the CEO of Varta batteries and an Ari which is digital imaging and frankly the whole of this relationship I said well Dejan you you you you decide and we found one topic which is because we have been producing physical chemists for some time not really knowing why frankly because it used to be during the time of socialism Germany and other countries stopped producing physical chemists because chemists went into bio and lo and behold suddenly we are three to four hundred scientists we do not really want to know what to do with them but now for lithium battery which is critical for electrical mobility they are very interesting so we took them we put a wrapper on them we gave it to Dejan to run and now we are very attractive to Germany it's interesting because we there was a poll done which I'll refer to in a minute a Facebook poll done by the World Economic Forum the lead up to this well I think you've probably heard it to a number of the panels but this one as well where somebody's wrote in to support entrepreneurial culture as their main driver for innovation and growth but they said you know everyone who thinks education skills are the missing link clearly doesn't know the region there's plenty of skills plenty of talent and education what we're missing is that entrepreneurial culture that's space to be able to take the idea and make the money out of it so I think that's a little bit what I heard your point being that if I could turn to you Connie Hedegaard now on again looking for an opportunity now that you've sat within the commission one can usually describe it as a place that's dealing with problems but are you seeing any forward movement any successful steps towards that kind of change you were describing in your opening remarks what can we what can we be hopeful about well sometimes you know when you look at these challenges and say why are things not moving it's sometimes helped to step back a bit and then there are huge successes there I mean the whole single market we take it for granted now it's a huge success the thing that we are cooperating on standards it's a it's a huge benefit for companies when we are trying to say to the car manufacturers of Europe here are the standards it can drive innovation and it can do it on one platform it benefits their market penetration will be faster and so on and so forth I think we in Europe have a very good tradition for public-private partnerships we could do better there but I think that there are also some good lessons to be learned by the way I also think that during the crisis what we did in the recovery program where we for instance said why don't we Europeanize our energy systems much more that is also a success story it's not the end of that story we are doing it right now but basically we are lessening the vulnerability of the individual country and acting more as Europe I think that is also a success and has the target setting that the EU is engaged in on climate targets and renewable targets efficiency targets are these creating a platform effect is it it is Europe is the only economy in the world who has actually decoupled economic growth from a resource use we can do more make more gross and then use less energy and that is also related not only to standards but also to our tradition of setting targets and it keeps the focus of governments also in times that are difficult for instance why is it that we have a lot of governments right now still focusing on renewables and expanding in renewables that's because we are binding targets then the counter argument would be well find that we have that in Europe but what about the rest of the world will they follow actually three years ago when we set the binding targets for energy and climate we were alone today more than 90 countries 90 countries worldwide have set their domestic targets and I also think we have a very good tradition in our pricing system not only in the emissions trading but also in other ways where we are pricing energy consumption and by the way I think that is one of the things we have to see more of in the future that we will tax less what we earn we will tax more what we burn we will tax resources and energy and consumption more and labor less because that will also help our competitiveness and thank you Mr. Karanbetov you gave an optimistic take on my challenges let me flip the question to you the other way around you talked about the importance of moving up the value chain getting Kazakhstan to have the kind of human capacity how easy I mean how difficult that must be hugely difficult to kind of move a country from as you said a kind of resource dependence perhaps to one where it's value added types of activity what are you doing about this is this a foreign investment track and you know the kind of transparency that's needed for that foreign investment to come in how are you addressing these kinds of challenges so I think we will talk about two tendencies one is maybe for future generation we start to create opportunities to develop the human capital in Kazakhstan I'm talking about initiatives to create western style universities in Astana and Almaty so first of all we have to create the business school and we start to do it with Duke from United States we start to do it in IT area with Carnegie Mellon we start to create the engineering school with UCL so it's opportunities to prepare the people in Kazakhstan in order to really be let's say well educated innovative in previous period the government paid every year we sent 3000 people to the best universities in the world and they start to come back and to work in our national companies in private companies in government companies and I think so this is like the future fundament for the further development this is and we start to create also the laboratories scientist centers IT centers so this is like everywhere we try to create some platform for this but at the same time even during the crisis you asked me about the successful stories not out of the natural resources we brought the serious investors to Kazakhstan we brought GE French Alstom Italian Phenomechanica Spanish Talgo and this is areas about the railways equipment infrastructure and the agreement is not just to have a joint venture but really to create a center of engineering center of maintenance and this is really very good news for us because it's a huge investment and this is American in European companies who believe to Kazakhstan what is the reason to believe to Kazakhstan is is the predictable investment conditions and the new market which is the custom union and I think we write let's say integration policy of Kazakhstan give us these opportunities to really achieve quick wins in these terms but in the future we understand so better conditions if it will be more competitive even with even the custom union more than Russia and Belarus the investors prefer to walk in Kazakhstan in terms of opportunities Snubber what's working you've told us with the the challenge that you're facing but just quickly and I'm going to turn to the floor in about three or four minutes to draw in our audience into conversation but if you can give us a couple of of ways you think things have succeeded from your standpoint well I do believe that a lot of things are working we've seen a tremendous innovation happening in our sector and general technology has been driving a pace of innovation that I think most industries will have to get used to and it's a very healthy thing to get used to because it means you need to reinvent yourself every five years and if you are not able to do that you don't stay in business that's the boundary conditions we're now SAP is one example of maybe one of the only or few software companies in the world that is not from the US and we've been able to stay in the industry and and take a marketing leading position why because we've had a very dedicated focus around innovation 13 percent of revenue spend on R&D but also and I think this is increasingly important for the future this idea that you can't do everything yourself how do you enable how do you inspire an ecosystem of innovators of entrepreneurs in in Kazakhstan and everywhere in the world to enhance what you do and I think that is the big idea of the future we've seen that can work in the technology industry and we need to bring that to other industries one concrete example where we involve this is energy I totally agree with Connie that we need to find ways to optimize the use of energy now to solve that problem you actually need a combination of utility companies automotive companies and technology companies in the same room we've been facilitating that conversation and if you if you imagine if you tackle the problem more broadly you know the car becomes a storage of energy produced at on windmills or by the sun a day or night it becomes the way you can handle the peaks so you can either generate energy and store it in the car at night or you can use it you know repurpose it at peak hours so suddenly instead of solving the problem of energy industry by industry we need to facilitate these cross sector innovations and I predict that if we were to do that we actually in this project it's a combination of smart grid smart meter electric cars and software we can increase efficiency on energy by at least 40 percent my prediction and then you have a complete different opportunity for growth without a climate issue ever give you a last quick word on on opportunities and strike with the media in ways becoming a different type of actor now unleashing kind of individual potential that okay sometimes for protest but could also be in this more positive track as well yes no the positive thing is for example when you look at Egypt it was really it's like we call it already the fifth force because media used to be the fourth force so Facebook may be in a few years the fifth force I mean in the end it was a whole revolution in a country made possible by a new technology called internet or mobile in very good mobile there and and this is also the chance you know it gives a lot more transparency because you know like 10 years ago if there's something was really really wrong people could only go you know to the tv station or to the main newspapers if they were owned or stayed near they had no chance ever to to get the information out today people twitter and if they are like I know some people like in Byroad or in Cairo and when they twitter you know like two minutes later the editor-in-chief of New York Times the editor-in-chief of Bill Citing they have it on the mobile phone they put it before we leave this room they would put it on the online platform so I think this is also a very chance maybe you're not like to to use information transparency in a very different way absolutely let me just quickly let everyone know here as I mentioned earlier there's been a poll that was done just ahead of this about what would part of the WEF family who contributed to the facebook list as the keys to unlocking Europe and they had a return poll of about 250 260 people in fact yes you've got it up there so interesting you can see education and skills coming up at the top of the list pretty much 50 percent of the vote there an entrepreneurial culture which I think is where you are trying to take this gym that's not just the skills but how you deploy it with another 25 percent interesting to see geopolitical risk and resilience I'm afraid right down at the bottom there with one vote which doesn't do a lot for those other topics and even natural resources interesting maybe this may be a slanted view but natural resources in terms of unlocking the innovation growth potential obviously getting a very small vote so I just wanted to put that out there as a as a teaser because I'd like to turn now to our audience and and bring in some questions that can be directed to any one or two of our panelists or if you want to be more broadly I'll try and not have everyone reply to every question but if you could there'll be microphones going around the room something we haven't talked about at all in terms of the risks out there there are you know the euro crisis and whether as we talk about Europe and Central Asia and the kind of growth potential there if there is some crisis over the coming years that will certainly be a geopolitical risk I think might not that number one vote right up much higher who would who would like to come in first and raise their own points from these last two or three days maybe something they feel was raised that has not been touched on by the panelists here let me invite somebody to come in and and throw a question to our panel people are going to be quite cautious at the moment no questions at all let me let me throw it back in that case I'll keep my eyes open if you change your mind put your hand up in a second and I'll see if I can get somebody in let me where we got somebody yes there thank you Yes Sarah Hewne from Standard Chartered Bank one issue which didn't seem to come up very much in the debates that we had was institutional resilience and that perhaps ties in with the geopolitical risk resilience so I wondered how far the institutional backdrop the rule of law where how far these features are seen as significant to allowing innovation and are seen as being important to growth potential both in Europe and in Central Asia so an institutional resilience in other words inside countries as much as across countries yes that capacity let me throw that open and let me bring it maybe Mr. Kanbetoff raise it to you first this concept the rule of law transparency especially within developing markets especially those that are strong resource driven economies maybe there's a sense that one doesn't have to put that at the top of the list initially when Brent is at whatever the price is today I'm sure it went up after the OPEC decision where do you place as a government this question of institutional resilience providing that transparency for foreign investors how important is that sorry first take Mr. Kanbetoff I think at the beginning we try to create the right atmosphere around the issues of protection of foreign and local investors especially in the areas of the which are more geopolitical rather than commercial I'm talking about investors to the oil and gas in uranium area and if you remember was the initiative of the UK Prime Minister Tony Blair about the extractive industry transparency issue and the Kazakhstan was one of the first country who is joining us so we are trying to very transparently and efficiently manage our oil wells so we have a national reserve and this is a let's say very open information everyone knows where how we manage this resource how we invest it let's say to be some social program in Kazakhstan this is one the second is we understand this is not even issues from moral point of view but this is a real competition between the countries if the country is not ready to get investment nobody wants to invest and investors in Kazakhstan invest last decade 120 billion so they vote not by the it's not propaganda they vote by the own money and I think so this is a very good signal it does not mean that we are on the same page we understand that the competition is increasing and there is some a lot of rankings for example like doing business doing by World Bank actually we try to upgrade our position I think we could do better and we try to do our best and just quickly how central on this is the rule of law and the rule of law is a big catchphrase but the independence of judiciary of that ability for contract law but also other aspects of a legal environment how important is the Kazakhstan government how much important are you placing on that particular issue? you probably know we want to enter a WTO very soon and the legislation in custom union is very similar to European standards so it means all of this European style legislation now to start to work in Kazakhstan so this is our approach did anyone else want to come in on this point? Yes, Bosna? I think in addition to the rest of General Mladic the most important thing that happened I think in my country and also in the region was the breakup of a large narco cartel of the so-called Shared Brothers that had assets estimated because we worked on this with the American DEA and the British service so that's about 800 million euro they had transatlantic ships and of course they recycled through offshore zones money into buying assets in the country and the talk of the town was well you know that this company belongs to this one and to this one the fact that they are in prison and one is still on the run the fact that their assets have been seized and now for instance one of the villas in Hovisat has been turned into an orphanage basically so we have this mafia type of compound now with kids without parents another one is a field next to Belgrade where we're building a police station I think that this is the basics without this and then of course a judiciary that is able to hold on to those who have been arrested you're not talking about democracy it's very important for the people to know that the people who they elect are the ones running the country and not some mafia group or some special interest when we reach that level I think the rest of the private investment will follow through and I think after that we also had a very big uptake in investment Jim you want to come as well on this I want to come back to a point around the speed of innovation and obviously then regulatory attempts doesn't necessarily accelerate innovation and but I think it's too easy to claim that you know stop doing all these rules I would as a business leader say from the business side we need to act in a more responsible way and I think that's a very important point instead of assuming that the laws will guide what you can do why don't you set your standards for what you want to do in a world that requires responsibility from business leaders and don't sit in finger point I learned early that when you point at someone there's three fingers pointing at you and maybe that's where it starts because obviously when you have a financial crisis that hit everyone in this world you have to reconsider are we responsible leaders in private sector and what do we need to change in the way we behave not necessarily only think that regulatory requirements will be increased because that only slows everyone down that's where I think the the media openness might be fed as well there's a lady here and then a gentleman there let's grab two questions in and together and I'll move over to this side of the room thank you Katinka Barisch from the CER in London now historically a great source of growth in Europe has been economic integration and policy cooperation through the European Union when we think back to the 1990s the EU acted as a great anchor for reform for the countries in Central and Eastern Europe that were on the accession track but also for the countries a bit further afield in the Balkans in the former Soviet Union my question is to Mr. Djelic but also to Mr. Kelymbetov if you look at the European Union now with the Eurozone crisis with a lot of bad atmosphere fragmentation and perhaps with the exception of energy and climate change not a big inspirational project on the agenda what do you see and do you still feel inspired just pass the microphone down I think there's somebody yep there we go two C's down it's somewhat linked to the you could say who you are please my name is Willem von Ege I work for the World Bank it's somewhat linked to the previous question I mean if you think about innovation you think about talent and bringing in the right type of talent my question is the following is Europe doing enough to attract talent from outside of Europe and how does this tie in with the whole migration agenda and I'd like to get specifically Mr. Schnabel to see what his experience is and as an innovative entrepreneur in that field thank you well let me first turn to maybe start as you with Mr. Kelymbetov let me start outside the EU on that first question about whether the EU is still an inspiration driver or model from your standpoint then Mr. Djelic I'll come back to you I think it's a very good question actually I think this is a purpose of maybe this world economic forum session in terms of the cooperation between Europe in broader terms and European Union and Central Asia still I think even all of this policy of let's say energy saving and alternative energy anyway the Europe needs natural resources for example Austria needs oil France needs uranium anyway and in this terms I think it could be win-win cooperation so we provide like Central Asia countries natural resources I don't know my name or other goods and we want to get back the cooperation in area of technologies but Mr. Hedegard said a few minutes ago European growth is becoming decoupled now it doesn't mean we don't import still a lot of energy but I'm saying there is a decoupling perhaps we may not be the growth market we were in the past so again can we act as are we as important to us the growing Chinese demand or the growing demand in other parts of the world do we really as Europe have that kind of clout or hold over you yes for Kazakhstan especially we are in between Russia and China and we understand the Chinese economy will drive the world economy this is big locomotives Russia also one of the part of the BRICS community but anyway we strongly believe that Europe is strong enough to be real driver because a lot of innovation and talented people and businessmen are working for it and on the regulatory side I mean because this is the other point that the EU a key as it was called of regulations and laws do you look to the European Union for as a model we are looking for European Union like a model in terms of any type of standards starting from technological coming to the social this is very important I think this is the right model which all the countries in the world emerging markets should follow and this is a good benchmark for us thank you Mr Jelic hi Katingka I think it's probably fair to say that the soft power of Europe is currently slightly too soft it's been softened by the fact that of course there are internal problems and it's a bit disappointing to see many years of so many smart people talking about the need to have a significant change in the next financial perspective only to see now that actually when it is about to start the real business of allocating the funds everybody's saying no pasaran so those who get money for agriculture say not one euro less for agriculture those who are beneficiaries of the money for the cohesion they say the same thing and at the same time the net payers say we would actually like to cap the European budget at a maximum 1% of GDP maybe 0.8% of GDP so yeah I mean definitely with the associated problems with Eurozone it is less of this kind of winning club which is making headway where you would like to join this being said it's by far still the best game in town for the people in Balkans this is a giant insurance policy for never again having conflicts because that's what it was built upon never again war between France and Germany in addition to this there's a lot of very exciting projects from the Danube strategy the things that Mrs Hedegard is heading where basically it is really one of the best ways to connect to the 21st century agenda and then one suggestion therefore there has been a huge and ever-growing benefit of being in rather than being out for resources it means that per capita young, latest the new members received 15 times more resources than those who are in the process of joining and a lot of things if you're out you cannot do you cannot build a high speed railing for instance you cannot work on the CO2 capture projects so probably in the next financial perspective finding a way to more integrate those who are in the accession process will make the soft power of Europe not only soft but pretty hard let me give Hedegard a chance to come in on this as well just very briefly because despite all the current challenges it is a fact that over the recent seven years EU has expanded with 10 new member states and I would say successfully so and also this week we send out very strong signals on Croatia for instance from the Commission this is progressing and we must be doing something right because the waiting list is really very very long so it's more a question of the speed with which we can accommodate still more who wants to be part of the club and I understand the question on the situation right now but I would also say that overall we have also used the crisis we have taken major steps in more economic integration in the recent 12 months compared to the former I do not know how many years so the crisis has also been used for actually getting in place some of the tools we need in the euro area for instance that I think could be a whole other debate I'll hold off that one quickly is Europe doing enough to track talent so first of all it's a great question because everything if you really want to be an innovative starts for talent education system that's where it starts and the answer is absolutely no and I'm concerned as a European when I see where we are on that topic today it is a fact that today in the US if you go to the best schools in the US more than 50% of the graduates are foreigners they used to be Indian people now it's now it's Chinese people and there is a hypothesis that a lot of the US growth in this tough situation is in fact due to that historic reason so US is definitely currently significantly better at attracting talent from other regions now what is the future I spent a lot of time in India and China it worries me even more you go and visit IIT which is India's answer to MIT I would claim the same level of education there's 250,000 engineers high quality produced in India every year that number will go beyond one million I come from a country with five million people that's a scary number you add the fact that there's more than 520 million people in India which is less than 25 years old and I'll speak English you begin to understand where this world is going it's not to Europe it's from Europe now so that's the scary part where are we today in Europe well in Germany today we don't even accept foreign university graduate diplomas that's where we are in Europe so here's a massive opportunity for improvement now without you can't complain without having ideas I think we have a unique opportunity in Europe what if we could offer the university program where you spend one year in Rome one year in Paris one year in Prague one year in London and one year in Warsaw wow that would be extremely attractive for many many regions around Europe that could potentially give us an opportunity here so I'm missing that opportunity it's there it's the diversity of Europe let's leverage that it doesn't mean a platform again for a university structure where you can marginalize and combine things rather than compete but it's an opportunity yeah a country with five million but in a larger space and but it is ironic that so few European universities are in the top 200 whatever it is UK does pretty well but we're now making it harder for students to come in we're coming very close to the end I saw three hands go up so I'm going to take just those the last three questions and perhaps you could target them at somebody but I'll give each of the speakers an opportunity just to say one last comment they're one takeaway that the message they would like to send either to governments or to companies that they want to take away from this from the summer so if you could make that your last point while we answer the two hands that are there and one hand that was in the middle here there's a microphone coming not if it's one person or two people asking a question here I am from Poland and I have only a small reflection I would like to say that in Poland in Europe is 80 millions people who are excluded and I think that it is a big challenge not only to think about role of governments and businesses but also about leaders of regions and local authority authorities leader and about cooperation between civic society institutions and local authority leaders and I would like to say that it is not only matter of creation workplaces because we have in Poland almost 50% society not prepared to entrepreneurial activities and we need special institutions and structures to rebuild human capital and I think it is big challenge and what is lack here I think it is lack of showing also role of region leaders region of Europe leaders and civic society institution working together for to create possibilities for social inclusion social integration thank you very much and a question sorry yeah question in the middle please there's a gentleman there if you could just bring the microphone to him that's the last question my name is John Anderson from Nordic Innovation brief observation followed by question around 1% of the 7 billion people on earth have higher education and there we are rounding up more interesting observation is that if we look at the next generation in Europe and Central Asia it's a fact that we are investing less than we did a generation ago in education now if we accept the fact that the investing in children is the future what does that tell us about our readiness to invest in our own future that these numbers actually turn out in this end this disperses us from Asia because this is going in the opposite direction where countries like especially India and China are going oppositely and investing more and more in their education and in their children well those are key points why don't let me just come around and literally just move down the speakers each to make a last comment and address if you'd like on these two points ever I see you want to address this point specifically but why don't we start with your final message and if you want to touch on one of those points either unemployed and excluded or on the education please do so as you go along well I mean for the closing let me be less parochial I think the crisis shook to shook many certainties and I think as Mrs. Hedegard and others in the panel have said that has probably made societies in Europe and Central Asia more change ready not that it is easy and we can see it with many reformist governments falling and losing elections this being said we've also seen more courageous governments actually being reelected which is showing that the crisis is not against reform it is opening an opportunity to and I think we would agree around this really have this further growth which will be resource responsible to make sure that through this crisis no group is excluded and I think what is quite important because institutions have been mentioned here in terms of governance definitely there's a couple of important things that need to be finished I think for the Bretton Woods institutions to finish off those quota changes for the UN to really come to a change in the Security Council it needs to be more representative if it is to continue to be relevant and then the level of Europe the Euro governance the shape of the next financial perspective and a better view of the relationship with the south which is the Mediterranean the Middle East and Central Asia and ex-Soviet Union I think those are the preconditions really for this region to continue what it has been after the Second War one of the most successful and certainly the most pleasing in the world to live in so I think it's not forcing optimism at the last minute but I think it's winnable it's a big agenda but doable you're saying Eva, last comment for you I would like to answer to the Polish lady because I think it's very important there's a lot of talk about you know education on the highest level you know at Ivy League universities and what I think is very very important is that the broad mass is also educated better, more efficient and even in a country like Austria which is one of the richest countries in the world we have so many problems with education we have a lot of problems with immigration to integrate people for example in Vienna 50% of the children in the primary schools 50% average don't speak German and this is a problem a whole new problem because the right wing about this rise and they do a lot of pressure for the governments right now and I think this is something also that the more developing countries should focus on that you need to educate everybody not only because there's a lot of programs you know getting people to Ivy League universities but for the broad mass I think it's very important and it's very often not on the first 10 points of government for the next 10 years no I think that's stratification compared to China they have it on a very maybe a number two a more mass approach Mr. Kalimbetov last comment from you maybe two sentences one is in terms of particularly Kazakhstan I would like to invite investors to Kazakhstan it's a good opportunity as part of custom union next door to China predictable investors climates this is first the second in terms of the broader terms Central Asia and Europe should cooperate in order to improve this cooperation maybe we need to discuss and brainstorm the policy issues and European Union should reconsider it the strategy in long run right thank you Rosh one comment to the question of education obviously it is extremely important that we focus more on that also invest more in RD&D but I would say it's not just a money question I think here it's also a cultural question it's a question of quality and it's a question of our self-perception where I would say we should reward more excellence and we should promote more excellence we should be less complacent and that would be my last remark in general because I think that Europe need to be less complacent the world around us is changing it's changing fast and we should take care that we are not protecting individual interests now and by that protecting the status quo instead of allowing for the long-term views that we need in order to make the necessary transition so there is a difference between what we collectively all of us need and that is transition and the long-term perspective and what the individual interests would wish because they will always be defending status quo and we cannot afford that we need to move forward faster thank you very much Mrs. Nabe, you have the last word thank you well three simple points first of all the positive messages there's so many opportunities we've only just started and there will be profound opportunities to change the way we work the way we live with new technologies in the coming years secondly the challenge I totally agree it is time for Europe to wake up we're a little bit leaning back it's time to lean forward we need to be much much more leveraging the diversity we have as a culture we need to be much better in scaling and we need to be much faster and finally my proposal is don't assume regulation will make it don't wait for others to try and make it happen it's about leaning forward I suggest this notion of instead of centralizing or decentralizing let's go for the platform idea it's proven its power and I would have concrete four platforms that we need to inspire people in Europe to to be part of healthcare will be a big issue let's tackle it now before it's too late energy how do we optimize the energy use so that we get much more gross opportunities education is a very key topic and how do we leverage diversity in Europe and of course as a technologist the next generation mobile internet will be a huge driver of connecting people everywhere with people everywhere in much more secure ways than what we've seen so far so with that last sentence don't wait take the lead thank you well thank you very much to all of our panelists I think I'm certainly not going to try to sum this up especially as we're running about three or four minutes late but I think in terms of the concept of this meeting the Central Asia Europe Europe Central Asia connection Europe may be a little less powerful in its soft power than it was in the past but I think certainly from what you were saying Mr. Kellan Betov you still look to Europe in terms of some of the standards the investment and ultimately we're looking to you as part of our future from a resource standpoint and the interlinkages that are likely to be there so there's still things I think that we're learning and being able to work with each other on but for Europe in general I perhaps I would take Connie's last remarks about being less complacent and certainly not judging our success simply against our own standards and our own limits and challenges but to look at the world well beyond Europe because the challenges that are coming certainly as you said from China from India as I think we heard from the floor really make this a moment that we have to think about very carefully in terms of the future next choices we take not centralizing perhaps platforming so with that let me turn over to Steve Kinick who is going to say some closing words Steve thank you very much Robin and ladies and gentlemen honored guests it has indeed been a pleasure and an honor to have you all with us over the last day and a half here in Vienna I would also very much like to thank the government of Austria for their fantastic hospitality it's been a pleasure to work with those colleagues and also to allow us to use this humble meeting place here at the Hofburg when we develop the concept for this meeting we thought about two elements really the head and the heart I think it's very much in line with the European project which has always been something about a logical need to do what needs to be done but also an emotional one I think on the side of the head we realize that we need to be hardheaded Europe cannot I think as the panelists have already said can't compete anymore on the basis of price on low labor costs on taxation it has to compete on the basis of quality and if you want to compete on the basis of quality you have to innovate you also have to integrate and I think that's another key part of the message from this meeting innovate and integrate and integration is very much about breaking down these silos our sense is that there's a perception that this region Europe and Central Asia is almost divided along three lines Western Europe what some people might call old Europe the new countries and accession countries of the European Union in the second block and then the former Soviet space but I think one of the things that this meeting has demonstrated is there's a huge amount more that unites us than divides us the challenges that this region faces in terms of all of the issues that we've looked at today they're common challenges around labor markets around talent mobility around the efficient use of resources why we divide the region into these silos is not that clear to me and that's I think a point that we have wanted to demonstrate in that in this meeting we've also felt that Vienna is the perfect location in that context being the gateway between east and west and that's where we've met over the last day and a half in terms of the heart and the rationale for this meeting I think what's clear is that Europe's good at self-criticism there's quite a lot of beating ourselves up about all of the problems and the challenges and it's clear that those exist but as we've heard today there are also a huge number of opportunities and actually some great success stories in terms of what this region has achieved and what it can achieve to the future so one of the messages for us has been let's keep that if you like that emotional connection with what we've achieved and look beyond the crisis start to really think in a more long-term perspective about what needs to be done I think the importance of those messages has been reflected also by the profile of our participants we've been proud to have here 13 heads of state and government over 150 CEOs representing over 40 companies in the Fortune 500 we've had also we're very proud to say that we have had over 30 leaders from civil society including the trade union movement who've had a strong voice in this meeting so looking back over the last day and a half what are the key takeaways and we've had a number of them here on the panel I think that I in a sense I think you could put them into three Ds I think a large part of it has been about demystifying there's some areas that we've been looking at which have been a bit of a mystery I think to other parts of the region and I hope we've been able to take you on a demystification our journey if you like I think the other key D is around dialogue dialogue is the foundation to taking action and taking action together and I think that the when we talk about the platforms that the panel and Mr. Snaper in particular has mentioned I think we've I hope we've created here a platform this meeting has been a platform a platform for the dialogue that is so important to drive the collaboration that we need and finally about drive I think I felt a lot of drive coming from our participants a lot of people saying we can't just sit back and wait we need to take responsibility we need to take action policymakers, business leaders, civil society need to step up to the plate and I think as Mr. Djelic said help yourself and Europe will help you it's about individual action but also a sense of solidarity so I hope with those three Ds along with all of the other key takeaways from this meeting you will go on to collaborate to continue to innovate and to integrate I wish you success as you do that and I look forward to meeting you all again thank you