5th Lennart Meri Conference Discusses Future of Capitalism
Today is the opening of the fifth annual Lennart Meri Conference in Tallinn, with foreign and defense ministers, economists and foreign policy analysts among guests.
This year's conference, running through May 13, is titled “The Future of Democratic Capitalism”. "This is what's in the air right now, this is what has been cropping up through various events in the past years," the event's chief organizer, Kadri Liik of the International Center for Defense Studies, told uudised.err.ee.
"But there exists also the whole rest of the world that hasn't been living in the way we are used to, and where some are challenging the Western economic and social model. Take China, for example, which practises authoritarian capitalism. In the Arab world, on the other hand, certain movements have surfaced, seeking more freedom and breaking of old chains."
Although the current feverish and multi-level changes would be difficult to align under a single headline, Liik said, "we felt that this would be a fitting theme for us."
The issues on the agenda include the economy of the Eurozone, relationships between major EU member states, recent changes in Russian society and politics, the crisis in Syria and the wider Middle East, the US presidential elections, developments in the cyber landscape, the program of NATO’s Chicago Summit, and many other topical problems.
One of the key speakers will be European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs Olli Rehn, arriving from Brussels, where he is to present on Friday a number of predictions relating to European and global economic developments. The Tallinn conference will hopefully be the place to discuss those predictions in a more relaxed setting, Liik said.
"We shall try to match different perspectives. Latvian experience of the crisis has surely been very different from Irish or Finnish experience, so we need to put those pieces together and see what kind of wisdom will come from it."
The webcast of the conference can be followed here.
Erkki Sivonen