Very happy that you are all here. We have a beautiful day before us and I think some very big highlights. I just wanted to very quickly introduce the idea. We had the first Berlin Summit last year to gather a lot of brilliant thinkers thinking new economic thinking around the world, and especially about how to win back the people. That was our theme last year in the super-election year '24, when we tried to stop what came up—this next wave of populists—and to discover how to stop it and how to make people less angry, in a way. That led to the Berlin Declaration, as you probably know, that a lot of people signed. It had a lot of feedback in the media—German media, international media, Le Monde, and others have covered it. Since then, we have been working on this idea of new principles of economic policies and so on, and also on how to confront these challenges like populism.
As you know, when we talked about winning back the people, in November someone else won the people—at least half of the Americans—and that led to some trouble that we are living through now, and some big trouble. So the question for us is also: what does it mean? Was it not successful to try and have this declaration? We think it is still important to have these, and to now think beyond. That's what we want to do, what we have already done in smaller groups yesterday and the day before, and that we want to do today: think beyond, and think about how can we prepare for the time after, let's say. What can we think of doing better in economic policies, coping with industrial policies, climate policies, inequality, and so on? Because this will be important, hopefully. Certainly at some point, this very difficult time will be over, and it's very important to prepare for this time and to win back the people against the populists and authoritarians. That's what we chose as the title photo, which is not a real photo, as you may imagine, but very much tries to show what we have in mind: getting out of the trouble and into a better future.
Today we will have a quick overview of our program. Adam Tooze will, in a minute, start with his keynote. We will discuss the German challenge, which is a little example for more challenges which are today in the room and in the world: how to cope with globalization shocks, with a lot of shocks that different countries—the US and Germany—have lived through, and currently the German economy. We want to very much discuss how to get out of this, what to learn from this, and from this example also to learn how to better manage globalization. Leaving German austerity behind is a big topic in the last couple of months on fiscal policy. What does that mean? What has happened in Germany? Is that the end of austerity? We will have a specific session on new global governance in the afternoon, where we'll discuss how to manage different kinds of industrial policy, strategic policies, and so on, and how to make this cooperative global governance. We have a keynote from Isabella Weber afterwards. Then some going around for you and for us: there's a gallery of ideas downstairs, there's a history of economic thought exposition downstairs which you can consult, and some other features. We will also present some of the ideas that have been presented in the workshops yesterday and the day before, and then pass to the next step, to the keynote of James Galbraith in the talk with Maja Göpel, and a late meet-and-greet with Adam Tooze, who accepted to join you and have a very informal talk to finish the day. That's what we want to do, and I would like to pass over to Adam for his keynote. And yeah, welcome.
