In front of a full hall at the EXPO Congress Center in the city of Nur-Sultan, Largarde pointed out that while 75% of the global economy experienced growth in 2018, the indicators for 2019 show that 70% of the world’s GDP is “slowing down.”

“I’m not suggesting that there is a recession,” she said, “but this is a delicate moment for the world.” The growth expectations for 2019 are currently set at 3.3% with hopes of seeing them go up again to 3.6% in 2020, an expectation that rests, however, on additional financial tightening, as well as an easing of the recent trade tensions between international players, namely China and the US.

She highlighted that the kind of sustainable growth the world needed was the one that could “lift the prospects of women, young people, the poor, and those who live in rural areas,” which would include the offer to secure the well-being of future generations.

With regards to women’s well-being and the fulfillment of their potential in Kazakhstan, she was pleased with the 65% of female participation in the work force, both in the public and private sectors, which is the highest percentage in the region, and “a benchmark in Central Asia.”

Lagarde pointed out that the Caucasus and Central Asia (CCA) region will continue to “play a key role” in stimulating economic growth, which so far has been close to 4% across the region, she reported.

Within the context of the 2019 Astana Economic Forum, the IMF’s Managing Director also met with Finance Ministers and Governors of Central Banks of the CCA region and Eurasian Union countries. This year, the Eurasian Economic Union celebrates its 5th anniversary, a unifying project that was first envisioned 25 years ago by Kazakhstan’s First President, Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Representing Georgia, a key player in the CCA region, Prime Minister Mamuka Bakhtadze stood behind the podium and extolled the vision of Kazakhstan’s leaders for the prosperous development of the whole CCA region, and asserted that the country is one of Georgia’s “most important partners.” A roadmap for an agreement to increase trade between the two nations was signed the same week. Bakhtadze underlined that Georgia is the only country in the region to have a Free Trade Agreement with the EU and China, and one of the first countries to join the Belt and Road initiative. “We are determined to keep this pace,” he said.

Known as the “Davos of Central Asia”, the Astana Economic Forum has brought together leaders and business experts from all around the world to debate and try to find solutions to the world’s economic and social challenges. The first editions took place in 2008 and this year the focus of the Forum was shaped around one axis: Inspiring Growth – People, Cities, Economies. All of these topics were explored in detail, with all their facets and inter-dependencies, over the course of two days and across more than fifty panel discussions and round tables.

Some of the luminaries and world leaders attending this year’s Forum included the 2018 Nobel Prize winner in Economics and former Chief Economist at the World Bank, Paul Romer; UN Women Deputy Executive Director, Åsa Regnér; Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, Jeffrey Sachs; UN’s Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana; former Vice Chairman of the US Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Stanley Fischer; UNDP’s Director of the Regional Bureau for Europe and the CIS, Mirjana Egger; Nobel Peace Prize winner, Rae Kwon Chung; Harvard Professor of Economics and former Chief Economist at the IMF, Ken Rogoff, among many others.

In Paul Romer’s keynote speech, he regretted the fact that for many years, the majority of economists and politicians believed in the “fiction of a minimal state” as the ideal model. These days some companies are becoming so powerful that governments can no longer “make nor enforce laws” when it comes to such firms. In Romer’s view, an ideal government is narrow in the tasks it chooses to take on — leaving plenty of leeway for the market to act — but is strong enough to enforce the law every step of the way and for everyone. It is paramount to make sure that “big companies will do the best for everyone, not just for the few.”

The Nobel laureate finished his speech by warning the audience about the biggest risk the world faces now, which is that if leaders can’t deliver a narrow yet powerful government, the will of the people might morph into a blind desire “for a strong leader instead of a strong government. And history shows how dangerous that can be.”

The trade spat between China and the US was subject of constant discussion throughout the Forum. Former Vice Chairman of the US Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Stanley Fischer, stated that the US President is trying to do by imposing tariffs is not a “trivial change in policy.” He recalled how the US imposed tariffs in the 1930’s during the great depression, a contrast with the expansion of global trade right after the war, from about 1946 and until 2006. “My point is that we just don’t know what the effect of those tariffs would have been if World War II had happened.”

He shrugged off the attacks that President Trump has been conducting against the US Federal Reserve on the basis that the risk of inflation in the US is “a myth.” Fischer noted that if the Fed had reduced interest rates by 100 basis points, as President Trump had wanted, the consequences would have been severe. “The Fed won’t do it. They know it would be a mess.”

During the panel discussion about the current state of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Columbia Professor, Jeffrey Sachs, called the public’s attention to the fact that just this past week, the temperature in the Arctic reached 29 degrees Celsius. “The deterioration is happening a lot faster than we thought. We are already in a dire situation.”

He expressed concern over the fact that politicians seem to be fixed on the idea “of short term results,” not for the future that is needed. “The current political system does not align with our human needs because it is very ‘present oriented.’

Sachs restated the importance of the SDGs because the “is what really matters. Education, a safe climate, biodiversity, ending inequalities. “We need to end the existing bias in politics and business. Politicians and business incumbents -the fossil fuel industry, for instance- they need to redefine themselves, adapt sustainable models. It is long overdue.”

The post Astana Economic Forum 2019: World Leaders gather in Kazakhstan to address current economic challenges appeared first on Brussels Express.

The Brussels-Capital Region comprises a total of 542,000 households, each of which spends an average of €9,200 every year on consumer goods and services.

As part of this total figure, Brussels-dwellers spend €1.5 billion each year on ‘light-weight semi-permanent’ goods such as clothing, shoes, books, and sports goods.

“Brussels City Center, which hosts nearly 3,000 sales outlets, 700 of which are specialised in the sale of such semi-permanent consumer goods, attracts more than a quarter of the market’s total consumer expenditure,” said hub.brussels in their report. “The rest of the market for such goods is largely concentrated in three other places, including the Woluwe Shopping Centre (10.6% of market share), the Haut de la Ville (8.7%), and the Westland Shopping Centre (5.6%).”

The study also shows that households in Brussels spend €1 billion each year on ‘heavy semi-permanent goods’, such as hardware and furniture.

“The purchase of heavy, semi-permanent goods in Brussels is concentrated in several places,” said the report. “The Brussels IKEA is the most popular location for purchases, and collects more than 10% of the total market share. Other popular places to shop for such goods are the Brussels City Center (9.2%), the Zaventem IKEA (8.4%), and the Basilix Shopping Centre (5.5%).”

The post Brussels dwellers spend more than €5 billion a year on shopping appeared first on Brussels Express.

This figure is at odds with the number officially claimed by the Belgian government, which has stated that the majority of the 160,000 private sector jobs created in this period were due to its labour cost-cutting reforms.

European Commission’s strategy called into question

IRES’s analysis calls into question the economic strategy of the European Commission, which imposes a policy of ‘wage moderation’ (i.e. suppression) on its member states which, it claims, boosts competitiveness. This new study, however, suggests that the impact of such moderation on job creation is low, and moreover that such a strategy can encourage an unhealthy ‘race to the bottom’ of member states’ social security systems.

The post Belgian labour market reforms only created 30,000 private sector jobs according to UCL study appeared first on Brussels Express.

Speaking at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Varoufakis labelled the EU an “authoritarian” and “opaque” institution, whose imposition of austerity measures on Greece over the last ten years has been “about as effective as a nuclear bomb”.

“The architecture of the monetary, financial, and political European system simply could not sustain the shockwave of the financial crisis of 2008,” Varoufakis explained. “Subsequently, the largest loan in history was paid to a bankrupt state, Greece, with conditions attached to it that were guaranteed to shrink incomes by one quarter. A nuclear bomb would have been about as effective as the policies pursued by the EU.”

Varoufakis went on to deny that Greece is a sovereign country. “Alexis Tsipras [the Greek Prime Minister] is in government, but not in power,” he said. “All legislation is written in Brussels. We don’t have democracy in Europe. We have a ruthless, brutal, cowardly fig-leaf of democracy – we have an oligarchy.”

Varoufakis also claimed that, by failing to address the legitimate grievances of European citizens, particularly those in Southern Europe, “the EU has treated the citizens of Europe the way the British Empire used to treat India.” He then suggested that the EU bears significant responsibility for the rise of right-wing populism across Europe.

“We have an inane political and economic system. On top of that, we are constantly postponing re-designing the system so that it will work. Then we wonder why European monsters – Salvini, Le Pen, Orban – appear.”

In spite of his harsh criticism of the EU, Varoufakis rejected the notion that he was a “Eurosceptic”.

“There is a popular view today that you must either be a Europhile or a Eurosceptic,” he said. “I reject this dichotomy. You must be sceptical – you must criticise – in order to save; to make the EU worth saving.”

Varoufakis was also at pains to stress the “collective” nature of Europe’s current problems – which include low growth, high unemployment, and rising inequality – and that the answer to them is “more Europe, not less”.

“There is no such thing as the ‘Greek Crisis’”, he said. “There is only the European Crisis. We are all in this together. We are all experiencing the crisis differently.”

“We need to move beyond the nation-state conception of European politics,” he continued. “We need a transnational movement.”

To highlight this fact, Varoufakis, a Greek, is running as a representative of Germany in the upcoming European Parliament elections. He will be a candidate for DiEM-25: the “Democracy in Europe Movement 2025”, which Varoufakis co-founded in 2015.

The central component of DiEM-25’s platform – other than to democratise the EU institutions – is to fund a “Green Transition”. This would involve the utilisation of the resources of the European Investment Bank and the ECB to invest in green jobs, green infrastructure, and green research and development, as well as to provide poverty relief for Europe’s most vulnerable citizens.

“The only alternative to transnationalism,” Varoufakis warned, “is to recoil to the level of the nation-state. This would be a victory for racism and fascism. We need a truly European demos, which is a prerequisite for having a truly European democracy.”

Varoufakis also touched on other issues during the event, including French President Emmanuel Macron’s call for the creation of a European army.

“Before we create an army, we need to look after our poor, we need to look after the environment,” he said. “And let’s not forget that Europe has committed one crime after another over the last few centuries. We had colonialism. More recently, we’ve destroyed Libya, Iraq and Syria. We need real democratic sovereignty before we have an army. Otherwise, who would be responsible for sending people to kill on our behalf?”

On the migrant crisis, Varoufakis said: “We at DiEM-25 don’t recognise the difference between refugees and migrants. ‘Oh, you were shot at, so we care about you.’ ‘Oh, your child is starving, we don’t care about you.’ No. We must let them in.”

“We don’t believe in ‘Fortress Europe’. We need to move beyond that mentality. Moreover, Europe is ageing. We need migrants.”

The post “The European Union’s policies have been as effective as a nuclear bomb” – Varoufakis at the ULB appeared first on Brussels Express.

Test-Achats wanted to know which expenses are the most problematic for a Belgian household. Six categories have been established: housing, health care, daily nutrition, mobility, culture and recreation, and education.

The study shows that only 39% of the population feels feels financially at ease about all these points.

56% of Belgians report difficulties in at least one of the six areas investigated, while 5% in the study are considered to be in a situation of poverty.

The post Two out of three households in Belgium face difficulties to save money appeared first on Brussels Express.

The center will be dedicated to the research of fuel cells and hydrogen propulsion. In total, 150 engineers will work there from its inauguration and this number could rise to about 200 people in the long term.

If the company, which is listed on the Paris Stock Exchange, remains silent about the future location of the research center, L’Echo understands that Neder-Over-Heembeek, where Plastic Omnium already occupies offices on the campus of the Solvay group, constitutes an attractive location.

The post Brussels will welcome at least 150 new expats: Plastic Omnium to invest 50 million Euro in the city appeared first on Brussels Express.

In case you were in the EU quarter on Friday, you surely heard about the Gilets Jaunes. As a quick reminder, this movement is originally from France and is (supposed to be) composed of random people who complain about their purchasing power and the high level of taxes.

This very recent movement has easily crossed the border over the last few weeks, and several demonstrations have already been held in Wallonia. Brussels was quite an exception so far, but the demonstrations on Friday have made an end to this exception.

Some videos and pictures were quite impressive. A sort of mini-riot has taken place on Arts-Loi. The policemen used water jets as well as firecrackers to disperse the protesters. Rue de La Loi was blocked for a significant part of the day, and even two police vans were burnt.

The demonstrators also grabbed stoned from the streets and used them as projectiles. Road signs were destroyed.

It seems some policemen have been injured due to the fights they’ve had with the Gilets Jaunes. “We are the people, Charles Michel you’re done”. That’s what dozens of people were screaming when the march reached its highest point.

The Belgian government quickly reacted to the disruptions.  “No impunity for inadmissible violence in Brussels. The street thugs and scavengers must be subject to sanctions,” wrote Charles Michel, the Federal Prime minister, on Twitter.

Jan Jambon, the Federal minister for Home affairs, also denounced the violent disruptions.

It is then up to the judicial authorities to decide what kind of sanctions will be imposed.

The demonstrations however might continue over the upcoming days.

The post Two police vans were burned and more than 80 persons arrested in Brussels: Gilets Jaunes movement appeared first on Brussels Express.

Only in France the sum of taxes and social contributions, relative to gross domestic product (GDP), is higher than in Belgium, according to Eurostat.

The overall tax revenue / GDP ratio was 47.3% in Belgium in 2017, compared to 46.7% in 2016.

In France, this ratio is 48.4%.

In Denmark, it went down from 46.8% in 2016 to 46.5% last year. The EU average was 40.2%, compared with 39.9% in 2016.

Belgium was the most heavily taxed country in Europe

In 2015, Belgium still had the highest tax burden in the EU, before it fell sharply in 2016.

The post Belgium overtakes Denmark and becomes the 2nd most heavily taxed country in Europe appeared first on Brussels Express.

This was the theme of the conference-debate organized by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry France-Belgium, at BNP Paribas Fortis headquarters in the center of Brussels, last evening on September 17. Enhanced by the presence of the Ambassador of France in Belgium, Claude-France Arnould and presented by Rénaud Bentégeat, President of CCI Belgium France, this conference brought together more than 100 people from the French-Belgian economic world, alumni and prospective students.

Nearly 150 years old, Science Po Paris was founded at the end of the 19th century during the post-war-period crisis. Frédéric Mion, Director of Science Po Paris, first put forward the main foundations of Science Po Paris: starting with the challenge of multi-disciplinarity. Training men and women in a complex world, as we know it today, requires positioning the institution at a crossroad of different disciplines, ranging from law, social sciences to international relations.

Science Po has managed to break down geographical and cultural boundaries, as such  these traits have become synonymous with the geographic and social diversity it represents through its students.

A third value for these men and women is not only the importance of theory’s contribution  but also the action during the course. In the pedagogical relationship, the main role is given to the student. They put into action « the real » via case studies or experiments. Finally, according to F. Mion, « We do not train super-technicians, but we train women and men to become who they are. We teach them pedagogical methods, tools and values. »

Science Po Paris is also its research and its 220 teachers/researchers who irrigate the teaching. One of the challenges for today’s responsible leaders is to be able to speak in the current debates, be it international politics, finance or sustainable development.

Concretely, Science Po Paris is comprised of 13,000 students, 4,500 professors and 2000 graduates per year. These graduates start working for both, the private and the public sector, and 40% of them are employed abroad. According to Marc de Fleurieu, Co-President of the Alumni, « nearly 1,000 former Science Po Paris alumni work in Brussels as Expats in European Affairs and in large, in Belgian or Franco-Belgian, or international companies. »

For those who are interested, there is a specific procedure to follow, including a selective test for foreign student applicants. Moreover, these prospective students -whether American, Chinese, Belgian or other- can follow the curriculum in another language. As such, they are not penalized for not being acquainted with the Franco-French curriculum or not knowing French.

The new campus, Campus 2022, with an area of 14,000 m² will bring together at the heart of Paris its current 23 locations. Besides its quality of teaching and research, remaining in Paris was a strategic choice but also an attractive element for students. Especially young Belgians and the Bruxellois.

« We are delighted to welcome this initiative in Brussels with more than 1000 Science Po alumni working in Brussels, or anywhere in Belgium, in the Institutional and Corporate world, » said Salvatore Orlando, Head of Expatriates Department at BNP Paribas Fortis. « Besides, it shows our important link with France, as well as with International students and professionals from all around the world. BNP Paribas Fortis supports the international professional mobility and working exchanges between the two countries. »

Science Po Paris will be returning to Brussels on November 27, 2018 for a fundraising event to ensure that it reaches its ambitions and the future of Science Po Paris.

The post Sciences Po and BNP Paribas Fortis forming the leaders of our globalized world appeared first on Brussels Express.

Several groups of citizens in Brussels have been working on the project to find an alternative local currency for a few months now. The idea was to launch a local currency that aims to support the development of an economic activity rooted in the territory and its local community, strengthen links between inhabitants through citizen participation as well as support activities that recognize and respect the « limits of the planet ».

The Zinne is planned to be launched by January 2019 and 1 Zinne will be exchanged for 1 euro.

If you’re interested in participating in its creation, a graphics contest has been launched to find a logo, and the model of the bill. You can request more information about the competition by contacting: concours@monnaiebruxelloise.be

Several other citizen currencies already exist in Belgium such as : Lumsou (Citizen Currency of the Namur Basin), SolAToi ( Citizen Currency of the municipality of Ath), The Val’Heureux (Liège), among others.

The post Zinne – the Brussels Citizen Currency appeared first on Brussels Express.