Prisa Group Chairman Joseph Oughourlian during his welcome speech at the World in Progress forum.Massimiliano Minocri
Hope versus fear. Political imagination versus intellectual paralysis. A global and European perspective versus nationalism and the self-centered views of particular interests. Ideas and reflection versus the noise and hoaxes of social networks. It is not usual for intellectuals, politicians and entrepreneurs to meet in Barcelona the way they did this past Sunday and Monday to debate at World in Progress Barcelona (WIPB), an ambitious project by Prisa Group — the parent company of EL PAÍS — to institutionalize an international meeting in the style of the great annual economic and political forums of the world.
The outlook is dramatic and prone to the kind of fatalism that leads to inaction and impotence. Uncertainty is at its peak, with two wars with no end in sight, in Ukraine and in the Middle East, and elections in the United States that will decide the role that the world’s once sole superpower will play in the new multipolar disorder. All these circumstances “can have serious consequences on our national and family economies,” said the chairman of Prisa Group, Joseph Oughourlian, in his welcome speech at the WIPB. The great challenges range from globalization to the daily lives of citizens and therefore require, according to Oughourlian, “panoramic and experienced views.”
Former Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi opened the debate early in the morning with a broad vision that ranged from Europe’s declining demographics to the EU’s backwardness in artificial intelligence. Extreme formulas, such as those triggered by the arrival of immigrants, are of no use. Not the far-right’s theory about a native population in freefall being replaced by foreigners arriving in Europe, nor the proposal of closing the borders and confining Europeans in a fortress hostile to the outside world. Renzi’s speech echoed the ideas of two other distinguished Italians who were quoted extensively at the forum, two former prime ministers like himself, Enrico Letta and Mario Draghi, the latter also former governor of the European Central Bank and the hero who promised “whatever it takes” to preserve the euro. Both men are the authors of two crucial documents for the future of Europe commissioned by the European Commission: the first, on the New Single Market that Europe needs and the second, on the future of Europe’s weak competitiveness.
It is no coincidence that Renzi, as mayor of Florence, proposed dedicating one euro to culture for every euro spent on security, an idea in line with the freedom of movement within the Single Market, that of research, innovation and education, which Letta proposes to add to the freedoms of movement of goods, capital, services and people. This fifth freedom is perhaps the secret to the recovery of competitiveness that Draghi is suggesting, as well as green and digital reindustrialization and the construction of a genuine defense industry. Without talent in free circulation in Europe, Europe loses.
Renzi is not worried about artificial intelligence, but about “the natural stupidity of populism.” The U.S. presidential election was also a topic of debate between the former Spanish foreign minister, Arancha González Laya, and the former U.S. ambassador to Madrid, Julissa Reynoso, regarding the political future of stupidity. “Our problem is not Donald Trump and our solution is not Kamala Harris,” according to González Laya. “Our problem is us Europeans and our ability to respond to the challenges we face.” For Reynoso, November 5 “will decide in which direction the country will evolve, between a candidacy of hope and increasingly perfect union, which is Harris’ world, and on the other side, another based on division, marking the differences of identities, ideologies and classes, which is Trump’s world.”
Alongside the creative Italian ideas, there were also expressions of hope, both in Spanish and in Catalan, in the speeches by the mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni; the regional premier of Catalonia, Salvador Illa; the Catalan government’s chief for the European Union and Foreign Affairs, Jaume Duch, and Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. For Collboni, “the name of this forum is in itself a call for optimism, for a world in progress, an approach that we enthusiastically defend.” According to Illa, “there is an urgent need to recover a politics of hope that overcomes the politics of fear in a context marked by the rise of the far right, of populisms of different kinds, of disinformation and of tension.”
The speech by Duch also reflected the hopeful expectations of a Catalonia with its own European policy, based on the correlation between the new policies that the EU is going to launch based on Draghi and Letta’s recommendations, and the needs of Catalan society. Catalonia wants alliances in Europe, but above all with the government of Spain, all guided by mutual loyalty in a world, according to Duch, of “international interrelations” that are no longer limited to the governments of the EU member states, but encompass all levels of governance, institutions and civil society.
Xavier Bertrand, former French Minister of Labor and president of the Hauts-de-France region, expressed a similar view regarding his relations with Brussels. He reiterated his intention to run for the 2027 presidential election for his party, Les Républicains. His region, committed to green and digital reindustrialization, faces the challenge of protectionism and American competition brought about by Joe Biden’s IRA (Inflation Reduction Act), and Bertrand regrets Brussels’ weak reaction. The EU, he says, “must become a power and not just an economic and commercial space.” The former minister also advocated the construction of a genuine European defense industry, the only circumstance that would allow a drastic reduction in the disproportionate purchases of military equipment from the United States.
Hope, but without ignoring the conflict, as reflected in the discussion on the war in Gaza and Lebanon, where Shlomo Ben Ami, the Israeli former foreign minister, expressed his skepticism about the two-state formula, for which he fought and negotiated so much when he was part of the government, and revived the old idea of the Jordanian-Palestinian confederation. Another former foreign minister, Spain’s José Manuel García-Margallo, disagreed with Ben Ami that it was only a political conflict between two national projects, and supported the thesis of an eternal and practically unsolvable civilizing conflict. Professor of Arab and Islamic Studies Luz Gómez, on the other hand, rejected the discussion on any formula, “be it one state, two, or three” that does not resolve the Palestinian dispossession, since without “reparation we will never achieve justice for the two communities and the two peoples.”
“Hope is not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.” These phrases by Václav Havel are very valid for the European policies that must be undertaken in the face of this globalized world that seems to be going backwards, instead of progressing as the title of the Barcelona forum suggests. And they are also valid for the most bitter and irresolvable conflicts, such as the two ongoing wars. There is shared fear regarding the outcome of the war in Ukraine and the achievement of peace between Israelis and Palestinians, but there also seems to be a broad consensus on what must be done, regardless of its difficulty. For Ukraine, accession into the EU and then into NATO, with full recovery of its sovereignty and territorial integrity. For the Middle East, the release of the hostages kidnapped by Hamas, a ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon, and security and full individual and collective rights for all, Israelis and Palestinians alike. That is, the two states, Israel, Palestine, peace.
WIP Barcelona is sponsored by Telefónica, Fundación La Caixa, Iberia, Indra and Naturgy, as well as Foment del Treball and Barcelona City Council. In collaboration with Roman and Thinking Heads.
Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition