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See ahead of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland on January 15, 2024.
Adam Galici | CNBC
LONDON – It’s that time of year when the great and the good gather for the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
A host of heads of state, politicians and business tycoons are set to attend the four-day event in the Alpine resort – but what could be more telling is that the leaders are leaving the forum.
While Donald Trump, who was inaugurated as US president on Monday, is expected to address the forum via a live video link on Thursday, a number of key leaders will be completely absent from the event.
These include Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping, as well as French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian leader Giorgia Meloni and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Of the Group of Seven (G7) industrialized nations – which includes the United States, Europe’s largest economies, Canada and Japan – the only head of state attending the summit in person is German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
WEF says this year’s event – the 55th annual forum, which takes place from Monday to Thursday – will bring together nearly 3,000 leaders from more than 130 countries, with the meeting “demonstrating the critical need for dialogue in an increasingly uncertain”. He notes that 350 heads of government, including 60 heads of state and government, “will gather in Davos-Klosters to address pressing challenges and shape emerging opportunities.”
People walk past a big screen during the speech of US President Donald Trump on January 26, 2018 at the Davos Congress Center (C), the venue of the World Economic Forum (WEF), in the city of Davos , in eastern Switzerland. / AFP PHOTO / MIGUEL MEDINA (Photo credit should read MIGUEL MEDINA / AFP via Getty Images)
Miguel Medina | Afp | Getty Images
The theme of the event is “The Collaboration for the Intelligent Age”, with the agenda focused on five key areas: reimagining growth, industries in the intelligent age, investing in people, safeguarding the planted and rebuilding trust.
However, not all world leaders will be there to discuss these issues.
“The leaders of Brazil, China, India, who gave keynote speeches 10 years ago, are not here now. Russia has not been welcomed for many years, Keir Starmer will not be here. it won’t be here,” Jan Aart Scholte, professor of global transformation and governance challenges at Leiden University, told CNBC on Thursday.
“True, the prime minister of Spain will be there and there are a couple of others, but the general picture of the heads of state, of government that are there is that they are not the big players. I think it will happen. a list of the G20, will be a small minority [who are attending]”, he said.
There is often no official reason for the lack of participation in the WEF, but pressing domestic issues – ranging from slowing economic growth to political crises – have been known to keep heads of government at home.
Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks during the opening plenary session of the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2017.
Jason Alden | Bloomberg | Getty Images
In recent years, there is also some ambivalence about attending an event that has been accused of being elite and out of touch.
CNBC has contacted WEF for comment. The forum has repeatedly stated that it provides a space where actors from business, government, academia, civil society, media and the arts can “meet on a global, impartial, non-profit platform”.
These people, he says, “come together to find common ground and seize opportunities for positive change in major global issues.”
Who will be there
A number of big names will also join this year’s summit – an event that started in 1971 under the aegis of Klaus Schwab, who was the event’s executive chairman until the beginning of this year.
Ding Xuexiang, the vice president of China, the president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Javier Milei, the prime minister of Argentina and Cyril Ramaphosa, the president of South Africa, are all giving speeches in Davos this week.
The head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, will also attend, as will the heads of global organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, the World Health Organization and the World Health Organization the Commerce.
Ursula von der Leyen reacts after being elected president of the European Commission for a second term, at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, on July 18, 2024.
Johanna Geron | Reuters
Sven Smit, a senior associate at WEF’s strategic partner McKinsey & Company said in online comments that it would be a priority for participants to “understand what is on the minds of the leaders who are in Davos.”
“You can’t fully predict, there are themes that people suggest, ranging from growth to sustainability, but what distills as a Davos theme is not fully predictable and that’s the interesting part,” said Smit.
However, many of the Western institutions present have, in recent years, found themselves on the wrong side of a push against globalization by populist leaders like Trump, and countries like Russia and China.
The WEF, too, fell out of this anti-establishment trend, Scholte noted, and while the presence of leaders like Trump was not sought in the past, there is now an acceptance that the world has changed.
“I don’t think the promoters of a liberal and open world economy speak with as much disdain, let’s say, of opposing forces and viewpoints as they did, say, before the global financial crisis,” he said.
“I think there is a little more modesty that, no, sometimes it doesn’t work completely. And no, we don’t always take enough into account those who feel excluded from it.”
However, he stressed that the WEF was still an attraction for many business and political leaders.
“There are various indicators that a site like the World Economic Forum is not as strong a magnet as it could have been a couple of decades ago,” said Scholte. “But the idea that it’s no longer a magnet, and the idea that it doesn’t still have some areas in the world economic government where it can still be very strong, I think that would be wrong.”
