The Salzburg Trilogue opened my eyes to the world of high-standing personalities, outstanding visionaries and researchers of the sustainable future.

Introducing the ideas of the coming years, more than 50 political, business and societal leaders from the international stage came together on the closed, but unofficial in its manners high-level meeting, organized for the fourth time from the Bertelsmann foundation with the support of the Austrian Foreign Ministry.

The main topic of discussions was the economic development between countries with different living standards and the perception of these various realities in terms of balance, growth, improvement and renewal. The report "Building Blocks for Ethical Market Economies in the 21st century - Perspectives on qualitative growth from Europe, the Black Sea Region and Beyond", created especially for the needs of the conference, was done by one of the participants in it Dr. Stefan Bergheim, Founder and Director of the Center for Societal Progress in Frankfurt and Malte Boecker, coordinator of the event and Senior Expert and at the Bertelsmann Foundation. Thanks to the research, each speaker and observer of the Salzburg Trilogue was able to get into the roots of the topic, which referred to the perception of the GDP as the general and most reliable source of progress and welfare determination.

I had the possibility to hear the opinions of names as Tim Jackson (Professor of Sustainable Development, University of Surrey), Wolfgang Schuessel (Former Austrian Chancellor), Michael Best (ARD), Peter Blom (Triodos), Bo Ekman (Tallberg Foundation),  Dr. Wolfgang Ruttensdorfer (OMV), Werner Wutscher (RWE), Pascal Lamy (WTO),  Jerome C. Glenn (Executive Director, The Millennium Project), Victor L.L. Chu (Chairman First Eastern Investment Group, Hong Kong), Nikolay Mladenov (Bulgarian Minister of Foreign Affairs), Prof. Daniel Daianu (former Romanian Minister of Finance) and etc.

But despite of their speeches during the official modules, I believe the most important conversations were held during the breaks and the unofficial small talks. Too abstract and sometimes getting lost into drawing out the lines of the general framework over the economic development, the official modules, in which every participant had 3 minutes to speak, became a premise for too many differing directions of the conversations.

Following its main idea to connect and engage, the Bertelsmann foundation successfully linked the professionals and managed to give the impulse for real actions on political level, which will further develop during the coming multinational synergies. The Salzburg Trilogue offered the possibility for key figures from the main areas of governance to establish a fast connection for realistic strategic partnerships, to brain storm over key points connected with the emerging market economies, to share their observations over the crisis in reference of the perceptions for sustainable development and qualitative growth. It was the way to connect the mainstream topics with the real thoughts of the decision-makers of the day, so that real conclusions could be made in the coming post-phases after the forum.

The interesting mixture between CEO-s of famous companies, ex- and current governmental figures, media representatives, cultural delegates and scientists conducted to debates over the differences in the economic development and the reasoning of questions, concerning the emerging markets and especially the ones in the countries from the Black Sea region. It was exemplary and favoured mostly by the representatives of Romania, Albania, Greece and Bulgaria as the natural sources of real information for the region. The Bulgarian Minister Nikolay Mladenov declined to name the Black Sea area as region, because of its problematic vision according to the cooperation not only in between the countries, which are placed there, but also between them and the countries, who want to establish good relations with them, connected with the market enhancement, future investments. He pointed out that the reason for the problems is connected with the conflicts, which still continue to exist and drive to misunderstanding and impossibility for stable common projects there. However, the industries as transport and tourism seem as the perspective future of the region, if the national governments manage to lessen the crime level, to improve the international transport possibilities, to establish stable security systems and etc.

This lead to one of the main question in the dialogue between big and small: What offers the social market economy to the global market economy? The interaction seems possible; say ones, but another still doubt, that the change is possible in the current years. And exactly because the change comes very fast and not only the people and governments need to be flexible on national level, but the global communities and unions also need to be flexible in their core structures; the speed of change brings up with its different post effects to the different participants. The society wants to be heard, as one of the speakers indicated. This will lead to stability and better visibility of the governmental work. The good feedback means growth and communal sense. It is the vision of the democracy, which creates the good transition between the societal classes and stages of development, where people really take active part as in times of a crisis. Sometimes, however, democracy can’t manage the balance between quantity and quality and here is where the communication is paramount.

The need of understanding how the sustainability can affect each branch of the lifecycle is crucial, explained Prof. Tim Jackson. We don’t speak only for GDP anymore, continues Dr. Stefan Bergheim. The new measurement tools for the welfare and the standard of living will actually answer the questions, from which the European citizens mostly are interested. “We need to create new indicators,” explained the EC Policy officer Oliver Zwirner. But not only that. We need to know how it is apprehended by the media and hence, by the people. Not only that they will give information how the different democracies can better interact in between, although they are on different stage in their economic development, but they will underline how the mistakes of ones, can serve as an example for the forsaking of the future ones.

That is why we don’t need to accept the sustainable development only as a platform for building of new things, which consumes and promises gains after a long period of time. We must understand that by updating the old we can also manage to keep the balance, to answer the needs of the future generations and to use fewer resources. Still, the change begins with small steps. Just like the small steps the countries in the Black Sea region are willing to make.

Future Challenges of Bertelsmann Foundation