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Preview of the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum 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 will attend the four-day event in the Alpine resort, but what could be more revealing is which leaders are bypassing the forum.
While Donald Trump, who will be sworn in as US president on Monday, is expected to address the forum via live video link on Thursday, several key leaders will be completely absent from the event.
They 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 industrialized countries of the Group of Seven (G7), which includes the United States, Europe’s largest economies, Canada and Japan, the only head of state to personally attend the summit is the outgoing German chancellor, Olaf Scholz.
The WEF says this year’s event, the 55th annual forum, which will take place from Monday to Thursday, will bring together nearly 3,000 leaders from more than 130 countries, and the meeting will “demonstrate the critical need for dialogue in an era increasingly uncertain. It notes that 350 government leaders, including 60 heads of state and government, “will meet in Davos-Klosters to address pressing challenges and shape emerging opportunities.”
People walk past a large screen during U.S. President Donald Trump’s speech on January 26, 2018 at the Davos Congress Center (C), home of the annual World Economic Forum (WEF), in the city of Davos, Al eastern Switzerland. / AFP PHOTO / MIGUEL MEDINA (Photo credit should read MIGUEL MEDINA/AFP via Getty Images)
Miguel Medina | AFP | fake images
The theme of the event is “Collaboration for the Smart Era”, and the agenda focuses on five key areas: reinventing growth, industries in the smart era, 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, of China, of India, who gave the opening speeches 10 years ago, are not there now. Russia has not been welcomed for some years, Keir Starmer is not going to be there. Macron is not going to be there. there,” Jan Aart Scholte, professor of global transformations and governance challenges at Leiden University, told CNBC on Thursday.
“It’s true that the prime minister of Spain will be there and there will be a couple more, but the general image of the heads of state and government that are there is that they are not the big players. I think that if you were to go through a G20 list, “It will be a small minority (that will attend),” he said.
No official reason is often given for lack of participation in the WEF, but pressing domestic problems – ranging from slowing economic growth to political crises – are known to keep heads of government at home.
Xi Jinping, President of China, speaks during the opening plenary session of the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, Tuesday, January 17, 2017.
Jason Alden | Bloomberg | fake images
In recent years, there has also been some ambivalence about attending an event that has been accused of being elitist and disconnected.
CNBC has contacted the WEF for comment. The forum has repeatedly stated that it provides a space where stakeholders from all sectors of business, government, academia, civil society, media and the arts can “come together on a global, impartial and non-profit platform” .
These people, he says, “come together to find common ground and seize opportunities to make positive changes on big global issues.”
Who will be there?
Several big names will join this year’s summit, an event that began in 1971 under the auspices of Klaus Schwab, who was executive chairman of the event until earlier this year.
Ding Xuexiang, the vice prime minister of China, the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Javier Milei, the prime minister of Argentina, and Cyril Ramaphosa, the president of South Africa, will give speeches in Davos this week.
The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, will also attend, as well as the leaders of global organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, the World Health Organization and the World Trade Organization.
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 Gerón | Reuters
Sven Smit, senior partner at WEF strategic partner McKinsey & Company, said in online comments that it would be a priority for participants to “understand what the leaders in Davos think.”
“You can’t completely predict it, there are themes that people suggest, ranging from growth to sustainability, but what is distilled as a Davos theme is not completely predictable and that’s the interesting part,” Smit said.
However, many of the Western institutions present have found themselves, in recent years, on the wrong side of an anti-globalization push by populist leaders like Trump and countries like Russia and China.
The WEF has also fallen out of favor with this anti-establishment tendency, Scholte noted, and while the presence of leaders like Trump may not have been sought in the past, it is now accepted that the world has changed.
“I don’t think the promoters of a liberal and open world economy speak as disdainfully, say, of opposing forces and viewpoints as they might have done, say, before the global financial crisis,” he said.
“I think there’s a little more modesty that, no, sometimes it doesn’t quite work. And no, we haven’t always taken enough into account those who feel left out of this.”
However, he highlighted that the WEF remained an attraction for many business and political leaders.
“There are several indicators that a site like the World Economic Forum is not as strong a magnet as it might have been a couple of decades ago,” Scholte said. “But the idea that it’s no longer a magnet, and the idea that it also doesn’t have certain areas within global economic governance where it can still be very strong, I think would be wrong.”
