The Forum will be a very exclusive event this year

As a unique opportunity for face-to-face meetings and discussions, the Economic Forum attracted several thousand people every year, including hundreds of entrepreneurs, politicians and experts. How is it now?

Zygmunt Berdychowski: Basically the same - it is also a face-to-face meeting. Unfortunately, because of the coronavirus, this year it will be held in Karpacz instead of Krynica, and in a much smaller group than last year. However, we still want to be part of the meetings industry, which guarantees all participants the possibility of real contact and direct conversation instead of just watching someone on a computer screen.

How many people will take advantage of this opportunity this year in Karpacz?

Approximately two thousand, which is half as much as last year.

That is still quite a lot, which is probably a great sanitary and logistical challenge under the current circumstances?

Indeed, and that is why we have made great efforts to organise this year's conference in very good sanitary conditions. There will be longer breaks, masks, disinfection and special gates measuring temperature at the entrance to the Conference Centre. We also have the possibility of examining people with elevated temperature.

Backstage conversations and unofficial meetings have always been as important as discussions during the Forum sessions. Is there room for that this year as well?

Of course there is - and this is exactly why we are organising the Forum this year, to provide our guests with such a meeting space, and this is the most often declared expectation on the part of those who have accepted our invitation. I am convinced that we will do an excellent job, because we all want to return to normal life and face-to-face contact.

Every year, the Economic Forum was attended by a large group of CEOs of well-known companies, politicians from the front pages of newspapers, and leading experts. They were a magnet for many entrepreneurs and journalists who could meet people who are otherwise difficult to access on a daily basis in Krynica. Has the list of such persons who will appear in Karpacz this year been already confirmed?

Yes, of course - the agenda is made available to all participants through a special Economic Forum application. I can assure you that the Forum level and the number of high-profile guests will not be different from last year's edition. Moreover, due to the smaller number of all participants, the Forum will be a very exclusive event this year. We will have guests who will be extremely interesting for the media.

So which members of the government will come to Karpacz?

We will only be able to inform about the Forum presence of the persons who are crucial for the political and economic life of Central Europe once they will have arrived in Karpacz. It has been our tradition not to talk about this before the Forum. The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Development, Jadwiga Emilewicz, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Culture and National Heritage, Piotr Gliński, and the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of State Assets, Jacek Sasin, are already in Karpacz. However, the announcements published in Rzeczpospolita in recent weeks have already featured key members of the state and local government administration, as well as important guests from abroad who have accepted our invitation. In this respect, the Economic Forum in Karpacz will be absolutely exceptional this year – firstly, because there are very few such events with the direct participation of participants, and secondly, due to the participation of high-profile persons both from Poland and abroad.

The title of this year's Economic Forum - Europe after the Pandemic - defines the leading theme of the event, although there are always many thematic tracks to choose from. What should attract the attention of participants this year?

Above all, participants to the event will have a unique opportunity to look at what is a real problem in the public debate in Europe today: they will be able to find out first-hand what the dispute in Belarus is about. The first public declarations, such as the one made by the member of the Coordination Council, Pavel Latushko, indicate that the Economic Forum in Karpacz will be a truly unique place. It is the first time that so many so important representatives of independent Belarusian politics - led by Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the leader of democratic circles in Belarus - have taken part in such a large political and economic event in Europe.

Other important topics include the functioning of the economy during the post-Covid-19 recovery period, or adapting to coronavirus-related restrictions. The changes triggered by the pandemic can already be seen everywhere. Mrs Merkel's declaration made already in May that the German government will defend German corporations against stock market takeovers by foreign capital best shows how the pandemic has radically changed the dogmas which have accompanied us for decades. After all, throughout the 1990s, we were constantly told that we must privatise everything, that capital has no nationality and that the more capital there is, the better.

A certain breakthrough in these dogmas has already been made as a result of the global financial crisis, when Western governments supported private banks in exchange for shares.

Now we have come to a time when the head of state with the strongest economy in Europe is saying something that must come out as a complete surprise to all those who remember the free market declarations from the last few years. The attitude of the European Central Bank, the European Commission or the US administration must be similarly baffling. They are now making decisions to print money, to incur massive debt without looking at the dogmas which until recently seemed unquestionable, such as the principle that the budget deficit must not exceed 3 proc. of GDP.

Now it turns out that all the governments in Europe and the governments of the most developed countries in the world are printing massive quantities of money, and no one considers it breaking the rules. On the contrary, everyone is saying with one voice that it is necessary to intervene, to behave actively. For the first time ever since the Great Depression, the role of the government as the guarantor of economic prosperity is again being emphasised with such force. This will certainly be an absolute novelty in the way we perceive reality post-Covid-19. In recent days, the President of France has declared that he will make another EUR 100 billion intervention to stimulate the French economy. It is hard to imagine that there will be no long-term consequences of such decisions, or that these consequences will fade with the end of the pandemic. They will result in a new way of thinking that will accompany us much longer. And it is these consequences of the coronavirus that we will be discussing in Karpacz in the first place.

What else should the Forum participants focus on this year?

We are also going to talk about the consequences that accompany the decisions of governments, as it were, in the background - after all, until recently, 90 proc. of the active substances in antibiotics were imported from China. Today, everyone already knows that this has to change, albeit not because someone wants to do harm to Europe or the US. However, we have seen that, as a result of circumstances that were previously unlikely to happen, such as the pandemic that stopped air transport, we have had huge problems in Europe with the supply of sufficient quantities of masks and antibiotics.

Something has happened that has never happened before in the history of globalisation. Suddenly it became clear that the traditional view of globalisation, where it was perceived as a straight track leading to ever greater benefits, had to change. It turned out that Europe, too, should have its own mask manufacturing plant and that globalisation, in addition to its undoubted benefits, also implies certain risks. We now know that we should keep this in mind when making the most important economic decisions. It is therefore necessary to ensure safety in a given area, either on the scale of individual countries or on the scale of the entire European Union. During these talks, we will also try to answer the question of what the healthcare model should be.

This year, primarily for sanitary and epidemiological reasons, for the first time the Economic Forum will be held in Karpacz instead of Krynica. Could this location turn out to be permanent?