Wang Huiyao, Gülşen Karanis Ekşioğlu and Norbert Csizmadia (Photo: Róbert Hegedüs)
Dávid László
08/01/2025 06:01
In his opening speech, György Matolcsy, Governor of the Magyar Nemzeti Bank, stressed that three major super-trends are defining our times: the intensifying climate change, the technological revolution and the all-encompassing geopolitics. He stressed that Europe can only successfully ride these super-trends if it abandons the idea of creating a United States of Europe.
In his keynote speech, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said that the next period will be the century of Eurasia and that Hungary must be ready to be a winner in this period.
Following the opening ceremony, keynote speeches were delivered by Ludger Schuknecht, Vice President and Corporate Secretary of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Zhang Zongyi, President of Xiamen University, Madina Abylkassymova, Chair of the Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan for the Regulation and Development of the Financial Market and Li Hongyan, Deputy Head of the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange of China.
The two-day conference was divided into six panels. The first panel on the future financial system featured leading financial experts. In the second, a technology panel, Zhang Hui, Vice President of NIO, spoke among others about the technological trends that will shape the future. The third panel, on geopolitics, featured a fascinating discussion between Gülşen Karanis Ekşioğlu, Türkiye's Ambassador to Hungary, and Wang Huiyao, President of the Center for China and Globalization, moderated by Norbert Csizmadia, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the PADME and the John von Neumann University Foundation. At the end of the first day, Barnabás Virág, Deputy Governor of the central bank, presented Eurasianomics, a volume of studies on sustainable and innovative Eurasian economic strategies.
The second day opened with a discussion between Michael Syn, President of the Singapore Exchange and Richárd Végh, CEO of the Budapest Stock Exchange, followed by a fourth panel on the economic conditions for sustainable prosperity. The fifth panel, on multilateral cooperation, featured speeches by Márton Ugrósdy, Deputy State Secretary of the Prime Minister's Office, Levente Horváth, Director of the Eurasia Center, and Nurkhat Kushimov, Advisor of Executive Office of the Astana International Financial Centre. The sixth panel on education focused on building bridges between knowledge, technology and entrepreneurship, with Jiao Jie, Dean of Tsinghua University, Zhang Ji, Vice Dean of Fudan University, and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Director General of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, among others.
The author is editor of Eurasia