The Future of Luxembourg

The Future of Luxembourg, 6 February 2013, Cerle Cité, Ville de Luxemburg

Why the Conference

Since 2007, the world, and especially Europe, has witnessed an ongoing economic crisis, starting with the financial crisis and continuing with the euro crisis. Most analysts agree that this crisis goes beyond a normal cyclical downturn and has deeper structural and doubtless cultural roots. Consequently, long-established system and organizational models must adapt to new realities to ensure future prosperity.

Needless to say, Luxembourg has not been immune to these crises as the past five years’ national economic figures attest. On the contrary Luxembourg has more to lose than others as it comes from a continued high growth period during which it outperformed most of the other EU member states. It is also without a doubt that Luxembourg faces its own homemade structural problems and challenges, ranging from public expenditure levels to performance to a rapid demographic transformation, amongst others.

We thus see our politicians and decision makers in new roles of trying to find answers and agreements on how to face these fundamental challenges and provide Luxembourg with a sustainable future, as they have always been able to do in the past.

But we also witness a rising interest from the civil society in participating in these discussions, as the recent emergence of a series of groups and initiatives illustrate, as for example Solep, 2030.lu, 5vir12, Nexpros, an offshoot of CEPROS, a volunteer think tank. Interestingly, these groups have different approaches to the discussion and highlight diverse aspects of the Luxembourg context. It is this diversity that is needed in the present circumstances, as we need to challenge our collective intelligence to implement the structural reforms that will guarantee a lasting and prosperous future for our children in Luxembourg. Luxembourg’s success may also become a model for other countries or regions.

It also happens that the New Club of Paris (NCP), a global association of academics and professionals will hold its regular 2013 Winter meeting in Luxembourg this year. The organisation’s main objectives are to create awareness about the characteristics of the knowledge society is and to support nations, regions, cities, communities and companies in their transformation into Knowledge Organisations. It highlights what the role of Intellectual Capital (i.e., intangibles) is for the competitiveness of nations, regions and companies. It is a common understanding today between economists and other analysts that the intangibles play a key role in the performance of organizations and communities within the knowledge society.

The conjunction of these two circumstances has led LuxIC to take the initiative to organise a conference on “The Future of Luxembourg” with the participation of the four groups working on the subject and the involvement of key people from NCP,  as well as local responders. The conference is organized with the kind support of the Observatory for Competitiveness of the Ministry of the Economy and of the now dissolved CEPROS, and under the patronage of the city of Luxembourg and its mayor Mr Xavier Bettel.

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