Founded in 2008 by Thierry de Montbrial, Chairman of the French Institute of International Relations (Ifri), the World Policy Conference (WPC) will be holding its seventeenth edition on December 13-15, 2024, in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

Many states in sub-Saharan Africa face situations of fragility that have led them to withdraw from some of their responsibilities, including their core sovereign functions. This withdrawal has opened the door to a plurality of national and international actors, both for funding and operational activities (NGOs, associations, private companies, international organizations, etc.). This trend, which varies in form and intensity across countries, has not spared the security sector.

Donald Trump's re-election to the White House is an extraordinary event that reshuffles the cards of the American political landscape.

The 23rd edition of the Ifri's Annual Conference on the United States will seek to better understand the significance and consequences of this election in terms of the country's economic and trade policy, the reshaping of its domestic political balance, as well as its foreign policy and transatlantic relations.

Lithuania provides a useful case study in China’s use of coercive economic and diplomatic pressure in pursuit of its foreign policy goals.

The Clean Industrial Deal will need to square the circle of industrial resilience, competitiveness, reindustrialization, innovation and decarbonization. The circular economy act can be paramount in this respect, alongside winning the battle of the electricity system expansion and decarbonization, and of supplying competitive low carbon molecules. 

As the geopolitical context has changed, so has the approach to international economic relations and the rules-based multilateral framework. Covid and Russia’s war against Ukraine have exposed the risks of extended supply chains and of having become dependent on a single supplier. 

At the beginning of November 2024, barely three years after the formation of the “ Traffic Light ” Coalition between the Social Democrats, the Greens and the Liberals, the dismissal of Finance Minister Christian Lindner by Chancellor Olaf Scholz led to the end of this tripartite coalition. 

In the wake of Donald Trump's re-election in the United States, Europeans face a crucial imperative: rethinking their sovereignty, especially in the technological realm. What will be the strategic priorities and action levers of the new European Commission on this issue? What assessment can we make of the previous Commission’s achievements and challenges in navigating Sino-American technological competition, transatlantic dependencies, and emerging global partnerships?

Debates surrounding North Korea are primarily focused on security issues, particularly nuclear and ballistic concerns, relegating the critical situation of the North Korean population and human rights violations to the background. The lack of information about the real living conditions of North Koreans contributes to the absence of attention and discussion on this crucial issue.

Discussion co-chaired by Thierry de Montbrial, Executive Chairman of Ifri, member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, and Marc Hecker, Deputy Director of Ifri (in English without translation).