For its third edition, the Paris Peace Forum, which opens on Wednesday 11 November, is being held under exceptional circumstances. The Covid-19 has obviously changed the format, forcing the organizers to fall back on exclusively virtual exchanges, after having considered a hybrid option for several months.
As for the content of the discussions, focused on global governance and the means to fight the epidemic, they will be declined under the influence of the American election. Joe Biden’s victory offers the hope of finding a constructive and attentive partner on the other side of the Atlantic. “It’s a breath of fresh air”, sums up a French diplomat.
Reach a “new consensus”
An independent association, but very strongly supported by the French authorities, the Forum sets up its own program of meetings. But it also offers the Elysee the opportunity to bring together, Thursday, several leaders close to France. Emmanuel Macron, frustrated by eight months of videoconferences that did not allow fruitful interactions and having accentuated the polarization of international relations, will welcome Senegalese President Macky Sall, European Council President Charles Michel and Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund ( IMF). Via screens intervening in the conversation the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, as well as the Secretary General of the UN, Antonio Guterres.
Many exchanges have taken place in recent weeks between Paris and Berlin about the post-Covid world, as it is emerging. What role for states in health and environment issues? How to revitalize international organizations? The leaders invited by the Elysée want to show a common desire to achieve a “New consensus” and an “Ideological clarification”, explains the entourage of the French president. The era of happy globalization, claiming to remove trade barriers, touting an illusory generalized flow of wealth and growth for all, is well buried. But the parameters of the new world – which seems to be shattered into parallel realities meeting their own rules – have not yet been determined.
The risk of “vaccine diplomacy”
The notion of The “global public good” in testing and vaccines, for example, is not a given for all powers, to say the least. A risk of national capture or diplomacy of the vaccine, in the form of blackmail or pressure, clearly exists, like what happened between March and May on the masks. “We are impatiently awaiting the return of the United States to the bodies of collective action”, they say at the Elysee Palace, while stressing that initiatives have already been launched and should gain momentum, especially on a financial level. The first example cited is ACT-Accelerator launched in April with the World Health Organization (WHO), industry players and private foundations. Its objective is to speed up the diagnosis and treatment of Covid-19, but also to guarantee equitable and universal access to these means.
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