The document summarizes the key discussions and events from the 2012 OECD Forum conference held in Paris from May 22-23. On the first day, OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría welcomed attendees and focused on the OECD's advice for governments to pursue structural reforms, social policies, and green growth. A session discussed measuring inequality and its impact. The updated OECD Better Life Index was launched, measuring well-being beyond GDP. A lunch session promoted empowering women and gender equality. The second day focused on challenges like inequality, climate change, and debt, as well as developing jobs, growth, and trust in the MENA region. Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister spoke about the need for consensus on global economic policies.

1. Conference Notes
OECD Forum 2012 OECD Conference Center Paris, France, May 22 – 23, 2012
I. Conference Sessions
22 May, 2012
Opening Session
Angel Gurría, OECD Secretary General, welcomed the audience to the 2012 OECD Forum. After a brief introduction about the current economic crisis, he focused on the OECD’s advice to governments: “Go Structural, Go Social and Go Green”. The OECD recommends governments to “Go Structural” because all OECD countries still have significant space for upgrading their economies with reforms which can deliver growth and employment much faster than it is usually thought. All of them have space to push for reforms in key areas such as education, health, labor markets, competition, taxes, green growth, innovation and gender. Governments are also advised to “Go Social” because the impact of this crisis on the individual has been devastating; there is significant room to improve social policy. Finally, the OECD recommends governments to “Go Green” because it is not sustainable to promote an economic growth based on highly polluting energies and overconsumption. Then Angel Gurría gave the floor to Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan. She fundamentally focused on four key points related to education and the development of skills: First, there is no substitute for health and nutrition in the early years of life. Second, education needs to start early and to be focused on the marginalized. Third, the hallmarks of basic education must be inclusion and quality. Last, but not least, schools must be synonymous with the development of skills.
Talking About a More Inclusive Economy
The session dealt with the topic of inequality and ways to measure its causes. Inequity creates concerns for future stability, growth and dignity of labor. According to Sharan Burrow, the General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) “the social contract is broken.” This

2. so-called social contract described for a long time the western nations’ efforts to establish social protection schemes after World War II. Today, the OECD Inequality report is a tool that governments have had at their disposal for the last decade in order to determine inequality. It has been concluded that governments have more responsibility today in creating wealth and distributing income. New ways have to be found in order to increase wages at the bottom but also to tackle income distribution from a fiscal point of view.
Launch of Updated OECD Better Life Index
The OECD’s Better Life Initiative was initially launched in May 2011 following a decade of work on this issue. Over one million of people have been using the index since May 2011. The OECD wanted to move beyond GDP to measure well-being of citizens by including new topics: housing, income, jobs, community, education, environment, governance, health, life satisfaction, safety and work-life- balance. Each topic is built using one to three specific indicators. For example, in the case of work-life balance, three separate measures are considered: the number of employees working long hours, the percentage of working mothers, and the time people devote to leisure and personal activities. This year in particular, the gender difference was integrated in order to reflect differences of well-being between men and women. The new and updated OECD Better Life Index can be found at: http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org
Food for Thought – Promoting Women Champions
This session specifically dealt with the empowerment of women and gender equality. In April 2012, the World Bank focused on gender inequality via its 2012 Spring Meetings slogan “Close the Gap”. But also other international organizations such as the International Labor Organization (ILO) or more specifically the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women – known as UN Women – have been working for the empowerment of women and girls. UN Women became operational in January 2011 and is led by Michelle Bachelet, who has been present at the 2012 OECD Forum and the lunch session on “Promoting Women Champions”. If we can empower more women – especially in the emerging world, but also in the developed world – there is a potential increase of 25 – 40 % in productivity. Many different examples have been provided of how women still lack social, and in particular, professional inclusion: while on average in OECD countries women earn 16% less than men, female top-earners are paid on average 21% less than their male counterparts. Participants shared different ideas and points of view around a common lunch table and engaged into a vibrant discussion on how to best promote women’s rights in today’s different societal and professional context within developed and emerging countries: possible solutions vary from strict affirmative action to government incentives, such as the Catalyst Awards in the United States. A new comprehensive OECD report has been discussed by Ministers attending the OECD Ministerial Meeting in Paris during the 2012 OECD week. It analyses the causes of continuing inequalities and recommends measures governments can take to create a more level playing field. The report can be found at: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/20/5/50423364.pdf

3. New Economic and Societal Approaches
The panel discussion on “New Economic and Societal Approaches” looked the necessity to develop a new approach in managing the global economy. There are certainly three major challenges that need to be tackled: rising inequality over the last decades, climate change and the global debt crisis. Excessively easy monetary policies over a long time contributed to the latter. The recent “occupy movements” have made clear that aims of the regular citizen have to be taken into account and that protesting makes governments aware of problems related to social and economic inclusion. Citizens have already raised the most pressing issues these last months and it is now the respective governments’ task to find solutions. In the same way, voting needs to reflect further the citizens’ desire to change policies in the long run and not in an immediate short-term perspective.
The Squeezed and Emerging Middle Classes
The two panels focused on different economic, legal and societal aspects of the middle class. For instance, the dismantling of trade barriers since the 1970s has significantly influenced and decreased the real wages of the working class, according to Richard Trumka, President of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL–CIO). The real concern of today’s middle class should not only be the protection of jobs in rich countries: the goal should be to try to ensure this for everybody. Advanced countries need to agree to being connected and integrated in a global economy that includes developing countries; thereby accepting systemic risks which are not only related to financial markets, but that reflect critical challenges in public health and climate change, for example. The internet and development of new technologies have introduced a new phenomenon: people are interconnected and communicating with each other. Suddenly, everybody is able to “blog”, to “post” and hence to convey a message online: this civil participation is crucial for the development and future of the middle class, according to Elena Panfilova, Director-General of Transparency International Russia.
23 May, 2012
MENA – Delivering Jobs, Growth and Trust
The morning panel discussion on the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) started with the formalization of Tunisia’s and Morocco’s adhesion to the Declaration on Propriety, Integrity and Transparency and the Declaration of Green Growth. In addition, Tunisia also signed on to the Declaration on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises, deposited Tunisia’s intention to become a party to the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters and handed over two documents concerning the adherence of Tunisia to the Development Centre and the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes. The formalization of this cooperation with the OECD shows that there are significant obstacles for the private sector to flourish in the MENA region. Fighting corruption and restoring trust – which can only be achieved through addressing the remaining high inequalities and through combating poverty – are particularly high on the agenda for the MENA region.

4. Keynote Address: Ali Babacan, Deputy Prime Minister for Economic and Financial Affairs, Turkey
As one of the founders of the OECD, Turkey is among the countries making an active contribution to the organization. Turkey took over the rotating OECD presidency in 2012. The global economy faces multifaceted problems, which Mr. Babacan said make it difficult to reach a consensus and make joint decisions. In fact, the global economy needs to create 21 million new jobs each year until 2015 in order to return to a pre-crisis level of employment. He added that the economic downturn caused severe damage to the global economy, downscaling economic activity and forcing banks and countries to default, as well as causing major volatility in stock markets. He warned against additional problems in national debt due to over-borrowing, which poses a serious threat given lower levels of saving. Mr. Babacan made clear that it is imperative to send significantly strong signals to the markets for debt sustainability and underlined that central banks cannot substitute fiscal measures and policies. “The biggest challenge ahead is to introduce policies which will serve both national and global interests as well as economic and social demands. And OECD is a major platform to define such policies”.
Joint Forum/MCM (Ministerial Council Meeting) Session: Presentation of the Economic Outlook
The global economy is gradually gaining momentum. Yet, the recovery is fragile, extremely uneven across different regions and could be derailed by the crisis in the euro area, according to the OECD’s most recent Economic Outlook that has been presented during this conference session. GDP growth across the OECD is projected to slow from an annual rate of 1.8% in 2011 to 1.6% in 2012, before recovering to 2.2% in 2013, according to the Outlook. Activity remains strong in most emerging- market economies, but policy challenges vary, with inflation acting as a drag on real incomes in some, while it remains subdued in others. Lower inflation provides policy space in some countries that could be used to sustain activity. “The crisis in the euro zone remains the single biggest downside risk facing the global outlook,” said OECD Chief Economist Pier Carlo Padoan. On the eve of a European Union summit in Brussels, the OECD suggested leaders and policy-makers could stimulate growth by: comprehensive structural reforms in areas such as education, innovation, competition and green growth, further enhancing the firewall to prevent contagion of the euro zone financial crisis, boosting the European single market, to support additional economic activity, increasing European Investment Bank funding for infrastructure projects and making better use of European Central Bank balance sheets. The full economic data, statistics and report are available at: http://www.oecd.org/document/4/0,3746,en_2649_33733_20347538_1_1_1_1,00.html
Food for Thought – Subsidies: Are They Costing the Earth?
This lunch session dealt with the use of subsidies to boost the national economy and how subsidies can potentially distort trade. The Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union was discussed as well as more general WTO rules aiming at a reduction of subsidies and tariffs. High-ranking officials from multiple organizations – such as the WTO, the European Commission and UNEP – participated in this lunch session and gave insight into their daily work. For instance, Doaa Abdel Motaal from the Office of the Director-General of the WTO stated that so far there is no existing international agreement that addresses subsidies issues from an environmental point of view.

5. Nevertheless, she believes that the very spirit on which the WTO was founded will itself help climate change negotiations, as the goal of the WTO is to prevent protectionism, thus enabling to focus on a real environmental goal.
Feeding the World, Sustaining the Planet
As Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah pointed out in the opening session, the first step in tackling the challenge of education is to ensure sufficient nutrition in the early years of infantile development. This afternoon session therefore dealt with the global challenges of nutrition and food security, particularly in the developing world. Since the global food crisis in 2008, it is a matter of fact that the global food security situation has worsened and continues to represent a severe threat. There are 1 billion chronically hungry people in the world and food prices remain obstinately high in developing countries, while the global economic crisis is aggravating the situation by affecting jobs and increasing poverty. A particular emphasis was put on the need for sustainable solutions to nutrition and food safety with the intervention of experts and officials from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and agricultural research centers.
How Skills Matter
Skills have become the global currency of 21st century economies. Without sufficient investment in skills, people become marginalized, technological progress does not translate into productivity growth, and countries can no longer compete in an increasingly knowledge-based global economy. The problem is that this ‘currency’ depreciates as skill requirements of labor markets evolve and individuals lose the skills they do not use. As a consequence, skills must be continuously maintained and upgraded throughout life so that people can collaborate, compete and connect in ways that drive economies forward. The OECD Skills Strategy, launched on 21 May 2012, was hence on the agenda of the OECD Week 2012: country-specific information and analyses is now available at http://skills.oecd.org/. In 2013, the OECD will release the OECD Skills Outlook, which will feature new data from the Adult Skills Survey. Consequently, the OECD Skills Outlook will be published on a regular basis with updated data and analysis.
II. Particular relevance for the Parliamentary Network
The participation of the Parliamentary Network’s international secretariat in the 2012 OECD Forum from 21 – 22 May 2012 enables Parliamentarians to be briefed about the most recent OECD developments, policies and economic outlooks and forecasts. Particular emphasis should be put on three major work foci of the 2012 OECD Forum:
- The updated OECD Better Life Index
- The presentation of the most recent Economic Outlook
- The development of a new OECD Skills Strategy

6. A basic knowledge and update of these three topics will enable Parliamentarians to pursue restructured and more efficient decisions in their respective Parliaments by taking into account the most recent economic and statistical data which is available on a country-by-country basis. As a consequence, Parliamentarians can specifically access the latest information in their country and shape national policy-making, both in developed and developing countries. The three topics indicated above include up-to-date analyses of the global economic and societal situation and, therefore, contribute to knowledge sharing in global economic governance.
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