BLED / LJUBLJANA – The annual Bled Strategic Forum (BSF), Slovenia’s pre-eminent foreign-policy conference, will take place in Bled on Wednesday and Thursday. This year’s focus of the two-day event is the future of Europe with a call to increase its resilience to respond more effectively to current and future challenges.
The happening of the first day will, as per tradition, take place in the Bled Festival Hall with opening addresses by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Slovenia Anže Logar, President of the European Council, Charles Michel and the Prime Minister of Slovenia Janez Janša.
In the discussion on the first day, the leaders of the European countries and high representatives of the European Union, but also leaders from the Western Balkans will address the main challenges for the future of Europe.
The topics discussed on the first day of the Forum will include post-pandemic recovery, green and digital transformation, and the future of EU enlargement process – the latter is traditionally one of the most visited discussion at the Forum. The relevance of the topic will be even greater this year, as the panel follows last year’s adoption of a new enlargement methodology and precedes the EU – Western Balkans summit in October.
On the second day of the meeting, the talks will focus on post-pandemic economic recovery and tourism recovery, strengthening the EU’s resilience, strengthening cyber resilience, connectivity and digitalization.
Other topics on the second day include discussions on building a more effective response to climate change, the importance of transatlantic and Indo-Pacific cooperation, the challenges facing the Eastern Partnership countries, the stability of the Mediterranean and joint management of the Adriatic Sea.
Representatives of the European Investment Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the World Tourism Organization, as well as Google, Microsoft and Facebook will participate in the Bled Strategic Forum.