9th Europe Asia Young Leaders Forum

June 16 - 19, 2011, London

The Growth We Need: Innovations in Politics, Business and Society

With the banking and financial services sectors playing such an important role, the impact of the global financial crisis is felt particularly strongly in the UK, taking the form of comparatively low growth rates and a huge public debt. Governments, both national and local, respond by implementing rigorous austerity measures that redraw the boundaries between the state, the economy, and civil society, shifting the responsibility for many services that have traditionally been in the public domain to the civil-society and the business sectors. While this political course is the subject of controversial public debate, the rather highly developed third sector develops some very innovative and original solutions in order to be able to meet these heightened demands.

At the Europe Asia Young Leaders Forum, we examined these social innovations, but also addressed the question of whether the “British model” can serve as an example for other states both within and outside of Europe, which are also looking to find a new balance between state and individual responsibility in times of burgeoning public debt.