Consultation Meeting on Horizon Europe and EU Programs in the Axis of Türkiye-EU Relations with MÜSİAD—-16 October 2020-ONLINE
Honourable Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Director for European Union Affairs,
Honourable President of TÜBİTAK, our MÜSİAD members and Distinguished Participants,
I respectfully greet you all; welcome.
The Horizon 2020 Programme, which the Europe 2020 strategy designed in order to gather under a single roof all the financing infrastructures related to research and innovation, constitutes one of the most important pillars of the European Union's new long-term growth plan. The Horizon 2020 programme, in which our country is also included, occupies a highly important place because it is open to the participation of our companies, our universities, our NGOs and our research institutions.
The European Green Deal Call within the scope of this Programme, whose fundamental priorities are Excellence in Science, Industrial Leadership and Societal Challenges, carries an extremely important resource potential for our country as well, particularly with its budget of one billion euros. In this context, following the call in question closely and developing serious projects is an important responsibility for us.
The European Green Deal does not cover climate change alone; it also touches on many subjects with such targets as Industry for a Clean and Circular Economy, Energy and Resource-Efficient Buildings and Farm to Fork agriculture. When we approach the matter in this context, we must state that this Programme, which will change the course of the EU's economic and trade policy in the new period, is highly important for Türkiye, especially if it is borne in mind that the share of foreign trade with Europe is at the level of %50.
Following the developments in the EU, which for many years has been our country's most important trade and investment partner, and determining mutual road maps in line with these developments is important so that relations with the EU may be subject to a productive revision on behalf of both sides.
For over a long term extending to the year 2050, the transformation the EU will carry out in many fields, above all energy, finance and industry, carries a potential that could directly affect Türkiye. In this context, the European Green Deal should not be regarded merely as an environmental matter.
In order to be able to adapt to this programme, which closely concerns our country too and which by its results will give rise to a new international trade system and division of labour, keeping pace with the developments that will be experienced within the framework of the new climate regime is becoming obligatory not only for Türkiye but for all other countries as well. At this point we are speaking of a new system encompassing new taxes and non-tariff barriers in trade, directed towards the targets of reducing carbon leakage to the minimum level and pricing carbon effectively throughout the economy.
In brief, alignment with the European Green Deal will in fact also bring with it serious gains in the economy. Within this framework, a new shaping will be in question at every stage of the economic cycle, from production to employment and from trade to exports.
Distinguished Participants,
I sincerely hope that the matters whose details we shall hear from our esteemed participants at this meeting, which I regard as a valuable environment of consultation and self-assessment for the future, will provide immense benefits to the strategic position our country will acquire in the new socio-economic conjuncture.
As the addressee of the subject from the side of the business world, with your permission I would like to make a brief assessment of the current developments in trade and in our national economy and of what falls to us as the business world in the period called the “new normal”: As in the whole of the global economy, the Covid-19 outbreak, which caused a serious crisis in the Turkish economy too in terms of both supply and demand, became like a bursting point of the already strained world system.
While even before the outbreak the expectations regarding the global economy pointed to the risk of a contraction in production across the world, with the outbreak the “expected crisis” turned into the “crisis being experienced”. In this respect we may say that the Covid-19 outbreak made a global economic crisis likely to erupt in the medium and long term arrive far earlier and far more severely.
Alongside such shattering economic effects, when we also take into account the social and psychological effects of the outbreak, we may state that we too, as the representatives of the Turkish business world, were negatively affected by this process in the first months. Nevertheless, particularly with the normalization process that began as of 1 June, we entered a rapid recovery process both economically and socially.
The global epidemics that have been experienced in the world in almost every century have also brought with them a new process of socio-economic and political questioning. Now we are questioning anew the new politics of the 21st century,
production, socio-cultural behaviour patterns, and the balances of production and distribution. The reality that a new economic and social balance will be established in the world after the pandemic process is inevitable. And this leads us to a production and life cycle in which the basic resources of our aged world are sustainable and which is efficiency-based while at the same time placing thrift in the foreground.
The serious competitive order experienced today when the energy market is in question will be experienced over water in the world of tomorrow. The protection of water above all, and of our soil and natural resources, and the use of their share in the economy through prudent policies, will be the problematics of tomorrow's world.
The pandemic process has left us face to face with realities we have ignored in many respects. For this reason, as I said at the outset, this process, which caught us unprepared, has elevated the expected crisis to an experienced reality.
Now a process will begin in which our classical paradigms will be reshaped. We need a new economic paradigm of production and distribution for a just distribution of production, supply and value chains in the eyes of all the countries of the world. For this reason, a multi-participant sharing system in which almost every nation can take part in the global output of the world with its own economic values awaits us.
Our ways of doing politics will change. In and after this process the world is testing direct democracy, which is leader-based yet grows strong by drawing its power from the grassroots. Our definitions of education and our education systems will change. We may say that a new model of education and economic management now awaits us, with qualified human resources trained in multiple disciplines in a way that makes effective use of remote access opportunities.
A process awaits us in which we shall question the conceptual balance between science and religion and redraw the boundaries of positivism. The world is coming to understand that in the triangle of science, religion and moral values it can walk neither on a hard positivist line nor on one entirely closed to the world.
The relationship we have established with the environment and with nature needs to be redesigned, and we need to enter into a new covenant of compassion and accord between ourselves and nature. In this process we have seen once more that nature is among the most precious assets entrusted to us.
Our conventional elements of national power will change. We see how the elements of national power that we once defined as land, capital and military dominance have diversified, and that new concepts have been included in the spectrum of national threats.
We may readily say that in the coming period we shall enter an era in which all our companies, without any distinction of large or small enterprise, will feel the need for and the impact of digital transformation far more clearly.
We may predict that a serious transformation will be experienced not only at the point of digitalization but also in elements of critical importance such as the diversification of supply chains, making the search for new markets more flexible, and the development of production and marketing techniques. And this whole process of change will leave us face to face with a new working order and set of regulations in economic life.
We are passing through a process in which we have tested that national production is not merely a political preference but a necessity. In this process, in which the inputs in our strategic sectors must be produced through national production, the importance of the perception of high value-added production and of production in high-technology products is gaining vital importance, particularly in order to protect the current account balance.
We are speaking of a period in which the concepts of efficiency and food safety, that is, biosafety, in the agriculture, livestock and food sector will be discussed far more. With this awareness, we as MÜSİAD constantly underline that our basic and strategic sectors, above all the agriculture and food sectors, must produce on domestic and national principles. At the beginning of the week we held the launch of our Smart Agricultural Cities business model with the honour of the presence of our Honourable Minister of Agriculture and Forestry. Within the scope of this model, we set out from the idea that the population crammed into the big cities and whose standard of human life declines with each passing day should be directed towards the countryside, but that while doing this rural life should also be transformed into a living space that is satisfying in terms of urban comfort and income level.
Smart Agricultural Cities has been put forward as a life and production model rather than as a project. It also overlaps in many respects with the subjects that will be presented here today. It is a model that points to an important portion of the headings within the scope of Horizon 2020, both on the Green Deal and on the subjects of clean circular economy and energy.
The model we have established underlines the theme of turning rural life and agricultural diversity into far more productive production and living areas through an environmentalist understanding and the possibilities of technology, and in this way of eliminating inter-city population and economic imbalances.
In the same way, we as MÜSİAD, with the same awareness and within the scope of our city economies and smart cities committee, are producing projects in order to create city brands and to turn each city's distinctive sectoral diversity into an advantage, moving from the reality that in the world of the future it is cities that will compete. Seeing the results of the insistence we have shown in making the concept of the Smart City a state policy makes us proud.
In the same way, we are experiencing the joy of having launched two years ago our work in the fields of gastro-economy and gastro-tourism, aiming to present food quality and safety, food diversity and cultural value in the sense of following all processes “from farm to fork”. Within the framework of the awareness we initiated, it pleases us that today these concepts are turning into policies.
Today, when diplomacy has become a language of social discourse far beyond being merely a political element, the fact that cultural value and diversity are instrumental in the embracing and rapprochement of societies had led us, within the Renewal process we launched within our own body, to use the concept of diplomacy in the fields of tourism, culinary arts, education, and trade and investment. At the point we have reached today, it is gratifying that gastro-diplomacy is being spoken of.
We as NGOs are at a very critical point in the raising of social awareness and in bringing state policies together with the grassroots, and we are aware of this. In the new socio-economic conjuncture, NGOs in particular will work like a bridge of communication and interaction between the state and society.
MÜSİAD, with its very wide field presence both at home and abroad, is a capital platform possessing a depth in the field rarely equalled in the world. With this awareness, we are also experiencing the justified pride of being the first civil society organization to have given its own management mechanism a dynamic structure and to have made it ready for the conditions and priorities of the new period. Long before the pandemic process began, MÜSİAD observed the paradigm shifts in the world and their reflections on our country, renewed its own structure and made its process management ready for this. With its project-based and production-oriented Committee working system and its Assembly structure, MÜSİAD
processes the micro data it obtains from its field and turns it into projects in its Committees, and without breaking the cycle ensures that the projects are spread to the whole country and to the world within the field presence of production.
We as MÜSİAD state at every opportunity that we are ready to put our shoulder to the wheel for our country to grow stronger in the world arena. Together, we shall reveal the potential of our Türkiye.
Distinguished Participants,
As I conclude my speech here, I respectfully greet you all and thank everyone who contributed to this fine meeting.
Abdurrahman Kaan
President of MÜSİAD