Without AfD, Left and BSW
The “German Davos” wants to build bridges
By Jan Gänger
April 17, 2024, 3:20 p.m
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More than 100 speakers and 1,000 participants from politics and business meet at the Ludwig Erhard Summit. The opinion leaders meeting is celebrating its 10th anniversary. Highlights include an award ceremony for Yulia Navalnaya and a discussion with party leaders.
It is known as the “German Davos”: the Ludwig Erhard summit on Lake Tegernsee. Not only is the weather reminiscent of the annual World Economic Forum in the Swiss Alps given the snowfall, the guest list is also impressive: more than 100 speakers and around 1,000 participants from politics and business are taking part in the three-day event.
The meeting, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary, will take place without politicians from the right or left. Representatives from the AfD, the Left and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance were not invited. “The Ludwig Erhard Summit is an open platform for the broad middle. We do not offer extremists, enemies of democracy and opponents of the European Union a stage. With this summit we are consciously committing ourselves to Europe,” said the hosts Christiane Goetz-Weimer and Wolfram Weimer. The motto is fitting: “Agenda for a strong Germany in a strong Europe”.
In view of the numerous geopolitical crises and challenges, there is obviously a lot of need for discussion in politics and business. An exceptionally large number of business leaders and top politicians have registered, as the publishers of the “Weimer Media Group” emphasize. On Friday, party leaders will discuss with each other – the Social Democrat Saskia Esken, the Green Ricarda Lang, the CDU chairman Friedrich Merz and Wolfgang Kubicki, deputy chairman of the FDP. “The summit is bigger and more lively than ever. But it is also more serious than ever,” said Wolfram Weimer. “Especially when wars are raging around us, hatred and polarization are rampant, the republic is wavering internally, and the economy is being hit hard, dialogue and bridge-building formats are important.”
Prize goes to Russian opposition
The relationship with Russia already played a major role at last year’s summit, and it will be the same at this meeting. In 2023, the Russian opposition figure and former world chess champion Garry Kasparov received the “Media Freedom Prize”. Russian resistance to Vladimir Putin’s system is also being honored at the current summit – albeit with an extremely bitter background. On Friday, Alexei Navalny, who died in a Russian prison camp, and his wife Julia will be awarded the prize posthumously.
Navalnaya will accept the award personally, and CDU leader Merz will give the laudatory speech. “Julia Navalnaya is the brave leading figure of the resistance movement in Russia (…) and the leader of the democratic awakening in Russia,” the jury said in its statement. ntv is the media partner of the summit and will broadcast both the awards ceremony and the panel discussion live.