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Chancellor Scholz during his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos
Photo: LAURENT GILLIERON / EPA
The »Jakobshorn« room is one of the smaller ones in the Davos Congress Center.
The wood-panelled ceilings are low, the walls covered with a sober greyish fabric.
But on Wednesday it suddenly became the powerhouse of this year's World Economic Forum.
More than a hundred people crowded into the room.
Investors, company bosses such as Siemens board member Roland Busch took a seat in the three oval rows of chairs.
They were joined by the broad-shouldered Klitschko brothers and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dymytro Kuleba.
However, the focus was on a petite, blond woman in a beige wool blazer: Ursula von der Leyen.
The President of the EU Commission had postponed her departure from the Swiss ski resort by one day for a spontaneous meeting between business and the Ukrainian government.
Their mission was to weld together a "Marshall Plan Group for the Reconstruction of Ukraine" in the "Jakobshorn" area.
"We can't use it to compensate for the casualties the country is suffering, but we can help it recover from the war," she said.
»This is the Davos moment«
The EU boss put a lot of pathos in her voice.
Much to the satisfaction of the man sitting next to her: Børge Brende, the new President of the Economic Forum.
Visibly proud, he took the floor.
"This is the Davos moment," he called out solemnly.
For the Norwegian, who has only recently headed the WEF, the spontaneous meeting is essential.
It signals that the event is of global political importance.
Despite all prophecies of doom from left and right-wing critics.
The meeting had to pause for two years, and Brende included the criticism of Davos' role in his farewell speech this Thursday.
"It's the first of many," he said defiantly.
It is "a reminder that we are better off in a world where we work together."
It was not a forum like any other – if only because this time there was no snow, which otherwise mercifully covers the architecturally less beautiful sides of the village.
In addition, the number of participants was lower than in previous years.
This is probably also due to the fact that the meeting has been postponed several times and the current date was already booked in one or the other boss' calendar.
The difficult situation on the planet is also reflected in the rather low density of political heavyweights.
No Chinese government representatives came to Davos, apart from the special representative for climate protection.
One of the reasons for this is the strict corona lockdown in the Middle Kingdom.
But even before the forced Corona break, there were signs that the World Economic Forum could lose importance.
Some of the US delegations during Donald Trump's presidency were significantly smaller.
Apparently, some of the previous participants feared being mistaken for one of the “globalists” hated in the Trump camp.
In the meantime, the organizers have heard, there is also a lot of dislike for the event in Canada, where a partly right-wing extremist movement of truckers formed during the corona pandemic.
But would it be bad if Davos disappeared completely?
The New York Times asked this question in January after the meeting had been postponed again.
The newspaper's answer was: probably not really.
Exactly one month later, Russia invaded Ukraine.
The world had a tremendous new crisis - and Davos a new issue.
One summit, four crises
For the summit in the Alps, crises were mostly a threat and an opportunity at the same time.
The Occupy protests, the European debt crisis and climate change all questioned the capitalism that Davos liked to preach in their own way.
But they also always offered those gathered at the World Economic Forum an opportunity to present themselves as part of the solution.
It was the same with the Ukraine war.
As bleak as many of the geopolitical analyzes on the Davos podium may have sounded in view of the conflict: At the latest when the planned reconstruction of Ukraine came up, they were again the problem solvers for the problems of this world in Davos, the
movers and shakers
.
The Russian war of aggression is at the center of four crises that the 2,500 participants were able to throw themselves into.
First of all, there is the crisis of international institutions and rules, which Russia "brutally flouted," as WEF founder Schwab never tired of emphasizing.
But the war also triggered an energy crisis, with dramatic consequences for inflation.
It has what it takes to eat up the prosperity gains of the past decades.
As a further consequence, humanity is threatened with a hunger crisis that has not existed for decades.
Behind all of these crises, one seems to be falling behind that doesn't seem so pressing: the climate crisis, embodied so prominently by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg at the last Davos meeting in 2020.
One fundamental question hovers over everything, and this touches on the basic idea of the Davos meeting, the belief in international cooperation and the promise of prosperity of globalization.
It seems as if the world is falling apart in the face of these crises.
Scholz sharply criticizes Putin
Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz took up all of these dramatic developments in his speech at the end of the forum and set exactly the powerful conclusion that the organizers must have hoped for.
He castigated Vladimir Putin's "imperialism" and promised: "We will make Germany and Europe independent of energy imports
from Russia."
Scholz linked the issue of energy security with climate protection.
This was something that had been repeatedly invoked in the days before, despite the many entrepreneurs and government officials promoting their fossil fuels in Davos.
Scholz assured that the goal of becoming CO2-neutral by 2045 "gained even more importance through Putin's war".
He cried: "Now more than ever!"
The Chancellor was able to warm up for the international world stage in Davos before welcoming the leaders of the G7 countries at Schloss Elmau in June for the first time in this capacity.
He succeeded: Scholz drew a wide arc, from the war in Ukraine, the energy and hunger crisis to very fundamental ideas about how the coexistence of peoples in a multipolar world should be organized.
In a world, then, in which there are not two or just one world power, but a number: in addition to the USA, the EU and China.
According to Scholz, deglobalization is a dead end.
No matter what populists promise.
Then he outlined instruments of this new, multipolar world.
He prominently proposed an "international climate club" of the largest greenhouse gas emitters, which should accelerate the implementation of the Paris climate goals.
Scholz benefited from the stage in Davos, and the forum benefited from Scholz, who reached the necessary altitude in his speech.
Maybe not rhetorically, but with what he said.
It is now up to the Chancellor to solve the four current crises of the planet on the real world political stage.
This stage is currently being set up in Elmau Castle, the site of the G7 meeting.
What connects the two places is the spectacular mountain scenery.