DEAR MEMBERS, PARTNERS AND FRIENDS OF VIENNA ECONOMIC FORUM!
The time has come to look back at the past year – the 17th since the founding of VEF. 2020 challenged us in the most unexpected ways by suddenly imposing a restriction on the global community pulse of interaction on a scale reaching out far, even into our daily routine and sadly at the cost of many lives.
Nevertheless, the powerful teachings of history are pointing out that such periods of hardships are usually followed by times of hope and new opportunities for further development. In this sense we need to emphasise our gratitude to all of you for staying behind Vienna Economic Forum and for demonstrating faith in our common aim to bring together and to stimulate the dialogue between economy and politics by approaching these opportunities in a more open and efficient way.
It is only with your firm support that the year 2020 actually turned out to be a successful year for VEF, an year of change – even in regard to the physical office space of Vienna Economic Forum that is now settled in Vienna’s “Embassy Quarter” at Prinz Eugen Strasse – right next to the beautiful Belvedere Baroque palaces.
In the spirit of time the adjustment also applied to the 17th Vienna Economic Forum – Vienna Future Dialogue 2020. In a special online edition – Economy Meets Politics in a Digital World, with great success VEF demonstrated that traditional experience and powerful current processes like digitalisation can go hand in hand by benefiting from each other and setting the course to bright future initiatives. With the strong support of the Team of Austrian Post the hybrid event took place both onsite – in the Trumpet hall of Österreichische Post AG and online – under the guidance of EU Commissioner Mariya Gabriel, with portfolio for Research, Innovation, Education, Culture and Youth.
The interesting discussions between high ranked politicians and representatives of the economy from the VEF-member countries and worldwide on the “challenges and opportunities for the regional economy” as well as the “new types of mobility in a digital world” reached out to more than 1200 viewers from 32 countries – regionally, Europe – and worldwide and received a great positive response.
Dear Members, Partners and Friends of Vienna Economic Forum,
we would like to sincerely thank you on behalf of the Board of Vienna Economic Forum for your constant and trusting support. The challenges of 2020 set stronger focus on the economic development of the VEF region as an European region and even managed to clearly define the most crucial directions of this development. This not only reaffirms the importance of the path that VEF-Family has been walking on during the last 17 years, but also gives us confidence to stay on the pulse of time and continue to write together the success story of Vienna Economic Forum!
Yours,
DI Peter Umundum
President
Amb. Dr. Elena Kirtcheva
Secretary General