The Mont Blanc Meetings (MBM) are back on 16 January 2025 in Geneva at the ILO headquarters! ESS Forum International is returning to the DNA of the original Mont Blanc Meetings, which we are celebrating 20 years of, i.e. a place for exchanges and knowledge-sharing between the movement of SSE enterprises, major international institutions and civil society to address today’s major challenges.
As the deadline for achieving the UN’s Agenda 2030 is approaching, there is an urgent need to step up actions to achieve the SDGs. In a fractured international context, the SSE must be up to the many challenges it faces.
2025, the International Year of Cooperatives, will be a pivotal year for the social economy, with two major events:
The 4th International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) will be held in Seville (Spain) from 30 June to 3 July 2025. The aim of the conference is to provide a new financial framework for achieving the SDGs and even going beyond them. As a reminder, it is estimated that the financing gap for the SDGs and climate action in developing countries is 4,000 billion dollars a year. The social/solidarity-based economy, which, we would point out, makes it possible to achieve almost 70 of the targets of the SDGs, is one of the solutions for speeding up the transition to the 2030 Agenda. Yet the social economy suffers from a chronic shortage of funding throughout the world. The idea of MBM 2025 is to break down the silos in order to have a discussion on the financing of the SSE through different channels, cooperative banks, development banks and sustainable finance.
The second major event is the 2e conference on social development, which will take place in November 2025 in Qatar, with a focus on strengthening the three pillars of social development: eradicating poverty, full and productive employment and decent work for all, and social inclusion, all of which are areas in which enterprises, and in particular social economy enterprises, have a role to play and assets to develop at this summit. The summit will also be an opportunity to clarify the contribution of enterprises to the ecological and social transition, as well as the relationships and complementarities between traditional enterprises and social enterprises. This need for clarification was also expressed in the United Nations Secretary-General’s follow-up report on resolution A/RES/77/281 on “Promoting the social/solidarity-based economy for sustainable development”, presented on 14 October 2024; the MBM 2025 wish to tackle this debate head-on and in full transparency, and to do so within the very UN institution responsible for social justice: the International Labour Organization.
We look forward to seeing you on 16 January 2025 in Geneva for a day of meetings and debates around 2 panels on the financing of the SSE and the links between CSR and the SSE with exceptional guests such as Nicolas Schmit and many others.
For further information:
aratier@essfi.coop
