The forum with a difference.

AuteurO'Brien, Tom
Fonction Business - Crans Montana Forum - Interview

Every year the Crans Montana Forum (CMF) attracts a host of political, government and civil society leaders to its mountaintop conference in the Swiss canton of Valais. Swiss News talks to its founder Jean-Paul Carteron who offers a deeper insight into the forum, its functions and purpose.

Working with global leaders the Crans Montana Forum (CMF) has some high-minded aims, stating that it doesn't oppose economic globalization and insists that globalization and free markets should serve the ordinary citizen and not be a blind and self-benefiting search for profit at any human price.

Founded by Jean-Paul Carteron in 1989, the CMF has managed to make some concrete achievements over its 14-year history, especially in bringing together leaders of post-communist Balkan states.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with Swiss News, Jean-Paul Carteron, explains how he gut the CMF's ball rolling in the late 80's as the time had come to do something to assist the fight against injustice and arrogance at an international level.

The CMF claims that it sets out to be a humanitarian organization, offering a personal rather than a political experience. "Globalization is fundamentally a positive trend, but a lot of work at the human level has to be done to ensure that human beings are placed at the very centre of the process and become direct beneficiaries of it," notes Carteron. "In this way globalization will give advantage to ordinary people rather than to corporate or collective entities or for columns of financial statistics."

Certainly, the anti-globalization protestors are more focused on the CMF's "big brother", the Geneva-based World Economic Forum, which organizes its annual meeting in Davos every January. And Jean-Paul Carteron believes that the Crans Montana meeting attracts less negative attention simply because it invites every organization willing to debate peacefully. "Some groups that tried to demonstrate at Crans Montana last year refused our invitation for exchanging ideas, arguing they want to overthrow capitalism and not "collaborate" with it," says Carteron.

"The Crans Montana Forum is an open forum, we always welcome representatives from civil society and many of them attend our meetings. These representatives join us for a constructive debate since it would frankly be ridiculous to speak about good governance without involving representatives of civil society! However, we cannot welcome groups whose purpose is to castigate participants and loudly demonstrate in the streets just to attract media attention. We are open for...

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