Foreign Minister Cerar is paying an official one-day visit to Paris today, where he will meet French Foreign Minister Le Drian and OECD Secretary-General Gurría to discuss the challenges of modern-day societies, driven by digital transformation, climate change, artificial intelligence, education, ageing of the population and the impact on the labour market.

“Slovenia remains an active member of the OECD, and as such it participates in many spheres of the Organisation’s operation. We wish to spend the preparation time for the EU Council presidency reviewing areas where we can cooperate more closely with the OECD in preparing studies and reports,” Minister Cerar said during his talks with Secretary-General Gurría.

He went on to say that “Slovenia is an ardent advocate of multilateralism: without cooperation and a common approach in terms of global challenges (such as climate change, social inclusion or digital transformation), countries cannot be successful alone.”

Artificial intelligence is expected to be part of Slovenia’s EU Council presidency programme, which is shaped together with Germany and Portugal in the framework of the trio (Germany–Portugal–Slovenia). Slovenia is already taking part in the OECD expert group for artificial intelligence through Marko Grobelnik, the representative of the Jožef Stefan Institute, and has participated in preparing the OECD Council Recommendation on Artificial Intelligence, which is the first document of its kind at the global level. In April 2019, during the visit of Dobran Božič, State Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Gregor Strojin, State Secretary at the Ministry of Justice, in Paris, a memorandum of cooperation relating to artificial intelligence was signed between the Jožef Stefan Institute and the OECD.

Next year, Slovenia will host the OECD Skills Summit: this event will be the perfect framework for discussing lifelong education at a time when both society and the economy are being impacted by digital transformation.