Global Marshall Plan
“Nothing in the world is as powerful as an idea whose time has come.”
Victor HugoThe global economic system has become detached from national legal frameworks – this is a consequence of globalization, new communication technologies and the challenges of an extremely rapidly growing financial economy.
The global legal framework is currently inadequate and is promoting a significant imbalance: politics has lost its priority over the economy because political structures are still national or continental, but not global. Added to this is the enormous growth of the world population and the associated increase in consumption of natural resources. The consequences of this development are already putting a strain on ecological systems and are giving rise to regional and supra-regional political tensions.
Individuals alone can do little to counteract this if systems that are superior to states pursue a course that threatens peace or is not sustainable. This is why in 2003 numerous representatives from business, politics, science, the media and non-governmental organizations joined forces and Global Marshall Plan Initiative founded.
The aim of the initiative is to win over business, civil society and politics worldwide to a cooperation that creates global security, peace and prosperity for all people. The starting points are the success of the Marshall Plan for Europe after the Second World War and the positive experiences from EU enlargement. Co-financing in return for compliance with European standards could serve as a model for development cooperation. The governments of all countries, the United Nations and international organizations are to be won over to the implementation of such a plan.
The initiators want the EU to use all its resources to implement the Global Marshall Plan, i.e. a global eco-social market economy, and to bring this plan into the negotiations for individual global agreements. With this new direction, the EU could give itself a clear profile and enter into a new quality of partnership with Third World countries.
The World Contract Foundation is a member of the coordination group of the Global Marshall Plan Initiative and contributes to the further development of its work.