Meeting of the working group of the BRICS Civil Society Forum "Sovereign Economic and Financial Development"

The HSE University held a meeting of the working group of the BRICS Civil Forum in the format of a round table «Sovereign Economic and Financial Development» to prepare proposals for the BRICS Civil Forum, which will be held in Moscow on July 3-4, 2024. The meeting was attended by the Research Fellow of the International Laboratory of Digital Transformation in Public Administration of the HSE University Evgenii Diskin.

Discussed issues included:

1. Economic losses and risks due to the monopoly of the dollar in the global financial system.
2. Rethinking sustainable economic development in a fragmented global logistics system.
3. ormation of distributed monetary emission systems.
4. Vision of BRICS Bank evolution.
5. Militarization of economic struggles – making the economy a hybrid weapon.
6. Delegitimization of ownership.
7. Politicization of the climate agenda, making it an instrument of unfair competition.
8. The risk of the collapse of digital platforms and the Internet in the context of exponential growth of transactions and the need to develop technological platforms based on new operating systems (the need to harmonize programming standards and architecture).

During the round table Evgenii Diskin delivered a report «Approaches for joint regulation of Internet platforms by BRICS+», in which he told listeners, that, despite obvious risks, Russia needs access to Internet platforms for a number of reasons, that are of significant importance. In particular, he clarified that in the face of terrorist risks there is a requirement to establish a closed information space within one state, according to the so-called «Chinese model». However, we must not lose sight of the need to counteract the abolition of Russians in the digital space, their displacement from the global Internet. Search for a solution of such large-scale problem must be combined with a solution to the problem of improving the quality of protection of Russian citizens, their rights and freedoms guaranteed by the fundamental norms of international law and the Russian Constitution. Significant progress had been elusive for some time, and new approaches are needed. One such approach is cooperation with BRICS+ States. Such an issue is not on the agenda of the Association at present time, but it is certainly of great interest to the States Parties, which face similar challenges to their national security, the sovereignty of the information space, impossibility to influence the actions of foreign Internet platforms, etc. Unification, creation of a platform for joint regulation of Internet platforms at least some basic level would certainly increase the weight of the decisions of each of the state and would give a new impetus to the development of cooperation in the BRICS+ format.