Themed “Employability: Asia and Europe Prepare the New Generation”, the 5th ASEM Rectors’ Conference and Students’ Forum (ARC5) held in Prague, Czech Republic on 4-8 April 2016 focused on employability skills. University leaders and students from all 51 Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) partner countries developed proposals for the upcoming ASEM Education Ministers’ Meeting (ASEM ME6) to be held in 2017 in Korea. Policy recommendations include conclusions of the Students' Forum and the Rectors' Conference  on how governments, higher education institutions, businesses and the third sector can better cooperate to equip students with employability skills. 

The IMF World Economic Outlook baseline projection for global growth in 2016 is a modest 3.2 percent. The outlook is weaker than that in the January 2016 World Economic Outlook Update for both advanced economies and emerging markets. Relative to the October 2015 World Economic Outlook, global growth has been revised downward by 0.4 percentage point in 2016 and 0.3 percentage point in 2017.

Justin Harvey, Chief Security Officer, Fidelis Cybersecurity Inc., USA spoke at the "True Stories from the Dark Side of the Net" roundtable organized by the American Chamber of Commerce in the Czech Republic. In the interview below, he addresses current trends and issues in cybersecurity.

AmCham EU welcomes attempts to ensure that adoption of the OECD’s recommendations is consistent across the EU and with international trading partners where they are required in order to address identified issues by the OECD such as cross border hybridity, excessive interest deductibility and abusive transactions. Consistency is vital to minimise the negative impact on cross border trade and investment and to avoiding potential double taxation. However, we are concerned that the proposed measures are not appropriately drawn to tackle the identified issues without negative impact on the single market.