Can the European Union become a political adult?

[Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign and welcome to the Robert Schumann Center my name is Eric Jones and I have the great privilege of being director here what we try to do with the Robert Schuman Center is to take Cutting Edge academic ideas and make them accessible and relevant to people in the public and private sector in other words we try to try to push the boundaries of knowledge out and then try to show people what they can do with that knowledge rather than just offering it something that they can learn and then try to remember now the reason that we do that is because we believe we believe this kind of work only adds value if people can make use of it and that's not a lesson that we came up with there's a lesson that we learned it's a lesson that we learned from all those scholar practitioners who came before us who trained us and who helped us better to understand that what we do is not just butterfly collecting it's something that has real impact and our speaker this evening is one of those Scholars now I say this is someone who started his career looking at small states and trying to understand how they interact with one another through exchange rate regimes and there was really only one guy you would look at in the European context and that was Niels tugason but right next to Niels tugason was our speaker this evening Luca tsukalis Lucas actually pioneered the study of the European snake mechanism and our understanding of how the political economy of monetary integration works in the 1970s and he took that work and used it as the foundation for creating an understanding of the new European economy that was the basic textbook that we all read studied and then taught out of for many generations now what's interesting about that is that Lucas spent his time first in Oxford uh and then at Saint Anthony's and then moving on into back in into Greece and when he went back to Greece at Area map he began to continue writing these bigger and bigger stories about how Europe works and I remember that because I picked up this book what kind of Europe in the middle of the first decade of this century and was reading it for review it's an unbelievably rich and compelling analysis of what European integration was and where it was going and in the rich and compelling analysis what I immediately realized is that this is unbelievably challenging for anyone as a citizen to appreciate both in terms of how it operates and in terms of what are the stakes involved in getting it right and in a series of Works since then Lucas has pushed that understanding further now I know he's pushed it further because I along the way began to have to referee books for publication and two books came across my transom at approximately the same time one was a book called is Europe ready for the big leagues which is the book that we're actually going to talk about in the third iteration of its title tonight the second iteration being the iteration under which it's published Europe's coming of age um this is another one of those stories that helps us better to understand European integration but in magically that folds the story of European integration into the story of you Lucas's own life and intellectual Discovery so it's a powerful book because it reveals for anyone who's studying Europe how the study of Europe and the development of Europe become intertwined the other book that came across my transom not from polity which I think is a rare exception for Lucas but from his old Publishing House Oxford University press was a fast shrift of articles on Lucas's impact on the leading lights in our scholarly community and there is nothing that I could offer in introduction that would convince you more than reading that book and discovering just how influential Lucas's career has been in shaping not just our understanding but the understanding of all of those who've continued to develop insight and wisdom about where the European Union is going not just in academic terms but in terms of practical application practical application with the purpose which is that to make the European Union a better construct to promote European interests from all parts of the continent and hopefully to make the world a better place of course still work in progress and that's why we're so happy to have Lucas join us this evening to tell us whether Europe can actually become a political adult in a context where finding adults in the room has never been harder so I hope you'll please join me in welcoming Professor Lucas soukalis [Applause] well it was a flattering introduction to put in my life so I'm grateful thank you Eric thank you for the invitation thank you for the introduction it's always a pleasure to be back at DUI where I've spent several spells of my earlier life and usually brief spells but I have to reveal that several chapters of the new European economy were in fact written here so it's always a pleasure to be back thank you so much now as you mentioned I published the book last month entitled Europe's coming of age you revealed even the title before that I changed my mind and with the help of the editors and the book is the most ambitious the most political and the most personal book I've written it is most ambitious because what I try to do is in the first part go through some of the main turning points of European integration interspersed with some personal experiences when you grow old you feel you are allowed to use even personal experiences to make a point and then in the second part which is the most difficult more most challenging is that I address what I consider to be the main challenges facing Europe and those challenges include the growth of the Europe to become a proper International currency dealing with income inequalities in our increasingly fragmented societies climate change and green transition foreign policy and the Democratic deficit so anything you wanted to know and never did to ask about Europe which is very ambitious and I try to connect the dots whether I've been successful or not it's not up to me to decide suspicious personal because I've used personal experiences and most political because I take a clear stand on most of those issues I do not pretend there is analysis but I do not pretend to provide a value-free analysis if value free analysis wherever possible in social sciences but I make no pretensions whatsoever I take a very clear stance and I want the leader in advance in case people have very different views and decide not to bother reading on now coming to the substance if you look back over 70 years of this common European Journey of course there have been many ups and downs have been many successes and failures but what really stands out is a remarkable and continuing expansion in terms of both functions and numbers so over 70 years this is really what stands out surely they've been failures surely there have been many downs but the project keeps growing and it keeps growing both in terms of membership and in terms of what it does and there can be many different explanations as to why it keeps growing the old functionalists would talk about the nature of economic integration you start with one bit then you are forced to deepen integration start with tariff barriers then you move on to non-act tariff barriers and then you start talking about Level Playing Fields and then you start talking about compensating losers and so on and so forth so there is a cumulative logic in economic integration but certainly there's nothing automatic about it we know that from experience uh lawyers who talk about illegal construction which the European court of justice in its rather if I may say so imperialist interpretation keeps on expanding but I think that looking back what really stands out is the thing that has shaped European integration and this should not come as a surprise to anybody is events the unexpected is what Harold MacMillan once said when he was asked what is the most important factor in politics and he said events my dear boy events and I'm just a few examples rather obvious it is the fall of the Berlin wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Empire that led to economic humanitarian a big bag enlargements it is the financial crisis that turned into an existential crisis of the Euro that led to a still incomplete banking Union in the creation of a European monetary fund it is the pandemic that led to a very ambitious recovery program Next Generation EU with a strong redistributive bias with mutual mutualized EU debts I mean if somebody had said that the European Union would move on with common debt only as late as 2015 2017 the reaction would have been come on wake up these things don't happen yes they do happen and they had happened and of course now the big question is whether the Ukraine war will be yet one such event bigger than others that leads to a further acceleration of the process of European integration of course we don't have the answer as yet things have not unfolded but I think you should be fair to add that judging from experience what has been the most difficult for the European Union is to make the transition from soft to hard power and that therefore May make us rather modest about our Ambitions of the way we react to the latest big crisis now the war the Russia's invasion of Ukraine marks among other things the end of the post Cold War era or rather postcode War order in order the terms of which were essentially defined by those who won the Cold War namely the West led by the United States but there is more than that because Russia's invasion of Ukraine comes at a tail end of a succession of Crisis and important events that have led to Big Transformations and I believe that more than just the end of the post call or the Cold War order in Europe we are we should be talking about the end of an era now let me try to explain very briefly what I mean by the end of anira by trying to Define what the era was all about now this era has lasted more than 30 years between 30 to 40 years depending on what is the main element on which you put the emphasis on if you look back to what happened over the last 30 to 40 years I believe there are two key elements that stand out one is liberal Market liberalization added to globalization so it's globalization in its liberal version that's number one and number two is U.S hegemony now I submit to you that both are approaching the end and have been a number of events that have been transforming those two key elements so let me say a few words about both of them with Reagan and Thatcher the pendulum started shifting from the state to the market and this went on for a long time and then with Deng Xiaoping China became part of the global process so it was economic liberalization plus the gradual integration of a very large country and that was the era of globalization globalization with the emphasis on the liberal side now this liberal version of globalization has been going through a number of changes in recent years let me enumerate a few of those challenges to the liberal economic order first of all the fact we realized it took some people it took longer than others to realize that the gains and losses of economic liberalization and globalization were very unleavenly distributed between countries but even more so within countries and this has contributed to the creation of divided indeed fragmented Societies in the western world that's the first thing then comes financial crisis that exposes the weakness or the fragility of the old assumption that financial markets are stable and rational if anybody had read any Financial history one wonders how they would have ever come to such a conclusion that financial markets are stable and rational but that was the Mantra the Mantra that lasted for many many years climate climate change is the biggest market failures of all and dealing with climate change requires the state to intervene to provide essentially to help provide a public good and in this case it is a global public good then comes a pandemic that puts the emphasis on the provision of global Health another public good and now Comes The Invasion where the emphasis shifts to defense in other words the point I'm trying to make is that in recent years a series of of Crisis and major events have shifted again depend have moved the pendulum away from the market and towards the state the state is coming back essentially to do two things to protect citizens in fragmented societies and to provide public goods so this is one element of the two of the latest period That's changing fast the other is U.S U.S hegemony the unipolar moment has referred to by international relations experts has lasted for more for about more than 30 years it starts with the disintegration of the Soviet Empire the end of the Cold war in Europe and the emergence of the United States as the only superpower a huge difference between the United States and everybody else this again has been changing globalization economic globalization has contributed much to this change because economic globalization among other things has allowed the emergence of an economic superpower China what has happened in China in the last 40 years has absolutely no precedent in international history I mean change from rags to technological superpower in 40 years this is an achievement so it is capitalism with a Communist Party I remember a conversation I had more than 20 years back with a guy in Beijing who was the head of the international relations think tank of the Communist Party of China and we had a long conversation he must have smoked about 20 cigarettes in the process he had a PhD from Harvard and the two things that he told me which I still remember in fact I quote in the book one I asked him what does he what does he think is the main challenge facing China 20 years back and he said the growth of economic inequalities and this is the major challenge to the political system remember that the present president this is one of the priorities of the Chinese leadership today is to deal with economic inequalities in China and then the other thing which was revealing I said why is it that the Russians didn't have a successful transition to the market economy and you Chinese have done it so well it's very simple I said why why is it simple I said come on I mean the Russians moved straight from feudalism to Communism they never had any experience of the market while we Chinese says the Chinese Communist Party official the the market is part of our DNA which I thought it was an unbelievable statement but he said it as a matter of fact and it is true I mean if you have traveled in Asia in most Asian countries the merchant class consists largely of Chinese people you go to Indonesia you go to the Philippines you go to Singapore you go to Vietnam they're Chinese and they've been there for centuries now China has emerged as an economic superpower and economic superpower at some point of time translates into a political superpower and a military superpower although still the difference between China and the United States is huge I mean people are talking about the assertion of Chinese military might well I looked at the figures and I have it in the book the latest figures I saw was U.S expenditure on armaments represented 39 of global expenditure on Parliament 39 percent the Chinese were 13 so one third France and the UK the top European countries about three percent of the global okay so China is emerging still there's a big difference big gap between the United States and China in terms of military might but the relationship is changing but there are other things as well the United States has become increasingly an unhappy country with the multilateral order it had itself shaped as a result of that multilateral order and economic globalization partly as a result of that and partly as a result of domestic economic policies and especially taxation the United States is one of the most unequal Societies in the western world and it is also perhaps the most polarized Society in the western world Trump was I believe largely the product of those internal divisions he managed to convince those falling behind that he is a plutocrat would be the right person to defend their interests he defended their interests by unilaterally ignoring multilateral rules but he also reduced taxation for the richest in the United States which probably was not part of the bargain at least as seen by those left behind so what we do have is a gradual shift of the tectonic plates the geopolitical tectonic plates the center of gravity is Shifting towards Asia China is emerging as a power the United States is in absolutely no mood to allow China to Challenge USA Germany so we are faced with a very difficult and dangerous period of utilization in the years to come but the other thing is also the world the United States because of domestic reasons can no longer is no longer willing to play policemen in different parts of the world and furthermore a large part of the rest of the world is not following the U.S and the Western lead see what is happening not only with Saudi Arabia and the other countries in the Gulf but also see what is happening with India and a very large part of what used to be called the third world in their unwillingness to endorse Western condemnations of Russia's invasion of Ukraine they stay neutral all right so this is this is quite indicative but there's something else also that is happening because of the shift in geopolitics it is that security considerations are increasingly taking over from economic considerations in world affairs to put it differently International economic exchange is becoming increasingly politicized and in that changing World both in terms of state and market and a world of geopolitical shifts Europe has to adjust and the question is whether we'll be able to adjust and how so let me move on to the second part of my talk tonight which is to raise five questions that present the kind of big challenges facing Europe at least how I see it let me come to the first question I believe the first question would be would be as follows can the European Union adjust in a world in which Regional integration increasingly Parts ways from globalization or to put it being less sophisticated English terms in a world in which Regional integration and globalization move in opposite directions because I believe this is the world we are likely to be in and we are already in so while there is at least partial deglobalization or at least a deceleration of the process of economic globalization the pressure for Europe to become more United at stronger increases so regionalism will be partly taking over from globalism now in that world the European Union given also its internal political and social problems will be called upon to try to reconcile which is not an easy thing to do economic interdependence with social cohesion and The Ballot Box and this is not going to be easy at all so this is one of I believe one of the big political challenges facing Europeans I believe the era of free trade even even as an ideology is kaput is going we are talking about different things now it will be talking about Freer trade with emphasis on what are the effects on societies and distribution of gains and losses on security concerns and so on and so forth and therefore the European Union will have to deliver or have to be instrumental in delivering together with the national governments protection of citizens and delivery of public goods this is a very different mandate from the one we've been used to for decades and I think there is another issue that is coming up has already come up I believe that taxation is going to be one of the big issues on the European agenda for years to come taxation remember was not meant to be an issue for Europe because the authors of the treaties in their Collective wisdom and also representing political balance of power had introduced or rather had imposed unanimity so with unanimity very little happens now taxation becomes a big issue because governments need to raise money the pressure on governments to increase expenditure to deliver public goods is there and it is strong at the same time in a world in which capital Mobility is almost unlimited there's so much Arbitrage on different tax regimes and there's so much tax evasion and tax avoidance by the richest and by the biggest multinationals that that creates a big issue I mean where the hell are you going to get the money from and Taxation has already been on the agenda and I believe it's going to be even more so on the agenda in the years to come now second question I mean I leave them as questions I raise some points but hopefully we may have the opportunity to spend more time in discussion the second is the European Union and Europe in general has been a Pioneer in the fight against climate change it has been all along and it's something I believe that we Europeans should be proud of now with the war in Ukraine and with the rise in Energy prices climate issues at least for a short while are likely to be on the back burner because there's a much more urgent priority and this is to secure the energy needs of your countries and given that you have to diversify from Russian gas and Russian oil you have to resort to pretty polluting things the big question is whether this is a short term and how long the short term last will Europe be able in the next few years to continue as a pioneer with the fight against climate change and also as a Pioneer in international negotiations and that is important because remember if China is to be treated as a rival competitor or whatever else there is no way you're going to handle climate change without the cooperation of China China is the biggest producer of carbon dioxide on a per capita basis certainly much behind the United States but the U.S Europe and China represent more than 50 percent of carbon emissions so you can't discuss climate change seriously without getting the Chinese on board so you have to negotiate with the Chinese question is will we be able to do so and can Europe find a way of reminding also our transatlantic friends that there can be rivalry there can be competition but there are also a number of things where we have to discuss with the Chinese as partners as fellow fellow Planet inhabitants now number three question will the European Union continue to Be an Effective regulator in the field of chi technology again this is an area where Europe is ahead of everybody else in terms of regulation of high technology or will the Europe instead of being an effective regulator and a referee end up being the turf on which American and Chinese high-tech multinationals fight it out and you can guess that being the turf is never very comfortable feeling remember that out of the top 15 high-tech multinationals in the world not a single one is European so can Europe continue being an effective referee if the game is played by others and if the game is increasingly political politicized which means that the players on the field to not always respect the rules so what can the referee do in such a situation now talking about high-tech means that the Europeans will need to talk not only about liberalization but that we need to talk about industrial policies you will need to talk about strategic autonomy about export controls and how far do you go in terms of export controls or microchips to China and other places and so on and so forth very difficult awkward questions for which Brussels is not prepared I mean these are not the sort of things that Europeans have much prep preparation for fourth question will the European Union be able to continue to export Pax or repair to the less developed and less stable parts of the continent by taking more countries in this is another word for enlargement and most people in the literature if they say that enlargement has been the most successful European foreign policy which is true since the EU is not hard power it's most efficient soft power is by taking countries in and socializing them in the process and therefore exporting democracy modernization and rule of law to other countries less fortunate in the past yeah but this is true but it's also true that experience suggests that enlargement is not a magic portion to cure all ills and it also comes at a big price now to put it differently if it's proved difficult to ensure rule of law and liberal democracy in a country such as Hungary what makes you think it's going to be easier to do it with Albanian Montenegro honestly if Cyprus has been a member of the European Union for almost 20 years and Still Remains a divided Island I'm not going to discuss at this stage whose fault it is but I don't think it's just one side one part is fault uh what makes you think that enlargement would solve the problem of Bosnia and Herzegovina and make it into a unified or rather functioning political entity and how many more weak members with weak rule of law weak administrations and everybody everything else can you take before Brussels becoming the epitome of dysfunctionality and not being able to deliver anything this is not an easy question remember we have five countries in the western Balkans that have been waiting for long to become members of the European Union now we have added to the list Ukraine and Moldova Georgia is waiting once we give the green light there will be more now can the European Union keep on expanding without paying a price and the price is I believe complete gridlock in capacity to deliver anything so enlargement for me would make sense if you had a stronger political Center if you spend more money and if you also adopt a more graduated approach to membership so you start negotiating let's say with a country like Albania if you reach a proper agreement they can adopt a key community on in an area you start by integrating them in that area so membership is no longer everything or nothing there can be things in between so let's say why don't you start at some stage Erasmus for some of those countries and move on to other things that can also make the way being in the waiting room more fun for those who may have to wait for very long if we want to be honest and not hypocritical about how we approach enlargement and then I come to my most difficult question which is can the EU become a geopolitical Power and a geopolitical power that thinks and acts strategically and makes the transition gradually from a peace project to also a peace project that has a hard power element next to it which means in other words foreign policy defense policy this is going to be the most difficult because experience also tells us this has been the most difficult thing or rather the thing where Europe has not succeeded right I mean it's been mostly a failure until now and this is the most difficult and I believe also the most important because in a world in which the geopolitical tectonic plates are shifting in a world in which uh economics becomes increasingly politicized and in a world in which your protector of Last Resort namely the United States has a deeply divided Society and U.S policy in the future remains a question mark if you do not make serious progress in the area of foreign policy and defense you see you will simply not be able at some stage to Define and defend effectively individual freedoms security and way of life of Europeans and that's so in other words that comes to my question for the lecture can the European Union become a political adult of course the epitome of adulthood is foreign policy and defense he has always been we have the currency we have more or less the borders the question is whether we have the army and that may also mean Europe ceasing to be a free rider on American protection and creating gradually a more symmetrical relationship between the United States and Europe by creating European Defense pillar as part of the Atlantic Alliance remember also to put to be honest at most U.S administrations when it came to the crunch in the past were not in favor of a European Defense pillar and of Europe as an entity within the Atlantic Alliance four reasons that may be another obvious okay now my last point how can we address all those challenges and we and most importantly will we be able to move with 27 or less now I believe on the most difficult issues uh agreeing at 27 today is not a realistic option the experience of the last 30 years tells us that we have had much more integration and much more differentiation and all most of the important decisions and initiatives were taken by small group of countries that gradually expanded this is true of the Eurozone this is true of Schengen this is true of several other things so I personally believe that coalitions of willing and able with France and Germany at the center is the answer because the alternative is nothing waiting for Mr Orban to lift his veto or foreign policy or any Orban is really waiting for godo you know the famous play of Samuel Beckett godo never arrives so and if it is the French of the Germans who lead because remember this is how it worked with monetary Union this is how it worked with the Next Generation EU the key question is whether the Germans are prepared to play ball together with the French because the French with macron are clearly willing to play the game the question is whether they have a partner so I believe that the future for Europe in the next few few years lies mostly or rather the decision for the future lies in Berlin whether Germany is prepared to approach France and take Joint initiatives that may gradually transform the European scene and my last word am I an optimist my way of answering that question is by referring to gramshi I'm a pessimist of the intellect and an optimist of the will so that's why my book does not have a question mark okay thank you very much [Applause] so that's terrific I I think we we didn't practice this part as much as we will next time uh and and that's that we do have time for your questions and comments we also have questions and comments coming in from the the audience online so what I'm going to do Lucas is I'm going to I'm going to ask a first question while people prepared their thoughts uh in the audience I believe we'll need to be able to move a microphone around so if you could wait for the microphone in in order to ask your questions so that our online colleagues can respond but but I I wanted to touch this issue about how France needs a partner and that partner needs to be Germany because we have a situation right now where France has a partner in Italy but it's unable to act in that kind of partner way because of Divisions within France's own political system divisions dealing with arguably one of the most important issues of the day and that's migration so so I guess if France is divided on that Central issue and we know Germany is divided on Russia do we have any European countries that are coherent enough to partner with any other European countries in ways that you might imagine are necessary to achieve this kind of political unity in the security space yeah as expected from you that's a difficult question uh macron is certainly weaker than he used to be in his first turn he does know he no longer controls La sombre National still a French president on foreign policy has enjoys considerable margin of maneuver because French presidents are elected monarchs for five years but it is true that I used to say before 2022 that macron was the only European leader that had a plan a vision and a relative weight everybody else was in a different category because they probably either did not have the weight or did not have the plan or did not have the vision or all three at the same time now the picture is more complicated macron is weaker but I think that macron is ready to take more initiatives as far as energy policy is concerned assuming that he reads some response from Berlin the German government is divided we lost an Italian government that could play ball as a Pioneer because drug is no longer I mean Melanie has certainly looks like a tamed eurosceptic at least in the beginning but it's not draggy so Italy may not be the country to be a Pioneer in terms of European initiatives so the scene is more difficult but sometimes big crisis big events create their own momentum because Europe is faced with I mean look at what is happening now with the crisis in Ukraine who is paying apart from the poor ukrainians of course of course the biggest victim is the ukrainians the second victim is the Russians and the third overall is Europe because the Specter of the war is back Energy prices are very high energy dependence has changed but it is very high for Europe inflation is going up the prospects for economic recession are high and there's also a serious effect on economic competitiveness for European companies this is the continent that is paying the biggest price for the war in Ukraine right so Europeans are faced with a challenge whether they rise up to it it's a question I don't know for the time being it doesn't look very optimistic I have to confess so on that pessimistic note what I can say more optimistically is that we have lots of questions so um I'm I propose to take if it's okay with you questions in little groups of three we have Veronica Jonathan and then our own president Renault so Veronica do you want to start thank you for your thoughts um you mentioned that security concerns in this new world order security concerns would take over economic concerns and at the same time you mentioned that U.S hegemony will decline or be lost entirely I wonder whether it the fact that the US is the number one military power as you also mentioned wouldn't in fact push in the opposite direction and increase the Symmetry between the EU and and the US rather than remove the us as the hegemon I forgot to say just for the benefit of our audience online if you could announce who you are that was Veronica angle who's a visiting fellow here but also a lecturer at Johns Hopkins uh Jonathan yeah so Jonathan seifling I'm another visiting fellow and Emeritus professor at the University of Amsterdam where we had the pleasure to host you at our inaugural event for our European Center some years ago so I have two uh questions for you one is uh I guess what could be called the finality of European integration you said pretty clearly the EU needs to become a a geopolitical power does that also mean that the EU has to become a state and would that be a fundamental transformation of European integration as we have known it until today my second question is about differentiated integration and you've said also very clearly that you think that the the future will be more differentiation because we have veto players like Orban so I I have just been part of one of three big projects on differentiated integration funded by the commission the one that was led from here and my reading of the academic findings of these projects is actually that while differentiation differentiated integration has had a valuable place a part to play in the past with the Euro and the Schengen Zone Espanol really that we are not really seeing um you know further developments in terms of differentiation they're mostly temporary and they expire so if the problem is uh Orban or other veto players might it not be that the future to deal with them is to isolate and suspend rather than go out uh in the in the direction of the Vanguard types of of differentiation and it may be that certainly Poland and Hungary are no longer the Siamese twins of a liberalism that they seemed to be in the past and that may make that easier I wonder what you think about that I think I'm Lucas I think we should break at this point yeah now the politicization of economics in the asymmetry of power the war until now has increased the asymmetry between the United States and Europe Europe is much more dependent than the United States Putin invaded Ukraine there is no doubt about it and to be honest I mean Europeans are already faced it won't be faced even more so in the years to come with extremely awkward questions if the United States insists on a more radical economic decoupling with China I believe it is not in the interest of Europeans to follow because Europeans are much more dependent on International economic exchanges than the Americans if you simply take exports of goods and services as a percentage of GTP openness of European economy is about the same as out of China and the U.S is about half of that all right I believe that it is not realistic to talk seriously about the coupling from China even for the Americans but it is certainly not realistic at all for the Europeans so if and the trouble is that China seems to be one of the few things that unites Americans across party divisions I mean there's hardly anything on which the American political system agrees today one of the very few things they agrees China bash China right now of course I mean China has a Communist party but it has had a Communist Party All Along right this is not new has the present president been so different from the past I'm not sure I'm not convinced about that so we have discovered all the eels of the Chinese political system suddenly after 30 years or is it simply because the rise of China is changing the balance of power and some people are not prepared to accept a more multipolar world now therefore Europe has been faced with extremely awkward questions about Huawei but there will be more huawei's in the years to come and our security dependence of the United States will reduce the margin of maneuver of Europeans to say that on some issues our interests may not in fact be identical with our partner across the Atlantic and that's one reason I'm arguing in favor of a more symmetrical relationship within the Atlantic Alliance so now your question finality politic I don't talk about the European State because I don't want to frighten people all right I'm I think I'm a federalist but this is a confession I've never made in public all right but uh I don't think it helps much it's better to leave it vague and we move on and see what happens Europe is never going to become a proper nation state it's impossible it's not even desirable in our history is so diverse it doesn't make much sense so we have some federal elements I mean the ECB is the Federal Institution par excellence right and it was a central bank that was in straight jacket in the treaty and it is Crisis that have taken off the straight jacket because forced member countries to accept the ECB as a proper Central Bank so we said in the past that we don't believe in common debt we don't believe in transfers we don't believe in redistribution yet when it becomes necessary we keep doing it so we will be moving now Ukraine and the war is a bigger thing it's more difficult I'm talking I think we should be talking about closer European Defense cooperation the Germans have made a big difference because now suddenly they discovered that the triptych of German policy is no longer possible namely you free ride on American Security you have a privileged energy relationship with Russia and you are the biggest exported to China which was the tryptic of German policy this is no longer possible so they're going to increase their spending on defense but I was really hoping there was going to be more joint procurement and more defense cooperation in armaments inside Europe if we really believe in the need to create a European Defense spinner and this is not so far happening right of course you will buy some armaments from the United States of course but not most of it not all of it because what is what are the medium long-term implications and what will Europe do if there is a clone of trump that comes to power in Washington in two years time how will they handle it and we just you know sit and pray that these things don't happen they've already happened once and judging from opinion polls this is not a wild possibility now differentiation yes I mean I'm aware of those studies but still take Schengen and Eurozone these are the best examples of differentiated integration and they are pretty successful I mean we started changing with five and we have I think 26 we started the Eurozone with 11 with now we now have 19. so as long as you keep the door open that's crucial because differentiated integration as a form of the privileged few that closed the door for everybody else is not a desirable because that would be a radical change of the process of integration but with the door open we don't have an insult only Orba it's on give you an example from my own country Greece for a variety of reasons including geography if you look at geography you understand why Greeks have the position they have and several foreign policy issues it talks all the time about European common European foreign policy yet you ask the Ministry of Foreign Affairs then they say they want to retain The veto are we serious right you either want a common European foreign policy or you don't talk about veto rights and I asked them what do we need veto rights if we can't convince even three or four countries out of the 27 and we are right on something there must be something wrong with us so I think that on foreign policy you need increasingly qmv and I'm glad to read in the Coalition document of the German government the German government believes in more qmv in foreign policy cooperation so let's make it a practice and if we are not capable of introducing it legally let's have 15 20 countries that issue common statements and you start from there and then it will be difficult for the one or two three others to be left out see any other alternative so renowned and then Claudio thank you um well I'm one of those currently the principal of the eui but most fundamentally European integration scholar and in that capacity uh very happy dear Lucas to have had the opportunity to attend such a brilliant presentation now I'd like to make three quick remarks I think they're more remarks than questions but maybe they will invite you to some reaction the first one is to say that I was struck by listening to you by one thing which is that the topic is Europe but two-thirds of the presentation are about the global context and that per se conveys a very forceful message which is that Europe is what it is and will probably continue to involve largely in relation or in reaction to developments outside of its own borders I emphasize this because I hear nowadays very often let's say remarks about Europe's inward looking character which it does have but I think what we heard today is a very strong and powerful reminder of the fact that from the very beginning because the situation was no different in the 1950s it is in reaction to all sorts of external challenges that what has seen the light of the day has been initiated now built into this first remark is a second remark namely it seems to me that you have responded to the somewhat rhetorical question you've asked in your introduction namely what is it that accounts for the changes uh that we have witnessed since the launching of the European project because when talking about the future you've listed an impressive series of challenges and implicitly it seems to me what emerges from this is that what Europe is or fails to be is determined by the way it addresses the the challenges it is faced with um maybe it should be spread out very explicitly because it will make it easier for you to not to answer a Jonathan's question uh amongst other things and finally following this function on this logic I'm tempted to tease you a bit and say well maybe it would be nice to add one chapter or a sequel to that book which is what if we don't there's to say what will happen of Europe if it fails to respond to the impressive list of challenges that you enumerated then the the question it will not perhaps be of its statehood but of its ability and that of its member countries to defend their common Destiny but it would be nice to try and imagine you know in a kind of uh science fiction exercise how things could be like if we failed to address adequately all these challenges thank you Lucas I think we have a memory issue here again well thank you Renault very much uh I there's nothing really to disagree with uh of course I mean Europe is a very small diverse continent of people whose numbers are declining and the population is aging okay both are happening so we start being small and we are becoming smaller fast because of democracy because the rest of the world is rising is growing faster than us which is nothing to do nothing wrong and Europe I remember an interesting concept introduced by Ivan krastiff who said Europeans have ceased to become missionaries and they should become monks to protect their own values within their monastery okay it's an interesting well forgetting being missionaries is already progress because missionaries meant imperialism essentially in the rest of the world now monks in a secluded Monastery is not really an option because many of the challenges are Global as you very rightly pointed out but also because most of our neighborhood is totally different from the kind of world that monks in a secluded Monastery would like to have uh if you look at the map the neighborhood of Europe and you start from Belarus go down Middle East and Africa is an extremely unstable region with unresolved conflicts sometimes semi-failed States and in the in the south in Africa with a demographic explosion and this is not a world that monks in and secluded Monastery want to be because the neighbors next door don't believe in that and will not allow you to be like that so true I mean Europe is part is a small part and another smaller part of Big World so that's the first point and I fully agree with you now shall I add a chapter where I describe what's going to happen if we fail I only have well I have a sentence at the end of the book who says if we fail we will end up as frustrated Spectators that watch History pass Us by but even worse we will not be not only marginalized but unable to defend individual freedoms and uh security and our way of life it's clear to me and and perhaps with lack of modesty remember that Europe is the part of the world that is most advanced in terms of individual freedoms democracy of course with exceptions inclusive societies and sustainable development the most advanced part of the world now this is something to be proud of but you cannot defend that Aki if you simply pretend that it's going to be soft power I mean Europe became successful as a trade and regular regulatory superpower having delegated its security to the protector of Last Resort which is the United States this is no longer a feasible proposition because the protector of Last Resort will not allow you to continue doing that being a free rider and also because your protector of Last Resort may not be the benign protector that you thought you had in the past so I think I can easily paint gloomy scenarios of what failure will mean and you know this stage of my life I don't want to start investing too much time in Gloomy scenarios because it will affect my psychology so I don't want to do that thank you Linda Claudia thank you I'm Claude I'm a professor at the school of a transnational governance I want to apologize because I'll ask the question and listen to your answer but then I have to go but I will not be because of your answer to my question you're not voting with your feet I will be very short I have a question about the logic of your argument the logic seems to me that in order to address the five challenges the EU has to become a state because when you talk about taxation uh when you talk about foreign policy security policy armaments you are very close to thinking along the lines of the state yet you just said that you you don't wonder you to become a state and I wonder whether we we think about the power efficacy efficiency of the EU always and narrowly in terms of a state-centric powers and forth which was uh some of us were here when Nino mayone taught the UI over said I don't think of the EU in state morphic terms like extending the morphology of the state to the EU um so and if however that's the logic in your argument I I was struck by the absence of the term democracy because surely there has to be an element of democratization uh if they you asked to answer the the five questions and get the people with the you and not alienate these people and so perhaps there is something on Democracy that was expecting expecting to hear in your remarks thank you Claudia do I and do I have time to take another question before you leave okay Christos I'm Christmas I'm a vision fellow here many thanks for another thoughtful length of a working talk um a similar linked up to point question um take into account that you raised the fourth um and and also take into account that Beyond the U.S the within the EU there might be polarizations because the human be within member states to democracy how do you view the the further steps that need to be taken in order for the fiscal Union to be completed and for the you to to acquire an industrial policy if it is feasible thank goodness so let me defend by non-state approach uh of course I mean the moment you talk about taxation you think of a state and I think in Europe today we need to reverse the old slogan of American revolutionaries who said no taxation without the representation we should say no representation without taxation okay now but I'm not talking about any EU State taxing citizens in the same way that nation states do I can give you two examples where can they you be useful it can be useful in helping National governments to deal with the problem of tax evasion and tax avoidance and dealing for example with multinationals because the European Union has the bargaining power that individual governments do not have but the money will go almost all of it if all of it to National governments so the European Union would be useful in complementing the role of now I don't believe it is a zero-sum game I believe that it is a positive sum or a complementary function so I'm not talking about a large fiscal capacity of the European Union it's neither desirable and politically of completely I mean there's no way we can do that but I do believe that the union can help in handling the problem of Arbitrage I mean today we have a situation which for economies makes absolutely no sense it makes no economic sense to have a single Market with capital mobility and Sovereign tax regimes completely suffering uncoordinated taxation in economics makes no sense whatsoever and yet this is the one we have all right and it is a matter of social justice but it is also a matter of helping National governments to raise more money to deal with their needs no but we could have a bit of European taxes for example carbon adjustment mechanism okay I mean on or carbon taxes part of those carbon taxes could go to the European Union and it makes sense because after all I mean carbon dioxide it does not stop at the border moves so it would make sense for the European Union to have a bit on that apartment has to help it also repay the debt we have already incurred to finance Next Generation EU because we haven't yet decided how we're going to pay back the money we leave it for later all right so I'm not talking about the state uh defense if we manage to do halfway the cooperation within Europe that we have a kind of military cooperation within NATO I would be happy now does membership of the European Union mean we have a super state in NATO well perhaps you might Target the United States and the rest but still you can talk in terms of joint procurement increasingly you can talk about common defense projects without creating a proper State proper state if it's something to be discussed in the next hundred years well I won't be around but I don't think it is really the issue that we need to deal with or democracy yes yes you there you have a point in my book I have a chapter on the Democratic deficit so this is but it is true that I have not said anything in my lecture and that is an omission uh all right we my teacher is a strong word because I started as an economist and one of the people I deeply respected if many and who is the former predecessor of Renault and others of Schuman Center I think that the Democratic deficit of the European Union is only partly the result of a transfer of power without adequate political legitimacy and it is partly also simply the shift from parliamentary democracy to the executive order and that is a problem but Stefano bardolini knows I'm there and I'm very cautious because already as an economist I've been daring in moving in these areas but faced with people like you here who are experts of democracy I better shut up so I have three more names on my list and while the microphone goes to Gabi who will be the the next I want to I want to ask a question that I'm inspired by by this Lively commentary that we have going online um there are participants watching this live stream uh one of them Bart Connelly has been putting a large number of comments that um that make me wonder um if we do have given the divisions within Europe right if we do get the kind of centralization that you imagine particularly in terms of common foreign and security policy to what extent should we be safe in assuming that this would be a benign hegemonic influence either in terms of guiding conversations and pushing a foreign policy agenda within Europe itself or in terms of its impact on the outside world and Bart's question in more precise terms is you know the European Union when it engages in the outside world and globalization to what is that is it morally complicit in in the kind of sweatshop labor and abuse of individuals that that we know are responsible talk about talks about monks but I think they're monks who believe in Saint Augustine's Marxism God give me virtue but not today and not tomorrow in the distant future all right so sure but I don't know but I think that the Europeans do not have the money Kian approach that some other unnamed countries have in their attitude towards foreign policy they've stopped being missionaries they are sort of real politic type but of course we would have to fight within Europe as to the direction that such an increasingly common foreign policy takes I don't take it for granted I'm not I'm not taking it for granted that Europeans are somehow more civilized more peaceful and all the rest than everybody else you know that would be an insult to everybody else here we go part-time professor at the Robert Schumann Center thank you very much Lucas for your presentation and I I assume that my question goes in a bit into the direction of the previous question um if we look into increasingly multi-modal fragmented potentially mini lateral Global governance and the need for a ground strategy or a geopolitical strategy of the European Union which position for conditionality within European foreign policy so we will have to turn to what biscop says is the dirty deals as we see now in energy security as tools for European foreign policy when do we tackle the question of how in the future we can Champion democracy rule of your human rights in an equal way across internal policies and external ones will we have to approach a moment where we have a don't go there discussion within Europe and the never mind view outside what do we do with the essence with the ideational essence of being European in the future thank you Gabby could you just hand the microphone to the gentleman with the beard right behind you Odysseus hello and thank you very much my name is and I'm a PhD candidate here at the SBS department and I want to pick up from where uh Claudio radeli left his question on on European democracy because it was also my impression that it was missing from your overarching Narrative of where the EU is going and whatever challenges it's facing but then thinking again you alluded to democracy but in a different way and with a negative connotation if I'm not mistaken correct me if I'm wrong and this was politization you talked a lot about politization and in a democracy inherently there is politization if there isn't it's not a democracy there is no contingency but there is something negative in the way you speak about politization and I'm guessing because the EU doesn't know what to do with politization it has been a depolitized project that suddenly has to deal with very intense political pressures from uh from the bottom up so please elaborate a bit more in this on this politization Dynamic that we're seeing in the EU and maybe whether we can kind of diffuse it in a positive direction to rejuvenate the European project thank you thank you for these questions and especially the last one uh enables me or forces me to make a correction what I mean by politicization of international economic exchange is really the weaponization of international economic exchange is using economic interdependence as a weapon for political purposes right so for example unilateral export controls using your role in international finance as a way of forcing other countries to conform with your foreign policy priorities these are the things that I have in mind so increasingly International economic Exchange being an area where the predominant equation is not economic efficiency but it is security considerations okay so that's what I meant by politicization otherwise I'm fully with you I don't believe as in free trade as a mantra that is should not be allowed to be politicized okay because especially knowing today and we should have known it in the past free trade has also an equal effects within countries and unless you are able to deal with those unequal effects free trade May no longer be politically sustainable now on conditionality and exporting our values again delicate areas uh my response would be as follows for many years there was an implicit division of labor in which Brussels played the saint and member governments did the Dirty Work in terms of foreign policy so Brussels talked about human rights about democracy in its projects and so on and individual chancellors lives in member countries had to do the dirty real politic this is becoming more difficult with time of course we have our values to defend that to have a foreign policy towards China that talks mostly about democracy and human rights and hoping that you are actually going to export your values to China is in it doesn't lead you very far and in fact it can boomerang it can lead to governments in those countries taking even more suppressive measures in handling what they pretend to be a foreign interference so let us accept I mean we should have our values and we should try to defend them as much as possible but I am honestly not a defender of dividing the world between democracies and authoritarian regimes it doesn't help me it doesn't help us very much and also especially because we also have to deal with some pretty unpleasant Partners who are not the best examples of democracy on our own camp so this sounds more real politic perhaps but yes it's going to be a difficult way of trying to reconcile values with real politic in a world which is becoming increasingly multipolar and an anarchic World also you know it's becoming more hopsian yeah and this is dangerous okay we have two final questions and it's gonna start with tamash and then go to Calypso and then we'll allow you to wrap up come on to this to this latest thoughts you haven't mentioned the soft power or you've just made a small reference to soft power there has been a growing cause to use soft power to integrate in the eu's foreign policy as as another tool soft power what would you think about this in this very gloomy context I mean I fully agree with your very clear analysis and the necessity to develop hard power uh still if you look at Ukraine or many other parts of the world I mean this is also a cultural War the world identity so there is not much talk about this but in the background it's an extremely important element and do you have any thoughts to share with us on this subject could you hand the microphone to Calypso super thank you I'm Calypso nicolaidis uh thank you Lucas for presenting us with a very very inspiring book um I I just wanted to to put two questions to you one is we are still in the middle of cup 27 in Egypt and if there's anything that excites you know our children more or less the same age but also our students it's cop27 and there I would would we not agree that the EU is neither a missionary nor a monk nor even a model it's just one of the partners that needs to be consistent with itself and and so in in this story um the new approach to multilateralism could even probably Inspire the EU itself because it's very bottom up whether it's about National contributions rather than the involuntary National contributions from all sorts of actors and so you told us you warned us very rightly about weaponized interdependence and we can agree on that what the EU is doing now with for instance a new directive on due diligence is using its supply chain to really try to affect other countries it's hard not to agree with that but one question is whether and to what extent there is a risk that that too will be weaponized that that too looks like imposing your model how do we draw the line how do we talk to the global South in that very complex and difficult balance so that that's one kind of in a way follow-up question with what from what Gabby was asking and my second question I couldn't resist is is about enlargement I don't think anyone has kind of pushed back really and and it's interesting that yes you're a European but you're also a Greek we had the taloniki summit and Greeks government one after another our brother at one end of the Spectrum in pushing for enlargement to the to to Southeast Europe and you said well can we really afford to take in more and more weak unstable countries but of course there's an argument in the field out there that that the EU tends to also sometimes export instability by exporting the management of its borders further and further by creating some vacuums we know how important Russia is where Scholars here who work on this uh you know in the in the region from the places yes EU does a lot but there is an argument to be said that these countries would be much more stable if there are Pro Prospects for enlargement would be real and indeed if the EU had a better way of managing migration and of course we're talking at a moment when France and Italy still have haven't really resolved their spat but it's a much deeper and structural problem the issue of migration and for sure we're not a state because we don't have common border management so what do we do about I mean what about enlargement in that bigger context so so let me start with the last and Thomas if I forget something about you from your question please intervene again now until now in our enlargement negotiations with the Western Balkans we have pretended all along that we negotiate for accession and they pretend to reform this is really my summary of what has been happening in the last 10 years there's very little progress in terms of domestic reforms these countries are very far from all of them but in different degrees from ever being able to meet the basic criteria for accession and there is enlargement fatigue in Europe like it or not it's a fact of life especially your half country that you know best France so my therefore the position I take is we cannot afford and we should not forget these countries sudden we should not forget Ukraine whenever the war ends we should not forget Moldova but also recognize that if we are talking about membership requirements these countries would take a very long time many years before they meet those requirements and allowing them in in the present system I believe would be disastrous so that's why I present as an alternative the strengthening of the Brussels Center so let us agree do we want enlargement yes if we do want enlargement we have to make the European Union more functional because if it is dysfunctional already with 27 imagine how this function was going to be with 35 that includes Albania Montenegro and other countries right and this is not undiplomatic it's really facts okay so we need a stronger Center we need to make the difference between membership and candidate less big by integrate them integrating them partially integrate the most even in the system increasingly make them socialize them not simply as candidates but try to make concrete progress in certain areas and bring them in that will make a difference and accept also that in the end is going to be graduated membership and this may be a long process but those who tell me that they want enlargement unlimited without internal reforms they are not interested in the European project and there's one country if I may say we will say so politically incorrectly that used to be in favor of that line that was the UK the more the merrier okay the more the merrier with the dysfunctional Center well I'm not in favor of that now on climate so the European Union has an interest in trying to bring countries and make them more part of a coalition to fight climate change right right but as you know better than I do one of the big issues with climate change is distribution who is going to pay for whom and it is a distributional issue between countries you know you have the third world that comes and says well I mean the mess we are in is the result of your industrialization over the last two centuries why should I Tanzania or whoever have to pay a price or forego industrialization because you messed up the planet for the last two centuries and it is also distributional between Generations I mean we are being asked Our Generation to incur sacrifices to make for a livable livable planet for our children that's not easy I mean you can do it for your children but not for the children or the others all right usually that's how people react so I believe that Europe given its experience its history can continue being a Pioneer now we have a U.S Administration that plays ball and this is great we have to get the Chinese much more directly involved in that process I'm a Believer in the creation of a climate Club an international climate Club North house idea that creates a club that essentially sets standards to fight climate change and also provides both incentives and sanctions for those who do not so I think I'm I'm in favor of carbon adjustment mechanism because otherwise it's going to be unfair competition for European producers our soft power yes I mean Europe has been a soft power but we tend to exaggerate how much of a soft power and how effective a soft powered we've been and other countries expose uh hypocrisy often okay so yes sure but I think the beauty of European Venus is not enough to change the world you need also some weapons so it's a pretty looking Venus with a few weapons to make a difference because otherwise it's got to be marginalization well Lucas I have to thank you so much for what's been an incredibly stimulating conversation I should also thank George Papa Constantino in the school of transnational governance who are co-hosting this event this is an event that's important for the eui as a community as a whole I hope that our colleagues online have enjoyed it unfortunately their Applause you will not hear so you'll just have to imagine what that sounds like for the room though I'm sure we can compensate so thank you foreign [Applause] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: The Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies

Views: 2,226

Keywords: European University Institute, EUI, European Union, EU, Robert Schuman Centre, European integration, European governance, Global Governance, european politics, Democracy, Future of Europe

Id: SbasBm0V1B0

Length: 99min 15sec (5955 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 15 2022