Timothy Garton Ash lecture: What story should Europe Tell ?

well thank you very much Constanza for that very very kind introduction are the only small correction would I would make is I think you said I was an eloquent witness of the brexit process and I hope I'm going to be an eloquent participant in reversing the brexit process for which by the way there is now the chances are going up and up because there's really quite a good chance and we I'm happy to talk about that in discussion too that at the end of the day the British Parliament will reject the deal that is just being finalised as I speak and and then and then gave for a second referendum but maybe that's for the discussion period I'm really delighted to be here in this fantastic Museum which I had the great pleasure of seeing for the first time yesterday being shown round by the leadership team who in the front row here and I'm hugely impressed with what you've done and I want to come back and spend a whole day going round it and listening to the guides in some of those 24 languages I I'm not going to talk directly about the museum I'm going to talk about the research project that I am just starting at Oxford which I hope will end in at least one book which have connects very closely a touch of a subject to this museum and the working title for that project as as you said is what story should Europe tell question mark but of course each of those five words itself raises a whole bunch of questions which which have to be asked and and let me take it word by word and indicate just a few of the questions that immediately arise so first of all the the word should why should why should Europe tell its story why does it need to tell its story is it Santa Anas famous comment that those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it is is that the basic reason but is that necessarily a story a story by which we understand something like a a narrative Hegel I'm sure you've all read Hegel studies in the philosophy of history which is not I have to say light reading but but is well worth reading and at one point he says in there it's one of his main points that it is the state which creates the need for history for narrative because you have so to speak the subject which in his view is the state and then you have to explain how it came to be there and to some extent why it came to be there and so one way of thinking about the European story is to ask what's the subject of that story and I'll come to that in a moment but there is a problem here and the problem is the tension although we use the same word in many languages for story and history story a historian Joseph de Guiche Easter the there is a major tension between at least the traditional ideas of a narrative as told in national contexts and history as what historians do and this is of course brilliantly captured in Ernest Reynolds great essay what is a nation where as you all know he says a nation is a community of shared remembering but also of shared forgetting and then has the famous formulation that every Frenchman or French woman I think he said every French man but let's say now a French man and French woman has to have forgotten the sin pathalam used a massacre it's a wonderful formulation so you you know then you have to have forgotten about it and he goes on to say that historians are therefore a great danger to the life of nations because their job is to remind you of the things that you should have forgotten like the sin Bartholomew's Day Massacre to complicate the story actually as Margaret Macmillan says the job of historians is to be Mythbusters so you have that tension between the narrative which has to be in some sense are simple and and preferably an inspiring story because that's part of the point of the narrative and history in what historians do which is to complicate and subvert all myths and so one of the questions of my project that central questions our project is there a way of telling the European story which is compatible with the duty of the historian to stick to the facts to respect the complexity of the story to subvert the simplistic myths is there a way of combining the two so please have that in mind as we go through the sentence which is on the screen now secondly there is the word Europe what on earth does that mean it may sound simple but it's not simple at all Europe is at least three things or groups of things first of all it's a continent it's a geographical expression but a continent with very ill-defined frontiers the only one of Europe's frontiers which is really well-defined is the one to the north but if that's the North Pole to the east and southeast Europe does not end it merely fades away across the vast expanse of what is now Russia and across Turkey somewhere between sin Petersburg and Vladivostok Europe probably ends somewhere between Istanbul and Tehran Europe probably ends to the south it's not well-defined at all because after all for centuries for classical antiquity the north african coast was much more part of the civilized world than was Scotland or Ireland it was the Mediterranean world of which broad L road and we've got ourselves into a muddle in the European treaties when we say that European countries are entitled to apply kindly explain to me why Turkey is a European country but Morocco is not right so Turkey is accepted as an applicant country to the European Union Morocco has twice been refused permission to apply on the grounds that it's not a European country please explain to me why Turkey is more European than Morocco I think the cultural historical claim is extremely dubious then you might say well at least to the west its well-defined well geographically perhaps as a good stretch of sea but if we're talking about Europe as a community of values of culture of ideals kindly explain to me why Turkey can belong to Europe but Canada cannot I once wrote a column in The Guardian explaining why Canada is a perfect EU member including of course Quebec which itself evidently is I mean if you go down a list of what most people in this room would talk about is European values Canada will take every single box except being in the wrong place and this goes to an important point which is when we use a phrase like saying we believe in European values what claim are we making we sometimes talk as if we are making the claim that these are exclusively European values empirically that claim doesn't hold up for two minutes there are many many societies and many many people around the world notably in North America but not just who share many of these values the second thing Europe clearly is is some political project or set of institutions at its heart to be sure the European Union but not only the opinion we forget about the Council of Europe the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights the OSCE but actually the Europe of values is originally and deeply anchored first in the Council of Europe and the Strasbourg Court on to some extent in the OSCE it's actually and I'll come back to this one of the fundamental problems of the European project that the Europe of values in the Europe of money are divided and then there's a Europe of NATO let's acknowledge in some sense the Europe of the Eurovision Song Contest of the Europe of football but various political projects and institutions and then there's a third level at which we can meaningfully talk about Europe which is Europe as an idea an ideal a state of mind of philosophy some of you may have heard of one of the great Europeans of our time who as I was proud to call a friend but honest forget emic does that name mean something to some people here but honest I'll get a Mac so bronnikov gerenuk was the child of a rabbi in pre-war Poland as a child he was shut up with his family in the warsaw ghetto and they managed to smuggle him out just in time he was so thin that in the middle of summer he he were counted he was wearing about 5 pullovers to keep him warm and people in the tram looked at him rather oddly in the middle of August wearing 5 but he survived his family were of course murdered in the Holocaust then he was adopted by Polish Catholic family so he had a dose of Polish Catholicism then he became a communist joined the Communist Party in Poland then he became one of the key advisors of the Solidarity movement starting in the great strikes of August 1980 and was actually one of the political minds of solidarity all the way through to the round table of 1989 and he then ended up as the Polish foreign minister who signed Poland's accession treaty to NATO and a member of the European Parliament a truly great European story of our time and I have never forgotten forgotten bronec turning to me one day we were walking down the corridors of the Polish Parliament and he turned to me and stopped and said you know for me Europe is something like a Platonic essence as amazing moment this manhood had so much of European history for me it's something like a platonic essence and he believed in Europe in that idealistic sense so geography political project and institutions idea and ideal who's the subject then in Europe telling the story who is entitled to tell the story to whom if you want an example of how not to do it may I commend to your attention a project which I'm sorry to have to say was sponsored by the European Parliament and led by a European Commission President Barroso called the new narrative for Europe and if you look on the website or rather the free loosely interconnected and extremely on the hip and clunky websites you have a classic example of how not to do it absolutely do Ambar highly institutional telling the story from the top down teleologically there's a declaration there called mind and body of Europe which was initially to be drafted by a committee but actually there's a very good article that describes all of this ended up essentially being drafted by one person I believe her name was Nicolas Atari and it's not bad at all actually it's quite good but it's not the expression of any genuine dialogue let alone a conversation with wider parts of European society and var franchisor who writes a good arty argument a good article about it says he describes it quite well as an attempt to align collective memory well whatever European native is about is not trying to align collective memory from above from Brussels another scholar Annabel Lee tous Monet describes quite well the power struggles around the European narrative and collective memory and in particular in a way the way in which when the Central and East European countries join the European Union in 2004 you get the memory wars because West European memory has essentially been about the Second World War but particularly about the Holocaust and then the East Europeans come in and say what about the gulag the West Europeans a Nazism and fascism the East Europeans say what about communism and so you get a kind of balancing up in which we not exactly split the difference but say yes we're going to take account of both and some rather sort of luth highest common factor or lowest common multiple wordings about the sufferings of all parts of Europe which seemed to me really quite problematic so to discuss and I really would like to have a conversation with you about it who is to tell the story and in a way this whole museum is about posing that question then what story let me take those two words together and the obvious question here is why what store in the singular and not which stories in the plural that must immediately have occurred to some of you I bet when when when you looked at the screen because of course everything about Europe is a dialectic of the single and the plural the one and the many unity and diversity a friend of mine likes to say and I think it's a lovely formulation that that the experience of being European is the experience of being at home abroad that's a lovely phrase and for me it captures it perfectly well I'm in Prague or Budapest Mountain Madrid Lisbon Rome Brussels I'm abroad but I'm also at home at home abroad but it still has that duality about it so how do we how do we how do we how do we go about this well let's first of all spell out the sheer diversity of our diversity so when you take your tablet round this machine how many people have taken your tablet run this museum let's have a show of hands please well a lot of you still have a treat in straw go get those tablets now the tablet is amazing because there are no texts on the exhibits and the tablet is in 24 languages chapeau bah I don't know how you did it but many people might object why only 24 what about my language where's Ruthenian or Ukrainian ID and if it's in there are many other languages we may say it's the diversity of states but how many states traditionally operate with the figure 28 soon I hope not to be 27 but why only 28 why not the 47 of the Council of Europe or the 57 of the OSCE I think on any realistic reading there were roughly roughly 50 countries in Europe whoever claimed to belong to Europe that's it that's a real ignorance but then again why the states and not the nations not the same thing I remember somebody I once visited the unofficial government of cup of Ruthenia how many people have heard of rafinha hands up not many well one day you may hear of ruthenium so transcarpathian rafinha is a territory of a people called the subcarpathian rusyns who mainly in the very very westernmost tip of ukraine but also in poland slovakia hungary and former yugoslavia so they're scattered across five countries called different names using different alphabets in five countries but they have an unofficial government which is located or was located in a hospital in Arad the Prime Minister was a surgeon the interior ministry was his Anisa 'test and the Foreign Minister had bicycle Dover from Slovakia and they told me about an organization called UNPO anyone heard of UNPO literally one one person that's very good the unrepresented nations and people's organizations you NPO and there are you know the Kurds are there of course Kosovo which has now been recognized and the ruthenians and it goes all the way down to people's who no one might take particularly seriously but of course one thing liberals have never worked out is who actually has a legitimate claim to self-determination I see ty of nodding here from the experience of former Yugoslavia and so why not Nations why not regions why not cities why not minorities what about the Roma arguably the most neglected minority in Europe by far and for that matter why not individuals after all we each have our own individual Europe if you went along the row in which you're sitting every person in that row would have a slightly different Europe I identify myself as an English European sometimes that gets a laugh but I am an English European but my my Europe is actually shaped as much by my experiences in Germany and Central and Eastern Europe as it is by anything I've experienced in England it's it's it's shaped by the experience of living in East Germany and being spied on by the Stasi by the solid on/off movement people like bonus of erm a class laughs Havel and the whole story of east central Europe's transition to democracy and to the to the European Union and then when we're talking about individuals nevermind the 500 million or maybe at 700 million who would consider themselves to be Europeans what about people in the rest of the world many of whom have some ideas about Europe they have Europe's of their own precisely because Europe uniquely among the continents went out to the rest of the world and quote-unquote discovered it and then colonized it and shaped it so that there is no part of the world which is untouched by Europe and that means that people in those parts of the world have their own ideas of Europe shouldn't we in our own story in our own understanding of Europe take some account of the Europe's of others and particularly of the Europe's of people whose countries we colonized and ruled and treated very badly for centuries I once went to Missouri in the Midwest to ask people what they thought of Europe and I went way out into the countryside it's farming country and nobbled farmers and said tell me what you think of when I say Europe and they had a bit of difficulty one of them said wonderfully it's a long ways across the pond and another said they have good hunting over there but then they all had something to say about Europe so in a sense if we were really to be serious about thinking about European stories in the plural we'd have four or five billion Europe's which is across impossible to embrace what is more all these Europe's are not are not fixed and static objects they are constantly changing with time let me give you a little example from I am not sure if it's still in the exhibition but I found it in the book about creating the exhibition and it's a a poster from 1970 a German poster which shows a sort of film starlet Europa sitting rather happily on a ball with sort of high bodies and looking rather kind of Marilyn Monroe like and the bull kicking away the customs checks and customs barriers and it's meant to celebrate the single market and kicking away the customs barriers and and upstairs in the museum or the downstairs anyway wherever it is there are quite a few little Europa's the abduction of Europa but I have to say in the days of me too I wonder if we don't actually look at those images a bit differently an image like that looks to us like an image of sexual harassment Zeus is a Harvey Weinstein of his day so the the these images that we may can have are constantly changing how do we address that in the book about creating this museum creating the house of European history there's a very interesting essay by Andre Mork who is here called the narrative and the way the museum goes at it and I think there's a lot to be said for this is saying there are common threads shared experiences via Christianity the Renaissance the Reformation the Enlightenment Revolution industrialization two world wars but they're experienced by different countries and different regions and different religions and different peoples and different individuals in very different ways and so that's how we get at the dialectic of unity and diversity by showing those common threads but how they're experienced very differently and I think that's absolutely right and is a key - in my view of how they say so the success of this museum but it doesn't quite get us to the point of what we want from a narrative because what we want from a narrative is something which which brings us together a bit more which is a bit more inspiring and uniting and motivating without being completely mythopoeic and doing doing terrible damage to the historical facts so let me in the last part of what I want to say before opening it up just try on you what seemed to me a few threads on which we could genuinely build a European story none of this is particularly new but I think nonetheless it's worth thinking about people often say we can't do it anymore with the peace narrative you must have all heard that said the peace narrative is something from the 1940s and 50s and nobody believes in it I don't buy that for a moment not for a moment I think what you saw on Sunday on the 11th of November the hundredth anniversary at the end of the first world war was a great European moment a great shared European moment I mean it remains true that Europe today's Europe has been built on the progression which goes from the experience of war to the memory of war to the remembrance of war which is something different from memory for three generations the European project everything we have achieved in European cooperation central of the European Union but not just the European Union has been driven by personal memories of war Holocaust gulag dictatorships of the right in southern Europe of the left in Eastern Europe and I can testify to that I mean I told you the story of Burnett's what gerenuk for someone like bonnet get a Mac that was self-evidently true but from Churchill and a dinar and money and Schumann all the way through to the generation of coal in matteawan that was clearly true but we no longer have that driving personal memory a colleague of mine at Oxford Peter pulled some who as a Jewish child his family got out of Austria just in time after the Anschluss otherwise had all have been killed in the Holocaust and he once said only those who have lived in a police state can know what it is like not to live in a peace state in a police state and the historian Ian Kershaw adds only those who've experienced war can truly know what it is like to live at peace and I'm afraid that is tragically true of human nature but the attempt we make as historians as writers as museum curators is to try to learn from history without having to go through it ourselves that is to say remembrance rather than actual personal memory and that's the gamble we're all taking but let's not pretend that this is all about stuff which is 73 years ago I've never forgotten spending time in Sarajevo in 1994 95 96 and in conversation people would say things like you know before the war or after the war and if you're British you immediately assume that must be the second world war because that is the war there's only one war and then of course I very quickly worked out that's not what they were talking about it was in 1945 it was 1995 it was the wars in former Yugoslavia as we sit here today there is a war in Europe in eastern Ukraine there is a low-level war going on as we speak people are being killed by grenades and mortars and tacks and the guy who's really got on to this is Emmanuel macron who's one of whose most profound insights is that we haven't had 70 years of peace it's complete nonsense he said in his speech except in the Charlemagne prize tell that to the poles tell that of a Czechs tell that to the peoples of former Yugoslavia tell that to the Spanish remembering the Franco dictatorship tell it to the Portuguese Taylor to the Greeks who had the Colonel's we haven't had 70 years of peace that's a myth and the lesson he draws from that is that we need to build Europe on the consciousness of what he calls the tragic least wha the tragic dimension of history and I think that's absolutely right so in my view this much often dismissed peace narrative in this new form of an understanding in the tragic least wah is one of the key European stories still this leads to the second as it were Gestalt if I can put it this way of European stories if you look at the way the pro-european argument is made in the different member states of the European Union at first glance it looks very different but actually it has a similar form the basic form of the argument is this we have been in a bad place we want to be in a better one and that better place is called Europe right so Europe has no shortage of bad places so we all have our different bad places for the Germans it was the shame of Nazism for the French it was a strange defeat and occupation and collaboration for the Spanish ship of the Franco dictatorship for the poles it was the communist dictatorship for the Brits it was relative economic and political decline different bad places but similar shape of the basic the Gestalt of the story from a bad places to the good one and the good one is Europe but now we have two problems problem number one what if we're in it right so we've all got there most of us at least and we're in the European Union reality is never as good as the dreams right and so you have a generation of Europeans who broadly speaking of no nothing else who take it for granted and for whom that argument doesn't hold particularly cuz they haven't had much history at school so they didn't know much about the bad places let alone from personal experience but it's actually worse than that because if you're young Greek or young Portuguese or young Spaniards and maybe there some in this room who can talk about it you were actually in a better place ten years ago I mean 2004 five six if you were in Athens or Madrid or Lisbon it looked really great it looked as if the promise of Europe was being fulfilled growing prosperity and Europe appeared to be converging those cities which in some sense uh minutes it's in a sense ridiculous to say that Athens was the periphery of Europe because it's the birthplace of Europe but but in some sense for many through modern history had been in some sense on the periphery so they were converging with the core Europe and then the USN crisis hit and people with PhDs from competence a University in Madrid are working as waiters in London and Berlin and things have got worse not better and what is more what is to blame for things having got worse well to some extent Europe at least in the form of the eurozone so that story we've been in a bad place we want to be in a better one the better one in Europe doesn't have the traction that it had then there is and this is my third and this is in a way very obvious but but nonetheless I think actually there's a lot of a lot of mileage in this there's a way of telling the story of Europe quite simply as countries which like tributaries of a great river started in very different places one up there in the hills one in those hills one over there but from these very different places have gradually run together in our shared European institutions and above all the European Union and I actually think that's a very good way to tell our European story because it's absolutely compatible with the historical facts as long as you don't project present this in a teleological or determinist fashion at the story of historical inevitability of progress towards a Telos of perfected European unity from Charlemagne to the Euro and there's quite a lot of that about and of course again there's a problem with this story which is if Britain leaves the European Union then that little tributary seems to be taking off from the river Poland and Hungary today I don't need to tell you the situation in those countries Italy for that matter I think one can quite seriously argue that we are at the moment in a period of European disintegration rather than European integration and what we shouldn't have is any illusions about that we shouldn't be telling any fairy tales about that so I think that's a good way to tell the story but we have to tell it Oris honestly and actually the last chapter in the story bringing us up to date is not one which says and so the Great River of Europe flows on ineluctably and magnificently to the perfect sea of European Union and ever closer Union it is all those achievements are actually fragile and under threat and we might all pass ways again and that's the way I think you mobilize people by by precisely reversing the story and instead of a story of inevitability you have a story of fragility now the last or perhaps penultimate thread I just want to dwell on briefly is one which a lot of you will be familiar with because it's a way thus of new European narrative a lot of people I think in this con to try and tell it which is about Europe in an increasingly non European world right and I think there's there's a lot of truth in that from roughly 1800 until about 1945 Europe was in some sense the center of the world it was setting the agenda of world politics we destroyed ourselves in what Churchill called the new 30 Years War between 1914 and 1945 we dethrone Europe from that central position but because of the Cold War focused on Europe and in particular on Germany and Lyne divided Berlin Europe was still the central stage of world history so the veldt guys to speak with Hegel for a moment was still in Berlin not because we were making that history primarily but because we were the central stage of that history and so the way in this museum the story of European integration is told which is between the stories of the Soviet bloc and the american-led Western bloc in the Cold War is exactly right that's how that story unfolded but since the greatest moment of European triumphs 1989 and by the way I think that's another European story that we could dwell on so long as we recognize that it wasn't the norm but the great exception right because a great mistake we made after 1989 was to believe that it was norm the things were gonna go on happening like that it was actually the great exception but since 1989 91 the end of the Soviet Union were no longer the central stage of world politics the veldt Geist has up sticks and taken a plane to Beijing right world history in in The Hague alien sense is being made by China and the United States and perhaps India and perhaps Russia are much less by Europe or by Europe only as one of the competing powers and the argument which I'm sure all of you will have heard that in a world of giants we have to be a giant ourselves that if we are to defend our own prosperity our own interests our own values our own shared way of life that sense of being at home abroad we have to get together at so as different defend our interest against these external great powers the China's and the Russians and now under trump the americas who are merrily dividing and ruling and quite successfully dividing and ruling in europe so that seems to me a a persuasive story but for the historian or the writer or those who are interested in the cultural dimension we have I think to think about how we do it because what happened is this for centuries Europeans were mainly concerned with themselves then somewhere around let's take an arbitrary date 1500 we set out to what we call discover the world you remember that when I was an undergraduate at Oxford we had actually a paper on the discoverers right and if you go to the have you have any of you been to the torre de belem in lisbon which is zvv the the exit from the harbor of lisbon and is actually very powerful if you haven't a historical imagination imagine these people sailing off into the unknown to discover the world but I mean the world by the way didn't need to be discovered it was already there it knew it was there but off we went and discovered it and then we plundered it and we conquered it and we colonized it so we had a very deep and complex engagement with the non European world but it was a colonial engagement and then come 1945 decolonization through to the early 1960s we turned inwards we turned away from that whole past and in large measure also forgot about it as individual countries and as a continent forgot about our colonial past and if you look at the way the European story was told in the 70s and 80s and into the 1990s it was all about us there was a New Yorker cartoon which I liked which showed two middle-aged men at a cocktail party talking to each other with a glass of wine and one is saying to the other that's enough about you let's talk about me and and in a way that's what Europe said to the rest of the world that's enough I'd you let's talk about me so we were talking only about ourselves the European story was about ourselves and my argument is that now Europeans have to rediscover the rest of the world but rediscover the rest of the world in a post-colonial a non colonial way in a different way so I think that the cultural challenge that goes with the geopolitical and geo-economic narrative I could go on there were many other threads what about Europe as a defender of shared values if we look at what's happening in Poland and Hungary today well the problem there is that the EU as such and the European Parliament in particular and in particular particular the EPP has not been a great defender of those values which it proclaims and in fact what we have seen is a rather lamentable divorce between the Europe of values and the Europe of money the Europe of values which is still seated in the Council of Europe in the Strasbourg Court and the Europe of values which the EU has tried as a reverse engineer into the economic community but we haven't actually succeeded in making the hard linkage so that how much money you get with your Hungary or Poland depends on how much you respect those values so actually if your order bond or catch in ski not to get too political here you can actually bite the hands that feed you and there are other narratives let me finish on this and throw it open for questions on Sunday evening where London November we had an informal dinner with the Brussels based alumni of my college in oxford Santos College Oxford and we have Antoni ins everywhere in the European institutions and we had a wonderful discussion in which I asked some how would you want the European story to be told and I think there were two common threads in there very different answers one was the one that I've talked about a moment ago namely it has to be about how we engage with the rest of the world not so much about ourselves but about the rest of the world and the other is it has to be personal and emotional and this is where so much that has work comes down from on high in Brussels fails is in being personal and emotional let alone poetic for me personally the emotional story of Europe is not about Britain it is about how my friends in Central and Eastern Europe between 1979 and 2004 2007 brought together Europe and freedom and whereas in the classic English Euroskeptic narrative in Europe and freedom asinus Kanter posed for us in East Central Europe and in South Eastern Europe your from freedom marched together Europe meant freedom and freedom meant Europe and that for me is is is what really inspires me about the European story and that's why I was so moved when on Saturday the 20th of October I was one among 700,000 people 700,000 people on the streets of central London I never thought I would see that in my lifetime the Duke of Wellington's house reased surrounded by European flags 700,000 people turning out to demonstrate for Europe with banners proclaiming from ours not far ours and I like this one it's very English the EU is rather good I love that let's not go over the top here the EU is rather good and my favorite freedom I will not give you up but with the you written EU so that's what I say freedom I will not give you up and on that note let me thank you all and throw it open and I please I look forward to comments and questions thank you very much right there are some if anyone would like a comfortable seat there are some seats of the front here if you're sitting uncomfortably at the back please don't hold back if you could have to my benefit to identify yourself and I think there's a roving mic coming is that yep who would like to kick off yes this lady here hi my name is Beatrice white and I work here in Brussels I'm sorry to bring it back to brag zip but since you finished on that note do you think there is a way to tell this story about Europe in a way that takes it out of the circles of academics and historians and has a genuine chance to appeal to maybe not ardent brexit ears but the people who've bought into some of the narratives that you've spoken about and if so how would this how would this be done in your view very practically if say there were to be a second referendum coming up in the next I don't know 18 months or a year or so how would you go about telling telling this story what would be the main vectors of it and through which channels so it's a it's a great question and you may imagine I've thought quite a bit about this because I think it's not gonna be the next 18 months if we get to it'll be the next five months I mean I think we've got to do it before the European elections or simultaneously with the European elections so we really have to get on with it and I mean I would love to tell of some of the sort of larger more inspiring European stories that I've been talking about but what were what we're up against in Britain is the absolutely poisonous combination of bad history and bad journalism right so if at school people have been taught an utterly simplistic our Island story version of history right England standing alone against the evil continent or no history at all right and if that that our Island story has then been reinforced day-in day-out by a massively mendacious Euroskeptic press the Daily Mail The Telegraph the Sun day-in day-out meta-narrative of evil Europe coming to oppress us and rob us of our freedom it's very difficult to go up against that in a matter of a few months so realistically realistically if it's about the second referendum we have to get it go at it a different way and the way to go at it is I think and also by the way you know I have some friends you know on my side of the argument who want the second referendum who say we just have to say Europe is great well I have to be honest you know you've got a lot of problems at the moment as you will know right look at the eurozone crisis tell that to the Italians tell it to the polls look at the refugee crisis you know - tell that to the Ukrainians I mean I don't feel comfortable doing that sort of agate frog job and just saying Europe is great but I don't think it's it's gonna win the argument I think the argument that has enormous traction is you didn't vote to be poorer when you voted for brexit and in particular you didn't vote for your children to be worse off right and you have to demonstrate how concretely people and in particular younger people will be worse off and that's I think the way we have to do it and the voters who are gonna have to swing are going to be middle-aged voters middle-aged swing voters who went for leave that time but who can be persuaded by concrete practical arguments about how actually good for the European how good for Britain fair for Britain and in particular for their children EU membership has been and how it's gonna hit their kids really hard yes please yeah sigh and they're not come to laid it back yeah yeah I'm Alex I'm a PhD student I'm asking a similar question but differently framed I would like to know actually on you how we tell was the story of Europe to people who didn't have an advantage of living innovation so we we there are not only populism and in English you know but there's also populism and Germany has populism France and of often best populism comes from countryside and also for less educated people so and is also evident I think that well less you are educated for less you I want to see half a new integration so it's less probable that you will move from one country to our country if you are less educated if you but you visit other countries the fear less educated so and I myself come for a countryside and I have many friends but never cross the border in my life and so how do we tell that people the story of Europe that's an absolute killer question and and and and absolutely the right question to ask I mean III mean before I go to it cuz basically I agree with it the challenge of course as you will know if you if you go to the poor northeastern Poland or the hungarian countryside every road and bridge and marketplace is being rebuilt with EU funds so it's not actually the case because with the structural funds they've benefited enormously and those farmers who are voting for law and justice in Poland or fulfill his or you possibly five-day have actually benefited but that's sort of by the by because I think your larger point stands and it there's a great irony here one of the great liberal projects from the 1960s was to have higher education for more people right so we massively expanded higher education I bet most people in this room have had some four our education we got it up to close to 50% unintended consequence we split our societies in half between those who went to university went to live in cities globalized had it enjoyed Europe were cosmopolitan socially liberal like multiculturalism and those who in some sense left behind they didn't have the higher education and that's happened in all our societies as also in the United States and so I think it is a big big challenge and one of the problems is that the way the European Economic Community has worked is it's it's rather like economic liberalisation in the sensitive sport great aggregate benefits to national economies but specific communities if they didn't get structural funds have have suffered right so the two things longer-term I think we need more social Europe that's to say I think if we're really to strengthen the European Union it's got to have some instruments to address those local social costs but that's gonna take a long time because there isn't great support among German taxpayers for that at the moment right shorter term I think our politicians have really to show that they get it that they understand it that they care that they're not themselves just all parts of this remote metropolitan liberal elite I'm now going to tell you a story which has a slightly rude sentence in it but I hope you'll forgive me in a book about the alternative if you're dull and there's a account of a half day demo in a small town in in East Germany and that there's this demo against trans lemarchal who's coming to visit and she completely ignores them she literally turns her back on them and just goes in you know behind the security people to the prepared peter and one of the IFJ demonstrators says to to to the journalist the cook Tom's new tine momentum our Jean she doesn't even look at us with her ass slightly Lutheran language perhaps but it perfectly captures what the Trump voter the brexit her voter and the if' de voter feel right which is what I call the inequality of respect it's not just inequality of economic unicorn it's inequality of respect and so I think there's actually quite a lot that our politicians can do if they can show that they're real human beings who know what a poor village is like and I've actually got it the lady right at the back I thank you so much it's very inspiring to listen to you and I actually had two questions now that I got to hog the microphone my name is Kat and I work with grants and I would love to hear you talk a little bit more about the Europe of money and the Europe of values and I have two questions related to this I was hoping you could tell us maybe a little bit more about what story Europe should tell about the crisis because when we try to make stories personal then of course a personal experience is going to carry more weight with people than remembrance of tragical historical events and for most people now I think that the financial crisis is a much fresher memory than anything we might have learned at school so I would love to hear your take on you know how do we how do we tell this story post crisis because I struggle with that myself and my other question is related to the values specifically values like human rights I feel like we have been spoiled in Europe for quite a long time because the question about human rights as a colonial project has been going on for quite a few decades around the world and whether or not human rights have been used as a colonial project in different countries around the world's pushed by an economic agenda and in a way I feel like that's returned to us however much we have tried to just look at ourselves in Europe and talk about ourselves we are having exactly the same kind of question you know what right does the EU have to impose its values on a member states just because they give us money or whatever so I was wondering you know is that part of our story is this a challenge that you see as particularly European or are we connected to a bigger picture here definitely were connected to a bigger picture there's a very fine historian I think I mentioned called Ian Kershaw who's just published at 2 volume history of your penguin history of Europe and he dates the crisis years of Europe of the European project to 2008 and that seems to me obviously right although you had the Dutch and French referendums in 2005 so there were already problems building out but so much of what happens comes from 2008 on the human rights thing I am very unyielding I think Europe must stand up for human rights consistently everywhere always buster and I don't buy that at all and actually of course in the case of potent hungry of member states those two things have been disconnected rather than connected right I mean that's to say there's been lots of money that we haven't cared so much about the rights in terms of how we tell the story I mean that I you know that that I think requires more thought because what we need to do is to tell each other's stories rather than our own that's to say the Greeks don't need to be told how tough it was for Greece and the Germans don't need to be told how it was for Germans but the other way round right so the Greek story needs to be told in Germany and the German story needs to be told in Greece that's that's what's been lacking and I mean I think writers and historians and journalists in particular very important in this but so are politicians and if we're thinking about the balance sheet of Angela Merkel's transfer ship and for obvious reasons were beginning to think about it I mean I'm a huge admirer of her I think her style of politics I sort of civilized moderate thoughtful feminine consistent non showy ego light politics I fantastic but I think she made one huge mistake which oddly enough was not so much about what she would regard as real which is a sort of nitty-gritty of policy but about telling a story because what happened at the beginning of the eurozone crisis was she didn't tell any story about it right and a story a narrative became strongly established in the German media and politics supported by the Bundesbank and by some politicians which crudely put was virtuous hardworking industrious North Europeans being screwed by lazy irresponsible south europeans I simplify slightly but not too much and once that narrative had become established in Germany which it did quite it was difficult even for the transfer with all her powers and and in the consular democraty that transfer has enormous powers to go up against the narrative and it's what we see in the populist to what the populist get right again again is the power of a simple narrative look at Trump a caravan is approaching the borders of the United States it is an invasion he said farcical ridiculous statement but as a narrative it works so it actually shows the important of seizing the initiative and setting the right tone in the narrative earlier on so in a way we can't make up unit spilled milk but what we need to be thinking about is as it were what's the next crisis coming down the tracks and what's the story we need to tell about that yes um there and then there and then that maybe I'll take free groups um so we'll get more in so the gentleman here in the scarf yeah thank you professor good evening everyone my name is David I work for the European Committee of the region's here next door press officer and I being born in Barcelona I can't help asking you about the Catalan claimant of independence but not whether you are in favor or not that's obviously not my question what I wanted to share with you and ask you about is about the Europe of values is about obviously how the economic crises how some rescuing banks people are not stupid I mean there's a moment where there is a crisis in the values from the economic perspective and people have suffered of the crisis a lot and haven't seen Europe responding a lot to these and what I want to go is more on the on the political Europe on the Europe of the political values when I was reading your articles years ago in politics I could never have thought that the people I voted for in the European Union would be now in jail it's very tough also to get into the EU and work for the you every day also having this situation for and and and and fighting for still believe in the European project which I do believe now I the comments I wanted to share with you just one for those that might think that those who are in jail because they did something they deserve to be in jail well Catalans we never act violently so when you're charged of rebellion without violence there is a problem but time will time time will tell in the European Court of Justice is there - to put things into place even though Germany and Belgium already did now in my opinion when when the Commission pushes article 7 for Poland for Hungary I wonder what are they thinking when they look at Spain and political leaders that actually run freely - elections are now in jail obviously the People's Party have taken over all the institutions for the first time they have the Parliament they have the Commission they have the council only tusk Donald Tusk there to say something a year ago now asking for dialogue and out for repression the power of words and not it'll remember that the sentence exactly I won't be much long and so do what's happening here do we have double standards here if I would be a Korean or polish I would say sorry but leave me alone and look at Spain what exactly is happening there when you try to interfere in the political life of a sovereign country thank you I'll take three and then respond this lady here identical or similar okay two questions in one thank you my name is Xhosa Falcom from the netherlands living here i had a question actually partly follows up because you spoke already on the question on who should be telling the story nations States cities individuals and as our friend from Catalan just talked about also the political situation in Catalan I will Catalonia I was wondering if you could look a little bit more into the future and the role of nation-states in this case in Europe but maybe nations more general as a political entity are we Europe sort of tries to go past nations but still were ruled by in nation-states which don't always actually align with nations so how do you see this fit into a positive story to the future of Europe can we do we go beyond nations or our nations and inherent part of our future so let me start with that one um there was a joke in the 1950s that if someone Ewan met someone and you said some where do you come from and they said I'm a European you knew they were German but so so if you look at Eurobarometer now that's fantastically high levels of identification with Europe and people being feeling European and being European but as a double identity along with the national identity whatever the national identity may be so I think realistically for the foreseeable future we're not gonna have the United States of Europe of which many people dreamed we will still have the nation-states and the question is how did these two things fit together and the answer is like nothing else we've ever seen before Julianna Marta likes to say they EU is an unidentified flying object and that's that's that spot on right it is there's no point in taking all these analogies Federation Confederation because it's something different now in that takes me to Catalonia I was in Barcelona earlier this year earlier this year I have very good friends friendships under strained families divided I wouldn't have believed it was possible having been going to Barcelona for years and years and years and it wouldn't have happened without the 2008 crisis I'm sure you would agree which catalyzed the impacts of the eurozone crisis catalyzed definitely catalyze the strains by putting the spotlight on the arguably unequal economic relationship between Catalonia and the sent um so part of the problem I do I do think I I don't agree with all your analysis a situation but I do think that European leaders should have spoken out more clearly about what was happening I do agree on that part of the problem is of course and this connects to your point that it is still the European Council is a Council of member states and the council is very reluctant to do anything against the member states but more to the point the institution which was meant to be the patron institution of this museum by the way the European Parliament which was meant to be the direct representative body right that was the basic idea it was the direct representation of the people of Europe and we should have European parties which stand up for different European directions and values and so on they utterly fell in this case and in particular the EPP so it's not just that the council is not going to do much against a member state government it's also that the EPP is not going to do much because they're defending their member party exactly what has happened with feathers on Hungary so I think if we're looking for an area to kind of really examine and I don't have a good answer it's not so much in the working of the European Council because it is what it is but it's in it's in it's in the European Parliament or other parts of the EU where one would hope that people would would would would speak out more clearly and I have to be quite frank my own view is that the the pan-european party groupings and the spritzen candidate just have not done what they were meant to do objectively on paper it all looks great subjectively it just doesn't work and the subjective matters in this case yes right so I'll take another three keep your hand up be optimistic and there we are that flag so I'll take that gentleman there then that turns one no you first you know I'm Melina and I'm young Romanian law graduate and my question would be where in this in this story you would you play the lower part of the slope appreciative couldn't yes would you put it in the division part in the disintegration one or maybe reinforcement part thank you right thank you my name is Jacob I'm also a law graduate currently blu-bib training here in Brussels I wanted to talk about the story of the upcoming European elections so we are seeing now that from the liberal camp especially Macomb true pitting the Nationalists versus two pro Europeans and to some extent I think that's a bit boring this alignment between liberals and pro-european because as someone else put it to me the other day for the liberal vision of Europe there might not be a place where conservatives and I would add for socialistic either so do you think there's a way that we can sort of move beyond this this nationalist versus European is at paradigm rather talk about what direction the EU as a whole should take great question and one there were couple more along that row shall we take them quickly if you yeah well but both of you we never if you'd if your brief we can take your bait I'm Jacob I'm working for an MEP at the Parliament and I wanted to ask you a question as a historian I worked my bachelor thesis on writing the Union so quite a related topic where I looked at some cases of historians and how they right about Europe and I was comparing them to the historiography of the nation of the 19th century and looking to what extent do they use the methods of historians of the 19th century because you said that nowadays historians are Mythbusters but in the 19th century they clearly weren't and they were architects of the nation so I would like to know because this is not a this is not a commentary hide it as a question it's actually a question I would like to know how you would evaluate the risk of falling in the trap of writing these overarching narratives they were already some answers in your talk of course but I'm wondering because you are very fervent supporter of the European course and of course I support that but then there might be a certain risk of how do you jungle between your engagement as an intellectual engag and and a historian that's what I would be interested in hi my name is Hassan Moran and I try to be a researcher in semiotics of culture which is not easy my question is regarding the theoretical framework of the research and the different concept illustrations of Europe I mean in the last couple of years 5-10 years the concept of way of life form of life if disco logic want any opponent at all they're having gaining relevance within the social sciences to understand phenomena like the imagined communities and so on my question is do you think it might have a place is kind of concept to understand the European s and if so if yes how did you start at the end yes I do but I don't know how I mean I haven't been travelling around Europe for 40 years I know that that thing exists but maybe it needs some novelist to describe it and I'm not sure how I would go at it academically because if you if you take it down to the level of trying to describe for example a European social model it doesn't work right because actually for social models are very different so if you take any individual part of you and look up close you see lots of differences and yet I am persuaded there is something there so so that would be a great thing for you to do find out how to do daring backwards the historians it's a huge danger and I hope I express that rather clearly and if you look at the book by Jean Baptiste or sell I didn't if you looked at that as one of your examples it's a classic example of a kind of what I would call Euro nationalist historiography doing what the nationalist historians of the 19th century did for Europe in the 20th century from Charlemont of the era of triumphant progress I honestly don't think I I'm in danger of falling into that trap because I you know I write it as I see it and and one of my key precepts comes from George Orwell and all well says very very clearly in homage to Catalonia you have to be hardest on your own side not on the other side that's how that's what you do as a political writer so I try to be hardest on my outside they make it quite easy for me multi-speed Europe is you forget about it it's a useless metaphor because the premise of multi-speed is that you're going in the same direction that's the image we're going in the same direction but at different speeds and the you know laggard brits will finally come along and the lager poles will finally catch up with the the portion they wear now in the front and it's not like that the danger is that we will be not just multi speed but multi direction that it will be part of the disintegration so I I think we have to think about it in different ways and actually since we're talking about history books I would strongly recommend you Peter wells Peter Wilson's history of the Holy Roman Empire now we all think of the Holy Roman Empire as a bit of a farce when it sort of crumbled at the end of the 80s beginning of the 19th century actually it was the most successful supranational national political community in European history modern European history it was tremendously successful and was tremendously successful because it had it was multi-layered it had a mystique tremendous mystique which is very important for a political community but it was also quite flexible it could adapt and could change and I think the you could learn quite a lot from the Holy Roman Empire actually and on the European elections this is this is a very good point because what we have to avoid and this goes back to the point you made at the beginning about those with higher education and there's not where the wonderful cosmopolitan internationalist globalists you're the dark reactionary nationalists that's a very dangerous way to set up to frame it and McCaw again is absolutely on to this we actually have to talk more about the nation not less but in a different way we have to talk about liberal Civic patriotism rather than xenophobic ethnic nationalism that's a way to do it and so I very much with macro on that and to that extent although the winners of the European elections are probably not going to be the urbanites all the McCrone East right I don't think either of them are going to be big in the Parliament but they are setting the terms of the debate right and macro is talking about the nation but our ban is also talking about Europe he's not just talking about nations he said recently he said thirty years ago we used to think Europe was our future now we believe we are the future of Europe right and he believes and claims he is standing up for Europe it's just a different Europe it's a conservative traditional Catholic Europe no gay marriage no multiculturalism strong nation-states no federalism so it's an argument about two concepts of the nation but also about two concepts of of Europe and I don't think there's any way around that but we on the pro-european side and the liberal side really mustn't forget about the nation as well as Europe I think I'll take just one more round of questions if I may so if you want to close a question stick up your mitt and I will try to bring you in great so one two three four five four yeah yes mark I'm a law graduate and Blue Book trainee at the Commission and from what I understand is that the biggest threat for Europe is today is the desinformation campaign we we are experiencing by different movements or by differ by many different parties from Russia and from nationalists and so on and my question is going to what's what can we do as Europeans to have a narrative which is more convincing how can we implement it our or how can we say that our con our narrator is more convincing than the narrative which is told by the disinformation campaigns thank you right so there was were words could you put up your hand again who was this lady here brilliant thank you very much my name is Tiana and I'm from Georgia I'm working here in Brussels and my question is on the question about who should tell the story do you think that the EU has the leadership crisis probably because we remember that the the narrative and discussion especially during the crisis of financial crisis and because like as you know I mean some some historians are know Thomas Carlyle and also also Hegel like who was saying that the history is made by great men I don't know to what extent also it applies applies to the EU as such because if we observe how the leaders are selected or elected at the EU level we said we see that they are kind of product of the consensus like for example they did the president of the currency also the Parliament because the president of the European Parliament is proposed by the major let's say parties and they need to be there there are like majority deals so and also like what are the rules of the EPP and Socialists and alder this Eero parties in telling the stories if they have their own thank you my questions are shorts for sadly relevant one how damaging could brexit be for the story that Europe should tell how how much of an impact could that have on this narrative and I come from Hungary and I also happen to live in Poland for quite a while so I actually experienced the narrative of both the Fidesz and peace governments and as you have mentioned it's it's not necessarily against Europe or no it's a different vision of Europe and many times when when you listen to the news the embodiment of sort of the enemy or the foreign is Brussels so they mentioned Brussels as the foreign influence which tries to take over the the country and and so my question is whether it's not the real question is what's or should you tell rather than what story should Europe tell because the EU is clearly not making the case for itself as a positive actor in the European integration process so so what what chances do you see here for the into play a better role in this narrative brilliant so let me try and pull all that together and take that question on the one about the EPP and the parties it took together because they're closely connected I I mean obviously there's some role to be played by European institutions and obviously there's some role to be played by European Party groupings that what has been missing for the last however many years is not people telling the European story at the European level what has been missing is national politicians telling the European story back home in their national languages in their national idioms that's what's been missing and on the contrary the old bad British habit of blaming it all on Brussels has been spreading around the whole EU I mean you see wherever you look politicians are doing that game of going home and saying well you know blame it on the blame it on Brussels I worked for some time I said worked with I I helped Tony Blair on some of his European speeches and Tony Blair gave terrific European speeches really great stuff the trouble was they would live it in Warsaw and disel Dorf and Paris not in Britain because he actually didn't dare but he frankly go up against the Euroskeptic press at home and what needed happening this goes to your question was that he delivered those speeches I once got him to do one speech in Oxford not not exactly in the entry the Beast but at least in Britain and I tried to persuade him to put in a passage about the lies being told by the Euroskeptic press which is a huge part of the explanation for brexit and what came out was two of the feeblest sentences in the history of the English language I mean he just would not dare take on the earth a skeptic press and and and it needs in my view national politicians to have the courage and tell the story in their national idioms that that's what's missing how to tell it to go to the question about disinformation I mean I think there are two different as there were sides to this one is how do you go after the bots and the use of social media and here Facebook and others simply have to step up you know took to the plate and I spend a lot of time actually I spent three months every year at Stanford so in Silicon Valley I had a lot of dealings with Facebook and they can do it if we put enough pressure they can do it they can address that problem so we have to put enough pressure that they do it the other side of the question is is how do we respond to lies and bullying and demagoguery and my answer is not by shouting back and lying back I think we civilize liberal civilized conservative civilized Social Democrats have to stick to our own language our own values and find a way of calmly but firmly answering back and it's for that that I really admire Angela Merkel because in ever in quiet way I think Angela Merkel has been a model of how you answer bullies like Trump a message of congratulation to Trump on being elected with a was a great example of that and finally last but not least and in coming to an end the damage that brexit will do I have to say in all honesty and not not not not because I'm British but because I think analytically this is the case and I think our Continental partners are under estimating the long-term damage that brexit would do to the European Union in the European story first of all foreign and security policy I know everybody is saying oh that's all going to be fine and we'll go on cooperating but that's not how politics works if Britain is having a hard time in its economic relationship with the EU 27 and it will be having a hard time it will rub off on the security and foreign policy that's a big loss for the European Union secondly if you look what happened with Switzerland Switzerland was on the point of joining the EU then decided not to and now someone told me that a recent opinion poll instead of being close to 50% for support of membership in the EU it was down to 11% because being semi-detached being that's almost the most uncomfortable position of all it's almost more comfortable to be completely out than in this not in not out position and say it'll I think be very very bad tempted tempered and thirdly and not least because political communities depend on what I call a Nimbus of irreversibility a Nimbus of irreversible people have to have a feeling that that's where history is going that there's they'll always be in England there'll always be United States that it's there for good and this is a body blow to the Nimbus of irreversibility of the European Union so I think the potential impact is much larger I think of continental partners because they have so much else on their plate and just want to get the bloody thing done are under estimating the long-term impact but here's the good news when we have a second referendum and when we keep Britain in the European Union I think that will be a terrific shot in the arm for the European Union I really do imagine the feeling if a country is as big an bloody-minded as Britain has thought again and decided to stay in and if that comes with a better consolation out of the European Parliament elections and a new government in Berlin and both things are possible I think actually we could have a great moment of opportunity for the European Union so so there's something to look forward to thank you very much [Applause] dear professor garden - tonight we've listened to first of all a total deconstruction of one sentence of all elements in that sentence Europe the story who tells it so you've started off with a feeling of we know that we know nothing and then you've taken us slowly to some solutions and they are some like some of your writings surprisingly dialectic so we should tell the story of peace by speaking about war we should tell us a positive story by referring to the tragedy of history we should praise Europe as a good place while speaking about it's bad places we should bring forward Europe in an onion world we should look at individuals and at a personal level but also at the world so to summarize we should I conclude from your speech that we should tell stories in the prologue prologue pearl oral sorry that's my German accent dialectically nationally emotionally sometimes poetically and about each other so thanks a million for this immensely rich food for thought and we'll release now everybody and thanks for the active participation to get some physical food I wish everyone a great evening and thanks a million for coming [Applause]

Channel: House of European History

Views: 3,570

Keywords: Brexit, EU, Orban, Nationalism, Eurozone, Populism, European Union, Trump

Id: bFUzC26hC3Q

Length: 91min 20sec (5480 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 15 2018