1 00:00:00,750 --> 00:00:07,340 Brexit to see Brexit and Brexit, Brexit, Brexit. 2 00:00:07,340 --> 00:00:18,150 Stop it. In case you're tired of hearing this word, I thought I'd start with saying it five times. 3 00:00:18,150 --> 00:00:26,670 But of course, Brexit is part of the backdrop to this conference when we started planning it. 4 00:00:26,670 --> 00:00:32,850 We thought it would be after Brexit. I'm very glad to say it's not after Brexit. 5 00:00:32,850 --> 00:00:42,150 The Brexit, I hope, will never happen. But it does, I think, reflect on our topic in at least three interesting ways. 6 00:00:42,150 --> 00:00:57,420 First of all, it's absolutely clear that the victory of the Brexit vote had a lot to do with the power of narrative in an age of populist politics. 7 00:00:57,420 --> 00:01:10,110 In this case, the very powerful narrative told of the plucky little freedom loving Ireland resisting wicked, federalist oppressive Europe. 8 00:01:10,110 --> 00:01:23,970 Secondly, if it happens again, as I say, I hope we can prevent it happening and it will seriously impact the sort of central EU narrative, 9 00:01:23,970 --> 00:01:30,180 which is, of course, a narrative of integration, unification, enlargement and progress. 10 00:01:30,180 --> 00:01:37,500 And the impact of Brexit would mean that suddenly we have the story of disintegration, contraction and regress. 11 00:01:37,500 --> 00:01:49,050 And thirdly, for those of us who are trying to keep this country in the EU, the question is really urgent, say Typekit, 12 00:01:49,050 --> 00:01:55,320 how you tell the story of today's Europe in a way which is compelling for British voters who are trying to 13 00:01:55,320 --> 00:02:01,560 make up their minds in the European elections in a few weeks time and then possibly an effective referendum. 14 00:02:01,560 --> 00:02:12,130 So it's very relevant to this background. I get to do all the formalities 10th anniversary of lecture and colloquium all the appropriate 15 00:02:12,130 --> 00:02:19,110 facts in the more formal session tomorrow often do in advance of the 10th anniversary lecture, 16 00:02:19,110 --> 00:02:23,610 I want to give a quick introduction to the shape of the conference. 17 00:02:23,610 --> 00:02:33,840 And first of all, this is a conference about narrative or narratives which people talk about a lot. 18 00:02:33,840 --> 00:02:37,640 But what are we talking about? What is it? What is narrative? 19 00:02:37,640 --> 00:02:41,940 How does it differ from story of history on plot? 20 00:02:41,940 --> 00:02:47,940 Who is doing what to whom? When we talk about narrative, what are the disciplines? 21 00:02:47,940 --> 00:02:54,780 How do we study narrative? One of the things we're trying to do in this conference is simply bring together people from history, 22 00:02:54,780 --> 00:03:03,480 political science, political theory, but also literary studies, communications and media studies, social anthropology. 23 00:03:03,480 --> 00:03:08,820 To see how these different disciplines think about narrative and what are the methods 24 00:03:08,820 --> 00:03:14,580 that we would use if we're actually trying to study narratives of any degree of rigour? 25 00:03:14,580 --> 00:03:19,800 Biography proof of the intellectual history, contextual and textual analysis, 26 00:03:19,800 --> 00:03:23,640 in-depth interview and drawing on, say, for anthropology or oral history. 27 00:03:23,640 --> 00:03:26,580 Like the really excellent project. 28 00:03:26,580 --> 00:03:37,050 The Oral History of the Sixties, the 1968 generation with Robert Kennedy, our colleague here and others were involved in public opinion polling. 29 00:03:37,050 --> 00:03:41,490 Deliberative polling. We are here at the museum as we have talked about it. 30 00:03:41,490 --> 00:03:45,930 I even discovered that there's actually in literary studies, 31 00:03:45,930 --> 00:03:54,300 a sub discipline called narrower tolerances and anyone who had never publicly stated the 32 00:03:54,300 --> 00:03:59,220 fact that we hasn't learnt colleagues in the thought order that I confess I hadn't, 33 00:03:59,220 --> 00:04:05,030 but I do now. And of course, don't forget journalists, which I then make, which would be snippy about. 34 00:04:05,030 --> 00:04:13,440 But so that's that thinking about narratives in general, how we studied them. 35 00:04:13,440 --> 00:04:23,910 And of course, the two narratives about Europe and the sharp eyed amongst you will have noticed that in the very first versions of this project, 36 00:04:23,910 --> 00:04:28,980 it was called What story should Europe tell? 37 00:04:28,980 --> 00:04:35,880 Is now called What stories does Europe tell? And the difference is entirely different because, of course, 38 00:04:35,880 --> 00:04:51,490 the classic way in which this question of European narrative is if comes in the form, what stories should the EU cover? 39 00:04:51,490 --> 00:05:00,020 So if you if you think of Hagos famous lectures on the philosophy of history where he says he doesn't. 40 00:05:00,020 --> 00:05:06,380 Rarely, history until it becomes a history of a state that's augmented by history, 41 00:05:06,380 --> 00:05:17,670 and what this does is to put the EU in the place of the state at the centre of the narrative and the people who spend their lives studying this. 42 00:05:17,670 --> 00:05:26,210 And this leads to some extremely superficial, not to say boring discussions of European narrative, 43 00:05:26,210 --> 00:05:32,600 mainly consisting in politicians playing around with some big abstract nouns. 44 00:05:32,600 --> 00:05:40,220 So to give you an example, I was at a conversation with Tony Blair and Mary Robinson the other day, 45 00:05:40,220 --> 00:05:45,140 and Tony Blair said the European narrative used to be about peace now. 46 00:05:45,140 --> 00:05:54,080 It's about power. Then Mary Robinson spoke up and said that it's not about peace of a car, it's about values. 47 00:05:54,080 --> 00:05:57,980 And so it goes on playing with these large abstract nouns. 48 00:05:57,980 --> 00:06:05,750 And we actually have a wonderful example of how not to do this, which is. 49 00:06:05,750 --> 00:06:15,710 The project started under the presidency of Jose Manuel Barroso, an official Brussels project called The New Narrative for Europe. 50 00:06:15,710 --> 00:06:22,580 If you want to see a perfect example of how not to do it, go look at their website. 51 00:06:22,580 --> 00:06:38,360 It is top down their own bar from Brussels out draughted by a committee very badly designed website visited by almost nobody. 52 00:06:38,360 --> 00:06:47,330 A declaration called the Mind and Body of Europe, which is just at the moment of waffle, which means nothing to nobody. 53 00:06:47,330 --> 00:06:50,690 That's exactly what we don't want to do. 54 00:06:50,690 --> 00:07:01,550 And interestingly, when it was launched at the launch event with Barroso, Angela Merkel said quite bluntly, Are you sure you want to do it this way? 55 00:07:01,550 --> 00:07:08,600 She said, Wouldn't it be a better idea to maybe just go out and ask some Europeans what they think about Europe? 56 00:07:08,600 --> 00:07:13,700 And that seems to us quite a good idea. So that's a part of what we're going to do. 57 00:07:13,700 --> 00:07:19,240 So in the new title, what stories does he ever tell you have to do? 58 00:07:19,240 --> 00:07:29,240 It's no longer should it starts. So if you look at the research document, our research team have prepared a document which is in your folder, 59 00:07:29,240 --> 00:07:34,070 which is a powerful summary of some of the relevant initiatives, 60 00:07:34,070 --> 00:07:40,850 and we've divided it into normative, prescriptive on the one hand, descriptive and on the other. 61 00:07:40,850 --> 00:07:45,800 And we're very much at the moment in the descriptive analytical pack, 62 00:07:45,800 --> 00:07:54,500 which is what this first panel is also about is an initial stocktake of what we can say about what Europeans never care about. 63 00:07:54,500 --> 00:08:03,980 The other difference is, of course, if we just added one letter to the story, it's stories plural, not singular. 64 00:08:03,980 --> 00:08:09,890 An excellent beginning in this direction is the book, which I commend to you. 65 00:08:09,890 --> 00:08:21,050 Edited by Justine de Klerk and our colleague Alex Nicolaides called European stories intellectual debates on the other two national contexts, 66 00:08:21,050 --> 00:08:25,160 which is one of the best books on the topic so far. 67 00:08:25,160 --> 00:08:34,040 But the question then becomes If we're really thinking about diversity, why just for national frameworks? 68 00:08:34,040 --> 00:08:39,890 What about my knowledge? What about unrepresented nations and peoples? 69 00:08:39,890 --> 00:08:44,810 What about different languages? What about different sexual or political orientations? 70 00:08:44,810 --> 00:08:49,580 What about generations? What about individual Europeans? 71 00:08:49,580 --> 00:08:55,550 And there is a real sense in which there is not just one European story. 72 00:08:55,550 --> 00:08:59,360 There are about seven or eight hundred million European stories, 73 00:08:59,360 --> 00:09:06,620 depending on how many people do you think that in Europe, every individual has their own Europe? 74 00:09:06,620 --> 00:09:12,950 Tell me your Europe and I will tell you who you are. So it's very much the plural. 75 00:09:12,950 --> 00:09:19,400 But then the question becomes why only ask Europeans? 76 00:09:19,400 --> 00:09:26,060 Identity always has two sides. It's what I think, who I think I am and who other people think I am. 77 00:09:26,060 --> 00:09:34,760 So if we go with public myself as other, then we think about have to think about what others think of us, 78 00:09:34,760 --> 00:09:43,700 which is something I think Europeans in this context have done far too that we tell this beautiful story about how 79 00:09:43,700 --> 00:09:50,690 Europe is spreading norms of international governance to the rest of the world and all cash invasions of the event. 80 00:09:50,690 --> 00:10:00,070 It is without thinking about how the rest of the world which has experienced the impact of Europe for centuries. 81 00:10:00,070 --> 00:10:05,500 Not always in the nicest possible way might actually receive that narrative. 82 00:10:05,500 --> 00:10:10,450 So I'm very glad that we have to have the whole of Saturday morning. 83 00:10:10,450 --> 00:10:17,140 Firstly, on your outside of those who maybe have come recently to Europe, 84 00:10:17,140 --> 00:10:26,890 those who represent different communities going to smuggle Turkey into that tunnel inside, outside question mark iSEC and you'll be able to tell us. 85 00:10:26,890 --> 00:10:35,770 And then the panel on Europe seen from outside these narratives are, of course, always contested. 86 00:10:35,770 --> 00:10:47,410 That belongs to that nature. And so rather than starting with theory, the second panel this afternoon wants to give you a sense of that conversation. 87 00:10:47,410 --> 00:10:53,620 We had someone who was a chairman of the Leave campaign, the Vote Leave campaign and the British Brexit referendum, 88 00:10:53,620 --> 00:11:06,370 a conservative Hungarian scholar, someone from Vault or PA and probably should our policy from a politician so floral in political context. 89 00:11:06,370 --> 00:11:17,260 But beyond these dichotomies, normative, descriptive, singular floral, there's that tension between narrative and history. 90 00:11:17,260 --> 00:11:27,160 Or, if you will, between myth and reality. So the classic statement on this is, of course, an enormous, great essay. 91 00:11:27,160 --> 00:11:38,470 Yes, it came national in which he says famously nations that communities of shared memory and shared forgetting every French citizen he says, 92 00:11:38,470 --> 00:11:43,030 must have forgotten, said Bartholomew's Day massacre. 93 00:11:43,030 --> 00:11:49,270 It's a wonderful formula, albeit so you have to learn about it and then you forgot about it. 94 00:11:49,270 --> 00:11:58,300 And so he says historians are a danger to the life of nations that they subvert the comfortable left by which nations live. 95 00:11:58,300 --> 00:12:11,290 Margaret Mellon, who will be with us on tomorrow, says historians should be Mythbusters not taking all these considerations. 96 00:12:11,290 --> 00:12:18,370 The empirical look oral history reverses this narrative. 97 00:12:18,370 --> 00:12:30,570 There is now a new school of thinking about Europe's showpiece, which goes in a sense to the opposite extreme from the classic. 98 00:12:30,570 --> 00:12:43,230 What story should Europe tells narrative to the classic version of it takes the kind of model of a nationalist historiography and repeats it. 99 00:12:43,230 --> 00:12:45,270 At the EU level. Right. 100 00:12:45,270 --> 00:12:54,990 So instead of our own story, it is from Charlemagne to the Europe, which, by the way, is the title of a real book from Charlemagne of Europe. 101 00:12:54,990 --> 00:12:59,010 Now what French historians have done is, in my view, 102 00:12:59,010 --> 00:13:10,290 to go to the absolute opposite extreme and to produce a series of books which are programmatically kaleidoscope, 103 00:13:10,290 --> 00:13:19,080 which break this history down into a thousand slivers and fragments and elements, a mirror, says the classics here. 104 00:13:19,080 --> 00:13:29,160 Book, edited by Francois Thomas, 78, called All Panopto Histoire and one by edited by Christophe Scholl. 105 00:13:29,160 --> 00:13:33,690 And then their book called Also for Babies that week. 106 00:13:33,690 --> 00:13:41,340 The former has one thousand three hundred eighty five pages, the latter two thousand three hundred in seven, 107 00:13:41,340 --> 00:13:48,420 as one of them says in the introduction, Not this market is dead on any move at all. 108 00:13:48,420 --> 00:14:05,280 Going large or large indeed, and it just has this absolutely kaleidoscopic colour or even a colour, which is in many ways magnificent. 109 00:14:05,280 --> 00:14:09,780 But in my view, goes to the other extreme. 110 00:14:09,780 --> 00:14:14,920 This is a point that Mark was made recently in a review essay in the AFP, 111 00:14:14,920 --> 00:14:22,410 talking about the diversion of this on French history edited by Typekit push on and he said, 112 00:14:22,410 --> 00:14:32,740 I agree with him, but maybe while something is gaining, something is lost, which is any sense of any shared history at all. 113 00:14:32,740 --> 00:14:42,610 So I think if it doesn't, then deliver on the promise that is made even by those who have in the schools, 114 00:14:42,610 --> 00:14:47,260 as some of you would have seen the op ed by Thomas Serviette, 115 00:14:47,260 --> 00:14:53,530 which was published in a number of European newspapers, including the Guardian, presenting this approach. 116 00:14:53,530 --> 00:14:58,480 And she says, we need, he argued, we need to have memory work. 117 00:14:58,480 --> 00:15:12,850 But the question really is when you look at those volumes where it's so it seems to be, what we have is the seller of the EU Commission led watchdog. 118 00:15:12,850 --> 00:15:19,660 This is Europe's new narrative and the Charybdis of this completely centred kaleidoscope. 119 00:15:19,660 --> 00:15:23,620 And what we have to do is to steer, of course, between the two. 120 00:15:23,620 --> 00:15:28,840 And that's what we're trying to do, both in the research project behind this conference and in the conference itself. 121 00:15:28,840 --> 00:15:39,310 So we start by exploring the full cacophony of the stories and many stories that Europe does tell. 122 00:15:39,310 --> 00:15:46,450 But then we look for politicians inside that cacophony. 123 00:15:46,450 --> 00:15:51,550 And it's interesting to me that I spontaneously came up with this German politician. 124 00:15:51,550 --> 00:16:02,770 But actually, in the book The Calypso and Justine the word polyphony appears on the last page and also in the book by Profiles and 78. 125 00:16:02,770 --> 00:16:13,420 And that's what we'll do in the last session. In case you think this is not possible, let me give you one example. 126 00:16:13,420 --> 00:16:25,390 And with this, I'll conclude, and we're going to have the work of the day of where I think one can detect the polyphony in the top office. 127 00:16:25,390 --> 00:16:40,090 If you look at the way the pro-European case was made in multiple European countries from the 1950s all the way through to the 1990s, 128 00:16:40,090 --> 00:16:43,510 it looks, at first glance, very different. 129 00:16:43,510 --> 00:16:52,780 But then when you look more closely, you discover a common basic structure and that basic structure goes like this. 130 00:16:52,780 --> 00:17:01,080 We were in a bad place. We want to be in a better world and that better place is called Europe. 131 00:17:01,080 --> 00:17:08,970 Now, everyone had their own bad place. Europe has no shortages of bad places to come from for Germany, 132 00:17:08,970 --> 00:17:14,820 with the shame and horror of narcissism for France, of defeat and occupation for Britain, 133 00:17:14,820 --> 00:17:22,140 relative political and economic decline for Spain and Portugal, fascist dictatorship for Poland, Hungary and other countries. 134 00:17:22,140 --> 00:17:28,260 Communist dictatorship But the basic shape of the story was the same. 135 00:17:28,260 --> 00:17:32,760 We were in a bad place. We want to be an event of honour that everyone is Europe. 136 00:17:32,760 --> 00:17:45,510 The problem comes when you have arrived and instead of travelling, hopefully you're in it, and the reality never gives up to the dream. 137 00:17:45,510 --> 00:17:49,600 And that sort of forward movement of hope is calm. 138 00:17:49,600 --> 00:17:57,330 And indeed, for some younger Europeans today, if you are a young Spaniard or Portuguese or Greek. 139 00:17:57,330 --> 00:18:04,440 The curve actually goes the other way instead of being upward from a bad place to a better one for Europe. 140 00:18:04,440 --> 00:18:08,280 You had a much better place 10 years ago before the financial crisis, 141 00:18:08,280 --> 00:18:15,840 and then the eurozone crisis hit southern Europe so hard back then you would need a doctoral student and I hope for my career. 142 00:18:15,840 --> 00:18:20,910 Now your always and I hope it. So that goes the other way. 143 00:18:20,910 --> 00:18:29,430 How do you tell the European story event? So what we're thinking of concentrating on in in the research project? 144 00:18:29,430 --> 00:18:37,920 But that's that's what these two days are about. He's looking at the generation that I call the 1890s. 145 00:18:37,920 --> 00:18:43,230 We had over 13 ideas. We had the 60 eighties. Now we have the age and ideas, 146 00:18:43,230 --> 00:18:47,790 which are roughly speaking people who are between 20 and 40 today for 10 years 147 00:18:47,790 --> 00:18:55,500 outside of age nine and trying to discover what their stories of Europol. 148 00:18:55,500 --> 00:18:59,100 And the question is, how do we do that? What are the methods? 149 00:18:59,100 --> 00:19:08,400 And then at the end of the project, rather than the beginning to bring that back to the question of the EU? 150 00:19:08,400 --> 00:19:16,380 But then the question to the EU may not be what story would you tell how you said it? 151 00:19:16,380 --> 00:19:23,340 But actually, what are you doing right? Maybe you need to be doing something different or not doing something. 152 00:19:23,340 --> 00:19:35,970 It's not simply a question of salesmanship. So that's what I wanted to say in introduction to what we're doing in this project to this conference, 153 00:19:35,970 --> 00:19:43,540 we are all ears for what you all have to say, and at the end of the two days, we may. 154 00:19:43,540 --> 00:19:49,630 Do something completely different in this project, but in the meantime, thank you very much for coming. 155 00:19:49,630 --> 00:19:54,010 I'm looking forward to hearing you will get to work. 156 00:19:54,010 --> 00:20:06,890 Thank you. You know, I got I got a call very late last night from New York and my editor was like, We need your help. 157 00:20:06,890 --> 00:20:12,230 Tomorrow on a story is very important. It's faced with some great potential, really when I said I can't go. 158 00:20:12,230 --> 00:20:16,580 I'm going to this three day conference on Europe and what it means. 159 00:20:16,580 --> 00:20:21,110 And he paused and then he said, OK, I guess that's much more important now. 160 00:20:21,110 --> 00:20:27,440 The significance of this is that a few years ago, he would never have said this, especially in America. 161 00:20:27,440 --> 00:20:35,090 I mean, Europe was not something that anyone cared about. I remember a German official who told me about a meeting with an American diplomat. 162 00:20:35,090 --> 00:20:39,470 This was prior to the financial crisis. And he said he got frustrated. 163 00:20:39,470 --> 00:20:45,590 He said, Why is it that Americans are so ignorant and so indifferent when it comes to the EU? 164 00:20:45,590 --> 00:20:54,020 And the guy said, I don't know, and I don't care. That could have also come out of the mouth of a New York Times foreign editor at that time. 165 00:20:54,020 --> 00:21:01,430 But it's changed, and in some ways, that's the good news. Europe and the European Union is no longer rewarding. 166 00:21:01,430 --> 00:21:07,010 The bad news, of course, is that Europe isn't in fact or speaking as a journalist. 167 00:21:07,010 --> 00:21:14,540 You know, the journalist's motto for simplify, then exaggerate. Europe may face the most existential threat. 168 00:21:14,540 --> 00:21:22,280 Yes. And I actually sort of mean that what I'm observing when I'm talking to people around Europe 169 00:21:22,280 --> 00:21:27,050 at the moment and I'm talking to a lot of people who wouldn't usually come to Oxford, 170 00:21:27,050 --> 00:21:28,700 who make their voices heard here. 171 00:21:28,700 --> 00:21:38,360 But people, ordinary people, teachers, nurses, car mechanics, young people, the waiters in Berlin and Madrid, et cetera. 172 00:21:38,360 --> 00:21:43,430 What I'm getting there is a sense of deep frustration of resignation, 173 00:21:43,430 --> 00:21:50,000 a sense that there is a sort of yearning for a narrative, a yearning for a European story. 174 00:21:50,000 --> 00:21:51,020 But at the moment, 175 00:21:51,020 --> 00:22:02,510 they don't necessarily feel there is one which leaves a vacuum in which stronger narratives than are actually very successful and resonate. 176 00:22:02,510 --> 00:22:06,500 I cannot give you a scientific sort of overview of what Europeans think. 177 00:22:06,500 --> 00:22:11,180 I can only give you a few snippets from different corners of Europe, 178 00:22:11,180 --> 00:22:19,790 snippets that struck me very much and that I think while not representative does say something about Europe at this moment. 179 00:22:19,790 --> 00:22:27,440 The most shocking thing, probably I heard in the last few months was in Strasbourg on the Franco-German border, 180 00:22:27,440 --> 00:22:35,540 and here I spoke to Bernard Cortes, a car mechanic. His family has always lived in the region of Alsace, but not always in the same country. 181 00:22:35,540 --> 00:22:40,580 His grandfather, his great grandfather, rather fought for the Germans in World War One. 182 00:22:40,580 --> 00:22:44,150 His grandfather fought for the French in World War Two. 183 00:22:44,150 --> 00:22:52,910 Today, nobody is fighting anymore, and Mr Cortes lives in France and works in Germany and crosses that border his ancestors died fighting for. 184 00:22:52,910 --> 00:23:02,090 He reckons about 500 times over here without even noticing. So he, you know, he has his dentist in Germany, he has a dermatologist in France. 185 00:23:02,090 --> 00:23:09,560 He buys his clothes to basis its food there, and he jokes about, you know, 186 00:23:09,560 --> 00:23:15,350 people in Strasbourg still keeping the German street signs in the basement just in case. 187 00:23:15,350 --> 00:23:21,860 But then he turns serious, and he says this here in Strasbourg, Europe is not a slogan. 188 00:23:21,860 --> 00:23:27,710 It is everyday life. It is banal, he said. And it is miraculous. 189 00:23:27,710 --> 00:23:38,090 I was shocked because you just don't hear that kind of very positive view anymore outside the very educated, privileged. 190 00:23:38,090 --> 00:23:43,550 You know, it means, shall we say, that at the moment would be in this room. 191 00:23:43,550 --> 00:23:50,540 What you do hear a lot more is a sense that the EU has forgotten the little people and that it only works for the rich. 192 00:23:50,540 --> 00:23:56,510 So for Sophie to say, for example, the single mother of two whom I met outside of Paris, 193 00:23:56,510 --> 00:24:00,650 she just makes ends meet fairly with some odd jobs and social benefits. 194 00:24:00,650 --> 00:24:04,440 The EU is the face of financial capitalism and ruthless globalisation. 195 00:24:04,440 --> 00:24:08,990 Sophie has been demonstrating with the yellow vests for months now. 196 00:24:08,990 --> 00:24:13,640 This is how Sophie described the life she and her children need. We deprive ourselves. 197 00:24:13,640 --> 00:24:18,440 We don't go on holiday. We skip a meal when we cannot pay. I don't dare to look at my bank account. 198 00:24:18,440 --> 00:24:26,090 I try not to spend just trying to buy food and pay my bills. And this is how Sophie describes the EU. 199 00:24:26,090 --> 00:24:32,990 I don't like the EU today. It is an EU of finance. It is an EU of industry of oligarchs and big companies. 200 00:24:32,990 --> 00:24:38,360 It is anything but a human social Europe that thinks first and foremost of the interests of the people. 201 00:24:38,360 --> 00:24:47,930 Europe is opaque, she said. We don't know how it works. We are only told about Europe when it comes to making people insecure and reducing wages. 202 00:24:47,930 --> 00:24:52,820 Now, the yellow vest movement is a very fringe phenomenon. It's often written about as such. 203 00:24:52,820 --> 00:24:58,780 But actually the grievances expressed by those people are very European, and in fact, they really reminded me. 204 00:24:58,780 --> 00:25:06,410 What I heard on the streets of London when I did a big project about London's Cabbie Wars and I spoke to the black cab drivers, 205 00:25:06,410 --> 00:25:11,460 most of whom I interviewed many at the time, but so 17 had voted for Brexit. 206 00:25:11,460 --> 00:25:18,350 There was only one guy and they didn't. And for most of them, Uber with its immigrant drivers, 207 00:25:18,350 --> 00:25:23,120 its low fares and its Dutch tax base was very much shorthand for everything that's wrong with the EU. 208 00:25:23,120 --> 00:25:27,680 I want to quote here Grant Davis, the chairman of the London Cab Drivers Club. 209 00:25:27,680 --> 00:25:32,660 He recounted a meeting to me with a minister in the Conservative government at the time. 210 00:25:32,660 --> 00:25:36,560 This is a quote I said to him. I'm from a working class family. 211 00:25:36,560 --> 00:25:41,810 I grew up in social housing. I believed in the conservative ethos. 212 00:25:41,810 --> 00:25:43,460 Work hard, better myself. 213 00:25:43,460 --> 00:25:50,300 I don't want no benefits, but what you've done is you're killing us for an American company that's paying taxes in the Netherlands. 214 00:25:50,300 --> 00:25:56,090 That's what Europe is. Look at all those cab drivers we have from poor families. 215 00:25:56,090 --> 00:26:01,910 I want it to be my own boss. I've done everything you said I should do, and you've pulled the rug out from under my feet. 216 00:26:01,910 --> 00:26:08,390 I found that very striking and I was I've been struck since. 217 00:26:08,390 --> 00:26:13,910 How many times I've heard Echoes not quite expresses eloquently. Is this across the continent? 218 00:26:13,910 --> 00:26:18,320 Now let me take you back to my own country, Germany, which is where I'm based now. 219 00:26:18,320 --> 00:26:25,280 I'm fairly recent there, and being from the western edge of western Germany, I always find it extremely interesting to go to the east. 220 00:26:25,280 --> 00:26:36,650 And so in Saxony, I recently reported a story about Wolves the return of the wolf, which has been extinct for about 100 years, 221 00:26:36,650 --> 00:26:43,910 and I was surprised how much I learnt about the European Union and what people think about it in the process. 222 00:26:43,910 --> 00:26:51,470 It turns out that under communism, wolves when they came across the border from Poland, were just short. 223 00:26:51,470 --> 00:26:53,870 The farmers who had sheep and calves and so on. 224 00:26:53,870 --> 00:27:02,900 They just shot them as soon as the wall fell and communism fell and EU law began to, guidelines began to apply. 225 00:27:02,900 --> 00:27:05,990 The wolf turned into an endangered species. 226 00:27:05,990 --> 00:27:15,530 And so over the last few years, the wolf has been circling back in eastern Germany and occasionally eating sheep, German sheep costs and so on. 227 00:27:15,530 --> 00:27:24,350 And the interesting thing here is that the EU has become this indeed insecure situation for eastern Germans. 228 00:27:24,350 --> 00:27:27,380 Who cares more about Wolves than it cares about them. 229 00:27:27,380 --> 00:27:39,680 The wolf is the endangered species for the EU, as one of these farmers put it at different moments out in lousy shape next year the Polish border. 230 00:27:39,680 --> 00:27:47,720 He said We are the endangered species, but the EU, the people in Brussels taking more care more about wolves than they care about us. 231 00:27:47,720 --> 00:27:53,840 And of course, what has happened is that the AfD, the far right party that is very strong in Saxony, 232 00:27:53,840 --> 00:28:01,010 may even come first in regional elections later this year has turned to walk into its new favourite scapegoat. 233 00:28:01,010 --> 00:28:05,330 And when they talk about wolves, they sound very much like they're talking about immigrants. 234 00:28:05,330 --> 00:28:13,130 And what's wonderful is that the spokeswoman on Wolves for the AfD, there is such a thing is actually called Philco Grimm. 235 00:28:13,130 --> 00:28:19,260 I'm taking you very briefly because I think it's another striking example, albeit not super representatives. 236 00:28:19,260 --> 00:28:25,910 This this fine example is about young, far right activists really to the right of the AfD generation identity. 237 00:28:25,910 --> 00:28:27,470 You may have heard of the marching zone. 238 00:28:27,470 --> 00:28:33,710 That's the sort of leader in Austria who recently received a donation from the guy who shot 51 Muslims in New Zealand. 239 00:28:33,710 --> 00:28:39,650 And these people are activists. They're far right, but they've really cleaned up their image. 240 00:28:39,650 --> 00:28:49,040 They don't use outright racist language anymore. They kind of look like you guys, you know, civilised and polite and angry and so on. 241 00:28:49,040 --> 00:28:57,020 But in terms of what they propagate, it's really the same old excuse of racist theories of old. 242 00:28:57,020 --> 00:29:02,420 And what I thought was fascinating when I went to a Christmas market in Harlem 243 00:29:02,420 --> 00:29:08,690 before before the focus was in December was just how normal these people seemed. 244 00:29:08,690 --> 00:29:14,990 It was like a kind of and how European. And that's kind of the point. They were Czech people and Austrians and Germans and French. 245 00:29:14,990 --> 00:29:17,420 They were dating and working and studying across borders. 246 00:29:17,420 --> 00:29:25,100 A lot of them were very intellectual, reading Gandhi and gene sharp, non-violent protest and so on. 247 00:29:25,100 --> 00:29:29,270 And if you didn't talk about migration with them, they really seemed fairly normal. 248 00:29:29,270 --> 00:29:36,950 It was a kind of Erasmus for the far right. But as soon as you talked about migration, they sort of showed their true colours. 249 00:29:36,950 --> 00:29:42,470 And one of the things that I was struck by that I'm coming to an end is how they 250 00:29:42,470 --> 00:29:46,940 saw themselves in the tradition of Europeans protecting the European homeland. 251 00:29:46,940 --> 00:29:52,130 That seems very popular. Our ancestors protected Vienna, said Martin Zelma. 252 00:29:52,130 --> 00:29:56,990 To me, now it's our turn. Basically, they celebrate these European battles. 253 00:29:56,990 --> 00:30:01,650 They're the. The symbol for the movement is the Greek lambda, 254 00:30:01,650 --> 00:30:08,490 which is said to have marked the shields of Spartans when they fought back Persian invaders in 480 B.C. and every September in Vienna. 255 00:30:08,490 --> 00:30:16,620 I actually was there with my friends out on the street. They marched in honour of Prince Eugene, who beat back the Ottomans outside Vienna in 60 93. 256 00:30:16,620 --> 00:30:22,630 So here we have a movement that is young and activist, and that puts itself firmly in the history of Europeans. 257 00:30:22,630 --> 00:30:34,010 It's a narrative that has become, in my view, very attractive to young, far right people. 258 00:30:34,010 --> 00:30:41,840 Always challenging to follow up, a very eloquent journalist whom I like to read, by the way, I read the story of a couple of days ago. 259 00:30:41,840 --> 00:30:47,840 Thank you very much for having me in this super highly interesting set up and the fantastic line-up, actually. 260 00:30:47,840 --> 00:30:49,070 I'm a political scientist. 261 00:30:49,070 --> 00:30:56,630 I studied the topic politicisation of European integration causes and consequences of how intense it gets debated in conflict. 262 00:30:56,630 --> 00:31:02,030 But I don't want to. I can talk about this later, but I don't want to present your individual research project. 263 00:31:02,030 --> 00:31:05,690 I became recently very interested of how political I call him. 264 00:31:05,690 --> 00:31:09,830 Geopolitical representatives present European integration. 265 00:31:09,830 --> 00:31:19,100 And this is not so much about what stories Europe tells, but how the political executives tell it like it's about to hold here. 266 00:31:19,100 --> 00:31:23,090 I'm also happy to speak about the conference later on. So what? 267 00:31:23,090 --> 00:31:30,980 I want to show you some very long term, some very aggregated trends here, which I think are worth pondering. 268 00:31:30,980 --> 00:31:35,300 So what I do is a little of what I did for love for the conference and in a couple 269 00:31:35,300 --> 00:31:40,340 of my projects is a little text planning exercise of the all related language. 270 00:31:40,340 --> 00:31:45,170 And I want to show you evidence of essentially four criteria. 271 00:31:45,170 --> 00:31:50,810 First of all, frequency how often domestic political representatives speak about the U. 272 00:31:50,810 --> 00:31:55,310 So I do this with a number of technically very flexible dictionaries that you can also, 273 00:31:55,310 --> 00:32:01,970 if you want to use it in your projects, download from my website and in political language. 274 00:32:01,970 --> 00:32:11,660 I extract just a three sentence window around references to the EU or its policies in this text, because I then look at three indicators. 275 00:32:11,660 --> 00:32:21,210 First of all, language complexity. So I use the flash reading score here, which is a simple, weighted index of sentence length and term length, 276 00:32:21,210 --> 00:32:28,880 right that is used in education sciences to measure cognitive mobilisation that you require to understand the message right? 277 00:32:28,880 --> 00:32:33,530 I will come back to this in a minute. The second thing is emotionality. 278 00:32:33,530 --> 00:32:36,140 Yeah, use the so-called noisy emotional lexicon, 279 00:32:36,140 --> 00:32:44,810 which is a set of fourteen thousand terms which Unicode us have rated to speak to one of eight basic emotions or trust, anger and so on. 280 00:32:44,810 --> 00:32:52,130 And yeah, just look at how emotional the language is by estimating the shape of words that are associated with the EU. 281 00:32:52,130 --> 00:32:57,440 And finally, the tone, just the sentiment with the lexical sentiment dictionary. 282 00:32:57,440 --> 00:33:08,330 Um, how positive all negative is. The language can audit when political representatives speak about the EU, and I do so in two datasets. 283 00:33:08,330 --> 00:33:18,050 The first one is plenary speeches or parliamentary speeches, public parliamentary speeches in an 18 year period 1995 to 2013. 284 00:33:18,050 --> 00:33:23,210 This is also publicly available to state, and for today, I show you evidence from four countries, 285 00:33:23,210 --> 00:33:27,980 four European countries amongst them, the UK and the House of Commons here. 286 00:33:27,980 --> 00:33:31,730 This is roughly two million speeches, and for some of the indicators, 287 00:33:31,730 --> 00:33:39,980 I draw a sample to compare how actually Europe behaves in comparison to all other political issues that might come up. 288 00:33:39,980 --> 00:33:44,840 And the second dataset I want to show you is public speeches of European executives or 289 00:33:44,840 --> 00:33:51,050 national leaders and European commissioners during the beginning of the euro crisis period. 290 00:33:51,050 --> 00:33:56,330 This is data from high tumour, heart disease cover and colleagues. 291 00:33:56,330 --> 00:34:02,630 So what aggregate patterns do we find? First of all, how much and when do national champs? 292 00:34:02,630 --> 00:34:08,240 And I think national champions are important because these are the ones that claim to represent the people of the century. 293 00:34:08,240 --> 00:34:15,350 How often do they speak about these? The work is also published if you want to read it up, but I want to show you this data, 294 00:34:15,350 --> 00:34:22,220 and this data gives you the chance that an individual turn in a and p speech. 295 00:34:22,220 --> 00:34:27,000 If an EU reference right for the value for the UK essentially means that you have 296 00:34:27,000 --> 00:34:32,120 roughly one percent chance that an individual title is a reference to the EU, 297 00:34:32,120 --> 00:34:38,030 you might think this sounds low initially, but the speech is about an average 200 words at all, 298 00:34:38,030 --> 00:34:42,680 and they have a lexicon of one million words to choose from, roughly in English language, right? 299 00:34:42,680 --> 00:34:44,660 So this is quite remarkable. 300 00:34:44,660 --> 00:34:52,130 But the more important message is that I want to show you here is that there is quite some variation across countries, so not really a harmonisation. 301 00:34:52,130 --> 00:34:58,910 And more importantly, in all of the four countries that are for you, it's primarily the government that speaks about feeling right. 302 00:34:58,910 --> 00:35:02,960 So the EU was the governing thing or the probability to speak about the EU. 303 00:35:02,960 --> 00:35:08,360 It's much higher when your party is in government. And again, we this is eighteen years. 304 00:35:08,360 --> 00:35:16,310 So the government had very different colours right in there. We also analysed there's lots of variation. 305 00:35:16,310 --> 00:35:22,250 Of course, we analysed this in the paper. That's too much to tell you at once, but I want to highlight two findings. 306 00:35:22,250 --> 00:35:30,650 Positive from a democratic perspective is that actually the amount of debate EU debate that this office follows the EU authority. 307 00:35:30,650 --> 00:35:39,450 So the more power that you get. Over time, over the individual treaties, the more debate is often the more debate is offered essentially right. 308 00:35:39,450 --> 00:35:47,190 Also, it's more European laws are published. We see more debates or if we have European summits, that's probably the strongest effect. 309 00:35:47,190 --> 00:35:55,350 But there are also downsides. For example, during national elections, actually, the amount of debate increases rather, 310 00:35:55,350 --> 00:36:00,420 systematically and more importantly of the European elections have no effect. 311 00:36:00,420 --> 00:36:04,500 So it's not more or less during election times. 312 00:36:04,500 --> 00:36:12,300 But the most striking thing to me, the most negative effect that we find is the more public Euroscepticism we have in public opinion, 313 00:36:12,300 --> 00:36:17,190 the less than you speak about the EU, right? Probably in those times when it's needed. 314 00:36:17,190 --> 00:36:22,020 Actually, no debate is on. How do they speak about it? 315 00:36:22,020 --> 00:36:26,940 Language complexity for length of sentences and complexity of individual atoms. 316 00:36:26,940 --> 00:36:34,800 Black dots are random speeches. The blue dots are the three sentence windows around European integration references. 317 00:36:34,800 --> 00:36:40,110 And you see in all four countries that the complexity also level of confidence intervals. 318 00:36:40,110 --> 00:36:43,950 They are so small you kind of almost can't see them in all four countries. 319 00:36:43,950 --> 00:36:48,810 The language on Europe is much more complex than the average parliamentary speech, 320 00:36:48,810 --> 00:36:54,820 and the average parliamentary speech might contain debates about national health insurance, about taxes and so on. 321 00:36:54,820 --> 00:37:02,250 Right. But your European integration is always something that comes with more complex language. 322 00:37:02,250 --> 00:37:08,610 The picture looks different. If you look at the emotionality, you receive it in almost all countries and hopefully robust for the German case. 323 00:37:08,610 --> 00:37:17,430 But in the other countries, you've language about Europe is significantly less emotional than the average complimentary speech, right? 324 00:37:17,430 --> 00:37:24,360 We could talk about individual emotions later, but on average we have fewer emotions and talk about your aggression. 325 00:37:24,360 --> 00:37:28,980 Again, this holds across the board the whole 18 year period, right? 326 00:37:28,980 --> 00:37:33,570 Like the complexity, tone and sentiment. 327 00:37:33,570 --> 00:37:40,620 We have one outlier. On average, Europe is presented with something more negative for the language is more negative 328 00:37:40,620 --> 00:37:46,500 than the average parliamentary speech that doesn't hold for the Dutch case. I'm actually not sure why I need to dig. 329 00:37:46,500 --> 00:37:53,850 I need to dig into this. But here behind this figure, we have much more variation over time, especially in the UK and especially in Spain. 330 00:37:53,850 --> 00:38:00,360 So in Spain, after the euro crisis, the sentiment attached to Europe declines dramatically. 331 00:38:00,360 --> 00:38:08,160 Right. In the UK, we see this as well, but it's much less dramatic than sunscreen, OK? 332 00:38:08,160 --> 00:38:12,270 And now you might say, OK, Europe is something very complex. 333 00:38:12,270 --> 00:38:18,030 Europe is probably something that is not very emotional. Yeah, people are hearing this. 334 00:38:18,030 --> 00:38:26,220 But my strong hunch is that these language patterns that are showing you the actual strategic choices of political elites. 335 00:38:26,220 --> 00:38:31,020 And I just briefly want to show you evidence from another project on the euro crisis, 336 00:38:31,020 --> 00:38:35,790 which is hopefully coming out in the summer and has been just accepted where we 337 00:38:35,790 --> 00:38:42,210 analysed how National and European Commission was responding to public euro scepticism. 338 00:38:42,210 --> 00:38:48,870 So euro scepticism of public opinion in their home countries and the strength of euroskeptic challenger parties. 339 00:38:48,870 --> 00:38:53,370 And this is a bit more complex. So this is an index graph on the from a regression model. 340 00:38:53,370 --> 00:39:03,810 But I just want to show you this here. If you are below the zero line means that public euro scepticism on the on the y axis in public opinion. 341 00:39:03,810 --> 00:39:13,230 So the more people save our membership than the European Union, it's a bad thing, the more negative national leaders speak about European integration. 342 00:39:13,230 --> 00:39:19,170 So they follow the crowd, essentially, which means if you have a very sceptical public already, 343 00:39:19,170 --> 00:39:27,990 the national elites also sends more negative signals whenever average right, which we know that elite queuing affects public opinion as well. 344 00:39:27,990 --> 00:39:34,300 So this might lead to a vicious circle. But interestingly enough, we were surprised by this, to be honest. 345 00:39:34,300 --> 00:39:41,760 Here you see the strength of Euro sceptic challenger parties. And then there's the stronger they get, the more this effect vanishes. 346 00:39:41,760 --> 00:39:52,350 We call it the macro story. Our interpretation of this is as soon as there is a euroskeptic party that absorbs the eurosceptic public, 347 00:39:52,350 --> 00:39:57,040 the national leader has no strategic reason anymore to undermine European integration further. 348 00:39:57,040 --> 00:40:00,450 Right. So they might go back to defending. If you see it, it's not. 349 00:40:00,450 --> 00:40:05,640 Statistically, it's not fully robust effect just vanishes. But there's a positive case. 350 00:40:05,640 --> 00:40:15,060 But we see when euroskeptic public opinion gets stronger, they send K€ messages of lesser complexity. 351 00:40:15,060 --> 00:40:22,270 But as soon as euroskeptic parties get stronger in electoral competition, the language becomes much more complex. 352 00:40:22,270 --> 00:40:23,400 Right. 353 00:40:23,400 --> 00:40:32,500 We interpret this as sort of the human, so elites try to hide their stance on European integration by using language that becomes much harder to. 354 00:40:32,500 --> 00:40:38,320 On the stand, Sentry, just quickly before I finish off the same picture for European Commissioner, 355 00:40:38,320 --> 00:40:41,500 here we see they always tend to defend European integration. 356 00:40:41,500 --> 00:40:47,740 They are always above the zero line and increases also when euroskeptic challenger parties become stronger. 357 00:40:47,740 --> 00:40:52,240 So therefore, that position is defending European integration in their public speeches. 358 00:40:52,240 --> 00:40:58,180 But like nationalists, they do the same thing when eurosceptic challenger parties become stronger at home. 359 00:40:58,180 --> 00:41:02,890 They use language that is harder to decipher for the wider public, right? 360 00:41:02,890 --> 00:41:04,930 So this is about cooperative mobilisation. 361 00:41:04,930 --> 00:41:14,860 The effect that we see here roughly is something about four school grades that you need to pass before you understand my contract. 362 00:41:14,860 --> 00:41:22,420 So in summary, it's really just question. But what I want to show you is that probably political emphasis on the supply 363 00:41:22,420 --> 00:41:27,040 of political debates about Europe has increased with more E.U. authority, 364 00:41:27,040 --> 00:41:30,220 and it's exercised through European laws. 365 00:41:30,220 --> 00:41:38,410 But it's primarily driven by governing actors and declines in election time, and it declines with increase in popular Euroscepticism. 366 00:41:38,410 --> 00:41:45,580 European integration is presented with more complex and less emotional language compared to the average political speech, 367 00:41:45,580 --> 00:41:49,600 and national representatives tend to undermine European integration in public. 368 00:41:49,600 --> 00:41:54,760 Why commissioners tend to defend it against public euro scepticism. 369 00:41:54,760 --> 00:42:02,380 So, and, of course, partisan Euroscepticism induces even more complex language. 370 00:42:02,380 --> 00:42:05,950 So I would be somewhat cautious with generalisations here. 371 00:42:05,950 --> 00:42:12,290 But what I read from this is that this in the political discourse is rather technocratic way rather bloodless, 372 00:42:12,290 --> 00:42:17,800 whether terror integration to use the language of the project here. 373 00:42:17,800 --> 00:42:23,500 And I'm I'm a bit worried whether this is conducive actually to pro-European mobilisation. 374 00:42:23,500 --> 00:42:30,370 So in my other work on politicisation, we can show that the public politicisation increases no matter whether it's warranted or not. 375 00:42:30,370 --> 00:42:34,510 So the question is now, how can the project be defended, actually? 376 00:42:34,510 --> 00:42:44,080 And my fear is that the patterns that I find here actually speak to this anti-establishment sentiment that populist parties essentially run there. 377 00:42:44,080 --> 00:42:54,180 That's what I wanted to say. Thank you for your attention. Thank you. 378 00:42:54,180 --> 00:43:02,610 Thank you very much. Thank you for inviting me. It's a real honour to be here and to present our work and to discuss actually our findings. 379 00:43:02,610 --> 00:43:08,050 And so what are your plans? No question of the panel and what do they have? 380 00:43:08,050 --> 00:43:19,320 And the short answer coming out of our work is that you care and you do know more than actually used to people's general attitudes towards Europe. 381 00:43:19,320 --> 00:43:23,850 It's not universe dimensional, but multifaceted. 382 00:43:23,850 --> 00:43:34,560 Europeans do pay attention to what is happening in European politics, and they do have high expectations when it comes to what it should take. 383 00:43:34,560 --> 00:43:41,580 However, they're not very happy with the reality of what happened. 384 00:43:41,580 --> 00:43:53,660 So before I continue talking and and trying to make a few but stark statements for the 385 00:43:53,660 --> 00:43:59,070 for the for the sake of the discussion and maybe also the kick-off of the conference. 386 00:43:59,070 --> 00:44:06,790 And I would like to talk very quick about our work and debate in these statements. 387 00:44:06,790 --> 00:44:12,810 Actually, however, I oh, you can. 388 00:44:12,810 --> 00:44:16,950 You can you can get a visual impression. Actually, I do not have a PowerPoint presentation. 389 00:44:16,950 --> 00:44:21,150 I'm just trying to. This is our website. 390 00:44:21,150 --> 00:44:24,690 It's it's our project that projects college opinions, 391 00:44:24,690 --> 00:44:32,640 and I co-founded and started this project with actually a Catholic priest, Professor Catherine Priest. 392 00:44:32,640 --> 00:44:38,430 She is a professor of political behaviour now in the Free University of Amsterdam. 393 00:44:38,430 --> 00:44:44,220 But obviously what she was has if he had asked her to before that, and she's a fellow. 394 00:44:44,220 --> 00:44:52,440 I believe that at Lincoln College, at least a couple of the studies project in two thousand fourteen, actually. 395 00:44:52,440 --> 00:45:04,140 And we ever since we collect data on European public opinion several times a year, ever since two years now, four times a year for every three months, 396 00:45:04,140 --> 00:45:19,680 we run a spin that a survey and a questionnaire that that is that we actually split in certain sort of science. 397 00:45:19,680 --> 00:45:26,070 And that is that is represented in training data and the question we kind of we keep asking 398 00:45:26,070 --> 00:45:30,210 this question touch upon and political sentiment when it comes to the European Union, 399 00:45:30,210 --> 00:45:33,780 when it comes to nation state and what has the personal life of people. 400 00:45:33,780 --> 00:45:43,200 And then we have a question is that a particular have a way for running and out of these questions, 401 00:45:43,200 --> 00:45:52,320 we actually analyse and write up studies and we we take a deeper look and actually public opinion. 402 00:45:52,320 --> 00:46:05,190 We have an overall interest for the past two years, and that is understanding polarisation and radicalisation of of Europeans within this European. 403 00:46:05,190 --> 00:46:11,530 Our view is always where we start from this from the EU wide, a data collection. 404 00:46:11,530 --> 00:46:16,450 And so we do interview in every European country and of a European language. 405 00:46:16,450 --> 00:46:20,100 You and I, we just have, I should say, to be correct. 406 00:46:20,100 --> 00:46:29,490 And we thus we kind of go into a subset of those like national assumption and also all socio economic sub. 407 00:46:29,490 --> 00:46:45,780 But the EU figures always of us and I think there for the sake of our discussion here, the three main findings that we take out of the data we seen. 408 00:46:45,780 --> 00:46:53,430 First of all, the pernicious consensus was not followed by general scepticism. 409 00:46:53,430 --> 00:47:01,830 But what we actually see is that Europeans are more ambivalent when it comes to European integration in European politics. 410 00:47:01,830 --> 00:47:03,750 What do I mean by that? 411 00:47:03,750 --> 00:47:14,100 I mean that what we keep seeing constantly is that we we ask questions touching on principle and potential of the European Union. 412 00:47:14,100 --> 00:47:19,320 We get very positive and steady positive answers, 413 00:47:19,320 --> 00:47:26,820 largely about the majority of people supporting questions that touch upon principle the potential of the Belgians. 414 00:47:26,820 --> 00:47:33,120 However, when we ask about the state of affairs of European politics, if we are, 415 00:47:33,120 --> 00:47:40,140 we ask about short term projections, which mean, So what do you think, how it will be in 20 years time? 416 00:47:40,140 --> 00:47:44,910 Then the image flips and the answers become very negative. 417 00:47:44,910 --> 00:47:53,750 So principal and potential, very positive state of affairs and short term protection rather than negative. 418 00:47:53,750 --> 00:47:58,640 I think when you when you look at when you look at a political discourse in the news, 419 00:47:58,640 --> 00:48:05,540 when you look at how how those political forces can have a strong interest in 420 00:48:05,540 --> 00:48:13,550 polarisation in polarising the political discourse you just used to say you can see that, 421 00:48:13,550 --> 00:48:15,530 for example, natural frosh. 422 00:48:15,530 --> 00:48:24,280 And it was an absolute monster in playing with this ambivalence when it comes to European puppet, to public opinion in European politics. 423 00:48:24,280 --> 00:48:32,240 It is one of its key front sentence he used to reuse was the European Union was really good idea, but it just does not work. 424 00:48:32,240 --> 00:48:36,950 So if you're ever wondering how he can use this ambivalence to make politics out of it? 425 00:48:36,950 --> 00:48:48,370 Think of Nigel Farage because he's just targeting exactly that point and then pulling basically people on from my point of view right now. 426 00:48:48,370 --> 00:48:51,680 And now I think the purpose of this conference is to be like, 427 00:48:51,680 --> 00:49:00,290 how can you hit that point in important, maybe to to to the other side of what we actually do? 428 00:49:00,290 --> 00:49:11,090 See, this would be my second point is that there is not much difference in the discontent when it comes to European politics on national politics. 429 00:49:11,090 --> 00:49:16,490 Whenever we can get to ask the same question about national politics, about politics. 430 00:49:16,490 --> 00:49:17,780 And we do not see a difference. 431 00:49:17,780 --> 00:49:35,570 So I think I want to emphasise it at this moment that to focus only on European politics at the moment of crisis would be going not far enough. 432 00:49:35,570 --> 00:49:42,590 I think it's important to understand that this is much more a moment of crisis in general, politics and our political systems. 433 00:49:42,590 --> 00:49:48,920 And I think we risk to miss a point if we only focus on European politics. 434 00:49:48,920 --> 00:49:55,010 And a third, my third point is the fear, as we have shown in numerous studies, to a decisive, 435 00:49:55,010 --> 00:50:03,110 decisive factor driving dissatisfaction with the state of politics in the state of societies today. 436 00:50:03,110 --> 00:50:09,140 It is amazing basically attitudes towards the future, the personal future and the future of society. 437 00:50:09,140 --> 00:50:22,880 And whether you have a positive or negative outlook on that future that will determine the likeliness in which you will have sympathies, 438 00:50:22,880 --> 00:50:32,260 but radical political parties or parties on the extreme off the political spectrum. 439 00:50:32,260 --> 00:50:40,100 And I think the important or interesting point here is that we have measured this 440 00:50:40,100 --> 00:50:45,350 when it comes to the personal economic situation of people positive or negative, 441 00:50:45,350 --> 00:50:51,890 the outlook of the state of society, whether it's positive or negative. 442 00:50:51,890 --> 00:50:59,750 And we see that the second factor, actually. So not the economic issues at this point in time right now, 443 00:50:59,750 --> 00:51:09,560 but the way in which you look at society and whether you think that the future to society's future itself 444 00:51:09,560 --> 00:51:17,600 is going to be positive or negative and you basically you position within that within that society. 445 00:51:17,600 --> 00:51:25,790 It's a it's a very significant indicator to understand whether you feel comfortable, 446 00:51:25,790 --> 00:51:33,020 comfortable within within the political system, whether you find that it is working, 447 00:51:33,020 --> 00:51:49,700 whether you, whether you support pockets, more of the centre ought to right and whether you look at a cure at your own and your own political future. 448 00:51:49,700 --> 00:51:57,710 So maybe it's the last point. And if I have maybe a minute left and we have actually looked, 449 00:51:57,710 --> 00:52:06,840 I was very interested in the stories you were telling and and how people who are very angry, 450 00:52:06,840 --> 00:52:16,550 very frustrated are very fearful, actually put forward at a certain put put in a basket. 451 00:52:16,550 --> 00:52:21,590 Globalisation and digitalisation in the European industry. It's all the same individual against, right, 452 00:52:21,590 --> 00:52:29,900 whether it's a taxi drivers of the yellow vests and these are people actually guilty of all of our misery. 453 00:52:29,900 --> 00:52:33,950 It's the system, basically us. So we actually put out a study. 454 00:52:33,950 --> 00:52:39,560 It's called globalisation in European integration, a threat to opportunity where we were just looking. 455 00:52:39,560 --> 00:52:49,220 Just the fact whether statistically we could prove that the majority of people actually put in the same basic globalisation in European integration. 456 00:52:49,220 --> 00:52:53,470 And the short question short answer is no. So. 457 00:52:53,470 --> 00:52:57,640 For us, it was really interesting because I think when you when you go around Brussels, 458 00:52:57,640 --> 00:53:05,890 you find that this is a very deep sided fear rife within European operatives that they fall into that category. 459 00:53:05,890 --> 00:53:11,560 So what we actually could see is that those people were optimistic about globalisation, 460 00:53:11,560 --> 00:53:16,240 thus about their own future in their own capacity to cope with the future. 461 00:53:16,240 --> 00:53:23,320 And these people kept these people very content with the state of society and state politics. 462 00:53:23,320 --> 00:53:32,840 If you very fine with their lives, their meeting and the world around them and the people who are fearful that these people are very homogeneous, 463 00:53:32,840 --> 00:53:39,910 becoming any homogeneous and Beyonce's Typekit interesting. But the people were fearful, actually split. 464 00:53:39,910 --> 00:53:53,530 You had those who were also rejecting globalisation and European integration and had seemed to have a very ambivalent tendency 465 00:53:53,530 --> 00:54:07,240 basically to retreat and to shut up and to shut down sorry and to to to to to to not to be in a cooperative kind of modus. 466 00:54:07,240 --> 00:54:13,270 But there's also the other half of those people who actually were pro-European and Croatian and who 467 00:54:13,270 --> 00:54:20,290 formulated expectations to be protected in that world of criminalisation that they find us troubling. 468 00:54:20,290 --> 00:54:28,040 So I think it is when it comes to our work and actually our our results. 469 00:54:28,040 --> 00:54:33,190 And it is very important to keep in mind that out of these people who take issues 470 00:54:33,190 --> 00:54:37,450 with where the world is going and whether their place in it will be a good one. 471 00:54:37,450 --> 00:54:48,310 There is significant amount of people who actually do have expectations towards the EU in order to make happen that this is not just not working. 472 00:54:48,310 --> 00:54:53,740 I'm not an expert on Natale. Changes will be my last, my last point. 473 00:54:53,740 --> 00:55:04,930 However, when I look at stories of identity and stories, people tell themselves either in words and in. 474 00:55:04,930 --> 00:55:17,230 In speech or in writing, and it it seems to me that there's also always the challenge, always a struggle and then in outcome, right? 475 00:55:17,230 --> 00:55:20,950 So it is about how we set out. 476 00:55:20,950 --> 00:55:25,750 We went on a journey. There were difficulties. We got through it. 477 00:55:25,750 --> 00:55:31,570 And then most of the time with the positive outcome we won. Maybe not entirely, but we want something. 478 00:55:31,570 --> 00:55:34,030 We're in a better place now. 479 00:55:34,030 --> 00:55:43,600 And I, for me personally, I think that we had a moment of time right now where this narrative is created all to us and crew. 480 00:55:43,600 --> 00:55:57,720 And I'm very I'm looking forward to this conference and learning from you what you think about the spending that. 481 00:55:57,720 --> 00:56:01,520 Oh, hi. I'm not from Chatham House. 482 00:56:01,520 --> 00:56:09,320 I was not part of this study. Oh, I'm part of a student at Oxford and I'm part of the research team. 483 00:56:09,320 --> 00:56:16,700 And we felt that this was a study that was important enough to try and find a way to feature despite the absence of its author. 484 00:56:16,700 --> 00:56:23,570 So I'm going to do my best to ventriloquists. Her job was to go with the technical skills. 485 00:56:23,570 --> 00:56:29,130 Exactly. So what is the tribes of the Tribes of Europe? 486 00:56:29,130 --> 00:56:41,360 Is a survey that Chatham House conducted from roughly between 2016 and 2017, an online survey in 10 European countries Austria, 487 00:56:41,360 --> 00:56:47,540 Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland and the United Kingdom. 488 00:56:47,540 --> 00:56:53,570 So important to the mind. This is a fairly limited set to begin with, but within those countries it's not limited at all. 489 00:56:53,570 --> 00:57:01,460 They actually reached ten thousand one hundred ninety five individuals on online surveys and asked those individuals 490 00:57:01,460 --> 00:57:10,580 eight questions which boil down roughly into three general themes how people feel about immigration and refugees, 491 00:57:10,580 --> 00:57:22,700 how people feel about the relative strength or weakness of the EU, and how people feel about feeling European and separately. 492 00:57:22,700 --> 00:57:29,360 I'll come back to this. They also interviewed in person roughly one thousand eight hundred and European elites 493 00:57:29,360 --> 00:57:33,530 who they classified as people who had to work in a significant sphere of influence, 494 00:57:33,530 --> 00:57:38,840 either on a local, regional or European level. 495 00:57:38,840 --> 00:57:47,120 This is just the breakdown that they offer of interviews. You can see it's roughly 1000 per country pretty evenly distributed. 496 00:57:47,120 --> 00:57:54,650 And what they found in those interviews using an analysis called Latent Class Analysis, 497 00:57:54,650 --> 00:57:59,120 which some other people are going to be able to explain my study, 498 00:57:59,120 --> 00:58:11,150 I found they distilled the answers from from the answers to those questions distilled six tribes as they called types of Europeans, 499 00:58:11,150 --> 00:58:22,190 hesitant Europeans, contented Europeans, interview rejections, frustrated pro-Europeans, austerity revolts and federalists. 500 00:58:22,190 --> 00:58:30,710 And I'm now going to go through very quickly the profile of each of those tribes so we can get a sense of how they break those down. 501 00:58:30,710 --> 00:58:37,190 So in order of in order of significance, that is to say, you know, 502 00:58:37,190 --> 00:58:44,690 there's class size hesitant Europeans who first by far 13 percent more in total than 503 00:58:44,690 --> 00:58:52,100 any other class of 36 percent of all of those surveyed fell into hesitant Europeans, 504 00:58:52,100 --> 00:58:55,040 which means that they are the least likely. 505 00:58:55,040 --> 00:59:01,140 If you're hesitant European, you are least likely to feel that your country has benefited from integration. 506 00:59:01,140 --> 00:59:07,490 You consider yourself a political centrist. You're fairly indifferent about the EU. 507 00:59:07,490 --> 00:59:18,630 You don't love it, but you don't hate it. And then you can see the metrics that sort of put up on each one that are associated with each group. 508 00:59:18,630 --> 00:59:20,450 Not necessarily the views of Europe. 509 00:59:20,450 --> 00:59:31,610 These are who people who have hesitant views that represent the meaning of contented Europeans with 23 percent of class size. 510 00:59:31,610 --> 00:59:39,080 I feel like I'm announcing rewards are tend to be young potential students. 511 00:59:39,080 --> 00:59:43,190 They're very happy with Europe's current status quo. 512 00:59:43,190 --> 00:59:49,640 They have a positive view immigration, and they think that the EU is quite democratic. 513 00:59:49,640 --> 00:59:56,240 They also tend to have high life satisfaction above average income, a profile that would fit many people at Oxford. 514 00:59:56,240 --> 01:00:04,280 I took the survey and I'm happy to say that I'm contented, although not many others with me in England. 515 01:00:04,280 --> 01:00:12,590 Probably we will find a lot of EU rejections in England. 516 01:00:12,590 --> 01:00:19,670 As you can see the country, this region where they found 14 percent of the class size, so they come in third. 517 01:00:19,670 --> 01:00:25,220 This is perhaps the profile that is most familiar to us in some ways because of how we see it in the press. 518 01:00:25,220 --> 01:00:30,510 Anger or fear. Pessimism towards the European Union. They believe it's undemocratic. 519 01:00:30,510 --> 01:00:37,160 It's too powerful. There should be more power returns to each of the sovereign states within the EU. 520 01:00:37,160 --> 01:00:44,210 Immigration is bad. Interestingly, they're mostly middle aged too old, and there's a note on this that I'll come back to. 521 01:00:44,210 --> 01:00:50,240 Mostly men and they are of mixed income. 522 01:00:50,240 --> 01:00:56,570 Chatham House notes that most fell into a sort of working class background, although there's also. 523 01:00:56,570 --> 01:01:07,040 A quote, significant number of wealthier, absolute rejections, frustrated pro-Europeans. 524 01:01:07,040 --> 01:01:15,290 This is perhaps the most complicated with nine percent. They are actually quite similar as Bob was just discussing. 525 01:01:15,290 --> 01:01:21,320 They don't are not happy with how the EU is working for them now, 526 01:01:21,320 --> 01:01:30,410 but they believe in the project to the point where they'd actually be in favour of giving more power to the European Union than it currently has. 527 01:01:30,410 --> 01:01:39,590 They also think that richer countries should take more of a role in in the distribution of immigration coming into the EU, 528 01:01:39,590 --> 01:01:43,490 and they see it as moderately democratic right now. 529 01:01:43,490 --> 01:01:50,150 So discontented with the EU today wanted something new and perhaps perhaps to grow stronger. 530 01:01:50,150 --> 01:01:55,910 Austerity rebels, the penultimate group also coming in at nine percent. 531 01:01:55,910 --> 01:02:02,180 So the same as frustrated Europeans, they actually don't like the EU. 532 01:02:02,180 --> 01:02:06,890 So this is kind of the inverse of frustrated Europeans. 533 01:02:06,890 --> 01:02:15,440 They tend to be lower to moderate income. They tend to come from countries that have been hit particularly hard with economic crises. 534 01:02:15,440 --> 01:02:18,770 They want more powerful member states. 535 01:02:18,770 --> 01:02:29,700 And I do believe, however, that the same as the frustrated Europeans that richer states should bear more of the burden in all EU policies, 536 01:02:29,700 --> 01:02:41,010 but especially immigration. They also tend to be older. And lastly, at eight percent of the Federalists who are overwhelmingly male, 66 percent. 537 01:02:41,010 --> 01:02:47,120 If you've been looking to see that most of the breakdowns are somewhere around the range of 50 50, 538 01:02:47,120 --> 01:02:52,280 the highest female category is actually hesitant Europeans with 57 percent female. 539 01:02:52,280 --> 01:02:58,090 There's a 66 percent male. It's overwhelmingly old. 540 01:02:58,090 --> 01:03:09,440 They tend to have high life satisfaction of high income, and they believe essentially that Europe is doing well and should keep getting stronger. 541 01:03:09,440 --> 01:03:13,940 More power to the EU, more connexions between countries. 542 01:03:13,940 --> 01:03:23,210 They tend to come house notes that they can speak lots of languages and identify pretty much international friendships and travel often. 543 01:03:23,210 --> 01:03:28,700 They have a positive view of immigration, but they actually tend to be split across the political spectrum. 544 01:03:28,700 --> 01:03:34,100 If you've broken down that, and that's actually a good note to transition because there are, of course, 545 01:03:34,100 --> 01:03:39,500 other ways to break down the data that challenge those of just two of which I'm going 546 01:03:39,500 --> 01:03:43,760 to discuss here because they note that I think that was interesting for our panel. 547 01:03:43,760 --> 01:03:51,020 The first is if you break this down by number five or by elites versus what I call the public. 548 01:03:51,020 --> 01:04:01,500 So this is a comparison between the 1300 interviews that they conducted with the Brits and the Sun, ten thousand interviews with the public. 549 01:04:01,500 --> 01:04:07,010 What they found was that there's actually a fair amount of agreement on some of 550 01:04:07,010 --> 01:04:10,760 the questions that they ask those eight questions between them and the public, 551 01:04:10,760 --> 01:04:13,730 in particular attitudes toward feeling European. 552 01:04:13,730 --> 01:04:23,960 Of the well over the majority of both the public tend to feel either quite proud or very proud of being European. 553 01:04:23,960 --> 01:04:36,620 They also found agreement on a separate question that they asked, which was what achievements the EU has managed to make over its tenure. 554 01:04:36,620 --> 01:04:46,970 Peace, genuine freedom of movement, single market and single currency in that order were the same for elites and public as a survey. 555 01:04:46,970 --> 01:04:51,260 However, there were differences. The most notable one? 556 01:04:51,260 --> 01:04:57,380 Seventy one percent of elites surveyed said that they had benefited from the EU. 557 01:04:57,380 --> 01:05:05,540 Four percent of the public would echoed that sentiment, and the public breaks down one third, one third, one third between benefited. 558 01:05:05,540 --> 01:05:17,530 So that strongly agree and tend to agree ambivalence, either agree or disagree and disagree that they have benefited from the European Union. 559 01:05:17,530 --> 01:05:26,110 Within the public, there was also a striking divide, Chatham House found that by far the most determinative, 560 01:05:26,110 --> 01:05:31,780 the greatest determinant for what would drive your opinion of the EU between being anti 561 01:05:31,780 --> 01:05:39,010 and pro was whether someone was what they call authoritarian minded and the title, 562 01:05:39,010 --> 01:05:45,490 of course, from the dawn of a study on the Apocalypse Now in the 50s, which this harkens back to. 563 01:05:45,490 --> 01:05:52,870 So they see authoritarian mindedness as favouring order, having a deference to authority and resistance to change. 564 01:05:52,870 --> 01:06:01,970 If you believe that, you are very likely, much more likely to be anti EU. 565 01:06:01,970 --> 01:06:05,570 So from this three takeaways that Chatham House offers us, 566 01:06:05,570 --> 01:06:13,700 that I will try and sort of provide my own slight spin on these and mostly come from the studies that they've done, 567 01:06:13,700 --> 01:06:25,970 so I'll try to remain consistent to them. The first is that this is not a binary debate, and this is what the study set out to try and demonstrate. 568 01:06:25,970 --> 01:06:33,500 So, they write, several of the tribes cannot be lumped simply into a pro EU or anti-EU category, 569 01:06:33,500 --> 01:06:39,280 and that, in fact, talking about those categories tends to lead us toward the extremes of the tribes. 570 01:06:39,280 --> 01:06:50,690 Think Federalists for an EU rejection. But those tribes are actually underrepresented relative to the amount that we tend to talk about. 571 01:06:50,690 --> 01:06:56,660 They also found that there are more tribes than there are political parties who represent them. 572 01:06:56,660 --> 01:07:00,890 And that's not to say necessarily that there are, you know, there are six political parties in Europe, 573 01:07:00,890 --> 01:07:10,370 but it's to say they want to say that the tribes don't map well onto the political parties that are available right now. 574 01:07:10,370 --> 01:07:17,780 And so perhaps this is why we see part of why we see more emphasis and more influence from some of the 575 01:07:17,780 --> 01:07:24,080 lesser represented tribes because the parties have gotten onto their beliefs on the Federalist belief, 576 01:07:24,080 --> 01:07:31,910 for example, and onto an EU rejected belief, then on to something more complicated, like a frustrated European. 577 01:07:31,910 --> 01:07:37,910 And the third conclusion of which is more minor there is that if you look at this data, 578 01:07:37,910 --> 01:07:43,680 you got a sense that Europe or perhaps the European narrative is quite up for grabs right now. 579 01:07:43,680 --> 01:07:53,030 Look, the plurality here is hesitance, perhaps ambivalence to be a similar way of categorising it. 580 01:07:53,030 --> 01:07:58,130 So put it in terms of this panel's title, it's possible we could say, 581 01:07:58,130 --> 01:08:06,950 can you say to that one third of Europeans fall into a group where they don't actually quite know what to make of Europe, but it's equally possible. 582 01:08:06,950 --> 01:08:11,210 And the Chatham House acknowledges this, that those hesitant Europeans are hesitant, 583 01:08:11,210 --> 01:08:15,560 not because they're on the fence about Europe, but because they just don't care that much. 584 01:08:15,560 --> 01:08:21,680 So it's unclear whether this is a question of what these Europeans are making or not 585 01:08:21,680 --> 01:08:27,440 making a judgement or a question of whether they're caring or not caring about Europe. 586 01:08:27,440 --> 01:08:36,320 Either way, Charles points that EU leaders should be engaged and that this is the focus as they move forward for determining 587 01:08:36,320 --> 01:08:50,690 European narratives will be to reorient ourselves to focus on what they think is the range from the hesitant Europeans.