1 00:00:00,360 --> 00:00:09,480 Well, today we're doing something different today we're interviewing our director of the Europe Stories project and of this podcast, 2 00:00:09,480 --> 00:00:18,840 Timothy Garton Ash. So Timothy Garton Ash is professor of European Studies at Oxford and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford. 3 00:00:18,840 --> 00:00:27,450 Timothy has really led us through this project and guided us taking time to work us through the research stages, 4 00:00:27,450 --> 00:00:31,020 as well as the writing stages of Europe stories. 5 00:00:31,020 --> 00:00:39,150 In this episode, we talk about Timothy's latest project, which is a personal history of contemporary Europe, 6 00:00:39,150 --> 00:00:44,430 which follows 10 books of contemporary history and political writing. 7 00:00:44,430 --> 00:00:51,450 Yes, and in the interview, we discuss with him many of the findings in the Europe Stories project. 8 00:00:51,450 --> 00:01:04,700 So we get Timothy's personal takes on many of the issues we've discussed throughout this podcast series. 9 00:01:04,700 --> 00:01:09,950 Hello, I'm Timothy Garton Ash, welcome to the Europe Stories podcast. 10 00:01:09,950 --> 00:01:14,690 What the young Europeans want the European Union to do and to be. 11 00:01:14,690 --> 00:01:15,980 Over the last three years, 12 00:01:15,980 --> 00:01:24,980 an amazing group of young Europeans have worked with me here at the European Studies Centre at Oxford University to answer this question. 13 00:01:24,980 --> 00:01:28,460 And this podcast will present their findings. 14 00:01:28,460 --> 00:01:50,980 Host Anna Martinez and Lucas say have a series of conversations with the authors of our concluding report and give you their answers. 15 00:01:50,980 --> 00:01:54,910 OK, so what was the inspiration for this project? 16 00:01:54,910 --> 00:01:58,720 Why ask what stories does Europe tell? 17 00:01:58,720 --> 00:02:09,910 So the inspiration for this project was the sense that Europe has lost the plot that it's stumbling from crisis to crisis. 18 00:02:09,910 --> 00:02:19,090 Pretty much the last decade, and we needed to find out some better sense of where Europe is going. 19 00:02:19,090 --> 00:02:27,820 And then gradually we narrowed it down from this very vague question about the new narrative for Europe. 20 00:02:27,820 --> 00:02:37,510 To the question, what stories does Europe tell, what stories are Europeans actually telling themselves about the real Europe we have? 21 00:02:37,510 --> 00:02:43,300 And then, as you know, to this even more precise question, what stories young Europeans are telling? 22 00:02:43,300 --> 00:02:53,020 And then even more precisely to the question what young Europeans want the European Union to be and to do by, say, 2030? 23 00:02:53,020 --> 00:02:56,590 And I have to say I'm absolutely thrilled by the result. 24 00:02:56,590 --> 00:03:03,100 You have been the most amazing team of young Europeans, and I always knew we had great students at Oxford. 25 00:03:03,100 --> 00:03:09,710 But you've been a fantastic group of students and it's been really a very exciting journey. 26 00:03:09,710 --> 00:03:13,100 If I could add on a little bit to Anna's question, 27 00:03:13,100 --> 00:03:26,780 was there something dissatisfying or lacking in existing ways of telling Europe stories that this project is trying to address or respond to? 28 00:03:26,780 --> 00:03:33,860 Well, first of all, a vacuum is normally unsatisfying, and that was something of a vacuum there. 29 00:03:33,860 --> 00:03:37,880 I mean, with the possible exception of Emmanuel Macron, 30 00:03:37,880 --> 00:03:45,830 it's hard to point to a European leader who's really putting a story out there in the way that earlier European leaders did. 31 00:03:45,830 --> 00:03:47,690 The only other thing that was, of course, 32 00:03:47,690 --> 00:03:56,930 was this great attempt by the European Commission under Jose Manuel Barroso to find what was called a new European narrative. 33 00:03:56,930 --> 00:04:03,920 But as you both know, we very rapidly concluded that that was precisely the wrong way to go about it. 34 00:04:03,920 --> 00:04:13,580 From Brussels out from the top down the bar, trying to prescribe what should be the new European narrative, 35 00:04:13,580 --> 00:04:19,860 rather than starting democratically by finding out what Europeans actually want. 36 00:04:19,860 --> 00:04:26,190 So you were a historical firsthand witness to the events of 1989, 37 00:04:26,190 --> 00:04:39,000 which were considered a formative experience or formative moment actually for older Europeans and by the swimming Europeans born before 1972. 38 00:04:39,000 --> 00:04:42,330 So the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War. 39 00:04:42,330 --> 00:04:49,980 This was either formative or our best moment in the opinion of these Europeans, as opposed to younger Europeans, 40 00:04:49,980 --> 00:04:56,100 namely those born after 1989, some of which did identify that is a very important moment. 41 00:04:56,100 --> 00:05:04,770 But the majority of these young Europeans identify as a formative moment, actually an experience, not a historical moment. 42 00:05:04,770 --> 00:05:10,650 I wonder as a historian and as a firsthand witness to that pivotal moment in European history, 43 00:05:10,650 --> 00:05:16,500 do you see a continuity between a formative moment that is about the fall of a wall, 44 00:05:16,500 --> 00:05:19,500 the ultimate border, if you will, 45 00:05:19,500 --> 00:05:28,800 and freedom of movement being so formative or at least a condition for the formative experiences of a whole new generation of Europeans? 46 00:05:28,800 --> 00:05:38,010 Is there a continuity here or is this just different expressions of the fundamental modern value that is liberty? 47 00:05:38,010 --> 00:05:39,180 Well, in a way, of course. 48 00:05:39,180 --> 00:05:47,730 The fall of the Berlin Wall is the ultimate expression of the desire for freedom of movement as an aspect of a larger freedom. 49 00:05:47,730 --> 00:05:56,430 I think that's important to say. So there's obviously a continuity there, but it is really interesting because as you said already in this podcast, 50 00:05:56,430 --> 00:06:02,850 we started out with this idea from the attributed Napoleon quote that we had to find the formative moments. 51 00:06:02,850 --> 00:06:06,780 And for most people of my generation older, we found some. 52 00:06:06,780 --> 00:06:14,470 I mean, actually, my own formative moment was the birth of the Solidarity movement in Poland, in the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk in 1980. 53 00:06:14,470 --> 00:06:22,200 So it was a whole decade of the liberation of Central and Eastern Europe, which was both formative and best moments. 54 00:06:22,200 --> 00:06:33,450 But it's really interesting that in your generation and European, slightly younger, even that isn't the same specific historical moment. 55 00:06:33,450 --> 00:06:44,850 It's almost as if you've had a really fortunate time out from a European history of moments good, bad and ugly. 56 00:06:44,850 --> 00:06:51,030 But of course, the substance of what you've been talking about the experience freedom of movement as the 57 00:06:51,030 --> 00:06:57,750 core of a larger sense of freedom is exactly what my generation were working towards. 58 00:06:57,750 --> 00:07:07,970 You know that the great phrase we use coming from a rather unexpected phrase maker, namely George H.W. Bush. 59 00:07:07,970 --> 00:07:14,120 Not a natural poet who in fact, he himself said he he distrusted the vision thing, 60 00:07:14,120 --> 00:07:22,040 but he actually produced the best phrase for the goal of our generation, which was a Europe whole and free. 61 00:07:22,040 --> 00:07:29,300 And we've got closer to it than ever before in European history precisely in the last 30 years. 62 00:07:29,300 --> 00:07:34,220 I would love to dig a bit deeper into this question of free movement. 63 00:07:34,220 --> 00:07:43,460 Something don't and I have found in doing these episodes is that it really does touch on so many of the topics that this project has been about. 64 00:07:43,460 --> 00:07:47,480 And it serves maybe not quite a master narrative, 65 00:07:47,480 --> 00:07:54,830 but it's almost has this magnetic quality where all these different issues can be tied with free movement in one way. 66 00:07:54,830 --> 00:08:01,430 And one of the attempts in this final chapter is to think both about the synergies and the trade offs, 67 00:08:01,430 --> 00:08:09,530 and it can be actually a bit difficult, I think, to think about the trade-offs of free movement because it's such an important and in many ways, 68 00:08:09,530 --> 00:08:14,870 a very positive experience for many Europeans, in particular young Europeans. 69 00:08:14,870 --> 00:08:27,500 But I wonder about two things. One is what might the specific trade offs be of free movement becoming more and more ordinary as an experience? 70 00:08:27,500 --> 00:08:32,180 And then also secondly, and more broadly, 71 00:08:32,180 --> 00:08:42,780 why is it so important to think about trade offs as we wrap up this report, this podcast series and this project? 72 00:08:42,780 --> 00:08:44,910 Well, Arnold is, of course, 73 00:08:44,910 --> 00:08:55,680 a student of political theory and has read Isaiah Berlin and Isaiah Berlin famously said there are lots of values out there and lots of good things, 74 00:08:55,680 --> 00:09:02,610 but you can't have them all at once. You can't have perfect freedom and perfect equality and perfect justice. 75 00:09:02,610 --> 00:09:09,030 You have to plumb to prioritise, to balance. And that's of course, true in this case too. 76 00:09:09,030 --> 00:09:14,820 So self-evidently, it gets interesting and difficult when you start making those trade-offs. 77 00:09:14,820 --> 00:09:18,090 Now, in the case of freedom of movement, I would say a couple of things. 78 00:09:18,090 --> 00:09:27,360 First of all, as we discovered in our really interesting Europe wide polling, not all Europeans love freedom of movement. 79 00:09:27,360 --> 00:09:30,840 If you remember, the figure from France was a very large number. 80 00:09:30,840 --> 00:09:37,650 Nearly 50 percent actually didn't think freedom of movement was a good thing for their country. 81 00:09:37,650 --> 00:09:41,000 Freedom of movement arguably gave us Brexit. 82 00:09:41,000 --> 00:09:48,770 The combination of immigration from outside and immigration from inside the EU was one of the principal reasons for the Brexit vote. 83 00:09:48,770 --> 00:09:57,650 So the problem here is that we have roughly speaking 50 societies, 50 percent ballpark, 84 00:09:57,650 --> 00:10:04,910 not freedom of movement, 50 percent ballpark hesitant or sceptical or hostile to it. 85 00:10:04,910 --> 00:10:11,580 So one of the big problems I think to come out of the report is what do we offer the other 50 percent? 86 00:10:11,580 --> 00:10:16,370 So one of your recommendations I like very much is it shouldn't just be about Erasmus, which is about us. 87 00:10:16,370 --> 00:10:26,420 It's about people who go to university. There should be versions of Erasmus and all sorts of different, you know, all different parts of society. 88 00:10:26,420 --> 00:10:32,780 The other huge trade off, which for me is one of the big takeaways from this whole exercise, 89 00:10:32,780 --> 00:10:41,120 is between freedom of movement inside the EU and the lack of freedom movement for people outside. 90 00:10:41,120 --> 00:10:46,010 Anna, you were there, I think, at our meeting in Berlin. It was an amazing moment. 91 00:10:46,010 --> 00:10:55,940 We had students from China and India, and all the Europeans were talking away about freedom of movement and the press. 92 00:10:55,940 --> 00:11:05,180 Our Indian friend and then our Chinese friend piped up and said, Hey, you try getting into the EU as someone from India or China. 93 00:11:05,180 --> 00:11:09,050 And I think that's going to be a huge issue for Europe going forward. 94 00:11:09,050 --> 00:11:13,830 What are we going to do at our own frontier and beyond? 95 00:11:13,830 --> 00:11:29,570 Yes, I remember that moment quite well, indeed. And the whole visit to Berlin, which was very impressive. 96 00:11:29,570 --> 00:11:35,300 On the 9th of November 2019, the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. 97 00:11:35,300 --> 00:11:44,780 Our team was in Berlin for a conference about the post 1890 generations co-organized by the shift of MacArthur and the Down to Earth programme. 98 00:11:44,780 --> 00:11:49,500 We interviewed Hart with Meyer, professor of politics at Oxford, for our project. 99 00:11:49,500 --> 00:11:52,760 Hear his thoughts on the lasting impact of this moment. 100 00:11:52,760 --> 00:11:58,490 The moment the wall came down, we had idealised narrative both in the West as well as in Europe, 101 00:11:58,490 --> 00:12:06,740 and we thought we could just continue with this narrative and not understanding that alternative narratives, 102 00:12:06,740 --> 00:12:16,490 alternative perceptions, some illusions about what the West alone, what Europe alone could do certainly came up very, very soon. 103 00:12:16,490 --> 00:12:17,900 And from then onwards, 104 00:12:17,900 --> 00:12:27,990 from this idealised version of Europe as the project of milk and honey and individual freedom and justice for everyone and the West. 105 00:12:27,990 --> 00:12:30,920 Globalisation, individual standards. 106 00:12:30,920 --> 00:12:40,220 Human rights, environmentalism spreading all over without really expecting the type of resistance and contestation that we see now, 107 00:12:40,220 --> 00:12:43,010 I think, was the mood of the 1990s. 108 00:12:43,010 --> 00:12:51,920 But it shifted quite quickly, and I think we are now in the struggle of preserving what we feel excited about in Europe, 109 00:12:51,920 --> 00:13:07,680 in a world which is rapidly changing and which provides a lot of avenues of contestation. 110 00:13:07,680 --> 00:13:13,860 Now, turning towards the topic of social and environmental Europe, so the vision for that Europe, 111 00:13:13,860 --> 00:13:24,120 one of the surprising results we had when we question Europeans on climate change and environmental policies was that first of all, 112 00:13:24,120 --> 00:13:29,550 this is a cross-generational concern against the general assumption that there's a general divide on 113 00:13:29,550 --> 00:13:35,130 this issue that young Europeans are much more concerned about the environment than older Europeans are. 114 00:13:35,130 --> 00:13:38,850 This was a surprising result, a good result. On the other hand, 115 00:13:38,850 --> 00:13:45,330 one of our research findings indicated that a majority of young Europeans believe that an 116 00:13:45,330 --> 00:13:51,150 authoritarian system would be better equipped at dealing with climate change than a democratic system. 117 00:13:51,150 --> 00:13:55,470 I'm curious about your reaction to both of these results. 118 00:13:55,470 --> 00:14:00,930 So first of all, both of those results were quite surprising to me. 119 00:14:00,930 --> 00:14:06,120 I assumed there'd be a big age difference in the salience of climate change. 120 00:14:06,120 --> 00:14:14,340 And 53 percent saying authoritarian states are better than democracies to tackle the climate crisis is a pretty shocking result. 121 00:14:14,340 --> 00:14:21,180 You know, we're talking now in the context of all around the time of the German elections. 122 00:14:21,180 --> 00:14:25,740 And it's fascinating to see in the German elections how all the parties, 123 00:14:25,740 --> 00:14:30,870 including even the Christian Social Union from Bavaria, very Conservative Party, 124 00:14:30,870 --> 00:14:34,860 have absolutely woken up to the Climate Change Challenge, 125 00:14:34,860 --> 00:14:42,780 are really building serious economic and technological plans into their programmes for the next government. 126 00:14:42,780 --> 00:14:48,690 And frankly, the EU too, with Frans Timmermans, with whom we have a very good interview on the website. 127 00:14:48,690 --> 00:14:53,970 So I actually think I mean, I'm not given to excessive optimism, 128 00:14:53,970 --> 00:15:00,810 but I actually think one could say that Europe is beginning to wake up to this challenge and to get serious about it. 129 00:15:00,810 --> 00:15:09,960 Whether it does enough soon enough is another question, but it bloody well, better because if not, 130 00:15:09,960 --> 00:15:17,070 then I think young Europeans will conclude that democracy just can't deliver. 131 00:15:17,070 --> 00:15:24,030 It can't do the business because what we find when we ask behind that polling 132 00:15:24,030 --> 00:15:32,250 result was it is not that people love Xi Jinping's China or Putin's Russia. 133 00:15:32,250 --> 00:15:43,110 It's not like the 1930s when people really thought fascist and communist regimes were an impressive Russian alternative version of modernity. 134 00:15:43,110 --> 00:15:54,150 It's that they doubt the ability of contemporary, consensual multiparty democracy with all the checks and balances, 135 00:15:54,150 --> 00:16:02,640 with all the lobbies, with all the influence of corporations to actually deliver the change we need. 136 00:16:02,640 --> 00:16:16,920 What seems to be one perception underlying this distrust or hesitation about slow moving consensual European institutions is maybe 137 00:16:16,920 --> 00:16:27,870 some kind of mismatch between the perceived urgency of climate change and the perceived pace of which European institutions move. 138 00:16:27,870 --> 00:16:31,350 But, you know, speaking as someone who looks at 20th century history, 139 00:16:31,350 --> 00:16:40,650 I think about many consensual and slower moving institutions that did major infrastructural or other kinds of policy projects. 140 00:16:40,650 --> 00:16:47,550 So there's nothing inherently it seems like the European institutions can't achieve in terms of climate. 141 00:16:47,550 --> 00:16:55,740 So I'm I'm curious about your analysis of whether there's something specific about the European Union today that gives 142 00:16:55,740 --> 00:17:05,160 people that sense that its mode of governance and procedure somehow isn't fit for purpose to deal with climate change. 143 00:17:05,160 --> 00:17:09,150 So that's a great question, Lukas, because you're absolutely right. 144 00:17:09,150 --> 00:17:20,850 And of course, the achievements of Europe post 1945 a post-war recovery were largely thanks to change through consensus. 145 00:17:20,850 --> 00:17:29,950 If you think of the way the economies were rebuilt after 1945 or welfare states which were supported both by Social Democrats and Christian Democrats. 146 00:17:29,950 --> 00:17:37,590 So there's absolutely nothing inherent in change through consensus to prevent decisive action. 147 00:17:37,590 --> 00:17:45,330 And what I think is peculiar to the EU is that you're doing that 27 times over. 148 00:17:45,330 --> 00:17:51,840 So you're trying to put together 27 versions of consensual democracy so that 149 00:17:51,840 --> 00:17:57,510 any one moment there's a national election coming up in some EU member state, 150 00:17:57,510 --> 00:18:06,750 if not two or three, in addition to which you have added in the direct democracy of the European Parliament. 151 00:18:06,750 --> 00:18:17,220 The role of the other European institutions, so it is an exceptionally complicated multilevel system of consensual democracy, 152 00:18:17,220 --> 00:18:25,650 which is trying to reach agreement, by the way, so often by unanimity at all levels across 27 countries. 153 00:18:25,650 --> 00:18:32,000 And that hasn't been done historically before. 154 00:18:32,000 --> 00:18:36,770 Still on this question of institutions and democracy, and again, 155 00:18:36,770 --> 00:18:43,400 with regard to the results of the perception that authoritarian regimes might be better equipped at tackling climate change. 156 00:18:43,400 --> 00:18:50,300 One alternative interpretation of this results that some of the authors of this report have is that this is actually 157 00:18:50,300 --> 00:18:57,140 just the expression of a general frustration in line with what you've been saying with democratic institutions. 158 00:18:57,140 --> 00:19:03,140 But that does not necessarily mean that young Europeans do not have democratic values at heart 159 00:19:03,140 --> 00:19:09,680 as older generations that were either deprived of those values and indeed had to fight for them. 160 00:19:09,680 --> 00:19:14,030 And in fact, one of the other findings we've had in this report, 161 00:19:14,030 --> 00:19:21,920 young Europeans value performance over procedure is their risk of the type of populist 162 00:19:21,920 --> 00:19:27,380 rhetoric that emphasises results over procedure being more appealing to this generation. 163 00:19:27,380 --> 00:19:35,600 So one thing about this kind of consensual, multi-party, slow moving, often coalition democracy, 164 00:19:35,600 --> 00:19:42,770 what the French called angry is the five day meetings in Brussels to achieve some 165 00:19:42,770 --> 00:19:52,190 result is that it's very boring and boredom is an underestimated factor in history. 166 00:19:52,190 --> 00:20:02,810 George Steiner has a wonderful essay about Europe before 1914, when he talks about the cold ennui, the great boredom, 167 00:20:02,810 --> 00:20:17,960 and I see in some enthusiasm from relatively small sectors of young Europeans for radical nationalist populist parties, an element of that boredom. 168 00:20:17,960 --> 00:20:21,630 In other words, there's no much Carl Schmidt in there. 169 00:20:21,630 --> 00:20:28,430 There's not much romance, there's not much humour, there's not much dynamism and action and indeed no violence. 170 00:20:28,430 --> 00:20:33,110 And let's not forget, the violence also has its own attraction. 171 00:20:33,110 --> 00:20:37,850 So that's the problem of boredom, which I think is a serious problem of Europe. 172 00:20:37,850 --> 00:20:42,320 Brussels has no theatre that Washington has theatre. 173 00:20:42,320 --> 00:20:46,610 Washington is like a soap opera of politics that you can follow with all its faults. 174 00:20:46,610 --> 00:20:55,650 Westminster have theatre. Brussels has no filter. That's one point to make, and another point to make is. 175 00:20:55,650 --> 00:21:01,560 You know, let me step back for a moment while we we've been working together on this project. 176 00:21:01,560 --> 00:21:06,020 I have been writing a personal history of contemporary Europe since 1945, 177 00:21:06,020 --> 00:21:13,130 but particularly over the 50 years that I personally have witnessed in Europe since the early 1970s. 178 00:21:13,130 --> 00:21:24,710 And one thing I found missing, and if I can put it this way, all your thinking about this was a sense of the historic fragility. 179 00:21:24,710 --> 00:21:35,210 Of what has been achieved in here. I mean, I spent many weeks in former Yugoslavia during the four wards of former Yugoslavia. 180 00:21:35,210 --> 00:21:40,610 I've spent time in Ukraine, which is still at war at the moment. 181 00:21:40,610 --> 00:21:52,370 You see just how quickly Europe can go all the way back to the barbarism of the first half of the 20th century on a smaller scale in Brexit. 182 00:21:52,370 --> 00:21:58,880 You see how things we thought almost irreversible can so quickly be reversed in the COVID pandemic. 183 00:21:58,880 --> 00:22:07,580 Frontiers go up again between European countries so that one of the things I think is is somewhat missing in this report and is really, 184 00:22:07,580 --> 00:22:12,650 really important. What I'm trying to do in my book is to convey this, 185 00:22:12,650 --> 00:22:25,850 this sense of the fragility of this project that what young Europeans regard as normal is historically speaking, extremely abnormal. 186 00:22:25,850 --> 00:22:40,700 It's an exceptional condition which will be lucky to hang on to for a few more decades. 187 00:22:40,700 --> 00:22:47,060 Bruno Vietnam-era is a Portuguese novelist who often writes from the perspective of disadvantaged communities. 188 00:22:47,060 --> 00:22:53,330 We interviewed him for the Europe Stories project. Listen to him speak of Europe as a delicate ideal. 189 00:22:53,330 --> 00:23:02,030 You know, it's such a wonderful and oversimplified idea you because we are living in unprecedented 190 00:23:02,030 --> 00:23:09,650 times of peace in Europe and sometimes we don't understand really all our rates. 191 00:23:09,650 --> 00:23:23,500 Wonderful. These artificial construction is. 192 00:23:23,500 --> 00:23:32,650 This reminds me when I was studying Habemus and all of us had this reaction, you know, it's so dry, it's almost impossible to read. 193 00:23:32,650 --> 00:23:38,320 Very boring. And our professor told us that the reason why habemus wrote that way, 194 00:23:38,320 --> 00:23:44,560 at least his political theory, perhaps not so much his journalistic or opinion articles, 195 00:23:44,560 --> 00:23:56,890 was that he did not want any trace of anything resembling rhetoric narrative because of what Germany went through with Nazi Germany. 196 00:23:56,890 --> 00:24:04,420 How that came about. And I wonder if there is a similar trauma at the core of the EU we have today. 197 00:24:04,420 --> 00:24:13,570 So is it devoid of that narrative theatre, as you say, because of its past with nationalism? 198 00:24:13,570 --> 00:24:19,510 Is it also, on the one hand, the effect of nationalist rhetoric and thinking, on the other hand, 199 00:24:19,510 --> 00:24:33,100 also the fear that a sense of threat might be reignited if the EU is perceived to be intending to act as a state or as a nation. 200 00:24:33,100 --> 00:24:43,360 Therefore, it became this very technocratic organisation that tries to steer clear of those elements that are typical of nations. 201 00:24:43,360 --> 00:24:47,910 The historical element, the mythical element. 202 00:24:47,910 --> 00:24:58,200 So I think another couple of things in there which one might want to disentangle the harbourmaster point is a very interesting one, 203 00:24:58,200 --> 00:25:04,310 although I would like to think one can be serious and sober and still lucid and readable. 204 00:25:04,310 --> 00:25:09,900 And actually, you know, I think habemus can be quite readable. 205 00:25:09,900 --> 00:25:15,930 And sometimes the German companions are very powerful things analytically, 206 00:25:15,930 --> 00:25:23,900 but certainly particularly in the German context, one wanted to avoid the sort of humour extremes of rhetoric. 207 00:25:23,900 --> 00:25:28,500 That's absolutely right. I don't think that means you need to be boring. 208 00:25:28,500 --> 00:25:34,950 After all, there was a village Brandt, who was a tremendously exciting post-war German leader, 209 00:25:34,950 --> 00:25:41,880 actually exemplifying the best qualities of a democratic Germany and so the EU itself. 210 00:25:41,880 --> 00:25:50,730 The basic point is this that everything we have tried to add on on in to turn it into a full, 211 00:25:50,730 --> 00:25:55,890 multifaceted European Union and political community at heart. 212 00:25:55,890 --> 00:26:00,900 It's still a European economic community, what it started today. 213 00:26:00,900 --> 00:26:05,270 And at the heart of that heart is a regulatory union. 214 00:26:05,270 --> 00:26:12,410 That's the main concrete thing the EU does regulation, trade negotiations, all that stuff, 215 00:26:12,410 --> 00:26:17,990 and that stuff is bureaucratic and is technocratic, there's no way around it. 216 00:26:17,990 --> 00:26:21,110 We've seen this in the Brexit negotiations. 217 00:26:21,110 --> 00:26:34,760 The question is where is European leadership with the strategic vision and the power to inspire, to move, to motivate? 218 00:26:34,760 --> 00:26:41,870 We don't find it on the whole in Brussels. We find it in individual national capitals. 219 00:26:41,870 --> 00:26:47,240 The closest we've come to it in recent years, I would say, is Emmanuel Macron. 220 00:26:47,240 --> 00:26:55,160 Some of this discussion makes me wonder how these themes of fragility and boredom would look like if we blew up 221 00:26:55,160 --> 00:27:02,420 the map and zoomed out a little bit and kind of link this discussion with the third theme in the final chapter, 222 00:27:02,420 --> 00:27:13,190 which is Europe in a changing world and whether it's in this report or reading the news in the past few months. 223 00:27:13,190 --> 00:27:17,000 We hear a lot of discussion about strategic autonomy. 224 00:27:17,000 --> 00:27:23,330 Of course, underlying that is the perception and a frequent accusation that at the European level, as well as at the national level, 225 00:27:23,330 --> 00:27:31,310 there has been a lack of coherent foreign policy and also a lack of a narrative about Europe's place in the world. 226 00:27:31,310 --> 00:27:43,310 And I wonder how seeing Europe in a changing world might give us a different perspective on these questions of fragility and also of boredom. 227 00:27:43,310 --> 00:27:52,250 Of course, theatre in the sense of Europe as a stage, but it is also an actor and in particular, 228 00:27:52,250 --> 00:28:04,100 whether having that narrative about Europe in a changing world can give us at least some entry points into cherishing that for Jose of that project, 229 00:28:04,100 --> 00:28:10,520 as well as resolving some of these cul de sacs that follow from boredom. 230 00:28:10,520 --> 00:28:15,140 So in a way, what you're referring to is a very old dream. 231 00:28:15,140 --> 00:28:25,610 It's expressed in the French phrase law presence or, as Tony Blair put it, we want Europe to be not a superstate, but a superpower. 232 00:28:25,610 --> 00:28:35,480 And that informed an older generation of Europeans France, Britain, Germany could not be world powers anymore on their own, 233 00:28:35,480 --> 00:28:41,640 but through Europe, they would again together become a world power. 234 00:28:41,640 --> 00:28:49,790 I think it informed Blair's approach, and in a world increasingly influenced as you know, so well, Lucas, 235 00:28:49,790 --> 00:28:59,450 by non-European powers, notably China, but also countries like Russia, we actually need that to defend our interests. 236 00:28:59,450 --> 00:29:04,850 So I vividly remember a supper. 237 00:29:04,850 --> 00:29:11,240 In the kitchen of a woman called Mabel's and Alonzo with a guy called Mark Leonard, 238 00:29:11,240 --> 00:29:15,820 where we said what we really need is a European Council on Foreign Relations. 239 00:29:15,820 --> 00:29:21,200 And this became something called the European Council on Foreign Relations EGFR, 240 00:29:21,200 --> 00:29:29,030 which for nearly 15 years now has been working to try to create a more coherent and effective European foreign policy. 241 00:29:29,030 --> 00:29:40,110 And to be quite honest. We haven't got all that far because we've been rowing against the tide for all those years against the, 242 00:29:40,110 --> 00:29:49,920 so to speak, central centrifugal and disintegrating tendencies in Europe, so measured against the ambition. 243 00:29:49,920 --> 00:29:56,220 I don't think we've got very far. What we have achieved is what I would call a shared strategic culture. 244 00:29:56,220 --> 00:30:06,540 In other words, there's a pretty good understanding in Paris and Berlin and London and Rome and Madrid and elsewhere that we need something like this. 245 00:30:06,540 --> 00:30:15,000 We need strategic autonomy that we need European sovereignty. But we haven't got very far to realising it. 246 00:30:15,000 --> 00:30:19,140 And in a way, this is a question back to you because, you know, 247 00:30:19,140 --> 00:30:28,680 for people of my generation and in know sort of elite discourse around the EU, this is actually the great new narrative for Europe. 248 00:30:28,680 --> 00:30:37,760 It is that in the post Western world. We need a stronger Europe to defend our values and our interests in a world of dance. 249 00:30:37,760 --> 00:30:49,380 Europe needs to be a giant itself. I've said that myself many times. What really struck me was how relatively little resonance that had to you guys. 250 00:30:49,380 --> 00:30:57,180 It wasn't something that anyone or very few people came up with spontaneously. 251 00:30:57,180 --> 00:31:02,640 If you ask people, Would you like a European foreign policy? They said, Yes, absolutely, we love it. 252 00:31:02,640 --> 00:31:13,260 But it didn't seem to be a personal priority. And this leads me to a last thought, which is, I think increasingly we're beginning to look at a Europe, 253 00:31:13,260 --> 00:31:21,310 which is no longer universalist, either in the old colonial way or in the new post-colonial way. 254 00:31:21,310 --> 00:31:34,600 But in a sense, more exceptionalist, that's to say, increasingly, what people are really talking about is defending a European way of life, 255 00:31:34,600 --> 00:31:40,420 which we no longer think the rest of the world is going to admire and emulate. 256 00:31:40,420 --> 00:31:49,170 But just defending it for ourselves. If we could pause on that for a moment. 257 00:31:49,170 --> 00:31:56,610 Because what you're saying is just so interesting, and it brings me back to that moment in our colloquium earlier this year. 258 00:31:56,610 --> 00:32:03,810 I believe this is how it went. You asked whether Europe should be a superpower. 259 00:32:03,810 --> 00:32:08,640 And I think in the first instance, very few people said yes. 260 00:32:08,640 --> 00:32:17,280 And then you asked again whether Europe should be a civilian superpower and many hands went up. 261 00:32:17,280 --> 00:32:27,480 And I think that matches on quite. Well, with what you're saying about these shifting views of what Europe's place in the world is, 262 00:32:27,480 --> 00:32:36,980 and I wonder from observing the explicit and implicit expressions of younger Europeans. 263 00:32:36,980 --> 00:32:43,370 What that means. Does that change what we even think as a superpower? 264 00:32:43,370 --> 00:32:54,680 So something that we suggest at the end of this chapter is Europe as a green superpower, Europe as a civilian superpower. 265 00:32:54,680 --> 00:33:03,980 Those terms are new terms in many ways, although they have histories, and I wonder whether that will mean not just for Europe, 266 00:33:03,980 --> 00:33:11,150 but that the very notion of what a superpower is might look very different because young people seem to 267 00:33:11,150 --> 00:33:17,480 have a very different sense of what they want to defend and how they want to defend what they cherish. 268 00:33:17,480 --> 00:33:27,380 Lucas, thanks for reminding me of that amazing moment because you see, for me, I have no problem the idea of of wanting Europe to be a superpower. 269 00:33:27,380 --> 00:33:33,320 But when I put it out there, I mean the chilling silence in the room. 270 00:33:33,320 --> 00:33:41,120 And when I tried to get you to explain, you said, Well, for us, superpower means sort of George W. Bush and the 86 airborne. 271 00:33:41,120 --> 00:33:47,660 It's about hard power, American style or one might add Russian style or Chinese style. 272 00:33:47,660 --> 00:33:53,120 So that's almost a semantic point about the connotations of superpower. 273 00:33:53,120 --> 00:34:01,910 But if we say civilian superpower, then we have to stop giving substance to that then. 274 00:34:01,910 --> 00:34:10,050 And since this is not something for which there are many examples in history, we have to start putting meat on the bones. 275 00:34:10,050 --> 00:34:17,450 If meat is appropriate for civilians who are all vegetables on the bones of a civilian superpower. 276 00:34:17,450 --> 00:34:22,620 It's quite difficult. First of all. 277 00:34:22,620 --> 00:34:28,300 It's quite wrong to think that economic power is soft power. 278 00:34:28,300 --> 00:34:33,730 For the recipients of the people on the receiving end of economic power in Europe has a lot of economic power. 279 00:34:33,730 --> 00:34:45,250 Economic power can be quite hard power. And Europe plays hardball in trade relations and trade negotiations and its economic policy. 280 00:34:45,250 --> 00:34:56,640 Secondly. If I'm a migrant or refugee from the Middle East or Africa trying to get into the European Union. 281 00:34:56,640 --> 00:35:01,110 What I met with does not look very civil or civilian to me. 282 00:35:01,110 --> 00:35:12,030 I met with frontier forces at places like Ceuta and the Spanish frontier to Morocco or the island of Lesbos or the sea south of Lampedusa, 283 00:35:12,030 --> 00:35:16,500 which are now turning me back, pushing me away. 284 00:35:16,500 --> 00:35:29,940 So the reality of working out what a civilian superpower means in its interactions with the rest of the world, I think requires a lot more discussion. 285 00:35:29,940 --> 00:35:34,830 I mean, obviously, we don't like invading Iraq and then occupying other people's countries. 286 00:35:34,830 --> 00:35:36,750 We don't want to do that. 287 00:35:36,750 --> 00:35:48,430 But what is the nature of those interactions between a civilian superpower, Europe and a rather uncivil and civilian rest of the world? 288 00:35:48,430 --> 00:35:54,100 On that note of discussion of European soft power, 289 00:35:54,100 --> 00:36:04,660 which is often referred to as normative soft power in the sense that Europe's fundamental principles and the laws that emerge 290 00:36:04,660 --> 00:36:14,020 from those principles end up influencing other parts of the world that look up to that legislation as an example to follow. 291 00:36:14,020 --> 00:36:19,660 We're all faced with the challenges of a daunting digital age, 292 00:36:19,660 --> 00:36:28,150 and one of the clear results from our study is that communication is a challenge for the 293 00:36:28,150 --> 00:36:33,820 European Union in the sense that there is no lack of information about how the EU works. 294 00:36:33,820 --> 00:36:41,080 And nevertheless, young Europeans aren't very well informed about this, and the problem might not be exactly that. 295 00:36:41,080 --> 00:36:42,670 There's not enough information out there, 296 00:36:42,670 --> 00:36:51,550 but there aren't many mechanisms of democratic engagement beyond traditional participation methods like voting. 297 00:36:51,550 --> 00:36:58,930 So how do you see Europe adjusting to the digital age, perhaps becoming again, 298 00:36:58,930 --> 00:37:04,690 an example of liberal democracy that is aligned with the new forms of communication, 299 00:37:04,690 --> 00:37:11,590 especially the forms in which young Europeans have grown up used to communicating? 300 00:37:11,590 --> 00:37:23,350 So a couple of things on that. First of all. Just as the amusement to either of, you know, what's happening in Brussels today. 301 00:37:23,350 --> 00:37:31,490 Now. Lucas? No, you haven't turned on your television set with bated breath. 302 00:37:31,490 --> 00:37:37,870 The Washington that found the Lion delivering the State of the Union speech. 303 00:37:37,870 --> 00:37:44,620 Well, he is actually delivering the State of the Union a European Union speech today. 304 00:37:44,620 --> 00:37:54,670 And as we. Found, in our opinion polling, most Europeans then just not care about it, they didn't even know about it. 305 00:37:54,670 --> 00:38:03,430 I mean, we had a stunning result that most Europeans don't know who delivers a state of the European speech, even even highly educated Europeans. 306 00:38:03,430 --> 00:38:10,510 So apropos communication problem point number two on the digital thing. 307 00:38:10,510 --> 00:38:17,400 I mean, again, I would want to say to be fair. I was just spent a few days in Brussels. 308 00:38:17,400 --> 00:38:22,520 People were saying our two biggest challenges are climate change and digital. 309 00:38:22,520 --> 00:38:28,630 So, so the EU has in some sense in principle, woken up to the digital challenge. 310 00:38:28,630 --> 00:38:37,840 They view it a characteristically being a regulatory union, particularly as a regulatory challenge. 311 00:38:37,840 --> 00:38:42,770 You know, the old saying, if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. 312 00:38:42,770 --> 00:38:47,930 And our problem is that Europe is a digital rule setter. 313 00:38:47,930 --> 00:38:57,140 But America is the digital trendsetter. So all the actual products, the platforms, the Facebooks, the Instagrams, the Googles, 314 00:38:57,140 --> 00:39:03,350 Twitters come from the US, all from China in a couple of cases like Ticktalk. 315 00:39:03,350 --> 00:39:13,370 And there's nothing or very little that comes out of Europe from below that we can really see as a shared European digital platform. 316 00:39:13,370 --> 00:39:24,630 And I think that would be a very unfortunate division of labour if America went and China went on doing all the inventing and all the creative work, 317 00:39:24,630 --> 00:39:35,420 and Europe was just the regulatory union. The other point, in terms of a European public sphere about the way we talk to each other. 318 00:39:35,420 --> 00:39:38,300 Is, of course, a very simple one. 319 00:39:38,300 --> 00:39:48,050 That we all speak different languages, and I regard that as an absolutely first order constraint on the creation of a European public sphere. 320 00:39:48,050 --> 00:39:55,430 I'm literally as we talk, just finalising a commentary that I'm writing about the German elections and the EU. 321 00:39:55,430 --> 00:40:04,850 The only way to reach a genuine Europe wide audience is to publish it in seven or eight different languages in the national media. 322 00:40:04,850 --> 00:40:09,650 If you do it just in English, you're reaching a tiny elite. 323 00:40:09,650 --> 00:40:15,650 So I think we've got our work cut out trying to find the sort of digital paths 324 00:40:15,650 --> 00:40:21,890 to creating a European public sphere across these many languages that we speak. 325 00:40:21,890 --> 00:40:26,930 I just have a very quick question about language. 326 00:40:26,930 --> 00:40:35,660 If we had a space for another chapter in this report, I would have loved to read one on language because it's such a first order theme, 327 00:40:35,660 --> 00:40:43,460 as you mentioned, and at least it's been one of my own learning experiences through this project, 328 00:40:43,460 --> 00:40:52,010 even though we haven't specialised in language policy to just be aware of the full implications of that diversity, 329 00:40:52,010 --> 00:40:54,980 both the benefits, but as you said, the constraints. 330 00:40:54,980 --> 00:41:03,260 And but my runway of reflection has only been in the past two or three years, whereas you've been thinking about this for many decades. 331 00:41:03,260 --> 00:41:14,450 And I'm just curious whether your sense of optimism and pessimism about language as a condition or a constraint on European identity in public sphere. 332 00:41:14,450 --> 00:41:22,040 How has that shifted over the years? Do you find yourself more optimistic or pessimistic than you started out? 333 00:41:22,040 --> 00:41:27,630 I never believed that we could make a United States of Europe. 334 00:41:27,630 --> 00:41:37,350 Remotely comparable with the United States of America, because as John Stuart Mill famously wrote in his essay on Representative Government, 335 00:41:37,350 --> 00:41:43,230 You need a united public opinion and for that you need a single language. 336 00:41:43,230 --> 00:41:50,280 So I've always thought that that that was unrealistic and continue to think that the key to the success 337 00:41:50,280 --> 00:41:57,780 of the European Union going forward is the same as it's been over 2000 years of European history, 338 00:41:57,780 --> 00:42:02,730 which is finding the balance between unity and diversity. 339 00:42:02,730 --> 00:42:08,590 That is the absolute key. To a good future for the European Union. 340 00:42:08,590 --> 00:42:18,700 And interestingly enough. The historical polity that did this most successfully is the one that most people laugh out of and think was a joke. 341 00:42:18,700 --> 00:42:28,690 The Holy Roman Empire, you know, Voltaire was a kind of cleverness of a newspaper columnist, said it was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire. 342 00:42:28,690 --> 00:42:34,780 He's quite wrong. It's the longest lasting, most successful polity in European history. 343 00:42:34,780 --> 00:42:41,920 Hitler talked about a thousand year Reich. This one actually lasted for a thousand years, and to many of those centuries, 344 00:42:41,920 --> 00:42:48,400 it was very successful precisely because it understood that you had to do both unity and diversity. 345 00:42:48,400 --> 00:42:57,220 So you had a strong central European institutions with a great mystique around the Kaiser, around the empire. 346 00:42:57,220 --> 00:43:03,160 But then in individual territories, most of them were not nation states originally. 347 00:43:03,160 --> 00:43:14,170 You had enormous flexibility and you allowed and accepted messiness and compromise and muddling through. 348 00:43:14,170 --> 00:43:25,450 And that's how you make your work. 349 00:43:25,450 --> 00:43:32,830 Our team, as Tian Xuelong, professor of European politics at Oxford, what he would like the EU to have achieved by 2030. 350 00:43:32,830 --> 00:43:34,480 Here is what he said. 351 00:43:34,480 --> 00:43:49,990 One of the things I would like to see most is still to see Europe finally achieving something what Massimo actually called an archipelago spaces, 352 00:43:49,990 --> 00:43:59,140 which is not Europe of states of Europe of space. This network of difference and mosaic of overlapping diversities. 353 00:43:59,140 --> 00:44:17,100 I always believe that there is more to Europe. It's just nation states and the EU as such. 354 00:44:17,100 --> 00:44:25,110 How have your views on your generation and younger Europeans changed, if at all? 355 00:44:25,110 --> 00:44:32,760 After the course of this project, after this report, so I was born in 1955. 356 00:44:32,760 --> 00:44:42,970 I'm a boomer. I'm a post skater. I very came of age just in the tail end of 1968. 357 00:44:42,970 --> 00:44:50,100 And. My generation was incredibly lucky. 358 00:44:50,100 --> 00:44:57,090 We were just too young to have to go through the horrors of the mid-20th century, 359 00:44:57,090 --> 00:45:06,190 but now we're going comfortably into our older years at a time when things are also looking very tough. 360 00:45:06,190 --> 00:45:12,570 So that's my first reflection. But you know, we've had it pretty good. 361 00:45:12,570 --> 00:45:20,740 Boomers. My second reflection is one that really informs the book on writing this personal history of contemporary Europe. 362 00:45:20,740 --> 00:45:30,050 Which is we got some things right. We have that vision of a Europe holding free in my case and that of many of my contemporaries, 363 00:45:30,050 --> 00:45:36,260 particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, but also in Western Europe, also in Spain and Portugal. 364 00:45:36,260 --> 00:45:43,700 We work towards that vision through the seventies and eighties, and we seem to see it in. 365 00:45:43,700 --> 00:45:51,680 In the 1990s and the early 2000s, which was really peak Europe, if you like, around 2004, 366 00:45:51,680 --> 00:46:01,430 2005, if I had died in the end of 2004, I would have gone to my grave, a very happy European. 367 00:46:01,430 --> 00:46:12,940 Things looked so good. Looking back from now, what you see is that our old Greek friend hubris was at work. 368 00:46:12,940 --> 00:46:20,060 And actually, we became complacent and overconfident, particularly in the what a free market economy, 369 00:46:20,060 --> 00:46:26,920 a globalised financial free market economy was going to deliver, but also in other ways. 370 00:46:26,920 --> 00:46:36,650 And so I think that is that is in a way my self-critical reflection on the work of our of our generation. 371 00:46:36,650 --> 00:46:42,640 Do tell us more about the book you're writing at the moment, which is as far as I understand, 372 00:46:42,640 --> 00:46:46,990 partly based on the research we've been doing on this project. 373 00:46:46,990 --> 00:46:51,580 The subtitle of the book is a personal history of Europe in our time, 374 00:46:51,580 --> 00:46:57,640 and it's quite unusual kind of book because it's it's not straight autobiography and it's not straight history. 375 00:46:57,640 --> 00:47:00,440 It's history illustrated by memoir, 376 00:47:00,440 --> 00:47:09,310 illustrated by things in that quite a few of them that I myself have seen and heard recorded over the last 50 years. 377 00:47:09,310 --> 00:47:16,240 For example, visiting the former East German Communist leader Harry Connick in prison for talking to Trump, 378 00:47:16,240 --> 00:47:25,940 that Helmut Kohl in 1991, who told me that did I realise I was sitting opposite the direct successor to Adolf Hitler? 379 00:47:25,940 --> 00:47:31,340 Which is a little bit of a conversation stopper. I have to say all at the same time, 380 00:47:31,340 --> 00:47:39,330 talking to Margaret Thatcher checkers about German unification and her quite salty views on the desirability of German unification. 381 00:47:39,330 --> 00:47:49,400 So a lot of moments like that, but but used always for the purpose of bringing home and illustrating this. 382 00:47:49,400 --> 00:47:56,510 History and I've actually been writing the book during the last four years while we've been working together on this 383 00:47:56,510 --> 00:48:06,020 project so that I've just decided that one of the last chapters is probably going to be called letter to a young European, 384 00:48:06,020 --> 00:48:10,640 and it's going to be about our work together on this project. 385 00:48:10,640 --> 00:48:16,160 And in a sense, what my generation, the work that my generation as well, of course, 386 00:48:16,160 --> 00:48:23,120 as the rest of what's happened in the world has left your generation to do. 387 00:48:23,120 --> 00:48:33,600 In Europe, I think you have quite large challenges on your plate, but at the same time, I have to say. 388 00:48:33,600 --> 00:48:39,360 You remember Churchill's famous remark about democracy, that it's the worst possible political system, 389 00:48:39,360 --> 00:48:42,720 apart from all the other systems that have been tried from time to time, 390 00:48:42,720 --> 00:48:51,190 and I would say this is the worst possible Europe, apart from all the other Europe that have been tried from time to time. 391 00:48:51,190 --> 00:49:00,940 So, Timothy, we ask of our authors at the end of each interview this question, and we thought we would ask you to. 392 00:49:00,940 --> 00:49:08,650 Do you feel that what we've found out and discussed in this project and this report 393 00:49:08,650 --> 00:49:14,280 makes you feel more or less hopeful about the European project as you see it? 394 00:49:14,280 --> 00:49:22,670 Undoubtedly more hopeful. To have, you know, such a tremendous they own guys, 395 00:49:22,670 --> 00:49:34,130 a group of young Europeans identifying the challenges and actually thinking very concretely about ways to address them with a basic. 396 00:49:34,130 --> 00:49:43,430 Underpinning of confidence that it will be possible for the European Union to address these challenges. 397 00:49:43,430 --> 00:49:47,720 That makes me more hopeful. Of course, 398 00:49:47,720 --> 00:49:55,070 if you guys if a group of carefully selected brilliant young Europeans studying at Oxford 399 00:49:55,070 --> 00:50:01,280 University did not think that was possible and did not come up with some answers, 400 00:50:01,280 --> 00:50:09,260 then one would have to be pretty depressed. Because if you don't come up with them, who else is going to seem more optimistic? 401 00:50:09,260 --> 00:50:17,750 Nonetheless, I think the challenges are pretty big and in all our societies, says the other half of our societies. 402 00:50:17,750 --> 00:50:30,590 That has to be persuaded of the continued value of hanging together rather than hanging separately. 403 00:50:30,590 --> 00:50:37,490 So that was our conversation with Timothy about our report, our project. 404 00:50:37,490 --> 00:50:47,540 His book and now fortunately and unfortunately, Lucas and I will be wrapping up this podcast series. 405 00:50:47,540 --> 00:51:00,440 It's been seven episodes, seven chapters, even though we've gone in depth into six of them, and the seventh was actually written by Lucas, my co-host. 406 00:51:00,440 --> 00:51:07,460 So Lucas had the difficult job of summarising and synthesising, 407 00:51:07,460 --> 00:51:14,210 attempting to harmonise and figuring out where the findings of our report actually can be harmonised and where we can't. 408 00:51:14,210 --> 00:51:20,120 In the concluding chapter, which he called synergies and trade offs Lucas, 409 00:51:20,120 --> 00:51:27,650 we never really introduced you on this podcast, but you are a DPhil candidate at Oxford, at also college, no less. 410 00:51:27,650 --> 00:51:35,840 And your thesis is focussed on transnational networks that connected Republican China with global organisations. 411 00:51:35,840 --> 00:51:43,310 How did you come to write a chapter for a project on Europe stories? 412 00:51:43,310 --> 00:51:59,000 So I think. It was very difficult not to think about Europe stories, having moved to Oxford during the middle of the Brexit negotiations. 413 00:51:59,000 --> 00:52:00,890 I think that. 414 00:52:00,890 --> 00:52:11,540 Certainly, questions of European identity and British identity have loomed behind some of the more specific questions we've asked in this report, 415 00:52:11,540 --> 00:52:21,900 even if they haven't been front and centre. And I think living here, these questions are of every day important. 416 00:52:21,900 --> 00:52:27,060 And as you know, I spent most of my time growing up outside of Europe, 417 00:52:27,060 --> 00:52:35,280 first in Hong Kong and then some years in the U.S. So I do come at this, you know, being an insider in some ways, an outsider in other ways. 418 00:52:35,280 --> 00:52:39,930 And certainly that's part of what I find interesting and hopefully something that 419 00:52:39,930 --> 00:52:45,590 can also give me a different kind of perspective on some of these questions. Mm hmm. 420 00:52:45,590 --> 00:52:57,500 Well, in your chapter, you do the other hard task of trying to organise the several recommendations that are made in each chapter into three clusters. 421 00:52:57,500 --> 00:53:04,990 I don't know how you manage to do that. And I will quickly read those out in their most, most summary form. 422 00:53:04,990 --> 00:53:11,210 So the European Union should deliver competently and promptly on promises, 423 00:53:11,210 --> 00:53:20,630 investigate and imagine the European project in line with young Europeans voices and develop more effective habits of communication. 424 00:53:20,630 --> 00:53:30,770 So I'd say this could boil down even further to basically two main concerns that reflect what we found about young Europeans. 425 00:53:30,770 --> 00:53:37,670 One is that young Europeans are more concerned with outcomes rather than procedures. 426 00:53:37,670 --> 00:53:45,470 And the other one is the need for better communication for democracy to work in the 21st century. 427 00:53:45,470 --> 00:53:54,080 And this has something to do with communicating or levelling up how institutions and citizens communicate. 428 00:53:54,080 --> 00:54:05,240 Given the technological improvements that have existed in communications, so it can't just be one way, it has to be two way. 429 00:54:05,240 --> 00:54:11,660 There has to be more listening rather than just communicating and informing the public about how things work. 430 00:54:11,660 --> 00:54:17,870 Because oddly enough, there is a lot of information out there on how European Union institutions work. 431 00:54:17,870 --> 00:54:23,840 But somehow, young Europeans are really ill informed about how they work, 432 00:54:23,840 --> 00:54:29,600 what they're doing, despite the fact that they're generally pro European Union. 433 00:54:29,600 --> 00:54:34,400 So my question to you is, you wrote this before we did this podcast. 434 00:54:34,400 --> 00:54:40,520 In the meantime, we've discussed with all our colleagues there, their respective chapters. 435 00:54:40,520 --> 00:54:42,650 Is this still the main takeaway for you? 436 00:54:42,650 --> 00:54:50,900 Is there something in the course of these conversations that we've been having that jumped out at you and stayed with you about young Europeans, 437 00:54:50,900 --> 00:55:00,650 about the European Union? In some ways, I think these are still the three questions I would pose at the end of the report, because of course, 438 00:55:00,650 --> 00:55:06,650 this is the conclusion to the report in one way and hopefully the beginning of many conversations in another sense. 439 00:55:06,650 --> 00:55:11,540 And I think these three questions can generate some amount of that. 440 00:55:11,540 --> 00:55:17,660 So just to backtrack a little bit, these three questions were thought up not just by me in a vacuum, 441 00:55:17,660 --> 00:55:21,590 but they were generated, you know, kind of collectively, 442 00:55:21,590 --> 00:55:32,840 at one of the colloquium that we held when the Dawn Dorf lecturer Catherine Dumfries mentioned in slightly different terms that, you know, 443 00:55:32,840 --> 00:55:44,180 these three are existential questions that the EU has to ask itself if it is going to connect with European citizens, including young Europeans. 444 00:55:44,180 --> 00:55:53,090 And in that sense, I still think that they are worth asking. Here's another kind of conclusion that might be. 445 00:55:53,090 --> 00:56:00,200 Between the lines in the report, but I think has become maybe more explicit for me in the course of thinking about 446 00:56:00,200 --> 00:56:06,230 the report and also hearing from our colleagues in the course of the past few weeks. 447 00:56:06,230 --> 00:56:13,910 So Catherine, the freeze also talked about, on the one hand, we need to acknowledge that the EU is a very mature entity. 448 00:56:13,910 --> 00:56:21,500 It's had many decades to evolve, and it's this kind of umbrella of institutions mechanisms that might be slow moving, 449 00:56:21,500 --> 00:56:27,800 but also have a lot of steadfastness to them. So I think we need to kind of understand it on the one hand and at the same time, 450 00:56:27,800 --> 00:56:35,870 be able to ask existential questions about what it's doing, why it's doing and you know who it's talking to. 451 00:56:35,870 --> 00:56:41,150 And I think that ability to do both to acknowledge that these are mature institutions, 452 00:56:41,150 --> 00:56:50,030 but also keep kind of holding them accountable, but asking about their purpose and also by asking them to deliver on their promises. 453 00:56:50,030 --> 00:56:56,510 Precisely and promptly. I think it's something that I really wanted to emphasise at the end of the report. 454 00:56:56,510 --> 00:57:06,390 So how about for you on? What do you think these seven episodes has changed about how you see young Europeans? 455 00:57:06,390 --> 00:57:14,190 I think the thing that most stayed with me or most surprised me was was when we were discussing one surprising finding in this 456 00:57:14,190 --> 00:57:24,780 report that there's not a big difference between the urgency that is felt about the climate crisis amongst European generations. 457 00:57:24,780 --> 00:57:30,120 And that's that's that's a big contradiction with what is generally assumed that 458 00:57:30,120 --> 00:57:36,000 young Europeans are way more concerned about the climate than older generations, 459 00:57:36,000 --> 00:57:40,740 and that's just not true in the case of Europe. So that was one surprise. 460 00:57:40,740 --> 00:57:49,170 Another thing that did not come out of this podcast as a surprise, but as out of the project was, I think it surprised all of us. 461 00:57:49,170 --> 00:57:56,640 The finding that 53 percent of young Europeans believe that authoritarian states would be better equipped to deal with democracies. 462 00:57:56,640 --> 00:58:03,060 But then something that through the course of this podcast was possible was like how we can 463 00:58:03,060 --> 00:58:09,330 interpret that finding in ways that cohere with other things we know about young Europeans, 464 00:58:09,330 --> 00:58:14,610 you know, namely their appreciation for freedom and democratic values. 465 00:58:14,610 --> 00:58:17,970 So how do we reconcile that finding with this finding? 466 00:58:17,970 --> 00:58:26,730 And one of the interesting takes on that is that it's probably more indicative of young Europeans frustration with institutions, 467 00:58:26,730 --> 00:58:35,070 and that is much more telling about the state of democracy in Europe and the European Union than it is indicative of their suspicion about democracy. 468 00:58:35,070 --> 00:58:38,250 I want to pick up on one thing you said on AI, which really interests me, 469 00:58:38,250 --> 00:58:42,960 which is you talked about the importance of interpreting our results, you know, 470 00:58:42,960 --> 00:58:51,480 because obviously the polls give us some numbers which can be very provocative and stimulating, but it's not always clear what to do with them. 471 00:58:51,480 --> 00:58:56,580 And you know, we kind of discussed through the course of these episodes that they're usually at least two, 472 00:58:56,580 --> 00:59:01,140 often many more ways to look at what a number means. 473 00:59:01,140 --> 00:59:04,560 And I guess it seems to me like part of what we've been trying to do also is to 474 00:59:04,560 --> 00:59:10,020 bring this interpretation not just between us and our guests and each episode, 475 00:59:10,020 --> 00:59:19,350 but also bringing it to a different kind of audience by having a podcast format rather than just a report or just a specific kind of publication. 476 00:59:19,350 --> 00:59:27,480 And I wonder if you've also had new reflections in the course of doing this podcast about what 477 00:59:27,480 --> 00:59:35,670 kind of public interpretation we could encourage on these questions of not just young European, 478 00:59:35,670 --> 00:59:40,000 but also questions of European identity and politics. 479 00:59:40,000 --> 00:59:45,880 Well, I can't help but think about the media when you ask me that I think everyone is very concerned, 480 00:59:45,880 --> 00:59:53,080 rightly so, with the problems that might emerge from new communication technologies that. 481 00:59:53,080 --> 01:00:00,010 Might be affecting our democracies to a certain extent, and I say might, because that's still not well, you know, 482 01:00:00,010 --> 01:00:08,110 well-studied everyone is talking about, you know, the impact of Facebook and other social media platforms on elections and so on. 483 01:00:08,110 --> 01:00:17,410 And we can definitely see that there is some correlation there, but there's still a lot to learn about the actual connexion here. 484 01:00:17,410 --> 01:00:24,910 It still has to be studied. And when we listen to podcasts, I'm a big podcast listener. 485 01:00:24,910 --> 01:00:32,560 And what I love about it is that there's no time limit. There is no concern with, you know, we need to shorten this message, 486 01:00:32,560 --> 01:00:39,040 get it to bite sized package so it can reach our audience in time for the commercial or something. 487 01:00:39,040 --> 01:00:41,410 And you have our in-depth conversations. 488 01:00:41,410 --> 01:00:46,840 More often than not, you actually have people from opposite sides of the spectrum coming together and having a reasonable conversation, 489 01:00:46,840 --> 01:00:50,200 which is something rare these two to listen to these days. 490 01:00:50,200 --> 01:01:02,260 And what I'm getting at here is that, you know, there's more opportunity for better in depth communication and learning and so on about these issues. 491 01:01:02,260 --> 01:01:14,170 And people can participate via multiple media and can interact directly with their information providers, be the journalist institutions and so on. 492 01:01:14,170 --> 01:01:21,850 They can react to them. They can kind of like become a hybrid in that role as well, like representing fellow citizens, 493 01:01:21,850 --> 01:01:29,770 raising important questions that others might have and so on, depending on the degree of involvement or democratic engagement they'd like to have. 494 01:01:29,770 --> 01:01:31,840 So I think there's enormous potential, 495 01:01:31,840 --> 01:01:42,040 but I think we're in a very confusing time where we're adjusting to these technologies and lightly reacting to their most obvious dangers. 496 01:01:42,040 --> 01:01:49,000 But we shouldn't lose sight of their potential for better democratic engagement. 497 01:01:49,000 --> 01:01:57,010 So I think this means that I'm hopeful, at least about the future of democracy, which also applies to Europe. 498 01:01:57,010 --> 01:02:00,130 Are you hopeful about the future of Europe? 499 01:02:00,130 --> 01:02:09,720 This is a question that you've asked all our colleagues, so I am afraid I must now deliver the favour on their behalf. 500 01:02:09,720 --> 01:02:16,170 Yeah, I totally I agree with you on that there are just so many avenues to explore and 501 01:02:16,170 --> 01:02:20,070 hopefully we've looked at a few of those through the course of this project, 502 01:02:20,070 --> 01:02:30,930 including the report and the research and the podcast. I think it's also another huge takeaway from this project is the importance to be 503 01:02:30,930 --> 01:02:35,790 realistic about what can be done and what can't be done and what the constraints are. 504 01:02:35,790 --> 01:02:45,240 So I think that's, you know, it's part of having a realistic hope to to kind of go back and forth between the aspirations and the constraints. 505 01:02:45,240 --> 01:02:50,490 And I think that that's also what we have to think about, you know, 506 01:02:50,490 --> 01:02:59,550 in the future in terms of experimenting with these modes of public engagement and interpretation is how do we get people whose life is so different? 507 01:02:59,550 --> 01:03:06,810 Who's the different languages, different concerns to come together and find the kind of space that they have in common? 508 01:03:06,810 --> 01:03:14,990 But in a sense, it's been really enjoyable. And I think, you know, I've learnt a few more things about young Europeans in this process. 509 01:03:14,990 --> 01:03:35,280 I I remain hopeful. 510 01:03:35,280 --> 01:03:44,640 Our guest today is Timothy Garton Ash and the author of our reports, concluding chapter synergies and trade offs with my co-host Lucas say. 511 01:03:44,640 --> 01:03:48,900 We're also grateful to our funders, the Swedish Nobleman Foundation, the tights, 512 01:03:48,900 --> 01:03:53,850 diphthong and the System McCarter for making the Europe Stories Project and podcast possible. 513 01:03:53,850 --> 01:04:05,040 A huge thanks to our podcast editor, Billy Craigan, our research manager Luisa Mello and our report editor Professor Timothy Garton Ash. 514 01:04:05,040 --> 01:04:10,230 A special thank you to Ellen Leach, said Lily Structure, May Moynihan, 515 01:04:10,230 --> 01:04:19,020 Sophie Verité and Victoria Hansel for contributing to the podcast Production Music by unicorn heads and Cats. 516 01:04:19,020 --> 01:04:28,110 Finally, thank you to the whole Europe Stories Project team. I'm your host and margins, and I'm your host, Lucas, to thank you for listening today. 517 01:04:28,110 --> 01:05:08,676 Check out other episodes of the Europe Stories podcast and find out more about our research project at European Moments dot com.