I think the politicians privilege, which sort of says, now this is the question you ask,
but on reflection, you might have asked me to put up an ultrasound by a simple sort of reflection.
I can't exactly date the first time I walked into this lecture theatre and it was in January 2009,
and it was part of a series of all parliamentary engagement and peace coming that he's going to face.
Weeks and hours was on who, who needs democracy and real life,
and we actually a lot of people decided to delay the start of the election on the
basis of the news that nobody would turn up with all these polls at that time.
And the reason for that was the clash with Obama's inaugural speech.
So we kind of decided that there was no time to compete with Obama.
But of course, so January 2009, all of us were reconfirmed in the basic belief that,
you know, that today is better than yesterday, but tomorrow it did better than today.
That is true. Progressives will always end up with something better.
And, you know, if the Labour Party in 1997 used to think single things can only get better and Obama for
us was the demonstration of that progressive belief and then try and find something,
and Obama has adopted them from the pulpit.
So what's the point? So I think my point is that probably Obama also wasn't what he thought he was up to today because it
basically advised that sometimes heckling is what happens when you wait till you finish the sentence,
because then they make the point it will bring to it like a couple of his ideas.
So when something happens and what do we do? Do we have that moment to stop and reflect as to what's happened to the body politic?
No, we didn't. We started smearing. We started to do that when we started saying this was just absolutely awful.
And we did not reflect at all. And the reason why I'm putting this little story is because it's like Oprah.
But also, I think if I want to get a religious, I think it's the most Matthews seven three,
which is why you need to respect that is in your brother's mind. But then I've noticed that a lot of new overnight.
And I think when you talk about hero protests, the visions of it.
Matthew, seven, Maybe quite. They used to have stopped.
Quite so we find everything wrong with the rest of the world, but we are so perfect it doesn't even require placement.
Neil McGregor, the former director of the British Museum, did a series on living with the gods, and in his introduction,
he said We debated whether they should because we thought the difference was that if we had gods, you know, serfs can have a fight with Poseidon.
The one wins and no one loses and you get on with it. If you only have one God when something unexpected, always you think undesirable happens.
You can only explain it in terms of.
And I think we go ourselves in the body politic and in Europe in particular into the session that we no longer agree or disagree.
You either sinner all your life and politics is about contesting ideas of the moment.
A few weeks ago and a few months ago that I was at a breakfast with Henry Kissinger who have him, that he is still a sharp observer of the world.
And he said in his column in Cannot Remember a time in life what Europe was and neither the cause of the problem.
No, the solution to everything. And I think that is a real challenge.
There are big challenges out. There are global flows of people, money and trade.
None of which, by the way, I think Jim is good for the closest, none of which we are addressing.
Never mentioned the environment and we have great internal challenges.
And to me, the biggest internal challenge which Europe faces is the division between countries who are members of the euro and those who are not.
And the first is and there are things which we need to address.
But if anybody wants to see this question of Scotland, they are very happy to deal with that.
The second one is we talk about nationalism because as we as we denounce Trump and say
this so much better and we say we've got to sort of take up this wave of populism.
We also tend to forget using the German example because Germany was a country of my birth.
This kind of difference between liberal nationalism and dramatic nationalism,
and this is in Germany told them in the 19th century and unfortunately, the wrong kind of nationalism in Germany one.
But if you take the United Kingdom, isn't it extraordinary?
Absolutely extraordinary that if you're Scottish nationalists, you are going to be left wing, progressive and international.
But if an English national, you seem to be right wing, inward looking and speaking up, I just think that requires us to pose interesting problems.
But the real challenge I would want to put you either in 50 years time,
it will be seen as more remarkable that the United Kingdom joined the common market as it was in 1973, then that it decided to leave in 2016.
And I would also confess to you that until the Maastricht opt outs, it was perfect.
That was the key point when the Brits were saying We never went,
we never intended to go down the political situation, but it was always about trade for us.
And all that was fine until you had the introduction of the era,
in which case this kind of parallel and say roughly speaking was on some direction kind of crystallised.
And as of today, the polls today for the European elections in the United Kingdom, who, by the way, once again,
which I thought were perhaps enough things are a good thing because it allows people to let some of that.
The Brexit Party, which was started only six weeks ago, has 30 percent.
Labour has 21 percent of Conservatives 12, so Lib Dem tends changing canine green tonight and UKIP three.
That must tell you something in a way which we engage with not smear.
Not saying that the electorate is stupid, engaged in trying to tell you something.
Even Mervyn King, former governor of the Bank of England, recently made it quite clear that as far as he's concerned,
the referendum in United Kingdom actually wasn't about economic well-being, and much of the European project was about Let's get rid of ideology.
Let's get rid of the providers to promise of a better economic tomorrow.
We can tell this kind of tone everything that this was about a sense of belonging,
which was a sense of identity, and those things were English problems, but we can talk about that.
It's quite extraordinary, by the way, that the Remain campaign in the United Kingdom has better in Scotland,
better in Wales, but in England, IT budgets better in Britain.
So that kind of leaves me with just two to five observations.
One is because I'm not there for the dinner tonight. I want to share with you something.
I went to the tape, an exhibition on the Commons of today.
If anybody's in long before before the 7th Duke go into, it's Cambodia, Iraq in there, it is horrendous.
But there was only one set of pictures which almost reduced to tears and one pictures of her.
And there was a group of people standing looking over a wall, and there was a youngster barely tall enough to look over the board any sign.
And the caption was 1961. People from the east looking into the west in Berlin.
And the reason why that reduced me to tears is because that is my history.
I grew up, I was born in 1955. And what I think in the European narrative, I will not allow anybody to take away from me,
and I will not allow anybody to take away from the United Kingdom is my European roots and my European history.
Just because in terms of a government structure, we've decided to go to a different structure that is a big danger.
We should not fall into that trap. And I'm not going to say something which will surprise people.
And that is I have no problem with federalism. I have to.
For the euro countries, federalism is the only way they have to go.
They will have to come up with the European demos and that will require European pan-European countries.
But the big dividing line will be trigger between those countries who have a single currency and those who don't.
And by the way, what would it have taken for me to campaign for remain in the referendum would have been very simple.
David Cameron has come back from negotiations that say the European Union, with an expanding number of members,
accept that forever and ever there will be euro countries and non-euro countries, and you've got two structures to bring those two things together.
But because we didn't. I'm afraid that's heartfelt, but federalism is something that we'll probably have to put in a lot of states in Europe.
Thank you very much indeed for a whole variety of very thoughtful advocacy points that come back.
Thank you for that discussion, but not with the Liberals.
I think in a sense, let's assume very similar to our next speaker in the shape of another.
I wonder if we could do this to you in reminding ourselves that we're talking about the contested Americans of today's Europe,
but we're also looking forward as well as that and thinking about how things matter, not just in five months or five years, but 50 years.
There's also. Thank you. If go to desert.
I just wanted to mention very quickly that we are also running in the UK for the European Parliament elections out of London.
So we haven't given up on the UK. Even so, I think when we think about narratives and fantastic visions, as you said,
the big thing inside that it also took from the discussions earlier is that the narrative is powerful.
If it draws from the fact that people experience and then have a sentiment towards and then it's taken up by someone,
the politicians on who takes it and talks about it and the feeling that it somehow connects to them.
And I think sometimes when we have these theoretical debates about narratives,
we forget that we can't just have them up here in the room without connecting them to the last reality.
And so I think the big insight for me that and that is also the story of why we
found the vote was that people are currently experiencing and big questions big.
I would say problems, but also the phenomenon that are affecting their personal lives.
And they don't see the narrative from the EU that will help them answer these questions.
And so just I think the one thing that I can do here as a representative of this European movement,
every village is to give you some insights about what kind of stories I heard from the people that I met
across Europe over the last two years and also maybe tell you a bit about what we did because it is,
I think, a phenomenon. I don't know how long it will be on if you will actually be able to fulfil our vision of building a long term European party.
But I think it's a phenomenon that speaks for itself, that exists and that our people are standing behind it and for the big discussions to come,
also to bring back to the new cleavages and whether they have political representation or not.
So. We decided to follow this political party of pan-European political parties because we saw that on the one side,
we have huge question marks, big challenges that we that we face.
For example, I mean, a Romanian that I know you wanted to as part of a movement said, I can see how the government is legalising corruption.
I can't see the answer. We need to somehow, from the European perspective, to find an answer to this.
To stop this opportunity go from the south of Italy was like I had to leave my single mom alone and
leave the south of Italy because I couldn't stay here and find a career path that works for me.
And why isn't there any form of like bigger investments from the European level that can somehow
make our country work so weak that it's a bit back to the austerity people that we talked about?
And then there's Stavros, who actually met a week after I met with him,
Garton Ash year and a few years ago and asked him about his vision for Europe and said,
Look, I don't understand why Morocco is having my own my my wage.
So why is this person having an effect of my life reality, my my life's reality?
And they kind of voted out of power if I don't agree with what's happening.
So I think there's this big question of the rule of law, of social equality, of all financial crises and financial flows.
And we don't have a European solution yet to answer to these questions.
Are there? They have one common denominator that is that they're all beyond the national borders.
These are all phenomena that we cannot solve and will never be able to solve with just a matter of perspective.
And we know that is this one. And so saying, let's go back to the nation state.
Easy, everybody, the Keynes in front of their own door, as we say in Germany.
And somehow we would come together and the like, you know, with the heads of state and somehow figure this out.
And that is actually, to be honest, it's somehow logical and sensible solution because you just say,
OK, if we go back to the nation, you figure it out. That's understandable. And that is a narrative that I can buy because I can connect to it.
It talks to the problems.
It takes the problems up and then it says he is the solution, and we haven't managed to find a solution that is really European answer yet.
We're not able to tell this narrative, and that is because we don't really have European politics.
There are multiple examples for this economy, and you know this all but in the parliament there a lot of the power of the European Parliament,
a lot of power is due to the national parties. I talked to an MP person, vice general secretary a few weeks ago who said, Yeah, we never did.
Like, we watered down our programme so that it accommodates all the national parties that are part of the NDP.
You look at Manfred Weber and you see that he's fallen on stream against Nord Stream and the transit markets for Nord Stream.
And you have many examples of national politics being more powerful than that than the European groups and that actually doing it.
I mean, there are a lot of lobby organisations currently moving back to Germany because they
believe that they can make more of an impact that they can make than European Parliament.
You look at the continent, it's obvious. I mean, that's national interests that the commission tries a bit to build the European perspective,
but it's not strong enough and it's not incredibly powerful enough to do that.
So where is the European with our European politics that can actually solve these problems?
So what we try to do is say we need to make European politics a reality, and that's why we built the European party and be face a lot of impediments.
I mean, you have to understand that at a different electoral laws or no electoral laws, they can intervene in different countries.
And just to give you some examples of how random that is in Italy, you need 150000 signatures to be able to run for the European Parliament elections.
In Germany, it's four thousand in Italy. You need to have a notary sitting next to you on the Piazza, who is actually saying,
OK, this is a signature nobody's ever made that has ever managed to do that.
In France, you need to have around 800000 euros to print your own ballots and take these ballots and send
them to the electorate office and all across France to be able to be elected re-elected.
Even though you already large participating in the elections.
This is these are thresholds that come before the percentage threshold that we talk about, which is also different across European countries.
So there's no common rules about European elections in which the European elections.
That's why I recognise that. And these are all little impediments that show the we we currently don't fulfil,
even what we already say in the treaties of having European parties because we didn't down to
actually establish an entity European party that could be and run in different countries.
And why is it that it's again, because of national politics, there is no interest of a national politician to some or further the idea of a
real European party of having the power transferred to a more European level.
And so I think the big question is why haven't we made this step of integration which would actually take up this problem that we need,
that we don't have a democratic representation really and build that as a Europe that works?
And I think then you can come back to the narrative and say,
this is a narrative that would work because we could say if we had the European Parliament,
that is actually the most powerful body in Europe,
that people could come with their lives reality and say, I'm going to elect the European parliamentarian.
This European planetarium can take and take the bureaucracy,
all of stocks and bureaucracy or any other topic of climate change or all of these big topics.
And somehow you benefit for me and then also implement the solution, the European level and make that a reality.
So I think for us, the big demand that we have and to actually tell a nice little story about Europe is that Europe works in a European way,
that we have the possibility of federalism, that we discuss which competences should be on the European level and that the people
can then elect the parliamentarians directly and in comparable ways across Europe,
so that you can then know that your vote is worth something if you like.
If I currently have to explain to people why they should vote in European Parliament,
most often that hear it doesn't make a difference, it doesn't have an effect on me.
It's more important what a vote on the national level, but we have to somehow like, do this.
This step forward to give this trust to the people that they will make some decisions, which might be annoying for us,
which might have some tendencies which are scary to us,
but which give the people the feeling that they actually democratic representative on the European level.
Yes. So I think what the last sentence there is that we somehow need to hold our petitions accountable,
and I really hope that we can build pressure on people like the Chancellor Merkel, who has the last years, have been really courageous.
We need to hold national positions accountable, to be courageous, to do steps towards a new European Union.
And I will be very happy to learn more from you at this conference to take care of me and my quest of building a European party faithful.
Thank you very much for these insights from the political front lines.
Next thing I need to focus on you. Give us your thoughts about the North American protests, whether that and what.
I would like to thank you for the invitation. I am obviously probably having ideas almost completely different from what I
have already heard and probably I am going to hear during the end of the day.
It's not arrogance, but I am. I am supposed to represent here a couple of people from didn't ask me to represent them,
but there is a public statement to bring some two years ago in Paris.
It was a short weekend and the end product was a piece entitled A Europe We Can Believe In.
And it was signed by, for instance, amongst others in Prague, Toronto, the sole recycler who call Roger Scruton just for yes.
So a Europe, we can believe in the background or the story behind this document is something like this almost 10 12 years ago, 13 years ago.
I can't remember, well, Dutch conservatives that are Dutch conservatives, not only the rules and how they, together with some European thinkers,
we launch a foundation and the school, the founding Birch Society, and we have a name centre for European renewal.
It was there before the crisis, what we have, the last crisis,
what we usually referred to and the central idea behind this meeting, where different people from all over Europe, Polish,
the Italian, Spanish, Swedish, some Germans, Hungarians, Czechs,
excessive force together in order to name the problem that we jointly or prior to that we had independently of each other.
Individually, we felt or thought or we had some ideas about that.
But there was now a focus point. And this focus point was I have to because I have to be green.
I'm not going to tell the whole story. It was more, more complicated and more interesting than I can tell you right now on the air.
But the common idea was that the problem with Europe is the problem of vegetation.
It is education that methodologically speaking or or finding a basic idea where we can focus all our ideas.
Justin, to tell the name what the problem is with Europe and it is education,
education and what was interesting that this was a common ground for both the best and European participants.
And then you see European participants as well. The common thread was the connecting line was between us that whereas the Western let's
call them conservatives or sceptical thinkers thought that the Western culture has,
as and as has become sort of aimless, uh, losing energy and not simply knowing what is what and losing reality on the one hand, on the eastern side.
We we have an education system of post-communist education system where we were supposed to be happy we
were supposed to just switching over to the Soviet type of education over to which was based openly,
exclusively on ideology as such, but now absorbing the end of history,
story and similar things, and democracy is the best, the improbable other things and so forth.
Education is such an approach this country even today. I am a rector of a posh Hungarian university.
I know what I have been talking about. The problem is still with us.
Who? Beaches, the beaches problem varies by police, but more practically, the Hungarian kids still don't speak the language under communism.
Even if you were a German major or English major, it barely happened that you could spend some time in Great Britain,
for instance, from an English major and so on and so forth.
So to put it, I know that I have you have the postcards that are very simple yet.
OK, so the common thread was there is something wrong with education,
and probably these good to give a patient was penetrated so profoundly with ideological way of thought.
That was partly due to the loss of intellectual traditions that the seven or pillars of our culture.
Certainly. Well, let me give it a I don't think too many people read ancient Greek and Latin in this room.
It is because of the education system, but this culture, but this is just a symptom.
I don't want to say that all of us should learn ancient Greek or Latin prohibition.
Yes, thank you. It was a validation of what I already said.
So this is this was a common ground of this statement and document.
And I myself found for common ideas that connect the whole idea.
It's about a 15 page pages. I read the statement and these four ideas around which the ideas are phrased in the statement.
I call them the excesses of the better. Number one, the excesses of the individual.
Second, excesses, excesses of the rational third excesses of the legal.
And the fourth one is the excesses of progress. And I don't have time, so to speak, about each of these.
But I want to just give you one example. What kind of what is the level of let's see.
What is this? It is. The individual European culture is unique in the sense how the individual back to the ancient times was so sort of invented.
This is the source of our science in the modern sense,
Asian sense also and therefore the individuality of the individual, the role of the individual and so on and so on.
It is is one of the most important developments of our culture.
But compared to the basic fact that that man is, you know, even so,
there's been this tension which has always been with us between the individual and the community, according to the statement,
or at least even implicitly said that the individual is contrasted to the community where the individual
has turned such a prestigious position in our society that the community is no longer including religious,
civil, national and some force communities.
Thank you. I am out. Letters since provisional could be made to authorities.
I think you could finish off our introductory section. OK.
Actually, let me start the discussion after what I heard.
I wanted to discuss certain problems, especially between narrative and structural problems or the conditions of possibility of any common narrative.
But but let me refer to the, he said.
And also to you begin with those two words.
Or rather, it will be a discussion with Henry Kissinger, who is not with last one group.
Think about the European Union is that you can discuss even with Henry Kissinger or even he can be wrong and he is wrong.
When he stated that, when he said that if he really said that the European Union,
the results and inform them up to me, European Union solved, or at least partly three big problems.
One is Eastern European problems. We just had yesterday the first 15th anniversary of the Polish and the only Polish Eastern European accession.
To European Union, and I think, you know, this part of Europe, Asia, East Coast, many problems.
Timothy Snyder knows well, it's not by coincidence that he called.
He named his book The Succession of All These Regional Bloc Lands.
I think that this was a huge problem in the modern history, at least partly at the sort, of course.
And then let me refer to the title. There was a problem with the Nordic narrative.
I tried to follow closely on verse three, and there was almost nothing about ending or what if everything was about percentages, money, populism.
But there was there was really nothing that we can do in this sense, actually.
Who said that my grandfather died or none of us want to play that often?
There was a lot of noise about Eastern Europe in the 70s and nineties, but there was no one single idea that came out of this region.
But but anyway, if you look at the numbers, Eastern European economics is very successful.
I would say that the best,
the most important achievements or the most important consequence of Europe of Polish or European Eastern European accession is independence.
This is what one populists are so dangerous in this country.
You can afford Brexit. You can afford to Trump if you are in Ireland.
The old world speaks English, if you will have nuclear weapon, etc. But if you but.
But if you can afford it, you can survive. Kaczynski or Viktor Orban, it's still a question mark.
We are not neighbouring Atlantic Ocean. We're never neighbouring Russia. It's a difference.
But, but but the second problem that I think the European Union solved is as a German problem.
I just read that the PS3 probably as well as some of you in the book and last foreign policy, the comeback of German problem in Europe.
But actually, this is a kind of a dialectic title that we have again, German problem because we felt so strongly.
The former German problem, which was as another characteristic, said once in Berlin that he's more afraid of too passive Germany not too active,
which for a poor Polish foreign minister to say that in Berlin,
it's quite it shows you what achievements the European Union accomplished when it comes to Germany.
Of course, you can say that it was not European Union with nature or it was American umbrella, etc. But let me ask you a question for this discussion.
Maybe for other panels as well would really need to survive without European Union.
With NATO's we will be NATO and NATO has, as we know today without European Union.
I'm here. I'm hesitant or like.
I have a lot of doubts. I'd prefer later with European Union than we thought.
And this is how I understand why. Before Trump, Obama happened in the sense that he was not elected from him,
begun this descent into her small or for Europe, maybe not that strong did verbally express this, as with Trump.
But that's a political philosophy. It's a certain change you pick on with Obama, unfortunately.
Then the third thing is Russia. I would say that he used.
Still, if you look at the sanctions, American sanctions for Russia are irrelevant.
The trade exchange between Russia and America doesn't exist.
It's less than one percent of of Russian GDP.
But the sanctions are a view that we are, you know, in Western Europe,
you can be surprised that they are still entangled and there are quite, well, efficient and maybe even strong unions.
This could be a perception in Eastern Europe who are disappointed,
but we in party disappointed that we understand and we appreciate, especially today, it still exists.
But but I can't imagine that without European Union umbrella in this region, Russia would be much more dangerous.
Russia would be much more active and wash up. Russia would have much bigger ambition from this point of view.
European Union at least 40 at least solve this huge problem in modern history sometimes.
And again, it's like with Germany European Union. His eventual successful in the sense that like,
I don't know if you are aware of the fact that it's not friends that traditionally used to be the biggest trade partner from Germany.
It's not even China. The biggest trade partner for Germany is for the Arab countries,
v4 and the trade exchange with these four countries Czech check with makes in Great Britain.
It's not really well known who are the Portugal countries, but it's Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary.
Poland is almost twice as large as was with France, and the progress is nine percent year to year, whereas with France is zero point six eight eight.
Explain explains of this part of the problem with the contested narratives,
because if you if you ask yourself why Germany is so passive or why it's run certain appeasement policy towards Kaczynski Orban,
so why they tolerate so much, why Fidesz is only now suspended, why Manfred Weber could say that in Hungary we have civic conservatism.
If you can understand like why they also tolerate so much in Poland.
And on the other hand, why there was no common narrative even for France and Germany.
And it's actually the German Franco alliance I think doesn't exist anymore is
next to this compared to manifestos McComb and Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer.
There's nothing in common, I think, and kramp-karrenbauer, when she answering to Macron,
proposes to resign from Strasbourg to replace France in the Security Council for a European Union.
It's like a slap in the face or a total ignorance in foreign policy.
So but it's it shows you why there is no common comment, not only our common narrative or for Western and Eastern Europe.
It answers also the question of both structural reasons to add to the business.
With this with Western stable politically,
even if kind of a house of ethnic dictatorships is a certain achievement from comical points of view, it's a better business than in France.
This is how hard is to expect common European narrative the rest times with free discussion.
Thank you very much.