 Okay, here we are, and it's Monday, and every so often we do midnight in Brussels where we catch up with Gauri Kandakar, and if you didn't know already, she is the Deputy Director and Director of Europe for Global Relations Forum, and she is also the Senior ThinkTech European Correspondent. So welcome again to the show, Gauri. Thank you, Jay, it's always a pleasure. Yeah, great to have you on. So we're calling this Updates Across Europe, and we have a lot to talk about, but I think the first thing we should talk about is this event you were working on, which took place a few weeks ago, and I want to hear everything. You worked very hard on that. What was it? Yes. Well, basically we did an event for the European Union Delegation to India, and the event was an urbanization, sustainable urbanization, and it's one of my suggestions, which the EU and India picked up actually to create a forum, a partnership on urbanization. So we were very excited. This event was the first in my hometown of Pune, which is a city next to Bombay in the west of India. And it's also where my think tank is headquartered, so I'm speaking to the Brussels office. And it was a great event. We had so many people talking about urbanization, and you could really feel the energy, the optimism in India is absolutely palpable, and we will speak on how both Europe and India could cooperate in building smart cities, which is the new big thing in India. It's Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister's pet project. It was great, it was great, absolutely. Smart cities, so I mean, how far advanced is India on smart cities? We think about smart cities all the time. What does it mean in India, and how far along the trail are you? Actually, nobody knows what smart cities mean. Neither in India nor in Europe, and nowhere. There's no single definition of a smart city. I think to make it really simple, a smart city is a city which sustainably fulfills the needs of people, be it business, day to day, essentials, water, less traffic. And all of that, I think that these are all components of smart cities. But what India is doing now is that each city is coming up with projects which would make them smarter or do things better. So this is the approach that they're taking, but there's no nationally adopted definition. Yeah, I think you're right about that. But I'd like to add one thought that is not intuitive, and that is that smart cities include public places which are not necessarily smart on the intellectual level or on the technological level, but on the people level. Public places are where the people live together. In the nuclear age, we tend to live by ourselves, we live in little silos, and then we go to work. And when we go to work, we cross public spaces, and we have our public lives out there in gatherings and so forth. And those are the spaces that make cities livable. True. I agree. Well, if it were up to me, Honolulu would be the best definition of a smart city, but well, not everybody can reach. I think that's paradise cities. Yeah, yeah. Well, I think in years to come, there'll be more talk about it, architects and engineers and city planners and political officials. You know, I think they'll come at time, don't you, when political officials have to go to school. They must go to school. They can't serve in their office until they go to school and learn how to serve in their office. And then we'll have more smart cities. I think we should also speak about a partnership between Hawaii and India. There you go. We can work on. And I'll get a chance to see you more often. Excuse me, I got a tail end of a cold here, but I do want to move on to my experience. Now you put a program on, and I went to Portugal. And Portugal is obviously near Spain. And while I'm knocking around in Portugal, I'm reading a book called The Terror Years by a film named Michael White, which is the best seller now. White is a journalist, and he writes about the people who created Al Qaeda and largely the same group who ultimately created ISIS. And he talks about where they came from, where they went, their life experiences and how they came together. And one of the things I thought was interesting was the fact that they had a significant presence in Spain. And there was a train episode a few years ago with a bombing in the metro. I think it was in Madrid. March 11th, they call it March 11th. Very, very serious. There was a fair amount of loss of life there and all. And it demonstrated that these terror groups do have a presence in Spain. Spain has not escaped the trouble in Europe. Portugal, however, has. Portugal, for some reason, is outside the range of that activity. And I therefore felt that it was relatively safe to go to Portugal. So I spent a couple of weeks in Lisbon, and I found it quite delightful. And I urge you to try it out. The food is out of this world. The people are friendly. There's immigration from everywhere, like in the rest of Europe. And the museums and public spaces, if you will, were really beautiful. Portugal is a little behind things. I would put it 20, 30 years behind the rest of Europe, you know, in terms of the development of infrastructure and technology. But it is a lovely place. Maybe it's good for that reason to know that it's behind. So that's my suggestion to you, Gary. Wonderful. It's absolutely beautiful. And I can't wait to go there. I mean, almost every other Saturday, I try to eat Portuguese food. Because a huge Portuguese community living in Brazil. And the food is delicious. I mean, you feel great, and you feel nice. And even if there's no sun, you feel happier. Yeah, as you know, it's like the language from the old country. Namely, the Spanish do not understand Portuguese, but the Portuguese understand Spanish. And so they feel they have an advantage on the rest of Europe, because nobody understands Portuguese. No. I can vouch for that. The remarkable thing about Portugal is that it had one century, maybe two, of fantastic exploration, beginning in the latter part of the, what, the 15th century. And while Columbus was knocking around in the Caribbean, they were also traveling and discovering things. And they discovered a good part of South America, especially including Brazil. They discovered they went north as far as Nova Scotia. And they discovered Nova Scotia. They discovered West Africa, a number of places and colonies they had in West Africa. They discovered India. The Gola, as I recall. They discovered Macau, we know that. They discovered, and China for that matter, and they discovered Japan in 1537. They were the most active discoverers that had yet been on the planet. And what is so interesting is they lost most of their colonies early on, because I guess they couldn't cope with the Spanish. They couldn't cope with the Dutch. They couldn't ultimately cope with the English. And because they had a very damaging earthquake in the year 1755, which destroyed a good part of Lisbon. That, taken all together, they lost their advantage. And now they rebel in historic glory. Oh, okay, very interesting though. Yeah. Anyway, I want to take you to Brexit for a minute. We have seen a lot of news about Prime Minister May. Prime Minister May seems to be doing exactly what she said when she took office. She's pushing for an early Brexit. However unwise that may be. What's the story? What's the story, Gary? Yes, Brexit chaos continues here. And the biggest sign is the fall of the pound, which I'm sure many American travelers are very happy about. But the pound is now equal to the euro, which is incredibly shocking. And it's basically signaling a collapse of the economy. And because of that, this week, there's been utter chaos in the UK and it's really impacted people on the ground is because British products are very traditionally British products like Marmite, which I don't think many of you know, but it's a very funny tasting kind of spread that you put on bread. And that was unavailable because the companies which produced it wanted to charge a surplus because of the fall in the pound. And these are European companies. Basically Unilever. And so Unilever said we will charge a surcharge, otherwise we can't sell. And so these products were unavailable and then these are traditional, traditional products which cause utter chaos. But about me, so Theresa May has been a bit shocking for all of us, I think, especially in the policy circles because she's come across as completely authoritarian. Far worse than, you know, the kind of moral agenda that the Tories had taken forward, even though they're not liberals, you know, they're not the liberals, but she had supported the remain campaign. So she was opposed to Brexit. When she took office, she herself came about with the notion to have a heart Brexit. Now a heart Brexit would be the most damaging concept you could imagine to basically extract the UK out like a tooth from the European Union which, you know, extractions are never pleasant. That's traumatic is what? Exactly, traumatic, highly traumatic and they would destroy the economy of the UK in particular, not Europe because these are already integrated economies and the larger part of the European economy remains. So the UK economy, so she's playing more to a populist notion, you know, a crowd pleaser, let's say and she's like, okay, the people want Brexit, let me give them Brexit, let me give it to them as soon as possible because she's an interim Prime Minister, she's not an elected official. She would have to, so she's aiming more for the elections. So if she goes for this heart Brexit, which she thinks would of course be a crowd pleaser and which nobody yet knows what heart Brexit is, nobody still knows what Brexit is actually. Is it pulling out of the European Union or will the UK remain in the single market? And the single market is basically the goods, free goods, free services, free people movement area. What justification does she use to jump from one side opposing Brexit, now not only to supporting Brexit, but to wanting it to be immediate and hard? I mean, what ration now could she give for that change of heart? Excuse me, so basically she's not given any, which is the shocking part basically, but what she said at the Tories conference that took place, the Conservative Party conference that took place this month, earlier this month, was that anybody who questions Brexit is questioning the intelligence of the British people basically, which was utterly shocking and she's just playing to popular tendencies and she's moving in that direction. So it's truly obvious that it's a complete, fast and it's really aimed at elections and their own political survival, which by the way is supported by the fact which was revealed this week that Boris Johnson, who you know, you've been seeing him as the face, one of the faces of Brexit whose campaign for the leave campaign, but he had penned an op-ed, which was to be published and that was in favor of remain. So basically he tossed a coin saying which op-ed would be better for his career and so he chose the leave campaign and this is the reality. Now the biggest, biggest test now is that people are challenging Theresa May and they are saying that, okay, one is this is constitutionally incorrect. She's not allowed to take decisions as an interim Prime Minister, but also because she's using all monarchy rules. Yeah, yeah. And the other thing is that they are saying that her mandate is not, nobody, the referendum does not give her a mandate to pull the UK out of the single market. And now what is happening and was the big thing to see is that Nicola Surgeon who's the Scottish leader has said that there will be a second Scottish referendum. Because they're so unhappy with the Brexit. Yeah, because more than 90% of Scotland voted to remain in the EU and basically when the referendum had happened in Scotland, the British people had told British politicians when to Scotland and they said that, but if you leave, you will have to leave the European Union because the UK is a member and independent Scotland will not be a member of the EU. And so basically the Scots voted to remain in the UK, to remain in the EU. Yeah. And now that this is off the table. Yeah. So they think that, you know, they're going back to the EU, yeah. Exactly. So you know what's really troublesome about this is that the damage is happening and will continue to happen. I mean, what I hear you saying is they're in for a bad time. They're in for an economic meltdown because of this is not too much and she's making it worse. And there's not too much they can do to avoid that. She, I mean, the UK is in real trouble. And then on top of that, Scotland wants to go away again. She whizzed. This is not good for Britain at all, is it? No, no, no, no, I mean, and the worst is that this is all self-inflicted. This was all self-inflicted by politicians looking for political gains. David Cameron had no business in offering this election in an outquestion to the broader public because most of them have absolutely voted not for the topic, but for their discontentment with various issues, which is now a global trend in a way. And this was not supposed to be offered anyways, but now the UK economy is in complete shambles. The EU's existing trade agreements are in question because the scope is going to change, the market is no longer going to be the same. And the UK economy is totally dependent on the EU for more than 70% of its trade, so. But the UK has strong trade relations with the US. And what I understand is that they are looking to the US to help them out and they're finding a certain amount of resonance on that and there are people in the government here wanna help them out, but my question to you, this is a hard question, Gary. Can the US save the UK? Not at all, not at all, even if you wanted to. And I'll explain why, because this is actually one of my favorite questions because I do work a lot on trade. And so for the moment, inside the European Union, trade is done amongst EU member states. So they're basically the closest and around 70% of European, or 80% of European trade is internal. A small percentage is external, right? So the majority of member states trade is amongst member states, EU member states. Now, there is this TTIP, the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. So basically an FTA that was being negotiated between the European Union and the US. That has been paused and that is not going to go anywhere. I mean, yeah, it has been paused. So anyways, this trade deal is now off the table for the foreseeable future, of course. I have always been of the opinion that it was not needed because trade, US is the EU's largest external trade partner and investments are to the tune of three trillion and more. So you don't need an FTA because trade is highly liberalized. But it's not in the US's interest anyways to have to negotiate a free trade agreement with the UK because the UK is now small and the US is looking for huge markets in Asia. So you have the TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership which has a mega market, many countries and that's the trend the US is going for. Big issue, big issue, yeah. Yeah. Certainly an issue in the campaign. Well, okay, let's move on to a second topic to talk about the refugees and terror and certainly there is a connection. As much as we would like to deny the connection or minimize it, inevitably it comes up again and again. There's a connection between refugees and terror. What is the paper saying these days? What is happening in Europe and in the hotbed countries in Europe? Well, basically one of the most recent terror incidences let's say happened in Germany once again where you had a Syrian refugee in a small German town who was planning to blow up another airport. So he had enough explosives and so it's a Syrian refugee, a male, young male gentleman and the German police got knowledge of this plan. They went to where he was staying and they found the explosives and they were on the lookout for him. Two days later, some other Syrian refugees basically showed the Germans where he was hiding so they linked the German police to him and he was found and he was imprisoned and he was kept in jail where he unfortunately suicided with his t-shirt basically. And there is the link of course, largely, largely terror attacks in Europe take place and they're caused by Europeans. So basically, people from the Muslim background this is a trend now, Islamic terrorism is a trend but people from who say they are Muslim, the whole debate is whether they are or they are not, okay. It's radical Islamist terrorism and these are like second, third, fourth generation of immigrants who identify themselves with Europe and the culture. So it's mainly those, growingly, there's a trend of ISIS extremists coming into Europe because of course, there's trouble in Syria now, you know. ISIS is being expelled from Iraq and as we speak, there's a battle in Mosul and as well Aleppo, so there are a lot of them coming over, I guess. Yeah, and it stabilizes everything. In fact, I was gonna ask you about the political reaction to this. Whether it's long-term residents of Europe or whether they have just arrived recently from the Middle East, fact is it has a political effect on the parties, on the political officials who would take other positions if this was not happening. You know, the kindness and gentleness that Angela Merkel was showing a year or two ago is now being attacked by in political circles. So where is it going? How is this gonna wind up? Are we gonna see all of Europe shift to the right? The trend is there. Even Angela Merkel recently had admitted that she was wrong with the refugee policy. At some point just before that, she said that if she had to, she would do it all over again, but she has to face elections again. She wants to get elected for a fourth time. But I just don't see it happening. Now there's a huge discussion on how the liberals have left a lot of people behind in Europe. The trend to liberalism has left a lot in its wake, and I think you see the same effects in the US, I believe. Yeah, well, that's the support for Trump. Yes, and social democrats need to reinvent themselves in Europe at the moment, because that's the basic ideology that has designed Europe, governed it for the past few decades. And social democrats need to come up with a lot of solutions to a lot of hard questions, and people are no longer identifying themselves with the current situation. So it's a drastic shift. It's a disruptive shift, let's say. What about the terrorism itself? One line of thinking has been that because ISIS is not doing all that well in holding territory, for example, the Mosul battle, as you mentioned, is going on as we speak, they may, ISIS may lose that battle, and chances are that it will lose that battle. And that makes its efforts in the Middle East less successful, of course. And the line of thinking is that to the extent that ISIS loses ground in the Middle East, it will try harder to generate terror in Europe. That will be the focus of its efforts going forward. How do people feel about that? What's the press saying about that? And is it being realized? Is there an increase in the amount of terrorism that you see? Oh, of course, and I'll give you examples as well, so yesterday, I believe, no, last Friday, I was sitting out on my balcony and I saw the bomb squad car, which was marked in Flemish bomb, and then it just passed below my house and it was going a kilometer away, basically, because there was a bomb threat. And this is a daily occurrence, so when I kind of searched Twitter to find out what was happening, because that's literally the quickest place to find out what's happening, and I saw so many events just in Brussels each day, either a stabbing, either a school being evacuated because of a threat, or similar, some package found and the whole station had to be evacuated, and this is a daily occurrence. Now we've also been seeing the military on the streets, and I think that's a phenomenon across Europe at the moment, of most countries. That's so too bad, that is really too bad, because whether they were real threats or not, maybe they're just meto-paranoid reactions to things, but it destabilizes people and it pushes them to the right, and it finds repression, doesn't it? It does, and I mean, just the fact that you said that you went to Portugal because you thought it was safer from school, I mean, it shows the shift, right? I mean, whoever thought Spain would be a dangerous country, you know, okay, you have the bullfights and the running of the bulls, but, you know, it was never a dangerous country. Over the past two years, I mean, you know, I worked for a company that was a think tank which was headquartered in Madrid, and I was working there for five years. If, you know, despite the 2003 Madrid metro bombings, completely safe, now think twice about going to Europe because it might not be safe. Oh, absolutely, I can tell you that that's true, and they try to find ways to go to Europe that, you know, skirt the threat. But let me go to, you know, one thing that I experienced in Portugal, it was funny, I would ask people in Portugal whether they were gonna vote for Trump or Clinton, you know, and it sounds like a joke because obviously they can't vote in an American election, but they are so invested, and I bet you the same thing is all over Europe. You may not vote, but you vote mentally, you vote. And I would, by the way, most of them are gonna vote for Clinton, but some are gonna vote for Trump. Some people are gonna vote for Clinton because they think that Trump has a mental illness. Some people are gonna vote for Trump because they feel that he's mean and they don't like to vote for mean people. And others, and I think most people say that Trump doesn't understand the social safety net. And we here in Europe, we need, we are wedded to the social safety net. We could not support a candidate who is not. So what is your perception of how people in Europe, not only in Brussels, but all around, how they feel about the American election? Oh, this is so interesting. I mean, I am completely invested. I feel so American at the moment. It's amazing. Me and so many of the Europeans, I follow on Twitter that follow me. We completely, so much energized by these elections. Basically, think tank journalist level. Yeah, I mean, at the local level, there are some who support Trump because they think Trump understands the terror threat, which he completely doesn't. I mean, it's a joke. But, so of course, let me give you my perception and I'm literally mirroring what a lot of my colleagues think. So of course, Hillary Clinton is not the ideal candidate. She has a history of corporate shady deals and friendliness, and that's not great, especially from a European view. It's not really socialist, right? She's this corporate background, so she's not ideal. And most of all, she's pushing 70, right? I mean, so she's not the young dynamic leader that like Barack Obama, basically. So that's one thing. However, she's the lesser of two evils. I mean, Trump as the Republican candidate and the perception of the Republicans in Europe is the nasty old party in a way. And it's not really great. And it wasn't a big shock that they went for Trump. And there were not other great candidates either, except for Jeb Bush, maybe, but I think it was too soft compared to Trump. And too much of a gentleman, I must say now, which I'm shocked to say. But at some point, I myself said, okay, maybe Trump, because, and the only reason I'd said that was, because he was against intervention, and I think you don't need wars. You don't need to go out and bomb another country, which the US is currently doing, by the way, in Yemen. And Mosul, by the way, just to add. Exactly, yeah. Okay, Mosul might, but Yemen is completely unnecessary, you know? They should not be external intervention and wars, and you know, they should stop. But not that he has policy sense of, even though we've tried our hardest to kind of make sense and try to think he has some kind of policy, you know, an understanding of policy, at least if not some big strategy, but he doesn't. And since last Friday, I think he has no more supporters left, except from the misogynistic little minority that might be there, the openly misogynistic. But otherwise, no, it's Hillary all the way now. Yeah, people have seen the debates I take it, you know? I was in Portugal on one of the debates, and it was at two o'clock in the morning, but I was determined to see it. And I guess it was available throughout Europe. You could watch it if you wanted, huh? I did, I watched the current debate, the one which took place, I think a week ago. Yes, right. And I was shocked beginning at 2 a.m. when he did the press, you know, the women who were linked to Bill Clinton, and I was wide-eyed, you know, this is a reality show. It's no longer a US presidential election. And it's gripping, you know? He's really turned it into something like the WWE. And it's absolutely gripping. And his calls for both candidates to take drug tests, I mean, it was crazy and the SNL skid, oh my God, that was fabulous, fabulous. Well, it's an incredible, incredible experience, not only here, but in Europe, around the world, to see a demagogue of this dimension actually deny things that are obvious that he did, obvious, and he denies it nevertheless. I mean, it reminds me of Yui Long in Louisiana back in the 1930s, if you know him. Anyway, I take it from what you say, Gary, that you will be voting for Clinton. Mentally, yes. Mentally, yes. Mentally, yes. Thank you, Gary. That's Gary Kandekar, Global Relations Forum in Brussels. She joins us every few weeks from Brussels in a show we call Midnight in Brussels. We examine what's happening in Europe and what they think of us. Thank you so much, Gary. We're doing it again, and we can talk some more about how Trump is doing that. Thank you so much, Gary.