 Ond ydych chi fod, rydyn ni'n i'n bwysig gyddiadau ar y gweithio cymdeithas arall dyfodol ar y gweithio'r gweithio yn y llaw y maes yw'r gweithio'n ei gweithio'n eu gwybod fel hynny, ond y peth yn yn oed o'r gweithio'r gweithio, ond yn y gweithio'r gweithio, ond mae'r gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio. a eich loed o gilydd ychydig sy'n griadwyr. Mae ddweud yn dwylliant gynnig o'r ystyried ac Dr Michael O'Sullivan yw hyn ni oedd y Cymru a'i phoelwch o'n gyfnod o ffort Provod ym Niteg Ùl. A maen nhw wedi ei wneud mewn ffortog ni hefyd y FFB yng Nghymru Pwg Llywogol i'r falch dobyn 2011-2016. Mae gennymau gan hyn yn yrthyn ni, sydd yn ymweld yma i'w Llyfrgell Cymru, mae'n ddysgu'r ddiddordeb yn honi. Mae'n ddiddordeb yn Unigolwyrgyngorol ac Oxford University. Mae'n bwysigol yn unigolwyrgyngorol Cork ac Oxford. Felly yw'r fawr. Mae'r ddiddordeb yn eu cyfnod, David Skellig. Mae'n amlwg o'r ddaf yn ysgrifennu Llyfrgell o'r ddylch yn ysgrifennu Llyfrgell, ..economic and political advisory firm. He has recently served as an advisor to the McKinsey Centre for Government... ..and a senior advisor to the Secretary for Foreign Affairs and Trade in New Zealand... ..of the small economy, and as fellow of Singapore's civil service college. Dr Skellig has a master in public policy and a PhD in public policy from Harvard University... ..and a master in commerce degree from the University of Auckland. So we have people with qualifications and interests and working experience right around the globe... ..who are going to talk to us now about global trends for small countries... ..and I think that's very useful. You're good to start. Thank you very much. Good afternoon. First of all, thank you to the Institute, to Dan and Jill for setting up this session. So what I'll do just to start is to give you a sense... ..as to how we've sort of happened upon this topic... ..and the particular relevance that it has for Ireland today. So David and I have the same kind of esoteric hobby. There are not many other people in the world... ..who study kind of the amalgam of small states and where they're going. We've just come this morning from a joint conference... ..hosted by the Department of Finance, Department of Foreign Affairs... ..and Department of Trade on this topic. And I think that's quite exciting and it's promising for Ireland. I think it's exciting because in a country in particular... ..a city that is saturated with Brexit... ..I believe we're now at the end of the beginning of Brexit... ..if I can put it like that. Beyond that, there are so many other challenges for Ireland. Having for so long looked at ourselves as a smaller neighbour of the UK... ..I think the outlook for this country and the way we think about ourselves... ..and the mindset needs to change. I also think that people talk almost exclusively of Brexit as a threat. Perhaps with the sort of condition by financial markets... ..think that the trade dispute between the US and China... ..and everything that's doing to globalisation in terms of slowing trade... ..fracturing supply chains and breaking down relationships. That's actually much more important and I think economically... ..more consequential for Ireland and other small countries... ..because small countries are, by their nature, they're open... ..they're very geared to globalisation. So I think we have to invest an awful lot more time... ..in where globalisation is going... ..and what this means for Ireland as a small country. I think the method and the way we do this is really important... ..and we are particularly pleased that the conference this morning... ..took place across a whole range of government departments. Historically in Ireland, you tend to get a lot of siloing in government... ..and that people are cross-referencing each other... ..with the help and support of academics and policy people... ..is actually quite promising. First of all, what do we consider to be small advanced economies? People often put to David and myself the question... ..isn't Ireland just a little version of the UK... ..or isn't Singapore just a wee version of China? They're not. The analogy I would use is... ..if you take a lightweight Oresman or Oreswoman... ..or a lightweight Boxer and compare them to a heavyweight... ..in verdu, they are faster, they're fitter... ..and they're technically better. I think small countries are like that as well. We kind of independently come up with the ideas... ..I developed something called country strength... ..what makes a country strong. Some countries like the US want to be great. I think countries are better off being strong. David has the term and the analytical scorecard... ..of country resilience. He defines small countries. If you take, say, Sweden, geographically... ..it's twice as big as Germany. Population is much smaller... ..but the way it thinks and acts and its policy... ..is focused on resilience. What I mean by that is having strong institutions... ..having a quality rule of law... ..and respecting that rule of law... ..and also to quote Joe Lee... ..in his history of Ireland in the 20th century... ..was a success of small countries lies in their ability... ..to think strategically. The most successful small countries have that as a marked quality. We've arrived at a group of maybe 13 small countries globally... ..who we would probably classify as being in the top of the peloton... ..or the league table of small countries... ..from whom big countries can learn... ..and other small countries can learn as well. What we think is special now... ..having been digging into this in various ways in the last few years... ..is that the time with small countries has really come. We have experience of interacting with governments... ..in, say, Norway, Switzerland, Singapore. They are very diverse culturally and politically. They have many of the same success factors. Many of the secret sauce of their success tends to be the same. Increasingly, they have the same problems. What we are now noticing and we are participating in... ..is that these small countries are beginning to talk to each other. David founded a small economies group... ..of about six or seven economies, Ireland and New Zealand... ..a part of that about six years ago. We have been involved in founding a group... ..at the OECD, amongst the OECD ambassadors... ..called the Network of Open Economies and Open Societies. For us, it really is an idea whose time has come. I think the best representation of this... ..is this group called the Hanseidic League 2.0... ..which, I'm told, initially occurred... ..as Pascal Dunhu inviting a group of other finance ministers to dinner... ..and they discovered that they had common views... ..and common ethics and common problems. It's now coalesceded to something that's maybe not quite formal... ..but it's certainly much more coherent. We think we're now at a point of departure... ..where the debate in small companies will become... ..maybe more formal, would be better supported by data... ..and that they would be, I hope, viewed as a coherent group... ..in a changing world. I'm going to pass over to David... ..who, I think, will take through many of the... ..economic and other indicators that we have developed. Thanks, Mike. Thank you for the opportunity to be here. As you can probably get a sense of from Mike's opening comments... ..our answer to the question in the file is no. Whereas you're quite... ..you can go now, that's all we're going to say. Whereas you are up-to-date on small economies... ..and the challenges and the complexity... ..which we will talk about. So this is an op-ed in the Financial Times... ..beginned last year in September, basically making the argument that with the threats... ..to globalisation of geopolitical stability... ..essentially the golden age of small economies... ..was a nice picture of when I was building Singapore. Then, of course, innovative op-eds are often... ..slightly caricatures of reality... ..but it's not a new set of concerns. This is a pair of columns... ..by a friend of mine, Gideon Rachman, in the Financial Times. The first on the left-hand side was from a column he wrote in 2007. Pre-crisis and analogy of errors. You can probably guess his big lumbering birds... ..with sort of small, agile birds pecking the flesh off them. So it's kind of age of globalisation. Small, nimble states have a competitive advantage. Fast forward to 2009, titled How Small Nations Were Cut a Drift. Suddenly we have crisis and we've got Ireland and various others. And these kind of small dingies on very turbulent seas... ..and the folk in the cruise-liners seem a good deal more comfortable. So in a sense, you know, a concern about... ..you know, be it specific shocks like the global financial crisis... ..or more structural changes like the globalisation threats... ..that Janan was talking about are not new. But we think significantly overstaters. I was sufficiently agitated... ..to write a response in the Straits Times. Basically saying, actually, I don't think that's right. Our view, and Mike articulates a little bit of this in his opening comments... ..it's easy to point to risks and we don't diminish the risks. Globalisation is challenged. Both for political and structural reasons. There is more geopolitical uncertainty. There are more risks. But we remain fundamentally upbeat. And the rest of this talk gives a sense of why that is. What I'm going to do is just talk a little bit through... ..how small economies have performed. Going to be a sense of why it has been the golden age. Then ask the question, you know... ..to what extent does it look like there's a regime change underway? We were supporting positive environment for small countries... ..as being eroded. And then lastly, a section on why you shouldn't believe the hype... ..about the negative outlook for small economies. So just by way of some summary statistics... ..and I'm very happy to email a presentation to those of you who are interested... ..or it might be available separately. This is a chart of per capita income. And obviously take the Irish number with a bit of a grain of salt. On top, you've got the Switzerland's, the Norway's, the islands, the Singapore's. The average income is sort of circa 15 to 20% higher. So we've identified a group of 13 small economies... ..and I've got a group of 10 larger economies for sake of benchmarkings. Yes, there's a distribution. So unfortunately New Zealand is towards the bottom. But in general, small economies have performed pretty well. The legend seems to have disappeared from that one. I'm not sure it's on a... Well, I'll have to tell you what it says. Essentially, small countries over the last 20 years... ..this is a GDP growth rate chart. A small advanced economy group is in blue. They've significantly over-performed. This goes back 20 years. You can go back to the start of the 90s and the same would be true. And even through a more challenging post-crisis period... ..we're very stagnant world trade growth. You know, fairly lacklustre growth globally. Now, the small countries have tended to over-perform... ..other industrialised groups, be it G7, OECD countries. And if you look over the last couple of years... ..a small economy's front ran for global recovery... ..as world trade picked out. So there's a consistent story of over-performance... ..and a pretty good recovery from a crisis. This goes beyond economics. There are many measures of kind of inclusive growth. How will you doing on social, environmental... ..and human development numbers? You see a very, very similar picture... ..of small countries performing well economically... ..but also socially. This is just a summary indicator of social progress... ..where small countries, unsprice, are led by the Nordics and the like, dominate. And if you look at other measures of labour force participation... ..the ability to get people into a workforce productively... ..small economies consistently have an edge. So the point is that small economies have performed well... ..on a range of dimensions over time. But the question is to what extent has that been driven... ..by a particular set of external circumstances... ..over the last 30 or 40 years. And obviously the one that's most commonly pointed to... ..is globalisation. So on this chart we have two series. One is exports of goods and services... ..as a share of world GDP. And you can see particularly from... ..and it's been increasing since the 1960s... ..but from, let's say, the early 1990s... ..when the period of intense globalisation kicked in... ..there was an acceleration. And small economies, as I'll talk about in a moment... ..actively participated in that process. But you can also see, even if you kind of screen out... ..the dip in and around the crisis... ..it's basically flat-lined. Since McKinsey had a nice report out last week... ..the documents that have slowed down... ..across a range of globalisation dimensions... ..in a bit more detail. And alongside the growth in exports... ..if you look at outward direct investment... ..inward direct investments, the two series... ..should mirror each other again from the early 1990s... ..you see very rapid expansion of the global footprint of firms... ..as they slice up global value chains and expand. So it has been a period over the last 25, 30 years... ..of intense globalisation. And if you look at the small country experience... ..over that period you see meaningful... ..increases in the share of their economy... ..that's accounted for by the external sector. So I've got the overall small advanced economy group in blue. I've stripped out countries like Singapore and Hong Kong and Ireland... ..that are something of outliers against the grey line... ..which is the large country group. And you can see meaningful. So even if you just take the yellow line... ..it's going from sort of circa 30% to around 40% over that period. Obviously for the full group it's even more significant increase. It's more marked than the large country group. And if you just look at the levels of exports... ..again not surprisingly led by the Hong Kong's and Singapore's of the islands... ..but if you look at the cross section it's pretty clear... ..that most small countries have sort of 50, 60% plus exports of GDP. Now in a sense there's nothing particularly surprising... ..but you would imagine that small economies almost by definition... ..will have larger external sectors... ..that's where productivity growth and innovation comes from. But this notion of a supportive global economic environment... ..has been obviously core to small country performance. And again apologies for the loss of the legend. But this is just a chart that maps small economy GDP growth rates... ..against world trade growth. And you can see a very tight mapping over the last 20, 25 years. Now obviously the concern at the moment is that we're seeing a slowdown... ..and world trade growth both for cyclical reasons... ..as the global economy comes off the boil... ..but also potentially for structural reasons as well. So the point I suppose to make is yes it is the case... ..that globalization has provided the following wins for small economies... ..it has helped to support their growth... ..and they've benefited from that. Again it's a chart that shows another dimension which is... ..outward direct investment flows. The blue line is small economies, the grey line is small economies... ..ex-Singapore and Hong Kong. And again the participation in globalization is even more evident... ..on that dimension. But as we can see, as I mentioned a moment ago... ..world trade growth seems to be coming off the boil in a cyclical sense... ..and the concern is that's going to intensify due to some of the issues... ..that Mike was talking about earlier. So the question I suppose is to what extent... ..has small economy out-performance... ..economically, socially and the like... ..being driven by this kind of positive... ..international environment, geopolitical stability... ..globalisation, strong global growth. And the claim that we would make is clearly it has helped... ..but it's not the only thing. If you look at the IMF forecasts going forward... ..they remain somewhat upbeat. Small economy growth outlook is in the blue... ..a large country in the yellow. So there's an expected growth delta... ..even in the context of an emerging global environment. But more fundamentally, there are several factors... ..that we think support resilient small economy performance... ..that you see consistently across the higher-performing small countries. One is they have strong national balance sheets. Now this is not universally true... ..as we have discovered, but in general... ..there is a sense that small countries run a tight fiscal shop... ..because they are more volatile, and it is the case... ..that small countries have more exposure to shocks. They understand the importance of building up a buffer... ..having some options. So fiscal balance or small fiscal services are the norm... ..for small countries, and post crisis many of them actively moved... ..to consolidate their finances. And on the national side, external balance is common out... ..for countries like Ireland and New Zealand unfortunately... ..current account deficits have been the norm. But in general, there are strong external balance positions. Coupled with that, you see very strong competitive positions. So if you look, for example, at the share of world trade... ..that comes out of small countries, and if you look at that at a sectoral level... ..there is a consistent story of the last 20 years... ..of small advanced economies doing better than larger advanced economies... ..because they tend to be concentrated in sectors... ..in which they have particular advantage. They invest heavily in R&D, so on and so on. There are multinationals from small countries versus a broader pool... ..and they tend to outperform. So there's something about the competitive position and the specialisation... ..that we see in small countries that gives them a degree of resilience... ..even in the context of, if you like, flatlining GDP growth... ..and world trade growth. Thirdly, there is a very strong tendency across small countries... ..to invest heavily. R&D is consistently high. There are some outliers in a positive sense... ..the Israel's countries like Switzerland and the like. But also in a more broad-based way... ..very serious around human capital investment. I mentioned earlier the strong performance of small countries... ..in terms of labour market participation. So they're able to educate people, get them productively into employment. And private sector business investment or private sector investment... ..ex-residential is consistently higher as well. So there's a notion of investing in the future... ..which is core to strong productivity performance. They deeply understand the importance of integration... ..beit regional integration, be it WTO, be it free trade agreements... ..which is something that our larger neighbours in this region... ..could learn something about. Sitting in Singapore, we look at Brexit with just complete bewilderment... ..because it's the anti-Singapore. Small countries don't make strategic mistakes like that... ..because they understand mistakes. And then lastly, but by no means leisly, strong political institutions... ..which is a topic that we spent quite a bit of time talking about this morning. Quality of governance, quality of decision-making... ..the ability to think strategically, as Mike mentioned, is core. And if you look at the international rankings from the World Bank and others... ..on measures of effective governance, social capital, trust and the like... ..small countries get the basics right. And if I look at the response to the crisis, the global financial crisis... ..across small countries, there was a consistency... ..and a discipline in the approach that was often not the case... ..in larger countries. And how many of these dimensions, be it external integration... ..the importance of R&D and the like, there is a deep... ..social or political consensus around the importance of this... ..based on confidence in political institutions. And I would also argue, if you take a forward-looking view... ..this is an area that I've done quite a bit of work on... ..with my small country government clients... ..yes, there are a whole raft of challenges and opportunities... ..in a structural sense... ..that are going to deeply affect national economic performance... ..over the next 10, 20 years and beyond. And just to give you a few examples from this non-exhaustive list... ..one is the impact of disruptive technology, which we're beginning to see... ..but will pick up pace, referring from automation to AI... ..to freedom from things and the like. The claim that I would make is actually... ..small countries are quite well placed to capture value... ..and to manage the risks from these. Many of them, not all, but many of them... ..have very high levels of human capital. They've got issues around shrinking working-age populations. They've got still fairly large manufacturing shares. One of the little known facts is that small countries... ..have higher manufacturing shares than large country counterparts. And to many of these countries, these technologies... ..although clearly disruptive, you know, hold... ..they solve a pretty problem. You know, how do you remain competitive... ..with high cost structures and the like? So this is why countries like Singapore and Denmark... ..and others are very actively engaged in initiatives... ..around the fourth industrial revolution. So to me, disruptive technology... ..and managing the social and political consequences of that... ..is something where small countries are particularly well placed. Second point, yes, it's the case that... ..slow and world trade growth is a problem. I showed you the chart of the tight mapping between world trade growth... ..and small country GDP growth earlier. So anything that diminishes world trade growth... ..is clearly going to be a negative. But neither would I overig... ..how much of an initiative a US-China conflict is. But the one thing many of these small countries... ..are deeply embedded into regional architecture... ..and have a big portfolio of FTAs... ..which doesn't completely immunise you... ..but provides a degree of resilience. Many of them are very FDI intensive. They are very high outward FDI shares. So they're not as exposed to tariffs. And if you look at the nature of their exports... ..relative to large countries, there's a much larger service of share... ..which, again, given that many of the tariffs... ..and the like are deployed against manufacturers... ..and other exports of goods, again provides a degree of comfort. So, again, I'm not wanting to dismiss this. Clearly it's a negative and it complicates things. But I would say that small countries have been aware of us. They've been aware of things like this, actually, for the last 15, 20 years... ..which is why they were front-running... ..the free trader group sort of pushed from 20 years ago. And I would argue not perhaps as exposed... ..as you might believe from simply looking at the export shares... ..that I showed earlier. On other things like climate change... ..small economies are pretty well placed... ..in terms of emission intensities. And I think, again, central to a lot of us... ..is the last point on the slide, which is... ..small countries well understand the importance of inclusive growth... ..of making sure that the gains from growth are well shared. So, if you look at the difference between... ..pre-tax income distribution and post-tax... ..pre-tax is not really very much enough. Small countries are as unequal as large. Countries, they're exposed to international markets... ..which puts pressure on the income distribution. But they very deliberately put in place tax and transfer systems... ..to soften that. And so, you know, once those are taken into account... ..there's a much smaller, sort of... ..a much tighter distribution of income. Employment rates are higher. And so, I guess the point that I would make is that the... ..the push back against growth illness, against globalisation... ..the breakdown in trusted institutions... ..is much less observed in small countries than in large. Simply because small countries are aware of the need... ..to maintain social consensus. As one example, government spending shares of GDP... ..in small countries, with a couple of exceptions like Singapore... ..are much higher than is the case in large countries. So it's this paradox between being small and open... ..and having to be competitive, but also bearing in mind... ..you've got to have policies to offset some of the downsides of that. So as a consequence, I actually think, as we look forward... ..although it is a more challenging picture on many dimensions... ..I would argue that small countries are pretty well placed... ..on a range of dimensions to respond to that. The final slide that I'll talk to you before I hand to Mike... ..for some closing thoughts... ..the final thing that gives me confidence is if you take the long view... ..and this is a complicated slide that I'll explain... ..this goes back 200 years, so Angus Madison, economic historian... ..had data sets of per capita income going back to 1820. So all I do here is I look at how close various economies are... ..to the per capita income frontier over various periods of time. And although the font might be a little bit small... ..if you look at the blue line, for example, which is the average... ..proximately to the income frontier since 1900s, so the last 100-plus years... ..it actually turns out that many small countries have been at or about... ..the income frontier more so than large economies. So if you look at the Switzerland, the Denmarks, the Netherlands and the like... ..these countries have maintained positions close to the frontier... ..on average, despite wars and depressions and periods of slow growth. So again, I'm not wanting to make light of the challenges... ..but it is to say that there is something about small economies... ..where there is a degree of resilience. They have political institutions, they have economic capacity... ..social capacity that enables them to respond. That said, there are clearly examples not on this chart... ..and I'm thinking here of countries like Greece and the like... ..small countries that don't have those things... ..where we've seen them flail around and do quite badly. So simply being small doesn't guarantee success. I'm not going to argue, as I said, right at the start... ..but it's easy to exaggerate the exposure and vulnerability... ..of small economies to a changing world. In my view, actually there's an underlying resilience... ..to small economies that for those economies that are serious... ..that sink strategically will see them maintain... ..their overperformance over coming decades. So Mike, I might just hand to you for some closing thoughts. That was that, I think. Thanks. So let me just tee up some sub-questions for debate... ..and what we try and do whenever we meet an audience... ..is try and reduce this to tangible or practical recommendations. So I think the first one for small countries... ..in terms of what they do is a change in mindset. Change in policy and mindset. We mean that in two sense. One is the reference group. So maybe 30 years ago the Department of Finance... ..if they were considering a new law and new policy... ..the first place they would look to in terms of a template... ..would have been the UK, maybe even the US... ..but certainly not Sweden or Singapore or Switzerland. And we think that that will increasingly change. There was a debate this morning... ..on the spatial geography of Ireland... ..the fact that Dublin is so big in terms of population... ..share of business, et cetera. And there is a debate going on... ..as to how to grow the other cities... ..in the country from Waterford, Cork, Limerick, et cetera. One very good example of that is Switzerland. Which has got maybe four or five cities... ..where there's a real sense of balance... ..and role across the country. The other way, I think, in terms of changing mindset... ..is, you know, what is the goal? And there is a debate internationally on GDP... ..and whether that's a relevant metric. Most politicians and political policymakers... ..tend not to look beyond the notion... ..of making their country great. That's often at the expense of others... ..or simply thinking in terms of GDP. And what we have, I think, collectively found or reduced... ..is that this idea of resilience or country strength... ..can actually be translated and expressed as a scorecard. Things like the rule of law institutions... ..minimising economic volatility. And if you want to see how these things work... ..again, David mentioned, look at the countries where they don't work. Look at Hungary, look at Greece, look at Portugal... ..and look at the difference between the recent economic performance... ..of those countries and the countries... ..that we would consider to be resilient. Ireland, I think, is an increasingly good example of that. So that, I think, is sort of the policy method. Then the threats are maybe two or three-fold. So one of the projects we're trying to get off the ground... ..is a small country investment fund... ..or exchange-traded fund. In order to do that, we've constructed lots of indices... ..of how equity and bond markets are small countries... ..compared to those in bigger countries. Actually, over time, you find there's actually quite good... ..outperformance of small countries. If you look at the export-oriented firms in small countries... ..they tend to do very well. But just by looking at these kinds of trends... ..you can see that the market is increasingly penalising... ..in some countries, companies that are global... ..in their orientation. So this week we had profit warnings from... ..semiconductor companies in the States, Caterpillar... ..Apple has been shaky of late. These are all companies that are hitched to globalisation. They tell a story and they give us a warning... ..that as globalisation is changing and slowing... ..companies need to adjust to this. So countries who are geared to globalisation... ..also need to change. The second and final aspect of this... ..is that as globalisation is receding... ..and if you look at all the measures of globalisation trade... ..the flow of people, the flow of ideas... ..the flow of finance, they are all receding. So I think it's not yet unambiguous... ..that globalisation is dead... ..but it's certainly giving over to something new. It's a multi-polar world made up of three big regions... ..Europe, China, Central Asia and the US. And as that world order forms, lots of things will change. So countries who are in between these regions... ..from Japan to the UK might fall between the cracks. Institutions we hold dear... ..the UN, the World Trade Organisation, the World Bank... ..and who have been pillars of the 20th century order... ..will in some cases fade and crumble. I mean, one of the viable, I think alternatives to this... ..is new coalitions of countries... ..of which small countries can be won. What we've seen so far is that... ..where you have groups of small countries... ..beat the Hanseatic League 2.0... ..there's a very strong sense that an informal association... ..of these countries works very, very well... ..because it allows people to discuss and to exchange ideas... ..without maybe the formal pressure... ..of actually having to publicly express their views... ..or take positionist answers. So I think to sum up what we're saying... ..we think the world is changing. Small countries can be exposed to this... ..but I think there's also a method and a process... ..that allows them to... ..maybe to marshal this change and adapt to it. So perhaps, Dan, if we... ..and if we maybe... ..you can, of course... ..I'll sit down and try not to fall on my chair. One final point. Mike and I, we've made a case... ..that small countries are a world position... ..and it's not the case that the world belongs to the large. One of the things that we've been writing about over the last few years... ..is this notion that actually large countries are becoming... ..more exposed to these global trends. If you look at the debates in the US, the UK... ..elsewhere they're grappling with issues... ..that small countries have been grappling with for some time... ..how do you manage... ..how do you manage technology? So our view is when organisations like the G20... ..and the light get together... ..there should be a more active small country voice... ..because in many cases small countries have been thinking hard... ..about these issues for some time. OK.