 First of all, I want to say as a Tilburg alumna, that it's really heartwarming, and it's not because of the temperature outside, that you are here with so many of you, preferred to be in this very pretty all but without windows. So I really appreciate that a lot. When I teach the Transnational Litigation course in the Global Law Bachelor, I always start my very first session of the course with an explanation to the students what the course is about, and what Transnational Litigation is. And the short answer to that is, Transnational Litigation deals with global problems and with their resolution via private legal order. And that is a nice start of a course because then I have a lot of time I can tell them, and during the course, you'll understand what all of that means. When I say private order, I mean in private relationships, as between you and me as private individuals, as opposed to public as between private you and me on one side and the state on the other, or between states. So what is typical for the type of global problems that we address in the course? And think, when I speak of global problems like the problems of the warming, is one example of the problems we heard today, but also of globally operating cartels, for example. Some of you might have heard of the air cargo cartel, that's the World Wild Cartel, or defective products and services that have been supplied in multiple countries around the world, like in the case with the PW. So what is typical for the resolution of global problems is that although they're global and affect many, many of us around the world, they are being dealt with by national courts. There isn't anything like international criminal, there isn't anything like the national private court, we do have international criminal courts, but we don't have international private courts. So when the national courts deal with those global problems, they need to behave to act actually as global courts, but they don't have global rules, they are applying their national rules on the issues they have before them. So what does this mean and where does that lead to, and those are the kind of questions that we will focus on tonight, together with our academic partners, and I would like to introduce you to them, Deborah Hensler, Professor Hensler was already introduced, and I would also like to introduce you to a new concept at Tilburg, the global digital classroom of which we are very proud. We were awarded last year the Innovation Prize by the Ministry of Education, and the global digital classroom allows us to give, to bring our students in touch with experts around the world that have relevant expertise to the issues we're discussing with our students, and that is, we believe, a unique opportunity and advantage for them, and so I hope has changed since you and I were students, and today we have online, in our global digital classroom, our expert on German civil procedure, that is Professor Axel Haufmeyer from Leuphana University in Lüneburg, and I will wait, I'm waiting for the connection with him. Yeah, here he is. Good evening, Axel. Tanika, thank you for joining me into this, and good evening Tilburg, this is humble calling. Well, thank you very much, we will get in the end of the evening, we'll give points for the various systems in Europe. So, this is what we thought we would do tonight, and how we'll divide the task among ourselves. Firstly, Professor Hensler will focus on the U. S. bit of the Volkswagen puzzle. Then Professor Haufmeyer will contribute the German part, and finally I will try to give you our perspective on this global legal order that now sounds very abstract, I realize that, that's for purpose, but later by the end of the evening, when I hope we all have deserved our drinks, and Professor Hensler and I are big fans of good white wine, you will hopefully know what we mean by that. So, before I give the floor to Professor Hensler, very quickly a few facts, because I am not sure to what extent each of you know exactly what happened with Volkswagen, but we think that is helpful to know. So, in a few words, Volkswagen has admitted that about 11 million of its vehicles were equipped with software that was used to cheat on emission tests. What happened was that the Volkswagen software sensed when the car was being tested, and then activated equipment that reduced the emissions. However, the software turned the equipment down during regular driving, increasing the emissions far above legal limits again, most likely to save fuel or to improve the overall performance of the car and its acceleration. Now an international NGO with headquarters in San Francisco was lobbying before European authorities to increase the strictness of European air pollution standards to make them more equal to those in the United States, and California is being known for having one of the most strict air pollution standards in the United States. And it had the idea that it wanted to test European cars from the same manufacturer that are being sold in the United States and in Europe to run the tests on the US cars on one hand and then on the European cars of the same manufacturer on the other, and to show that one the same manufacturer is having better cars in the States and also better, not so good cars in Europe. That way, maybe embarrass the European regulators. I don't know exactly what the theory is, but that was in any event why they wanted to do those tests. So they did the tests, but much to their surprise, instead of having very nice tests what they were expecting on the European cars made for the American market of a certain manufacturer, Volkswagen, they found out that the results of those were far above the legal limits, much more than they were expecting. So that is in some what happened. And Professor Hansler will explain us now the next steps in the Volkswagen saga. So good evening. I'm really delighted to be here. I've spent so much time at Tilburg in the last half dozen years or so at the invitation of Professor Zankova and her colleagues and the dean and the law faculty that I have begun to feel like. This is my second home. Now, usually when I come to Europe as a researcher and a law professor, I am asked to talk about the American system and often I encounter views on how the American system works that aren't in fact accurate. And tonight, I feel we have an opportunity because we're talking to you with colleagues both from the Netherlands and from Germany to give you a sense of how the different legal systems in our three relatively different countries but all Western industrialized democracies that share most of the same values, how we are treating this same problem which we put in this context of wicked problems as was the title of this alumni event. So sometime in the spring of 2014, not that long ago, the competent environmental regulatory authority in California learned that researchers at the University of West Virginia whom Volkswagen who had been commissioned by this NGO that Yonica mentioned, they learned that the Volkswagen and diesel models were emitting fumes that were far above California, my states, pollution standards. Well, this was very curious because in California and in most other US states, car owners must take their cars to be tested for compliance with environmental protection standards on a regular basis. In California, it's every two years, if I don't take my car, I can't get my license renewed and if my car doesn't match up to the standards, I have to take it to the shop to fix it so it will comply and then I can redo my license. So in principle, it should have been impossible for the automobiles that were tested at this point to violate the standards set by the state. So when the California Regulatory Agency learned about this, they began an investigation and it was very soon taken up by our Federal Environmental Protection Agency as well. So as they normally do, these regulators discuss these puzzling findings with the representatives of Volkswagen of America. But Volkswagen resisted the public agency's investigation and indeed they're reported to have denied that whatever might have gone wrong that produced these odd test results, it certainly wasn't anything deliberate. However, on September 18th, 2015, Volkswagen publicly admitted that their engineers had deliberately installed a device in the car's control systems to fool the government's testing equipment. What this meant was that hundreds of thousands of Volkswagen auto owners in the US were unknowingly driving cars that violated their state's anti-pollution standards. So once known, this would have to be corrected. You can't drive a car that violates these standards. The car needs to be fixed, as I said, in order to renew your license. This was a lot of cars. EPA or Federal Environmental Protection Agency announced that it would order a recall of about 600,000 cars. These were cars roughly between the model years of when we're calling correctly of about 2006 to 2000 through 2014. Almost immediately, a very well-established law firm that specializes in consumer litigation and in particular class actions filed the first class action in the United States against Volkswagen charging consumer fraud and violations of the various relevant laws. Now, as some of you probably know, what a class action is, roughly speaking, is a special form as a civil lawsuit in which one or a few people or perhaps organizations come forward saying, we represent a large number of folks just like us. And because there's so many involved, we've created this procedure to deal with cases like this where you couldn't have thousands of people appearing in the court at the same time. Within three days, this firm had filed lawsuits in 20 different states. And it announced publicly that its objective was to bring suits in every state in the US. It said that after it had published a press release that regarded this first suit, it was being deluged with contacts from angry consumers. According to the firm, many car owners said they had purposely bought these VW diesel cars which were marketed under the name clean diesel and paid a premium price of several thousand dollars by comparison to other makers car models in the belief that they were protecting the environment while at the same time achieving superior fuel efficiency. I paid a premium for a Golf TBI because I was promised that it was clean diesel. I was told that the emissions were better than the standard gas automobile. In addition, I was also promised high fuel economy. I now feel I have been defrauded by these claims, wrote one owner. Another wrote, I trusted VW on the performance, handling, efficiency, resale, the historic durability of diesel and the eco-friendliness of this car. I feel completely deceived. I'm embarrassed to drive this car on the road. So some of these statements sound a bit over the top to me and you might wonder as I did since they came from the lawyer whether they are in fact what potential clients said to the lawyer. But I will tell you that I have a colleague on the Stanford Law Faculty who herself offered to represent a class of folks, and owners using almost exactly the same language. She said indignantly she had purchased this car because she thought she was doing something good for the environment at the same time she was getting high performance and good gas mileage. Now normally in the US when a serious flaw is found in a car, you know, a problem with brakes or airbags or whatever, whoever's the relevant regulatory authority will order a recall. And when auto manufacturers pay to fix cars that are recalled, consumers generally have no damages. They haven't lost any money, so they have no grounds and they usually have no desire to file suit. So most of the time recalls don't lead to litigation. The Volkswagen litigation in the US, some of you may believe oh that's just like litigious Americans, it is an incredibly unusual litigation. The wicked problem if you will in the Volkswagen case is that Volkswagen as I understand it has been unable to figure out to this day how to fix these cars so they will comply with our strict air pollution standards in the US for any amount of money that it would be reasonable for them to spend, that is it's doable, okay. But it's doable only with very complicated work on the car that would cost them a lot of money. And of course this is why we assume they installed the seat devices in the first place. They didn't set out to make a car that wouldn't comply with the law. They wanted to market the car in the US and apparently only realized when they were far along in the engineering process that their new diesel cars couldn't meet US environmental protection standards while at the same time delivering high performance and fuel efficiency. So during fall 2015, this is just last year now, 63 class actions, each of which claimed to represent thousands of VW car owners were filed in state and federal courts around the US. So as everybody understood, there was literally no way hundreds of thousands of individual claims could be resolved within any reasonable amount of time. And it would be hugely wasteful to try each of these cases individually. The cost to taxpayers like me for individual dispute resolution in a court would be unreasonable and perhaps even more important, the cost to Volkswagen to defend a vast number of individual claims all over the United States would really be astronomical and unsupportable. So this is exactly the situation that the US class action in fact was designed to address. It's an efficient mechanism for resolving large numbers of claims when they arise out of the same circumstances. But as I told you, during the fall a year ago, there were many class actions being filed. Many lawyers claiming to represent different groups of consumers. So what could you do about that fact? It's not very efficient to have many class actions going on at the same time either. So fortunately, we also have a procedure in the US to address the problem of duplicative litigation. It wasn't invented for class actions. It dates back to 1968. But under the statute passed in 1968, the federal judiciary is allowed to essentially scoop up cases that are duplicative in this sense and to assign all of them together to one judge in one court and put that judge in charge of making all the legal decisions that are necessary as you move a legal case through to disposition. Usually it's the parties who request the use of this authority because they see it as so efficient and that's what happened in the Volkswagen litigation. So on December 8th, the beginning of December last year, 2015, the litigation was in fact consolidated in this fashion for pretrial management in a federal court in San Francisco, California before a judge named Charles Breyer who is noted for his management skills and fairness. And the case was assigned to him because he had that reputation. There's a special panel of judges that decides on these assignments. In January, the New Year dawns, Judge Breyer moves swiftly to put the litigation on a path through resolution. Now under long established federal court rules, he had the authority to set a schedule for the litigation, appoint committees of lawyers to manage different aspects of the litigation and to resolve all of the possible disputes over evidence or what have you that eventually inevitably emerge in this process. But in this peculiar special case, Volkswagen had admitted liability and the facts of the investigation carried out by the public regulators were public. So Judge Breyer made it clear that he expected things to move swiftly, that there was no reason for the lawyers to engage in lengthy process arguing about those facts. The question was how to remedy the harm. So Judge Breyer ordered Volkswagen to submit a plan to the court for fixing the car. That seemed like the normal sensible thing. The point here is people have a car they can't drive legally. So come up with a plan for fixing it. At the same time, he appointed a small committee of plaintiffs lawyers, which was led by very well nationally known female lawyer from San Francisco who had worked in his court before to lead the litigation. He also appointed the former head of the US FBI to help the parties try and negotiate a plan for some kind of relief or redress as it's generally termed in Europe. So by late spring after lots of delays, VW seemed to be unable to come up with a plan for fixing the automobile. But at the same time, the lawyers informed Judge Breyer that they were moving towards a settlement. Now this case has many other dimensions that there's no time to cover tonight, but I will mention that while this litigation has been moving forward, the US Department of Justice has filed criminal charges against Volkswagen for violation of the Federal Clean Air Act, and there's also been action by state justice officials in most of the states. And all of these public enforcement actions, not the criminal investigation, the public enforcement actions that are seeking fines were also assigned to Judge Breyer. At the end of June, on June 28th, 2016, just six months after the litigation was assigned to him, the party submitted a tentative $15 billion settlement, this is the settlement you've heard about or read about, to Judge Breyer for his approval, and it includes offers to buy back cars in specific amounts for specific models of cars and models in years, as well as a cash contribution to an environmental cleanup fund. Now under the US class action rule, whenever a settlement is proposed, class members must be notified and given an opportunity to exclude themselves from this class action so that they can pursue individual lawsuits if that's what they would prefer. That's their right. They could also just decide they don't wanna do anything, but it's also their right. So we call this an upt-out class action because the action of saying, count me out is termed up-tout. Now notifying, imaginative, hundreds of thousands of people that a settlement has been proposed and notifying them of the provisions so they could decide whether it's better for them to stay in or up-tout is extremely expensive. It involves print and broadcast and now today, social media announcements. And so judges over the years have adopted a practice that isn't actually required by the rule of reviewing proposed settlements before notifying the class member. And if the judge feels certain aspects of the settlement won't ultimately gain his or her approval, which is necessary for this kind of action, then he tells the parties they should just go back to the negotiation table. They shouldn't spend their client's money on a pointless process of notifying people of something that he's not gonna approve in the end. One month after the lawyers submitted this proposed settlement for Judge Brier's preliminary approval, which doesn't mean that he will ultimately approve it. It's just he's tending towards it. He did approve releasing it to the class members and starting the period of time that people have to decide whether to stay in or up-tout. Now there's been a lot of negative discussion that at least I as a law professor here when I come to Europe about the up-tout class action regime of the US including criticisms by some that an up-tout regime violates the European Convention on Human Rights because people with legitimate claims caught up, get caught up in a litigation, they don't realize it, they don't understand what's going on and they don't know what's been proposed in terms of the settlement. So if I can make this system work, so I'm gonna just very quickly show you what members of the VW class can find if they go to the webpage of the court. Can you open it? This was the other way we did it. Try this, there it goes. Sorry about that. Okay, so the print on this is small. This is a public website and you would find your way to this public website, all you have to do is Google Volkswagen Settlement. It's also press coverage of the settlement told people how to do this but you can figure it out by yourself. So this is, as it says, the proposed settlement document library. I know you can't read exactly the titles but I wanna show you that there are all of these important papers in the case or all on this website. Obviously I'm not gonna go through all of the links but for anybody who's interested, not just in what's being proposed by the lawyers but what the various federal authorities have ruled, et cetera, all the information is there. Now, and there is in fact a, I don't know if I can find it, but a summary of the settlement, a sort of executive summary that tells you generally what you would get and then directs you to more detailed information to figure out where you might fit into this settlement. And that is actually, that's actually this. If it comes what I throw it off. Technology never works as well as everybody claims it's going to. Trust me, you could read the settlement from the webpage. Now, under the US class action rule, after the settlement is announced, time is given not just for class members to opt out but also for others to object to the terms of the settlement. That's why you would wanna go and read the terms of the settlement. And the judge has to hold a public hearing and he then has to consider all the objections that might come forward from anybody's a member of the class. They could appear with a lawyer or without a lawyer. They could write him letters or appear in person. And only after he's considered all of those objections can he approve the settlement if he feels that it's fair, reasonable, and adequate. And if the settlement is approved, and this settlement has not yet been finally approved, if it's approved, it will bind everybody who did not choose to opt out. The people who did not opt out no longer have the ability to proceed individually. Now, under our rule, the judge also has to approve the attorney's fees, these plaintiff's attorneys who you've all heard are so greedy in the US. And under our rule, the judge actually awards these fees. And most federal judges are quite comfortable exercising this authority and fairly frequently, they will award less money than the attorney's request. So after the announcement of the VW settlement, there was media speculation that the plaintiff's attorneys were gonna ask for several billion dollars in fees, apparently on the notion that some people had that the lawyers would ask for a percentage like 20%, 25%, or 30%. So Judge Breyer asked the lawyers to inform him of what the thinking was with regard to fees, which of course Volkswagen will also have to pay. And they filed a statement in court and because the system's not being responsive, I'm not gonna take the time to show it to you, but it is also on this website in which the lawyers say, and it's a legal commitment because they filed it in court, that they expect to ask for $324 million of fees and about $8 million in expenses. Now that's a lot of money, but if you quickly do the math, you will see that that is about 2% of the money that VW is now offering to pay the consumers. And actually the fees don't come out of the fund, VW pays them in addition to the fund. By August 30th, 2016, that is just a few weeks ago, 210,000 class members out of the estimated 475,000 had registered to receive benefits from the proposed settlement and most of them are going for the buyback. And the final hearing on the settlement, which will, as I said, be public, is scheduled for mid-October this year. Now, Yannicka asked me to describe to you the consumer class actions in the US, but that's far from the only legal problem that VW faces in the US. I already mentioned that there are official actions by 40 states, that the Department of Justice is pursuing a criminal investigation. But VW's troubles do not end there. As a result of this mess, VW's net income dropped by about $6 million in 2015 and their share value dropped dramatically. So last January, as he was organizing these consumer cases, Judge Breyer was also assigned several class actions that had been brought by shareholders. But under US law, investors cannot sue VW if, because VW shares were not traded on a US stock exchange. They can only sue VW as shareholders if they bought a very specialized form of stock. It's called an American deposit receipt and it's not frequently used in the US. And so there are just a few US pension funds that actually purchase those shares and they have filed suit. And Judge Breyer represented a leading US securities firm, a different firm called Bernstein-Litterwitz to represent them. So I want you to remember this name because it's going to appear again in the story Yannick is going to tell you about that developments here in the Netherlands. But before that, I'd like to turn to my colleague, Professor Axel Hofmeier, who is going to tell us what's going on in Germany, which as Volkswagen's home country has become the center of the global shareholder litigation. Yes, thank you very much for inviting me to this interesting conference about wicked problems. And indeed, the Volkswagen scandal is a wicked problem, not only for Volkswagen, but for Germany. Why is that? Because Volkswagen obviously was an icon, I would say, of the German industry and the perception of the German public has now changed very much. And not only the perception of Volkswagen has changed, but also the perception of the German relation to the US legal system, I would say. Professor Hensler mentioned already the typical US class action that is triggered and viewed as problematic from a European viewpoint. But now when we read here in Germany in the newspapers that the US customers that are affected by the scandal under the settlement that you just described that they will get maybe up to $10,000 as compensation or many other benefits, including the right to give back the car, this has gotten many German customers to think, well, what do we get? Do we get anything? Now, the legal structure is different, of course, and the emission standards in Germany are much lower than in the US, but nevertheless, there was a legal problem here too with these defeat devices with which Volkswagen cheated. So this really puts the German consumer as disadvantage, but we have no class actions. So every individual consumer has to sue on his own, but that's rarely done. I think we have now 60 or 70 individuals sued by consumers and the legislator has not yet reacted. There was in the beginning, there was a talk of maybe we should also have some system under which consumers will be able to collectively protect their interests, but now there is some, I would say, it's very quiet on this front, so to speak, and we have this legislative that does nothing and maybe the legislator has seen that Volkswagen would give similar benefits to its German or even European Dutch or other European customers in the same amount that the US customers are getting, this would be a very serious economic problem for the existence of this icon German car manufacturer. But let me turn now really to the shareholder claims because these are, in fact, at the moment being litigated in Germany, the shareholder claims are based on laws against the misinformation of the capital markets. Volkswagen is a publicly traded company and the Volkswagen shares are part of many investment portfolios of many individuals, but also institutions around the globe. And so these investors now have a claim possibly because they argue that they may have bought the Volkswagen shares too expensive if they had known or if the market in general had known that Volkswagen is cheating the authorities in the US and in Europe and is cheating its customers as it has been described. If the market had known that, then the Volkswagen share would have been at a much lower rate. So there's this huge loss suffered by investors around the globe through the scandal and through the fall of the Volkswagen shares price. And in Germany, we have a special litigation tool that has been designed about 10 years ago for these kinds of mass shareholder claims and it's called the Capital Markets Model Case Act in German, the Kapitalanliga-Muster-Verfahrens-Gesetz abbreviated as Katmuck and under that name, it's become quite famous, at least in the legal world. Okay, so we have this Capital Markets Model Case Act. Please note that this is not a class action. It is just a tool that has been designed to deal with this multitude of claims. Just what Professor Hensler described as being not desirable, a waste of resources that thousands of individuals come to the court with essentially the same problem. That's exactly what happens in Germany at the moment because this Capital Markets Model Case Act still requires that every investor that claims, claims to have a claim needs to file its own individual suit, just an ordinary suit with the court. And so at the moment, we have several hundreds of suits that being filed in the court of Braunschweig, which is the competent court for the headquarters of Volkswagen. And the value, that's very interesting, that the total value of these suits is between three and four billion euros. So that is really a very big, at least in monetary terms, a very big litigation that's going on there. And it will then be continued probably for many years, depending on the strategy employed by the parties. And the questions, for example, did the Volkswagen Board know what was going on in the US? These questions will all be litigated in what is called the Model Case. Now, what is interesting, coming back to global wicked problems, is that these claimants here that bring these cases to Braunschweig, Germany, are almost completely institutional investors, big investors. Yes, they're also individuals, small investors, but this big sum, as I said, three billion euros, that's not your Joe Smith little investor guy, but these are big institutional investors, including many household names. For example, Allianz, a big German insurance company, has filed suit. And many, many investors from all around the globe, pension funds from the US, banks, from all kinds of countries, they have all filed a suit. And why do they do that? Because normally filing a suit in Germany, especially with this kind of money, these kinds of amounts in controversy, is very dangerous for the cost risk. Under the German rules, you run a very large cost risk, but nevertheless, these investors have decided to file suit. And I think that's for two reasons, mainly. One is now the development of the discussion of the fiduciary duties, or the duties that the management of such a fund has. If there are possible claims in the amount of millions, then they cannot just let them sit on the table. They must do something about it in the interest of their own customers, their own investors behind them. And the second reason is the amount of financing that's available today that has also at least in Germany changed a lot. Today, almost all of these suits are externally financed. So the cost risks do not lie with the plaintiffs, but with some other institutions that have taken the risk and then may get a share of the profits if the case is successful. So all of the main players here, the German law firms that do this, for example, the law firm of Needing and Bart has teamed up with a big US law firm that's called Robinskeller-Rotman, just to give you examples. And the German law firm of Tilb has teamed up with Grant and Eisenhofer, another German, it's going to be a US law firm, and they are also funded by an institution that's called Claims Funding Euro. And then there's another US law firm, but they have created offices in Germany. It's called Quim de Manuel, and they are funded by a funding institution that originally comes from Australia, Bentham, it's called, and so on. Many of these corporations, and that just shows that this is really an international problem that is organized on a global scale, but is now played out in this little town of Braunschweig, Germany, for reasons of competence of the court. Well, we don't know how these cases will turn out. It will be a very long, possibly a very long litigation, depending on Volkswagen strategy, but I think it's fair to say that even now at this stage of the proceedings where the model case has not even yet begun, what has been done now in August was that the court in Braunschweig has made what is called the reference decision, that is it has identified the common problems that are identical to all of the hundreds of plaintiffs and has referred these problems to the higher court, but there the procedure hasn't even begun. So we will see what comes out of it and how this wicked problem is being treated by the German courts in the future. Well, so much from Germany here, and now back to you, Janneke. Thank you, and we're almost there. We almost deserved our drinks. So we heard a little bit piece of the US part of Volkswagen. We got the German description and some of you might be thinking, okay, this is all very interesting, but where is this global private legal order that they were announcing in the title? How are we construing it? Well, you might be surprised about the answer and the answer to how could Volkswagen bring an end to this because we don't have enough time for tonight, but you should know there are similar actions going on in Italy, France, in Belgium, in Canada, in Austria, virtually everywhere, and it will take years and years and years and a lot of billions and billions to resolve all of that. So is there a way, since we don't have an international private court, is there a way to bring this to an end? And the answer is yes, there is. And the answer is it's here, in the Netherlands. And what do I mean by that? Well, the Netherlands is the only jurisdiction outside the United States. Not just in Europe, but outside the United States, and not everybody's side, that introduced this special provision in 2005 that allows company like Volkswagen to bring an end to obtain a global peace in cases like this by settling with representative organizations, representative interest of consumers or investors, depending on which part of the dispute they wanna bring to an end, and to submit it for approval to the Amsterdam Court of Appeal. And the Amsterdam Court of Appeal can declare it binding on opt-out basis. You can opt-out, so everybody is part of the group unless they opt-out, and that has happened already in similar cases like the WK's, twice. So, what does this mean? In Europe and in the Netherlands, we rely in such situations when we want to resolve such global dispute, but even mass disputes, less global, national or international, we rely on non-profit organizations. Non-profit organizations could be ad hoc stichtingen, foundations, or long-standing ones like the VEB, I'm sure many of you know them, are consumable. So, in anticipation of the defendant, here, VW, reaching the state of mind of wanting to bring this to an end, to a global peace and to resolution, here are all those Dutch ad hoc non-profit organizations and non-profit entities lined up for a beauty contest to become VW's true, preferably one and only, I think, negotiation partner for global resolution. And please note, and here is the Dutch polar culture, this provision can only be invoked if VW wants to bring this to an end. They cannot be forced to come to Amsterdam. So, I did a very quick research. I'm not promising that I'll be able to show you what I've prepared, these are just very quick links, but I'll do a try. And I found five, at least five, there might be more, but I found at least five non-profit associations. And four out of the five had websites which I think is telling in English, because they're Dutch foundation, so I wouldn't have all in English. I wanna show you the first one. Okay. This is a bit better than of Professor Hesler, but we're in front of it, so I'm not sure. So, please mind the banner. Why do only Australian car owners get away with considering the state of limitation? Only for Americans? So, they obviously disagree with the fact that just American consumers are getting something, right? So, this is this interesting part when Professor Hesler and I studied the Musk Lanes that we bump into these very interesting observations that in this globalized world where we have information technology we all have the same problems and issues as consumers. Yes, we do have different national legal rules, but we do believe we are alike. We do believe why are the Americans getting a resolution? Why aren't we getting one? We're all the same consumers of VW, right? We're all shareholders of VW. Why are we treated differently? So, this is a very interesting issue. The other interesting issue what I came across when I was studying those foundations for today's presentation is that if you look at their funding, who is behind them? So, I went to the other one. So, that is one of the other foundations. It says, the foundation is founded, I'll light it up, and advised by Labaton Sukharov a premier American securities anti-trust consumer protection law firm. And then, I went to the other one. Let me click this one. And then, I went to the other one. And then, I sew, a little bit better, that's five. Bernstein did, which you remember, the lead plaintive of Professor Hansler's story in the securities, is providing, is behind, is financing the costs and supporting this foundation. And then, I found this one. And it says, behind it is the global justice network of internationally operating lawyers, including many of which in the United States with experience in dealing with these type of cases. And what I also found interesting, so those were all ad hoc associations, just for you, background information, it isn't strange that they have to be financed because such associations has to apply with the so-called claim code, the self-regulation for governance of such foundations. And according to the claim code, you need to have a board and supervisory board and composed of experienced people, so you have to have a lawyer, so obviously that is something that needs refinancing. What I also found is our, I'm a bit nationalistic in that respect, own VEB having nowadays, they are not any more national retail investor association. They are nowadays international, European, they're becoming more ambitious foundation and I can't help but I'm always interested, I wanna know, how did they do those things? They have only membership fees, et cetera, who is behind the VEB? If you do research as long as we do, since 2000 together, since 2008 and by now, that the VEB has been involved in collective settlements in the previous years where they negotiated a very nice fee for themselves, which they can use to support and do subsequent actions. So, if you would have more time or a very nice scheme to show you all this network, to reveal this network of private, more or less visible network, that is becoming a more and more sophisticated and entrepreneurial private actors as opposed to institutions entrusted with some sort of state authority or adjudicative power who, despite of the scattered national legal regimes, work together and maybe also in competition with each other to establish or construe this global private legal order because we don't have anything like that. So that is what we found fascinating, that we have this global legal problem, we have all those public institutions and when we deal with the underlying disputes and claims, they are national and we rely on private actors to do what state institutions need to do. So here is, oh please let's open, so a whole lot of questions about the role of national courts, about transparency and good governance, about the strength of those private networks, about the alternatives maybe to this way to go forward. But maybe we agree that this is actually not such a bad idea and we, nothing, don't touch it, don't fix it if it's not broken. And I would like to leave it here and I would like to thank Professor Halfmeyer who sacrificed his family evening to be with us. And I want to thank you. Thank you.