 Hello, welcome to this public governance knowledge clip. My name is Harold Benink, I'm a professor at the Institute of Governance here at Tilburg University. Public governance is a very interesting academic subject area. It tries to integrate law, economics and politics. And actually as you will see when you read the international newspapers, when you follow the news there are lots of things going on currently in international politics and international economics. What about a potential trade war between the United States and China? What about the situation with Russia, with Iran? What about the situation in the European Union? The rise of populism. These are all very important issues we deal with in our study programs and what makes our program quite unique is that we try to integrate different approaches law, economics and politics. Currently one of the most fascinating stories in Europe is of course the situation in Italy. During the past 20 years or so Italy has been growing very slowly and its debt of the government is very high. It's more than 2 trillion euros, that means 2,000 billion euros and a debt ratio of about 130%. So how is Italy to cope with this? Can Italy implement economic reforms in order to enhance the growth potential of its economy? Is the euro as a single currency perhaps something which is impeding Italy to start growing? In the past Italy did have a national currency, the lira, and then it could implement devaluations in order to restore competitiveness. So we see very different issues about law, about economics and politics. The Italian case will be worthwhile following because Italy had its own problems in terms of economic reforms but also is severely hit by the number of refugees coming in from African countries. And that is something we cannot blame Italy for because it's linked to the geographical location of Italy in southern Europe. So this is an unfolding story for all those students who will start studying at Tilbury University this coming September. I'm pretty sure that this Italian story will unfold and will also play a very important role in the classroom. Because what are we doing in our programs? Because we want to provide you with sound economic knowledge. But on the other hand we want to apply this knowledge and relate it to current issues in international politics and economics and law. So very exciting programs where you can link the academic material, the academic knowledge very much towards happening in our real international world. So we hope to welcome you, to be able to welcome many of you to Tilbury University in September. Thank you very much.