 Sorry, I interviewed you at the bottom of the text, it's too simple. I need to, I'm not going to say something like that, but I'm not going to say anything like that. Yeah, that's okay. I will speak first, then I will introduce you. All right. Good morning to you all. I think it seems everybody happens to be back in the room. So we'll get started, even if we have had some delay this morning. I have the pleasure to be moderating a debate on European membership this morning. This is the first panel of the day with distinguished speakers from all around Europe actually, all corners of the continent, at least European Union, both from the civil society and academia world, academic world and institutional world as well. I have a tendency to believe that most of you did not come to hear me talk about myself, but I will nevertheless start on that. In the 1990s, as much of my countrymen in France did, when I was drafted, I was sent to Bosnia for my military service. The reason why I speak about this this morning is first because this was already bridged upon this morning in the introduction session and also because for me it was a real experience of what Europe could do. I don't mean the European Union because at that time the European Union was not per se involved in these events and just getting afterwards, but I remember very vividly the presence of Europeans in military form and also lots of NGOs from all over Europe, from Ukraine to Portugal, from Sweden to Italy. And another fact very striking is we are speaking this morning of membership, of citizenship. The actual title of this panel is How to foster a sense of identification with the European Union. That was the first title, maybe more with Europe. This is a difficult question as well. And one of the figures that was given for preparing this panel was the fact that according to a recent Eurobarometer survey, there are only 6% of European citizens who define themselves as Europeans before they quote their nationality. They quote the country of which there are nationals. And this reminded me quite vividly of a survey that took place in 1981 in Yugoslavia where only 5% of nationals there define themselves as Yugoslavia. And I don't know whether this is a very sensible comparison, but it's very striking to feel that in this hour, 2016, we have the same kind of belonging to this political union as the Yugoslavs did more than 35 years ago. And the hope is that this number might grow up, but it seems that what we have heard, people from my generation have heard, was born during the Cold War in the West for my particular case, was that all the events that took place at the end of the 20th century were the end of history, so to speak. And the reason for Europe was all the more asserted, all the more solid, because history as we knew it had ended in a way with the fall of the Soviet Empire, so to speak. So for me, maybe I studied too much history, but for me it was to a point to open this debate in Sarajevo where the actual history of the 20th century started for most Europeans and where it also finishes for a lot of them. Taking part to these debates, we have, as I said, four distinguished speakers and we are trying to find a way to help the Europeans, citizens of the European Union, to feel that they are part of this union and to feel that they are part of a real citizenship and not just an additional prerogative that is given them by the Maastricht Treaty which most people in the Union anyway can't pronounce. So I will first give the floor to Regina Plebanec, who is a writer. She has published a successful novel, I think, and also a colleague of mine because she started out as a journalist and still has a column in Gazeta Wybocza, I think. Mrs Plebanec, please, you have the floor. Hello, everybody. Hello. Yes, I'm heard right now. Hello, everybody. I'm a Polish writer. I published five novels in Polish. They are translated into English as well. I also wrote a volume of literary essays. I'm going to publish in September the new book which will talk about European identity or Afro-European identity as well. It will be a piece of fiction, a novel again. I'm also a journalist. I write for many newspapers in Poland. I'm privileged and honoured to write something for the supplement of Gazeta Wybocza. I started there and I still keep in touch with Gazeta. I also write for Politica, which is a weekly journal in Poland. So I basically stay in Brussels for 11 years. I also lived in Stockholm for five years. Briefly, maybe I will mention the main point I would like to talk today. I would like to maybe talk about the new European identity because I was thinking that what emerges right now from the current situation is that really new European identity, means that it's the identity which consists of many layers. I mean, every citizen has many identities. We have national identities, we have ethnic identities, sometimes we have gender identities, religious identities. And reducing our identity to only one element, for example, the religious identity, is a trick that is used by politicians right now, especially populists, which Adam Michnik mentioned wonderfully in his great speech. And it happens right now in Poland, it happens in Slovakia, it happens in Austria. But the truth is that every citizen's identity is very complex, especially the identity of people who migrate, like most of us, but not only expats. I'm thinking right now about refugees as well. These are people who combine sometimes two different national identities. They speak two languages at least. And the problem starts when they settle down in the environment which is where people threaten them as foreigners, as strangers, and they really do not appreciate their complex identity, because the new European identity is the complex one. So I would like to talk about this a little bit maybe during this debate that we should maybe change our attitude to the European complex identity. We should include maybe Afro-Europeans to our discussion and we should appreciate East-Western European identity as well. And it should be done on a really low level sometimes in schools. It should start at schools, it should start in the local initiatives. So this is my basic point. Thank you very much. I will next give the floor to Michel Fouchet who was a career diplomat, was an ambassador and has always been also in the academic world, so to speak, in terms of teaching and reflection and research as well. And I will please give you the floor now. Yes, thank you. How to foster identification with the European Union? I accept the question raised by the organizer even if we could have taken the same words in a different way. For example, how to foster identification of the EU institution and policies with the wishes and expectations, interest and values of the citizens and the nation of Europe. I think the question sounds accurate, especially today in that very big room where there is a physical distance between the public and the speakers. So we are on the same stage. Let's suppose we are at the EU institution and you are the citizen. How to get closer? It's like the chair and the piano, which piece of furniture has to be moved. So I propose a joint progress. I think to improve identification by citizen I will suggest four lines of action and I will only insist on the first one in the first answer. First is, and especially in the context of the 70th anniversary of the Rome Treaty next year, March. We have to tell the truth about the project from the beginning and the successive geopolitical context. Second, territory. I'm working on border issues as a geographer. Time is ripe to fix limits, not borders, limits of the European project. I cannot identify myself to a political community if I don't know the limits. Who is part of what? And if we don't do that, we will never have a foreign policy. Third, political commitment by leaders. They are very lazy. They like to criticize nationwide, Brussels, so-called Brussels. And the last point is we have to not rethink, refound, but to add a new scale to the European project, which is the world scale. Not only between France, Germany, Sixth Fender, wider Europe. First, the first one. History is supposed to be back today. Russia, Middle East, Africa, nationhood, nation affirmation, so-called return of borders, but it's nothing new. History was always there, maybe partly invisible. France decided to sign up the Rome Treaty in 1957 after a political and strategic failure in Suez one year before. The goal accepted to close the imperial period in March 62. 16 months, 16 weeks, weeks, only 16 weeks after, it took hand off at an hour in Reims Cathedral. Only 16 weeks for a kind of pivot from the empire to a new project for the French Europe. But we can tell the same story and Adam Mechnick was very eloquent on that. Europe and the Cold War, Europe and political transition in your country, in Greece, in Portugal, decolonization in Portugal and European pivot of Portugal, Ireland, this kind of terrible face-to-face with London. And suddenly, there is another figure, another character on the stage, British Brussels, et cetera, et cetera. So we have always had from the beginning a specific geopolitical context and European project was a kind of positive answer to that. Today, and I will stop with that, it's economic globalization, digital revolution, globalization of terror, war and tensions. 83% of the 75 conflict wars and crisis recorded this month by international crisis group are located in between 3 hours and 6 hours flight from Brussels. We can sleep without thinking of that, there is no outside, we close the door or we have to take on responsibility. So my first suggestion to improve identification to European project is to take the long view, to accept that EU is an answer to a specific, successive, difficult geopolitical concept. We need a sense of history, we don't need a narrative. Thank you. I also welcome Claudia Wissner who is also a true European in her career because she has studied and teached both in France, in Germany and Finland as well. Now there is she used to be a professor at Bochum and Marburg and now Darmstadt and Yves Kille if I'm not wrong. I will please have the floor miss Wissner. Okay. Thank you very much. I'm very pleased to be speaking here. And I have prepared 5 points or 4 points on the leading question of this panel that was how to foster identification with the European Union. First of all I would like to start by underlining what Mr. Foushi has just said. If we speak about identification then we have something that goes from the bottom to the top, from the citizens to the institutions to the polity to the regime. But there should also be something that goes from top to bottom. These are sort of the two directions that we need to keep in mind and these are also the two directions that we research after in research. Now my own field is democracy research. So research on everything that concerns the quality and the workings of democracy and research on the EU multilevel system. And the 4 points that I have bring these sort of two aspects together. On the question of how to foster identification with the EU meaning these two directions I would say first debate the EU. Now you might be saying but this is absolutely normal obviously democracy is about debate. Yes and no but that is something that has been quite unusual in European integration. And it's a bit stressfully discussed in political science under the label of politicization of European Union. Something that was not political seemingly has become a political issue since the Treaty of Maastricht. And the politicization as it is discussed in political science seems to disturb what has been termed the permissive consensus. The silent acceptance of the citizens. And my plato here is that we should see things the other way around. That it's absolutely normal that even in representative democracies citizens debate and discuss and have an opinion on the political topics. And we should welcome the fact that European integration now is a political issue and a political topic. As it is salaries as it is childcare and as it is education. So we should debate the European Union in both directions top down and bottom up. Second point we should take we means the researchers referring to the distance sort of between the speakers and and the listeners. But we also means EU politicians officials on all kinds of levels take people seriously let them participate. And taking them seriously immediately brings me to my third point. I think protest and contestation on EU policies is something that should be welcome because it's what is an essential part of democracy. Representative democracy only in a very narrow model means that we the citizens go to vote on election day every four or five years and that's it. In the more broader accounts representative democracy means that the citizens have the right to contest to protest to to voice their opinion in between. And I think that is a good sign if we have that. Let me provocatively say that the more demonstrations we have in front of the European Parliament in Strasbourg the better that is because the more lively the European democracy is. And that is something and that's very important that is to be distinguished from a no to the European Union because you can be a very active citizen without saying no to the polity per se. I am a German citizen and I may be critical of some policies of the German current German government and I'm surely I am maybe critical of Angela Merkel. But this doesn't mean that I neglect the German basic law the German constitution and the Germany as a polity on the whole. On the contrary I would rather say I'm pretty fond of the German Grundgesetz even if I disagree with what Schäuble may do or may not do. That is also what is democracy about. And the fourth point and that's maybe even the hardest and the most important point that I have to make make the EU more democratic. And I would like to underline that and I've published about that currently only in German what happens in the financial crisis I think is a big problem in that respect. Because we have all of the progress that we have obtained with the Lisbon Treaty are sort of bypassed by the governance of the austerity politics and the financial aid. And I think that we have had serious breaches in the quality standards of national representative democracies in the donor states as well as in the data states. In Germany we had situations where the Bundestag was nearly bypassed because sort of emergency laws were made. We have had experience that in Greece we have experienced that in Portugal and I think that's very serious. Because no EU policies should hamper the standards of representative democracy somewhere in the EU multilevel system. And on the contrary I think that we need to be very careful here and that those standards need to be strengthened and not weakened. Thank you very much. Let's now welcome Paul Blocker who is also from the academic world and also globe trotter in Europe in the sense that he studied and maybe also teached in Italy. And he's now at the prestigious Charles University in Prague and please you have the floor. Thank you so much. I'm very happy to be in this panel. I might be one of these few persons you mentioned that answered yes to being feeling more European than a national in the Euro barometer type of surveys. But I would like to also point out by referring to my academic sort of career that that is not necessarily relating to a very clear cut identity. I feel that I have a very confused identity. I started studying EU integration and particularly enlargement at the University of Amsterdam. But then I moved towards Florence to do a PhD in social and political sciences at the European University Institute which could be seen as a factory for Europeanists if you want to call it like that. Currently you're right. I'm teaching at Charles University in Prague but I still live in Italy. I produced two Europeans in the meantime, Italo, Dutch, young European citizens and I also teach American students there on European integration. Well, I mostly myself interested indeed in issues of civic engagement and democracy and particularly from also the perspective of constitutional reform, constitution making. I've been writing also on the Centro-Nisty European region referring to some of those traditions that Adam Michnik also talked about in terms of dissidents thought about in itself government and things like that. I'm also particularly interested in another aspect of democracy in Europe and that is what I see as an increased prominence and importance of trans-nationally mobilized citizens and others. For instance, and I think this is a movement that's also present here, the European Alternatives movement making all kinds of claims for European democracy. Well, I also gave it a little bit of thought what might this identification with the EU actually mean and how might we actually try to foster this. And I also came up with some four points but not necessarily because these are the only points I could think of. It's not an exhaustive list. But one aspect that's extremely important and Adam Michnik's points about the fall of the Weimar Republic made me think about it once again is that if we want a viable and a vital European Union and we want it probably also to be democratic then we need people to support this. This means on the elite level but it also means on the civic, on the society level. And so the first point I want to make is experience as a main aspect. Experience meaning people actually in their everyday reality realizing one way or the other that their experiences have to do with Europe or with you one way or the other. A very clear example for myself is when given the fact that my check is really rudimentary, I teach a lot of Erasmus students at Charles University. And so they experience in their daily lives some kind of European phenomenon that is they are temporary at least living in another country. They meet other Europeans and other global people so to speak but they also at least when they follow my course as they often get into contact with knowledge with discussion about Europe because I teach for instance a course on the sociology of European integration. So that's an extremely important part I think where we still don't have much knowledge. A lot of people like to sort of very simply claim Erasmus that's good, that creates Europeans. Is that really true? We don't really know. Recent sociological research has shown that Italians that go abroad are much likely to come back with a pro-European mindset than people from the UK or people from Scandinavia. So that's one thing I would want to throw on the table, experience. What does that mean? In my own personal case that means an awful lot. Having done what I've done made me in a way naturally European. A second issue that dovetails nicely with what has already been said before is voice. Voice of citizens in Europe I think is extremely important. That has an institution as well as a societal dimension. Of course the institutional dimension came on the table with Maastricht as you pronounce it rightly. That's an extremely important institution but I think it needs a lot of being made more robust. One very simple issue is something that I myself don't enjoy being resident in Italy either. That is being able to vote in national elections. I think if we want to talk about real European citizens we also need to give them a real robust multiple set of rights. Including this type of political right. That also means that certain developments that are going on at the moment and particularly since the European economic and financial crisis they form a threat to some of the rights that we already enjoy. For instance legal scholars have been arguing that the way the financial crisis has been dealt with with what Hamel Maastricht called an executive federalist approach means that ordinary citizens the fact though are reduced in the political and social rights they are supposed to enjoy. If we want I believe people to identify with Europe we should also be able to say something about Europe to have an effect on European institutions and policy making. Thirdly a major issue I think perhaps it's the most important issue. It's issue of I would like to call it here publicity but not in the economic sense of advertisements but in the sense of public sphere of public dialogue exactly as Adam Michnik said if we don't want civil war we need civil dialogue. We need an European open society based on European discussions about European matters. A bleak page in this type of public debate is for instance the recent referendum in the Netherlands on Ukraine. So we are now in a situation in which where political scientists for instance 10 years ago would say desperately European citizens don't care at all about Europe they don't even know it exists etc. Nowadays they're happy because there is this politicization as my colleague has just called people are aware of it they discuss it politically but often in a very negative light like in the Ukraine referendum in the Netherlands it ultimately became almost a test case of do we want to be part of the European Union or not. But we could also read this in a much more optimistic light. Finally there is interest in European integration. We need to find ways to turn this into a more open dialogue in which real and carefully arguments are discussed in what might for now at least remain overlapping national public spheres talking about Europe. And then finally and then I wind up the final point I would want to make is that if we want identification we're talking about identity which refers to some kind of notion of commonness, commonality. But I feel that particularly in these times of multiple crises as some would call it we're not anymore extremely clear of what that commonality might be. And so relating this to the idea of publicity I think we need a lot of more open debate about the finality of the European integration process. There was a missed moment with the European draft constitution. We need a new constitutional moment in which this time there's much more involvement of indeed increasingly critical citizens that discuss together with all kinds of other actors what the finality of this European project are supposed to be. Thank you. To come back to what the four of you said in this first round so to speak you have talked about the expectations of the Europeans of the need to build a Europe that's more top-down to hear people's voices to let them be heard. This Europe which is multi-control, which is Erasmus, which is people going to work in other member states this is a marginal part of European population. This is either workers or academics or intellectuals or students who have this mobility that the European Union wanted to foster for decades. What about all the rest? Well about all the maybe 75% of Europeans that stay at home that don't go abroad apart from in order to visit another country. It's on, it's on. Not anymore. He doesn't like me. Sorry, I just as a writer I hope I have a right to go into details from this wonderful elegant generalization because I'm thinking who are Europeans and I'm really glad to hear about students but I'm in touch with many diasporas in Belgium, in Brussels. This is a very multicultural city but Brussels is not only about expats not only about European Union workers but it's also about Belgian Congolese, about Muslims, about Belgian Moroccans and I'm in touch with them and I'm thinking we should really include them to this debate because now what happens is that the second generation of Moroccans who came to Belgium for example they feel Belgians but they are not treated like Belgians. The same happens with Congolese people who are born Belgians who have the Belgian identity card but they don't have the identity in themselves, Belgian identity. And for example I will just give the detail because I think you know I have some approach to this. For example in schools in Belgium of course we all know the painful history between Belgium and the Congo, the former colony. For example Belgian Congolese students learn about their identity in the context of slavery. So if we serve citizens of Europe because they are citizens of Europe if we serve them the first contact with their history with their ancestors by humiliating them we will not go further and that's why when I heard here the word debate I'm thinking we shouldn't maybe debate so much, we should really talk to these people, we should discuss with them because there are many relationships within Europe and not only within European countries but also between continents between European and African continents that should be discussed and for example we should maybe listen to Europeans who were born in Muslim countries or who were born in Africa. For example I brought the book by Amin Malouf. This is quite a known essay called In the Name of Identity, Violence and the Need to Belong even though it was written 20 years ago but it still says a lot about this painful relationship between Europe and Africa because as Europeans we have to admit we colonized Africa and we are in the relationship with Africa so why not include this thinking of Afro-peans to our thinking about Europeans? Does anyone have the same sense of feeling? Is that a question of education on how it works, a question of education on history and achievements? I think it's enough to have a look at the map of the last electoral polls in Austria. It's really striking. Opposition between let's say big and middle-sized cities in favor of the pro-European candidate and the rest of the country, small cities, countryside probably which a relation with Europe and the world through TV set, not direct implication. I think we should study that very carefully because we will have in the next year in France for example more or less the same kind of internal geopolitical divide and I fully agree with Adam Mechnick position on the new political divide in lines. Many European countries not between the left and the right, between the left and the right are working together in the European Parliament but between politicians proposing as a program to close the country and others on a more open line. Openness provided but this will treat it as the next panel on protection provided that there is security. So it's rather complex to deal with openness as a political program when you have to confront external threats. And you are both coming back to this idea that Paul Blocher also talked about which is this question of identity. How can we make people feel that there are Europeans even if they tend to as we are seeing not only the polls in the elections ever since the 10th of the century and especially in the elections for the European Parliament in 2014 as populist parties, Euro skeptics, Europhobic parties are now on the front of the scene, are now under the headlights. Do you think that's also a sense of identity that's disappearing or this identification with the European Union either disappeared or was never really created apart from the political construction? Is that something that is related to this top-down, bottom-up idea that you were butting about? I mean, the fact that Europe was built because of political necessity, historical necessity, does it have to be entirely rebuilt? Does it have to be entirely refought? Or is it just a question of adequating what exists, adequating what we have built which is a very complicated institutional system? We have heard the expression this morning of an Ivory Tower that is in Brussels because there is not only in Brussels people that live there, there are also people that build the Union and there is an Ivory Tower in terms of complicated institutions. Do you think Europeans can relate to the way Europe was built or does it have to be rebuilt, so to speak, or can we just educate people to think about that? I don't know whether that's a good question, but it all pertains to this idea of identity. Are we Europeans? What is Europe? It was built in a way that does not always help us to feel that we belong to an identity or to a group. Well, sorry. I feel part of the problem, and perhaps it in a way speaks to the problem that again also Adam Michnik raised of the sort of return of nationalism. One of the main problems seems to be that increasingly less people are aware of the potentialities of Europe and at the same time the increasingly less potentialities of national member states. And so increasingly it seems to me political leads themselves have retrenched into nationalistic or pseudo-nationalistic strategies and vocabularies in that way convincing people who already look warm about the EU in the first place and a very few that are able to in a very clear way make us understand why the only way forward is an European Union and a more politicized European Union. So I feel in that sense there is a kind of responsibility I think of political leaders in current times of whom majority I would say is not able to explain the original importance of a European project. And there are many ways in which you can think about it. You can think about it in terms for instance of cross-border problems that are going to do with nuclear energy or the environment. It's evident to me that even if perhaps the security issue is now overriding anything else, an old-fashioned you might say dream of a kind of fortress Europe is simply impossible to realize. It's not an answer to this problem. There needs to be a European collaborative effort to deal with this. And so I feel that it's not necessarily about top-down explanation it's about a kind of political intellectual honesty of what kind of problems Europeans are facing and by as a populist leader arguing that we need to close borders or as in the UK or Germany saying we will reduce access including of EU citizens to social security. That is backtracking into a past that doesn't even exist anymore. And so there I feel there's a huge problem that indeed again the Europeanists in this case rather than the Democrats and the Weimar people the Europeanists are disappearing or becoming too timid or they don't see their own mission anymore. Michel Fouser. Yes, I would like to discuss the idea of return of nationalism in the European Union. It's a return of something we have maybe forgotten which is that the basic frame of the Union is a nation. I'm speaking in Barcelona. Everybody knows that there is a nation in Catalonia and a nation of nations in Spain. It's complex. It's like that. It's history and territory. Don't forget that 6 out of the 10 new member states which joined the European Union in 2004 had no sovereign existence 15 years before or at least for former Czechoslovakia in the same configuration. This is exactly what I learned when I served as a French ambassador in Latvia which was the same in Estonia and Lithuania between 2002 and 2006 exactly in the time of accession to NATO and to the EU. What was the driver of that? It's first about freedom, security, to enjoy sovereignty and to have to rebuild a nation. It was basically about nationhood. Same story in the north, in the south, like in Poland after 1919. So we tended to forget that. And the EU today is a kind of, you know, the law style, I would say confederation of nation states. It's like the United Nations, no United Nations without nations, no European Union without nations. And the main problem is that when you have to face sovereign threats the answer, the first answer and the first reflex of answer is a national one because it's about security, identity, etc. When you go to Schuman Square in Brussels the art, the temple of our beloved institutions. You have security forces now, armed forces, police forces. It's not EU police, it's not EU army. There is no EU army, there is no EU police. It's a Belgium royal armed forces. Still today, why? Because at this stage of the process when you are facing sovereign threats, sovereign insecurity, the answer is by definition national. And the best way is not to claim more Europe, more Europe but to push national government to work closer together. This is the first step. This is what the citizens are asking for. I don't want once again to jump to the second panel but there is today a link between so-called identity and a sense of, let's say, security of a way of life and I think we, you know, homeland, fatherland, I'm at our not empty concept and maybe there are a kind of refuge against the threats of globalization, amplified by extremist propaganda and TV programs. So we have to deal with that today. We have to find a better articulation between nationhood in very different form according to Spain, Sweden. It's a very different story. And the supranational level, which is European institution. Claudia, you wanted to react to that? Yeah, I also wanted to... Oh, it's on, it's on. It's on, okay. I also wanted to make a point on that bottom-up top-down thing on the point you originally meant made on the, what about the 75% of people that don't have an experience, day-to-day experience with Europe. Let me a bit provocatively say that maybe they have an experience with Europe. It's a provocation what I'm going to say but there is a hard point in it. One of my colleagues in Uwe Skulda does research on migrant workers on building sites in the European Union. And among other things, he did an interview with posted workers on the European Central Bank building site, which is in Frankfurt in the city where I live. And what that taught me is that there is really two classes of people that are mobile in Europe. People like me, who have the benefit, because I'm welcome. I have a Marie Curie research fellowship in Finland at that time and I traveled and I was welcome and it was very nice, very privileged. And posted workers at the ECP building site in Frankfurt who don't even have the marginal workers' rights that a German worker enjoys because the sort of loss of posted workers in the directive add up in such a way that in the end they lose all the rights and that we end up in a sort of Manchester capitalism period. I'm saying this because this is sort of two poles of an extreme. On the one hand you have the privileged pro-European allies who will benefit and on the other hand you have sort of the 75% that you managed mentioned and probably the lower level of the 75% who really are afraid and who have some reason to be afraid. Because I would prefer to be a poor worker under the German law than a posted worker at the ECP building site. And I think this is something that has to be taken very seriously. And when I meant debating Europe I didn't mean debating in a top-down way but sort of to bring in people. And the second example that I would like to mention was the French debate on the EU constitutional treaty in 2005 where we had really a large public debate on the EU in one country. The interest in European integration decisively rose during that debate. 45% of the people said that European integration is the most important topic in their everyday talks shortly before the referendum. And then we all know that the referendum went out negatively so the majority of the people voted against that constitutional treaty. Yes but then I'm sorry but this is also what democracy is about. When I read sort of the interpretations of the referendum my German colleagues had a prejudice and it was that the French voted no only because of domestic reasons. Partly this is true but partly this is not true. Many French voters voted no because they disapproved of the constitutional treaty. It's an informed no. Personally I don't share the reasons of the informed no but we have to accept that this is an informed no. So I think that if there is sort of no serious efforts to include those people that more or less informed say we feel decoupled from what is happening in Europe we'll have a big problem. And I think this is precisely the feeling that all the populist Eurosceptic parties or Eurocritical parties that we see popping up address. And the problem is that they have a point in it. So I think there is a lot to be done. But how then can we do that? How can we foster this identity this sense of membership this sense of being part of Europe for those people who come from outside of Europe for those who see their future in the nation and maybe only there for some of them for those who are the disenfranchised of Europe and for those who have a confused identity as a poll blocker? I mean what could be done? Is it education? Do we create fora? Do we spend our nights talking and throwing rocks on the police like they do in Paris under Nureed Abou? What is there to be done to Claudia Vestam? I've studied the examples of nation building and I find they are very instructive. What sort of people did in Germany for instance because Germany is a young nation or in France in nation building was that there were schools so that was education. There was the military. There's this famous book by Eugene Weber turning peasants into Frenchmen who explained that it was the schools and the military service. No we don't have that in Europe. I mean we have the schools but we have to be a good thing. But education then I think is one thing. So I think it's a serious point to talk about a Europeanization of education, school education everywhere. Children need to be taught that European integration is a good thing. Then we have experience. I have a French civil godchild so in French there is this baptême civil and I have a French godson which is really lovely and my children grow up with their French friends so that's very nice they experience it that they are friends and then my children ask me always, mommy so is Paris in Germany and I say no it's not in Germany but it's in Europe so it's neighboring etc so I think they grow up with a European identity. So we have that and I think that it does something to people that there are very limited border controls but then the third point and this is what I meant with my example at the ECB building site is that the growing nation states they gave the citizens benefits they gave them a policy output and this is what I mean by the danger, if people just have the feeling that this policy output that comes from Europe threatens me and I don't like it then you have these re-nationalization and these xenophobic tendencies facilitated by it so I think that the question and the debate of what is Europe about and what kind of Europe do we want is not an academic one, not at all I think it's one that should be put on a more everyday level so what do we want the policy output of Europe is for those 75% maybe in such a way and what is it? Well could I first come back to something that disturbed me a little bit Michel's remark on that national national security when a security is national by definition I find that highly disturbing yeah well I have problems with that I have to say but that's perhaps part of my that's why it's a debate that's perhaps why I'm so confused but of course there's no one answer and I think if you talk about the nationalization experiences of particularly the 19th century in Europe we probably don't want to repeat that I mean there was a lot of top down elitism going on there but what I from my own work I sort of gather as useful and helpful is for instance looking at different processes of constitutional reform in which citizens have been included this is an area where many people would argue but this is expert knowledge this is far away from ordinary people they cannot talk about this they don't know about this they don't have the capacity to discuss this but if you look at some of the processes that have been done in Iceland in Ireland in Romania two times in the forum constitutionality you see that there are the right institutional settings deliberative for of different kinds then there are many ways in which citizens can be very meaningfully included in a discussion of what are in the end fundamental issues and I feel that if you only let citizens every once in a while say something in very punctuated moments as referenda are you risk every time that it will backlash the frustration that has built up in between those moments comes out in those moments and also for instance you see it in your Ukraine referendum in the Netherlands most people voted in the end were frustrated they were not necessarily well informed they will people they thought finally have a moment to listen to them so to speak yes but then there is also this question of education you talked about since Claudia Wissner spoke about it and Gragina spoke about education and talking to people you said that well the military service is disappearing it was also disappeared it is certainly the case in France and I would like to yes education but I would like to yes this roundabout Schumann roundabout bothers us and the security because I'm thinking why the security is on the Schumann roundabout because they were terrorist attacks in Brussels not far away from my home by the way why they were done because several people from the Molenberg districts were radicalized by Islamic state and I'm thinking now about this you said Michel Foucher about the need of working between nations and European Union and I'm thinking about working deeper with people who live actually in multicultural cities very physically because I know Molenberg because I've been there several times I have friends there Molenberg is not the nest of terrorists there are some terrorists definitely who became active recently but I'm thinking what made them to radicalize so much because some of their needs they are Belgians by the way Europeans and French as well some of these Europeans their needs were not fulfilled by European Union by Belgium, by France and I'm thinking about several needs one of this is a need of identity one is the need to belong to a group especially important for young people another need of spirituality and I'm not thinking about religion because as we know it's impossible to have spiritual life without religion but unfortunately recently the religions are taking all this spiritual need this is also a need of simple interpretation of the very complex reality especially for young people this is very important and a need, a simple need of action, of rebellion that is quite common especially at this age they were people of 20 something years old and go back to school what Claudia mentioned my kids also go to schools not European schools not privileged schools they go to local schools and I discuss with them they discuss with me sometimes the situation and the problem is that even though Belgium is in European Union but the multicultural complexity of identity is not appreciated and who knows two or three languages is taken as a burden because he lowers the level of the national language of French for example and unfortunately the same happens with Belgians born in Moroccans families that have certain accent so they they keep this accent because it comes from their homes and then they can't go any further with this accent because on the labour market they are not appreciated so it's a very well known case of telemarketing that if Belgians start to work there if their name is Mohammed or Ahmed they are re-baptised by their bosses as Jean Paul or Luke or something like this so I'm thinking we should go deeper to this level maybe governments local governments should work improving the education and maybe widening this identity as a really multicultural identity but I'm not talking about privileged people like us who can travel but I'm thinking about refugees as well or really immigrants and is this something Europe does? Is this something Europe should do? Is it something that is the in the last result the work of a local or municipality or whatever I mean identifying with Europe is something it seems more and more difficult for probably for young people nowadays what lacks here? What do we need? Do we need a project Michel Fouchet spoke about geopolitics European power what do we need? How do we identify our achievements again? Do we need values and how to put them forward and how to it seems we need to have them accepted if we want to this way of Europe to work is it a necessity and is it also feasible nowadays Claudia Bessna I think it's not so easy and that is probably one reason behind the helplessness that we also sense in the current crisis that even the leading EU politicians don't seem to agree what they do this all for so one point that I always feel is underestimated is the point of peace and that's not a banality once again I mean we have had 70 years of peace in most of central and western Europe accepting the Balkans that was a very sad experience it was a very shocking experience the Balkan was in the 1990s and I think it showed us how precious it is to have peace and I think this is underestimated but it's obviously a problem because there is always a difference between explanation and feeling so two or three generations that haven't experienced a war anymore how shall we explain them that war is something that it's good not to have I mean it's a problem but I think that once again children feel that when they see what happens in Syria and when then you explain them that we don't have that in Europe anymore because we have European integration then that's one point but I think that the second point really is that maybe there is not a predestined answer for what we want for the European Union except for peace and I think that sort of the problem is that we have a little bit of a void because the inner market is not an answer in itself I think it was Jean-Claude Juncker who said once that people don't identify with the common market and I mean that's absolutely true why should I identify with the common market there's absolutely no reason to make me like a European common market if it still existed yeah but I think that people identify with something that gives them benefits and that they can easily identify with and that they can in a way subscribe to and if it is sort of in a more in a negative way and so the French referendum debate that was sort of one thing that left me in a way dissatisfied after this very intensive debate was that it was only about the Europe we do not want it's not about the Europe that we want and I think unfortunately it's difficult to say at the moment what is actually the Europe that we want you can ask me what would be the Europe that I want and I would say well I, Claudia Wiesner, would like a Europe of mobility, of peace of human rights of equal values of taking up all the good of difference that we have taking up the Muslim Jewish and the Christian heritage and the like heritage is too and it's a rich continent for me the European social model what would enter into that too and I would also say that there are probably things that you would learn in a global comparison when you sort of compare I always feel that if we compare Europe to the rest of the world to the US then you see that it's different but that's then again I mean Paul would probably say something different and Michel Fouchier too so I think we need a debate about that Grasin, do you want to say maybe something else also? I would like to say yes, no I would like to say that even though I really appreciate this point of view but I'm thinking praising the achievements of European Union would not speak to the younger generation I'm really in touch with them and I see that it's the same situation like in Poland that my generation appreciate what happened appreciate that we have now free market that we have democracy, that we have all this liberty, now by the way threatened by the government by the new government but younger people were born in this reality and for them it's obvious that they have it, that they have peace for example for them in Europe they really were born in this situation, they don't know the difference so I think we should find another values that will speak to them and this is of course very very difficult but I was thinking in everyday life what we can do is the local bonding is really that people sometimes do not identify with nations they do not identify with something huge like European Union institution but sometimes they feel really happy identifying with city or identifying with neighborhood and I'm thinking if Molenbek would not be made a ghetto and it would be more included into Brussels people would be really less radicalized so I would maybe again go down with the thinking maybe not generalize so much but go to schools, go to local initiatives go to local cultural centers that works for example in Brussels the cultural local centers where we have group of artists from the same neighborhood from really the same city and we like each other, we know each other there are Muslims, there are Atheists, they are Catholics and it works somehow Yes, Paul Blokhan I just wanted, before we close we haven't even mentioned once yet the European Citizens Initiative as a way of engaging people I'm just thinking of this not necessarily only because of the instrument itself which is a recent one but also because a number of the initiatives were in themselves about how to engage people more like there was at least one or perhaps even two on Erasmus Erasmus Plus is a program and asking for more funding well that's a very banal but I think an important statement was beyond merely students it's including teachers, it's including traineeships so that's an important point there wasn't also another one let me vote it was called European Citizens Initiative exactly on making political European citizenship more robust so I think there are propositions out there a lot of the transnational civil society groups and we haven't talked about this name it might be almost a curse word but his name yet Yanis Varoufakis with his recent DM-25 movement makes very strong claims about including citizens into political deliberative processes and so I'm not entirely sure that the problem is the dearth of possible alternative strategies to be found it's much more about the political will of actually following these up and I'm not always entirely sure if to strengthen these aspects we need some kind of indeed narrative of I mean we all know what the positive parts about Europe are I think is it I mean it's written down article 2 and you can translate that into more detail terminology but I think we all agree about the rule of law democracy and things like that so we need tools is something that you all seem to think in order to touch the citizens before we wrap this up I was wondering whether someone in the audience thought we had missed something missed a point very briefly missed a point that we should have talked about feel free to come forward if you have a very short sentence to give us in order to enrich the debate it does not seem to be the case I was wondering whether after this debate you had changed your mind about what we talk today I mean before you came here you all prepared a few lines and for a lot more than that and I was wondering whether this debate I changed your opinion on maybe one point let's start with Bob Lothar because it's the closer to me well the main issue seems to me indeed the issue of a return to nationalism and if one thing I don't mind during the debate is that we are not prepared enough to face this challenge which again referring to Adam Michnik's talk is ultimately about a debate about open versus close society so I think it's crucial but some of the instruments I try to to suggest I think should help us to keep a society open but it's equally true that if there's very little will amongst many members of society this is a very difficult task and so that needs to be reconfigured in my list in one way or the other Claudia Wisner I would say that I've learned to focus more on two things that I learned from Grazina and from Michel Fouschi and I think that Grazina's point that she insisted upon that debate and discussion needs to be sort of at the everyday level in schools in cultural centers in workplaces maybe you shouldn't forget about that that is a point I hadn't thought about in detail so much and the second point is that I came to think about the hard facts and I think that Michel Fouschi's point of security that will be discussed in the next panel is probably one of the hard facts sort of major points that the nation states guaranteed when they were developing that they guaranteed the security of their citizens and that probably refers to to output the output that I mentioned so strongly to Michel Fouschi Of course I always by profession tend to look at real politics from the top and so it's good for me to to listen and to learn about what Claudia said and Paul on the important role of permanent debate and the positive value of a no of a negative answer even if I think that they will not have a Brexit because the British I don't know if they are citizens subject of the queen tend to answer the question not like the French or the Dutch about the return of nationalism once again I'm afraid not about affirmation of nationhood and specific historical formation of nationhood but I'm afraid of the silence of pro-European politicians or responsible politicians when the populist leaders nationalist leaders are on the stage very noisy even in Britain you listen more to the Brexiter than to the let's say politician in favor of status quo and this is I think a very important point there is a lack of political commitment by political leaders of each member states to endorse more clearly their European commitment so the space is open to nationalist leaders I study a lot and I was part of negotiation in the Balkans when you have a crisis somewhere at the beginning somebody is giving an order to kill, to attack to clean a village you have always the donor dot you have always decision makers starting the conflict always by the way European citizenship is a permanent political fight a daily struggle this is my conclusion my conclusion and I heard when I listened to you it came to my mind that we should maybe concentrate on helping forming the citizens society because with all the details that we give with helping schools with the sensibilization of fighting racism in everyday life I mean racism not only because of the color of skin but because of the accent because of the name I mean every aspect that make can make small wounds and these wounds can grow to bigger traumas and I'm thinking citizens society is really really important especially right now as an antidotum for the radical populist politics because only if we feel the solidarity between us, between neighbors, between people that we know then we can do something about it and we have great example in Poland for example I mean the big solidarity that changed completely the system and the reality in Poland that's one step it was 25 years ago but now we have the good example as well because even though having very conservative government that changes everything right now but we have a growing movement we have another solidarity for example on streets of Warsaw there were 250,000 people recently on the manifestation and this is the really citizen society so we should maybe insist on strengthening people and people's local bonding that's my point from our discussion and on that note I would like to thank you all very much for this very enriching debate and I think there might be points that we have not talked about but it seems that one conclusion an easy one seems it seems is that there needs to be concrete engagement and that's probably the work of teachers of NGOs of local agents more than maybe the European institutions and it all takes place where people actually live and certainly not in the European Union institutions and governments even though nations are maybe or maybe not more and more important today so I hope this was give you insights and that this debate was suggested to you enough to draw something from it as all our four speakers seems to have and I certainly did thank you very much a question there are there microphones I don't know we have maybe three five minutes do we have three five minutes? probably two minutes we have two minutes it seems so a very short I must say something sorry for delay the lunch but it's an ice-breaking exercise to just speak something from this side I'm speaking from the perspective of the citizens of Serbia which is the candidate in the process of EU integration and building this identification and I missed the term strategy I didn't hear enough in this discussion because we're speaking a lot about analyzing the situation but not so much about solutions if I take a look in this integration process and this negotiation chapters this is the some kind of strategy of EU for integration I think that EU too much insist on this regulation strategies but not on education strategies if you look the opening of negotiation you will see that this is more outside process than inner process because you can build identity from outside with regulation and you can build inner identity with education and this we feel this lack of this education strategies in this integration process and this can be more discussed about these EU strategies for creating the EU identity this is enough Voila Nick close to you there on the Thank you very much I'm Paul Maureen I'm the Executive Director of EGAM the European Grassroots Anti-Racist Movement I wanted to thank you very much for the panel I think you identified quite well what is the problem the fact that young people today are kind of lost generation because of the democratic perspectives because the radicals on their side they offer certain perspectives that we are here refusing you identified also the fact that 75% of the European citizens don't travel are not really well connected to what is the EU and the European values are so the issue of making Europe and its democratic values a reality for young people is important and at EGAM we have a campaign that we are running together with European student organizations in Europe which is called universal Erasmus to generalize Erasmus to make Erasmus so universal accessible to all young citizens in Europe so not just 20% and we're doing lots of lobbying towards the EU so that it can be included in the 2020 budget and maybe ideally replace the civil service that used to be the instrument of nationhood on building nationhood in the 19th century I think this tool and Erasmus can be a great tool to make sure young people can belong to Europe thank you thank you very much thank you for your interventions I hope there will be food for thought and next debate I will thank again our panelists today and I think it's past due time for lunch great thank you