 Welcome to episode 17 of Eat NATO for Breakfast. Today we have a very special programme. We're broadcasting in two languages, with translation into English and Spanish. If you're watching us through People's Dispatch English, you'll be hearing me in the voice of somebody else, our interpreter, Sarah, because today I'm going to be speaking Spanish. And if you're watching the programme through the YouTube of the party of the European left, you'll be surprised to hear Francesca speak Spanish. Many thanks to People's Dispatch and PIE for making this possible. In the previous 16 programmes we've spoken about history, the new Cold War, the ecological and feminist struggle for peace, and the specific impacts of war and NATO on the environment and health. But we felt that we needed to go deeper into one of the fundamental players of NATO and of this international crisis, which is the European Union. To that end, today we again have a programme full of women who'll speak to us about Europe's role in this war and in today's geopolitics. We have two prominent leaders of the European left party, Maite Moller, who's vice president and responsible for international relations and Claudia Haidt, coordinator of the EL Peace and Security Working Group. Today we have two Spaniards and two Germans. Welcome, Maite and Claudia. How are you today? And where are you speaking to us from? Are you looking forward to eat NATO for breakfast with us? Firstly, thank you so much for the invitation. It really is a pleasure to be with you. It's always a pleasure to see how women are empowered. And speaking of such inadvertent, almost masculine subjects, I'm in Pamplona, which is where I normally live between Pamplona and Brussels. And I am, yes, looking forward to eat NATO for breakfast, but I know I'm going to have to have some liver salts afterwards to be able to digest it properly. How about you, Claudia? Good morning. And yes, I would like to eat NATO for breakfast, too. And it could be hard to digest, so Maite is absolutely right. I'm talking to you from Stuttgart in the south of Germany. And by the way, Stuttgart is host to two major command structures of the US military. On the one hand side, it's the European command. And the European command, maybe you know it, maybe you don't, is the US military's supreme command for the European Union countries, but also for Russia. And Stuttgart is also host to Africa. This is the African supreme command structure of the US military. So those are the two only supreme command structures of the US military outside of the US. And this might give you an indication on how good allies the Germans are if they are host to those command structures. And me as part of the peace movement and of the left party, I'm always paying regular visits to those command structures in order to tell them that they are not as welcome as they think they might be. Yes, but the people that are welcome are ourselves to together have the NATO for breakfast, Franziska. I can see you once again drinking your coffee out of your eat breakfast for NATO cup. How are you today? Good morning, everyone. And thank you very much for organizing all the complicated arrangements around translation. And no, I'm not drinking coffee anymore. I've switched to herbal tea. It's been, to say the least, it's been exciting enough. I really need to calm down and calm my nerves. So no more coffee for me for a while. Thank you, Claudia. And thank you, MITRE for joining us today. I think Claudia already jumped right into the subject. We need to look at, we need to look at the role of the European Union, but also even more specifically the role of the different countries. We have tried to do so a little bit in the past already looking at speaking with people from Norway. We will be speaking with people from Italy. So we are looking into the countries as well to find out where they're standing today. It'll be the European Union session. So the war in the Ukraine has sort of brought into the sharp focus, the global situation in many ways. We clearly see that there's a division in the world again in the 20th century, like in the two blocks, a new Cold War. We have NATO on the one side playing a central role. And somehow the agendas between the United States and Russia are sort of playing out. And in the middle is Europe, not only geographically, but also politically, because the European Union is related in political terms and social and commercial, well, in political and social terms a lot with the US, but also in commercial terms a lot with Russia. So how do we see this role of the European Union in this global situation? What is the weight of the European Union in all this? And how has or why, to some extent, it doesn't seem that NATO is really determining the conversation or is strengthened in Europe, is really playing a much more, suddenly a much more prominent role after it seemed for a while like it, you know, it was superfluous military alliance. Maybe we can start with that question. Thank you very much. For this question, I could speak about until the cows come home, because there are several questions and they're all key, the ones that you've raised. And as this is breakfast, let's be as quick as possible. European construction, this is the issue that we need to talk about. To build European Union without including Russia was stupid because Europe isn't everything except for Russia. It's everything, including Russia. Europe geographically is so. That was a big blunder doing that. Well, economically, I hardly need to comment on that. But right from the outset, it should have been a construction of Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals. So we started with a blunder. If we'd built a European Union, including the biggest country in Europe then today, we wouldn't be in the situation where in that's point number one. So it's key that we show our shame. So our shame for not having done this in Europe. How can it be that in Finland such an important decision which is to join NATO, a country, Finland, which has been an example together with Sweden and others of balance, just in five minutes overnight decides to join NATO without even consulting its population. This is a complete lack of democracy. Even in Spain, a referendum was held to decide whether to join NATO or not. I know it was a complicated thing to do. But what is happening now? The EU is strengthening, was encouraging people to join other countries to join NATO. They're not saying that openly, but in a veiled way they are encouraging countries that are not in NATO to join NATO. And I don't want to say that I'd like to eat NATO for breakfast, but actually don't think that I haven't realized that this mineralized version of European Union is completely useless and also completely dependent on the United States. Claudia, in your opinion? Claudia, your opinion? Well, as Maite already has pointed out, we are talking about the militarized European Union. And if we talk about European Union, we have to consider the foundations on which it is built. And you might know that the legal foundation of the European Union at the moment is the so-called Treaty of Lisbon. And this Treaty of Lisbon came into force in 2009. And it's the basis for developments in security and foreign policies and so on. And you might have noticed that there are some significant changes we have to see in European Union just now. And for example, this treaty includes something totally strange, at least for me, namely the obligation of member states to, and now I quote, progressively improve their military capabilities. So for my point of view, it's the only, it's not a country, but the only state building or community of states which is actually founded on a legal obligation, on a constitutional obligation, even to improve its military spending, to spend more and more money to become stronger and stronger. This is totally crazy. And now, actually, Germany is copying this framework of constitutional obligation to improve military spending. And we've already talked about this in other issues of Eatnato for breakfast. But Germany now is proposing to spending 100 billion euros just to improve its armament. And this 100 billion euros are to be put into the German constitution so that they really have to be used even by future governments for buying tanks and ammunition and war planes and fighter jets and whatever. So what we are seeing now has started by European Union, but is actually being implemented by more and more countries, for example, at the moment in Germany. And if we are talking about the European Union, actually, we have to talk about Germany. You know, for a long time, Germany has been the dominant economic power within the European Union. And it had catastrophic implications during the austerity crisis, the euro crisis, this dominant role of Germany. And now we've also seen an increasing political dominance of German policies within the European Union. And now this is actually complemented by a stronger military role. And if Germany is actually spending 2% of its GDP for military reasons, and this has a global implication. With this 2% of the GDP, Germany becomes the third largest spender globally after the U.S., after China. In future, we will see Germany. And this is not something I'm proud of. Coming from Germany, it's something I'm really actually ashamed of. And Germany that is going to be that strong militarily is normally not good news for neighbors and seeing it on a global scale. So I will do everything to stop this and I hope we find lots of allies for this. But we are talking now about the European Union. And Germany will be also militarily the strongest part within this European Union. So we just are not talking only about an alliance of states with the European Union. But we are talking about an alliance of states with a dominant power or two dominant powers, Germany and France side by side. We know that both countries don't have a past which is dominated by let's say peaceful foreign policies. Germany and I don't have to talk about World Wars and with France, you know, it's colonial past and even colonial presence, and this is forming the foreign policy of the European Union. So what we are seeing now is a very militaristic European Union. Some of this militarism is still ambition and not reality. But this ambition is really founded on a lot of money. So it can become reality. And thus this make the European Union into an independent player. This is what some of our politicians tell us, hey, it's going to be an independent European Union, independent from NATO, independent from NATO. But in order to be independent, you have to be our aims. You have to be our goals. You have to use our means. None of this is true. So what we are seeing with the European Union that it is working side by side with NATO, it has the same aims. And it's not an alternative. We are going to talk about this, but it's just a very bad copy of what NATO is. And it's not a European Union I want. I think Claudia has set the scene of what we want to talk about now. She spoke about ambition. She spoke about European Union ambition, but I'd like to actually carry on talking about what Maite said at the end of her intervention. Rather, this ambition also follows what the US is aiming for. So could you say a few words about whether the European Union is something in its own right, does it have its own independent foreign affairs? And if not, why not? And also because many of us would like a different kind of European project such as Claudia, what can we do to chart our own destiny? So first of all, Maite and then Claudia, let's see what you have to say. I think that Claudia has, yes, started to set the scene. I'm just going to talk about two specific issues. Firstly, from what I've seen as an older lady who's seen how the European Union has developed and I've followed it closely because I'm in charge of international relations for the European left and have been for the last 20 years, I don't know what you think about this and it's almost a question to you, but as I see it, there are increasingly worse overseas affairs representatives of the EU. A few years ago, we were complaining about our representative. What could we say now about Mr. Burrell? I don't know what's happening in the European Union today, but what started out being a very interesting project because it was a very interesting project, we were creating something rational in the European Union and I supported that idea, but this rational construction of a European Union should have its own policies, its own independent policies, economic, overseas, and where it has less of its own independent projects and I think Claudia said that quite clearly is everything that's related to militarisation and foreign affairs because here in this field, we are being completely controlled and led by the United States, so the foreign affairs policy of the European Union for me is something that makes me once again question and ask myself what's the European Union for and the second issue. There's also a problem of the states that make up the EU or rather the governments of the EU because otherwise it's just a kind of a circus, it's a kind of theatre where a lot of other countries are being harmed for example, Cuba criticising Cuba and criticising other people and other countries, so the European Union has a problem, it's a really serious problem which is who's ruling Germany, who's leading France, who's in the government of all the different European Union countries when for example, Pedro Sánchez goes to Ukraine to visit Zelensky. These images of our governments, of the European Union governments, for me are very concerning. It would seem that the only thing, only people that are saying things with common sense are Pope Francis and sometimes China and Cuba as well. So whilst our states, the states that are members of the European Union don't have progressive governments, governments that are against war, that are against militarisation and that in favour above all of peace, then the European Union is just a complete disaster and it would be better if it didn't have any overseas affairs policy. So we've got these dependent relationships. Thank you. Well, I think I'm just going to follow up on what Maite is saying, if it's okay. And what we are asking ourselves is if the European Union actually is something which is acting on its own with its own values with regard to its foreign policy. And yes, of course European Union is different from the US. But if you look on the foreign policy, actually the US government should write a thank you note to Putin for bringing the alliance closer together than within the last 10 or 20 years. Within the last 10 or 20 years we've seen some small manoeuvres of doing a little bit different things there and so what Putin actually managed is to enforce the structure of NATO again to make it stronger than ever before. So actually if we are talking about rational policies, I don't see them within the US government, within NATO, within the European Union, but I also don't see them in Moscow and with what Putin is now doing with his kind of foreign policies. Actually it looks like two trains running towards one another and all of them pretending it's not my fault, it's the other one who is rising, who is running towards me. And I have to keep on because if I don't keep on, then the other will win and this is moral bankruptcy. So we are talking about morals and not about policies and not about the people who will suffer by this kind of policies. And there actually has been pressure for a very long time by the US on its European allies to increase their military spending and to increase their military ambitions, level of ambitions. And this was okay, something happened, but not as much as the US government actually had wanted. What we've seen in the last years is actually that every crisis was used to increase the military spending and to increase the level of ambition for military activities. And now we see at least for the moment the final step, the war against Ukraine, which cemented the alliance, made it even more into a strong military actor, which is using this moment in time not to find ideas how to overcome the confrontation but actually to implement policies which will deepen the rift, which will make the world into an even more dangerous place. And it's like a militaristic reflex, but it's not a reflex, it's policy. It's policy which has long been provided for, but now has the moment to be implemented. And the reason for the US to put this pressure on its European allies to improve their military spending is actually that the US doesn't want to change its policy in Europe, but it wants to do less for the same policy and be free to implement pressure in the Pacific region towards China. So we see actually a continuation of US policies which are now being implemented by its European allies more and more and leaving the US free to put pressure on China over the Pacific. So we don't see this in recent years. I've seen the idea that the US is being a little less present in the European countries as something positive and I still see it, but what we now see is that it's bringing the European allies to do the dirty work more and more and make the world into an even more dangerous place. And we really have to make a break with this, not reacting on provocations, on war, on suffering as we see in Ukraine now by preparing even more wars and even more suffering, but by starting to be rational and prepare for peace and not for war. Thank you, Claudia. I think you raised a number of very, very interesting points. You say not react to the military, like not react to war with a military reflex of just jumping to the conclusions. One of the things that we have seen and one of the things that is being undertaken by the EU and by other countries around the globe, but not by no means all countries, is a different type of pressure, which is the whole idea of sanctions. So we've seen that in Germany it was Robert Habeck, but I guess also Josep Borrell, they all proposed that the Europeans should just turn down the heat so we could live without Russian gas and oil for a while because this was now for the war effort and this was gonna go and bring the Russians to heal. The idea of sanctions is a very, very tricky one. We see that it will likely harm many countries and the people we have an impact on food and energy security in countries actually from Germany to South Africa, so it is actually global, this crisis. And we also see that, for example, the investment of EU countries in US liquefied gas has increased. So we also, when we look at sanctions, whether they're effective is one question, but I guess another question that we need to ask ourselves is who benefits from these sanctions. And I would like you to comment a little bit on this, on the idea of sanctions as somehow a more peaceful way of solving the two trains racing towards each other. Is that actually, is that boycott against Russia even sustainable? Are these sanctions really harming the people that they should? I mean, again, I actually know the answer to that. That seems like to that moment, almost a silly question. But I would like you, if possible, to comment a little bit on this aspect of, let's call it what it is, of this type of war theater that is also taking place. If you could, Claudia, please. Yes, I'm really convinced that what we are seeing now with the sanctions, which are implemented, for example, by European Union is actually a continuation of warfare and a continuation of building up the blocks just by other means. It's not military in itself, but the implications, the destruction it causes, the death it will cause, actually are on a level with a war. So this is economic warfare, what we are seeing now. And just to be clear, there are some sanctions I don't have a problem with. To not export weapons is actually a kind of sanction. So yes, I'm in favor of sanctioning every country or at least every country which is engaged in warfare, not to send weapons, not to export weapons. It's a sanction I'm fine with. I'm also fine with, let's say, using the luxury yachts of oligarchs to make them into lifeboats. Okay. And if we use the big mentions of oligarchs, not only the Russian ones, we also have some Ukrainian oligarchs to use them to get flats and good living for people. Also no problem for my side. But if we talk about sanctions with widespread effects like the sanctions on oil and gas, we have to be very clear that they are causing actually more harm than they are useful and they won't help the people in Ukraine. You know, the sanctions the EU is implementing just now are not short-term sanctions. You can see it by the question that some of the EU countries only have to implement them in two years or in three years. So it's not about the short-term help for Ukrainian people. It's about the restructuring of economic connections and of economic cooperation. And this economic cooperation is being more or less stopped or it's on the way to being stopped between the Western and Middle European Union countries and Eastern Europe and also with China it's not possible because the links are too strong but at least the links with Russia are really now being destroyed by this phase. And we are talking really about a European Union which is doing everything not to be a bridge to Russia but to building up new walls. And economic cooperation can be part of a bridge-building process. And we actually see a frenzy of sanctions in the moment which don't stop with economic sanctions. But they are continuing with cultural sanctions. They continue with stopping... stopping ways in which people from different countries can cooperate with one another. You know that there is this concept of twin cities. There is a city in Germany cooperating with a city in Russia. And really a big part of those twin cities have now stopped their cooperation. It's crazy in a time like this you have to continue talking if you want the foundation for peace. So what I now see is only foundations for future wars, for future confrontation and no foundation for future cooperation. And actually the ones who are going to bleed for this are especially in the global south. We already see in Egypt, in Tunis, in many countries in Africa and Latin America. In Asia we see a problem with hunger, with people not being able to buy what they need to survive. This is a huge, huge problem. And I don't see any pressure of the European Union to free the ships which are loaded up with grain in Ukrainian harbors. There is no pressure on this. There is pressure on a lot of other things, but no pressure to actually help those who are in need. So my take on the situation is that European Union is actually only acting in those areas of policies in which they are actually making the problems stronger and deepen the problem. And it's not really active on those areas where they could actually make a huge difference on a global scale. To make my final point, you can see the permanent nature of the sanctions of the restructuring of economic cooperation by the fact that the sanctions which are decided on now are not conditioned. They are not conditioned to withdrawal of troops or not conditioned to ceasing hostilities. They are just implemented full stop. So if they would be for people in Ukraine, they would be conditioned to the cessation of war and this isn't happening. All sorts of things are happening as we've seen in many things that aren't happening. But what we are seeing is that this is unsustainable. All these studies on energy and food security say we're heading for disaster. And also the words of Borrel, which Francesca mentioned, it seems to be forcing civilians to just actively boycott Russia from our homes. So we seem to be obliged to take part in this war. But this situation in Europe, I think we all agree, shows all the different ways that it's affecting it. And like all crises, there's also this need to seek strange alliances. We've seen, for example, how in the Middle East with the support of the Mujahideen. And in Europe, if you remember, in this dangerous context, sometimes there seems to be this naturalization of the extreme right in the European Union. And I'm really, really interested in your opinion on this. The extreme right already promotes hatred, racism, the limitation of rights, and representatives of the extreme right are increasing in number in national governments and in the European Union. Recently, you held some very interesting talks about that, talks entitled No Pasaran. We're going to put up a link for everyone who's listening to us if you'd like to have a look at that. But this violent situation is also being mixed in with sending weapons to Ukraine. And also, of course, in Ukraine, there are also organized militarized extreme right forces. So you're sending out weapons. You don't know where they're going to end up. And then there's this naturalization of violent replies. Can you say a little bit about that, Mighty? One of the most serious consequences of this war. You called it the naturalization. And I'd say the whitening of the extreme right in Ukraine, laundering it, as it were. I mean, the leaders there are dressed in military fatigues. And military fatigues and a little bit arrogant. You know, here I am. We know who he is. We've been in Kiev. We visited Ukraine, of course, before the war broke out. And we saw that in Ukraine, the government is an extreme right-wing government, as is the Hungarian government. It's an extreme right or right extremes, whatever you want to call it. And look at what's happening in Poland. Poland and Hungary are both in the European Union. And I've not seen any sanction against these countries who forbid homosexuality being spoken about in schools. Or the idea that Poland has to put an end to abortion. Nobody's sanctioning that. So it's almost like we're laundering and naturalizing, as you call it, the extreme right. This gradual naturalization and it's nauseous. I want to return to what I was saying before. The problem is that the European Union is just a sum of heads of states and presidents. These are the ones who are taking decisions. Economic decisions are taken by the ministers of EU countries. Others as well. They're not taken in the European Parliament. Major decisions are taken by governments, individual governments of the European Union. So it's a construction of the European Union that has failed at its roots. And I'd go even further than that. I think Claudia has said this a few minutes back. Who would have imagined that in Spain, after dictatorship until 1975, that today, this morning, seven o'clock in the morning, that there's an extreme right-wing party and it's a powerful party and a great deal of potential. They're completely shame-faced. They don't have any problem insulting people. Valtonik may end up being thrown into jail for having criticised the former king. And this party's already governing in a region of Spain together with the popular party. So it's not just a matter of laundering them. It's just that they've been completely integrated into... They've been normalised. I mean, it's only a few days ago in relative terms that there was a world war. And now we've got Madrid in a situation of more than 40% of people that are voting for the right and very, very high abstention levels in France as well. What are we going to see what's happening in France and what's going to happen in the legislative elections? But at the end of the day, this laundering or naturalisation of extreme right is becoming something completely normal. And this is a fact. It's not something that might happen in the future. No, no, it's already happened and it's here to stay. And I want to finalise by saying sanctions, and please allow me just this, sanctions already always paid by civilians. So you've got on the one hand the extreme right on the up. On the other hand, sanctions, whenever we feel like using them, we use them. What we're doing with that is we're getting into a situation in which there's a lack of democracy because people really don't care anymore. The case of NATO joining Finland is also a lack of democracy. And what does that help? It feeds the extreme right. And I don't want to mention the Eurovision Song Contest here because I think that's just represents such levels of degeneration that Eurovision Song Festival and what you see in the television about that, you just win against Russia. That's it. First, Russia isn't allowed to take part in the competition. This is a lack of democracy and a lack of democracy in my, where I come from is called extreme right. That's what lack of democracy means where I come from. Thank you, Maitre. I think the next, I think as far as all the contradictions and also the deficits that have been listed in the show that we've talked about, the contradictions of increased military spending for within Europe, like the controversial European Army project, PESCO and Frontex and all of these incredible contradictions also some of it very much related to what Maitre is calling a lack of democracy. We can speak a lot about what are these contradictions and deficits. I think I would like for our, I think it's the last question of the day because we're already running out of time again as it always happens when we get into an interesting conversation that we want to continue and continue because only, I don't know, sometimes only halfway through the show do we realize where do we need to go with this and where do we want to go? So we never have enough time, but hopefully we will make time perhaps in Madrid that would be great if we all meet there during the countersummit that is being prepared. But what is my question is listing the deficits and contradictions is one thing but we have the pleasure to be here with people who are actually in the European left and who are in the places where I don't know civilians and citizens might turn to and say, what do we do? How do we go about this? So what can we propose? What can we work on together? How do we bring things back together? Because for example, what Maitre was just saying about Poland and Hungary, I sometimes wonder about choices. What are the choices for these people? So before we say they all vote right because they're illiberal people who, you know, what is a good left alternative for them? Where can we provide? How does the left provide this alternative and be an alternative? And so I hope that this is meant as a positive question. I hope that we can end on a positive note of like how do we work together? How do we challenge our strength? And yeah, so I would like to give the word to Maitre and Claudia for a few more minutes to please help us, you know, make a proposition, help us with the proposals that we can join and work on together. Thank you. What a complicated question that is. I believe that the left and ecological and progressive forces that question current economic models need to unite. We need to unite in some countries that's being achieved. I think Spain is an interesting example as is France. It's a very interesting example after having been through those presidential elections as well. The progressive and left wing and green forces have actually argued much more with each other than with opposing forces, but they've managed to achieve something. And the Cubans, the Cubans say in these things, united in diversity. So that's the project that I purchase. But I want to say something to you, Francesca, which I think is what you're trying to sell us to do. What is our goal? What is the goal here? The key goal at the moment is peace. Peace. It's a key goal. And what's more, it doesn't unite all of us. We're not all united in peace. It only unites those that are anti-militarists and environmentalists. Those that are anti-militarists and feminists, for example. The issue of peace is a key axis that does unite. But some people will be left out. And those that are left out, we know who they are. And I'm not referring here to the extreme right. I'm referring to rights, right-wings. You can put any other objective before right that you want to. This needs to be a debate with social movements, with unions, with everybody so that it's not just an institutional unity because what we need is unity from the bottom upwards, from the grassroots level. So the issue of peace, peace has always been key. But the thing is, we're very divided. If you look at all the different calls that are out there for the rest of May and June, there are all sorts of calls for peace, but they're all different. And we need to talk about that. We need to say, look, okay, great. We have this vision. This is our view of the path to peace, and this is ours. But at a given moment in time, we need to bring together political spaces, people that are in grassroots movements so that we can all together come together and build peace. That's the only way to get the world to change. And if we don't understand that we need to leave outside the 25% or the 20% that separates us, sometimes we just start handing out banners. We have our own slogans and our banners. Well, no, you need to get more people involved. You don't need to say that, oh, I'm the one that's most fighting for peace. We need to unite. We need to work together. Stop looking at what separates us because, as you quite rightly said, Francesca, this summit not against NATO, but in favor of peace, because although, okay, it's against NATO, but it should be a peace summit. And this should be the place where we should all come together and with that carry on being determined to work together, together, because otherwise we're going to still end up being separate trade union forces, political forces that are fringe forces facing up an enormous, great big enemy. Thank you. Yeah, well, let me continue from where my tail left. And for me, it's especially interesting that within the last two years, we have seen that everything is possible. Within the corona pandemic, we've seen that it is possible even in our world of today to stop everything just now if you want it on a political level. And within the last weeks and months since the beginning of the war against Ukraine, we've seen that there is money. The 100 billion we already talked about in Germany, we never seem to have enough money to fight climate change. Although it's much more dangerous than Putin could ever be because it's got the potential to destroy everything on Earth that we see. So if there is the political will, we can actually decide everything politically. This is what we have seen. Even if it wasn't to the best within the last two years, sometimes for people, that we've seen that political decisions can be made. And the Tina principle that there is no alternative actually should never be used as an argument after those years. But we should only ask if there is a political will to change something. And we actually also have seen that it is possible to welcome people, to welcome refugees with people from Ukraine. It obviously wasn't as big as a problem as with people from other regions of the world. So we see that societies are able to change, able to do things if they want to. And if we use this energy to on the one hand side fight climate change to tackle all the essential crisis which are globally on the agenda or should be on the agenda like hunger or illnesses and so on, we actually could achieve a lot. And it's clear that all the global problems can only be solved if people on the globe work together. And if we start our policies with people and not with governments, we have a good first stepping stone. Therefore, it's good that if NATO heads of state are meeting in Spain, but also people from different countries are meeting and showing NATO is not acting in our interest, is not helping to solve the problems which are on the table. But we are part of the solution, NATO is part of the problem. And this might sound idealistic. And I know that people like Putin will not disappear tomorrow. But what NATO is just doing is self-fulfilling prophecy, is helping to get people like Putin stronger. They themselves act as a role model for people like Putin. All the things that we see now with Putin actually have been in some ways already ways he's working on just now have already been worked by NATO states. And I don't want to apologize for him, not at all. What he's doing is a crime, is a war crime, he should be punished for it. But it is really a difference if people are saying this or if governments who are responsible for millions of people within, for example, the War of Gerald are saying this is a crime. So we have to really talk about who is putting what kind of moral standards to what kind of developments. And what we're seeing is really an increase on hypocrisy and we have to go down again and put the same standards and our same ideas to whoever is acting. And we expect of the governments of the NATO state to do everything to prepare for peace and not for war. Someone, I don't know who said that we have to prepare for war with the same and even more intensity than people who are preparing for war. So we not only have to wage war, we have to wage peace and do it with great intensity. We have to prepare it, found our alliances and really put peace first, peace with other nations and peace with the environment. This is a big task, but I'm really optimistic that we can achieve it. Thank you. Thank you, Claudia and Maite, for having spent some time with us today. We've all from our homes and from our towns find it really difficult to understand what is happening in Europe and what European institutions and European policies are all about. I know Maite is always very good at explaining to us how the council works, how the parliament works, because we need to analyse and see, as Maite said, what is this project that we want to create? We all need to think about political will and democracy. Of course, with our alliances, that's impossible. We need to think about immigrants. We need to think about what's happening with women's rights and LGBTI communities, what's happening with racism, what's happening with extreme right, because peace isn't just a lack of war. It's the fact that social justice exists in our lives. We will carry on working. We do work united. We will carry on doing so. We're hoping that we can carry on seeing each other and building upon what we're working in Madrid from the 24th of 26th of June, thanks to the interpreters, thanks to Vishard, our producer from People's Dispatch, and of course all those people that have made it possible to have this first bilingual episode of our programme. I want to mention our next episode, we're really, really happy because in the next episode we're going to have two very important guests, Cosmos Muzumale and Akendi, who are going to talk to us about the situation in Zambia and the advance of military bases in Africa and the role of Africa in the new Cold War and global NATO. And I'm sure things will crop up related, as Claudia said, to French colonialism. So we'll see you next week. Let's carry on building. Weapons will not save us. Let's together build this peace alternative. Thank you very much.