 panel here for you where I'm very happy to welcome four members which will be which I will introduce to you after a short video. My name is Markus Fallner. I am a journalist from Heisei IX magazine here in and over Germany and the topic of this panel is public money public code which has been a little buzzword in the open-source community until it became an official request and now I'm very very happy that we have that this is getting more and more momentum and I am hoping that this will get a not much of well a much bigger topic in not only German also European politics. I would like to start we have 45 minutes so I would like to have this panel like about 30 minutes so the first five minutes will be all three and a half minutes something like that will be a video which the FSFE was so great to produce I guess it's a year or two years old but it's a perfect video to explain what this public money public code is all about after that we will have a short introductory round about the four wonderful people that are sitting right here in front of you and after about 30 minutes I think we will have a session of Q&A for with hopefully good and thoughtful questions from the audience and so that is my plan and feel free to interrupt us any time except for the video because we have a wonderful technical setup that will prevent audio present provide audio for you and so I hand over the microphone to our first class engineering audio technician just pause for him please imagine for a moment our government would treat our public infrastructure like our streets and public buildings the same way it treats our digital infrastructure our members of parliament would work in a rented space where they weren't allowed to vote in favor of stricter environmental laws because the owner a multinational corporation didn't allow that kind of voting in its buildings nor will it allow a long overdue upgrade to more than 500 seats this means some members of parliament have to stay outside in the street and a couple of blocks away a brand new gym is already being torn down just six months after it was built it's being replaced with an exact replica at great expense and the only difference the new manufacturer also provides streetball as an added feature meanwhile every night through a hidden backdoor in the city hall documents that contain sensitive information on citizens from bank data to health care records are being stolen but no one is allowed to do anything about it because searching for backdoors and locking them would infringe the signed user agreement and as absurd as this sounds when it comes to our digital infrastructure things like the software and programs that our governments are using every day this comparison is pretty accurate because mostly our administrations procure proprietary software this means a lot of money goes into licenses that last for a limited amount of time and restrict our routes we aren't allowed to use our infrastructure in a reasonable way and because the source code of proprietary software is usually a business secret finding security holes or deliberately installed backdoors is extremely difficult and even illegal but our public administrations can do better if all publicly financed software were to be free and open source we could use and share our infrastructure for anything and for as long as we wanted we could upgrade it repair it and remodel it in any way to fit our needs and because the open source in free software means that the blueprint is openly readable for everyone this makes it much easier to find and close security holes and if something practical and reliable was created digitally not only can you reuse the blueprint all over your country the actual thing itself can be deployed anywhere even internationally a great example of this is fix my street originally developed in Great Britain as a free software app to report view and discuss local problems like potholes it's now being used all over the world everyone benefits because new features and improvements are shared by everyone if all our software were developed like this we could stop struggling with restrictive licenses and could start thinking about where and how software could help us we could concentrate on creating a better society for everyone so if you think that tomorrow's infrastructure should be in our own hands help us now by sharing this video and visiting our website public code.eu it's time to make our demand. Public money, public code. Good. Yeah, you have a short applause for the FSFE for that video I I know it's probably running through open doors here for this audience but what this video really makes a great thing in my opinion is that it addresses and is understandable for let's let's say ordinary people or as some good friend of mine used to say for children and manager and so I'm happy to welcome on this board let me see how do you how do you see what's the lineup okay so here our chief audio technician and wonderful community manager marketing manager okay for next cloud just bought you all know him I guess next is Tim Tim Schrock from the Deutsche Bund Jugendring which is like the National Youth Council of the Federal Republic of Germany correct next is Katarina Meyer who is from the Open Knowledge Foundation Network correct yeah and thanks for the great video Alexander Sander from the Free Software Foundation Europe and I I'd like to start with a short introductory round where my friends can explain what they're doing and I start with a question to Alexander and how much money are we talking about on a on a on a European or German scale when we talk about public money public code does the FSFE know how much in public instances or administrations are investing across the pond actually neither the FSFE nor the governments know it exactly and so that's why the European Commission just published a tender where they are asking for scientists to make a study on this and to figure out how much money and how the ecosystem of open source and free software and looks like in Europe but and we have some figures and so for example in Germany we let's say waste like 75 million every year of just for Microsoft licenses so we have yeah lots of money a lot of money which we could invest in free software and that's why two years ago the Free Software Foundation Europe started this campaign public money public code and we already achieved to get like nearly 200 organizations to sign this campaign also some administrations like Barcelona for example signed this campaign and so there is a lot of progress in Europe in the member states but also on the European level and I think we can see that yeah governments more and more understand that free software is a good solution and that they are wasting a lot of money for licenses and yeah but we have to keep on with our fight and yeah convince from the local government to the national until the European government to to switch to free software in general and what are you doing at the FSFE especially so I'm I'm the policy manager at FSFE so I'm yeah taking care that yet in the end the legal text is good for the free software environment good I hand the microphone over to Katarina and from the open knowledge foundation what is your profession what are you doing there within the open knowledge foundation I work at the project that is called prototype fund and in a way we're already implementing what you are calling for with the help of the German research and education ministry we have a funding and research program that provides money for open source projects that somehow follow the public interest and I very much see that under the framework of critical digital infrastructure that should be open to everyone and within four years we provided 4.8 million to 118 projects amongst them also one from the next community so far I was at a KDE NOMI conference once and there was a professor on stage who said the biggest problem in education today in IT education is we teach use not code is that related to the work of the of the open knowledge foundation also because you mentioned education in a way yes we also have a project that is called you can talk that is addressed the teenagers we created the prototype fund more because we acknowledge that there's a lot of open source developers that work on critical digital infrastructure in their spare time and in a way it was self-exploitation so we wanted to fix the upstream problem a little bit and not that like freelance work and working as bedtime and projects that you want to work on is bad but it can't be the base on that we interact also with the government that uses the projects so and also Tim Schrock here is involved in youth in working with you young people youth people because of the the National Youth Council and my question to Tim is well just tell the people what what you're doing in your daily work and then maybe you can tell us what what kinds of software we are talking about the sizes or the order the how many not the sizes I'm sorry the addresses who do we are who are aiming at as users I I don't work directly with young people but with organizations that have youth projects and our aim is to provide digital tools for people who can't participate who are not who are too young to vote for example and the funny thing is we receive public funding for that like mainly from the youth ministry and it always collides with the interest of open sourcing things because the youth ministry thinks that open sourcing means giving it away to someone who they don't know so and last month on this panel just poor fleet I think you must be the bad guy then because we always we have all those people that are for open source and for public code for and so I'm always been looking for somebody who is against it but actually that doesn't seem to be somebody right well at least as head of marketing I'm supposed to be evil so let me give it a try from that perspective and I find it fascinating to hear that every year 75 million is spent on Microsoft licenses I think if you talk to the people from only offers or collaborate here they can probably tell you that they can write that code twice a year for that money and then there's 4.8 million I think it was that is spent then on a whole bunch of projects which means it gets I mean it's great don't get me wrong but of course it gets spread out in many ways or many places and it's it's a little frustrating because we're literally just throwing money in this big black hole now I know that the youth organization is or that that you guys are using next clouds and that's really cool and you know I think again the marketing guy I mean I've been around open source for a long time I've been promoting open source and that's essentially how I see my job now here at next cloud and of course at next cloud as you probably notice here we are a company and a community and the way we see it is we try to use the company to build and enable the community and by servicing our customers of course we can help also private users so we do a lot of projects where we try to get while everyone on next cloud even if it might not benefit the company and it would be nice if governments would have a well let's call it a similar view on this and I think the video made that point really I've never seen it honestly I really should have and I found it fascinating to see the arguments made is of course all very obvious to me as was pointed out by Marcus and it's just sad that this is not more widely acknowledged and I guess a explanation for children and managers and let me out politicians was very much welcome I hope this works and that we can we can do something together you know because it doesn't even have to be again I think prototype fund is a really good approach and but of course as government I understand that you're often in a certain system you're used to working in a certain way you don't want to open source things you don't know where the code is going and I really hope also that open source businesses like a library and and only offers and of course next cloud can play a role in this because we can provide this familiar thing of will send you an invoice and at the same time of course that money goes goes into open source and yeah I hope that that is one of the ways in which we can help solve this problem a little bit by working together I think in this area Tim what is what is preventing if it is all if it all is so open so visible and so so if it is such a commonplace because as we are sitting here for us it's it's obvious yeah but what is hindering the obviously or as we perceive it better solution to get into to become reality I mean you told me stories about local levels and software and all the obstacles that your your I say mostly customers even though they are administrations have to surmount so what is it that is hindering this obvious thing to become reality I think it's different on the national level and then the municipality level on the national level it's well in 2014 we tried to open source one of our consultation tools and the ministry really did not understand what open source means they asked lawyers came back to us and really said like okay but the procurement laws actually say you have to give all the the grant regulations say you have to give back the using rights to us and how can it be that someone else uses it and then we agree it we agree on it if you tell us beforehand who will use it in the future but just imagine I mean luckily there's Firefox and even people in the ministry knew Firefox and I explained with this example so how do you think do you really think that people of the programmers for Firefox knew beforehand who will use it in the end that actually convinced them in a way but it's just a misunderstanding in many things I guess it's not that they're totally against it because when they under they realize are it's actually cool that no but not every group every municipality has to reinvent the wheel then it's actually cool for them they are a bit afraid that companies could just make money out of public funding so they use the source code and then just do something else with it even when you try to explain there's different licenses and there's different approaches to that there's possibilities that's also they're afraid of and on the on the municipality level we often have the problem that okay my counterpart is usually the youth administration the Jugendamt and for them if they even try to have a digital consultation or any digital project online platform it's anyway really difficult for them to get started with it like having someone who does the coding and everything and then forcing them to open source it and putting it on github or something that is just too much for them they just don't understand it I don't say I don't want to say it's wrong that they should I mean I support the public money is of course but for them it's just too much they they need a lot of help and support for that so it's like an it sounds to me like a knowledge hurdle or a knowledge problem and you you smiled when he was speaking I guess that Katarina has made the same experience or has heard things that or was it completely different maybe way we had way easier because the research ministry they already work with an open access strategy so if you receive funding for a paper or if your whole chair is funded and you also have to publish everything you write in that project and then open access yeah mark and then in a way it was only the digital translation so it was way easier to convince them that you today it's not you don't earn the money or the revenue via the software but with the service and everything around it and they have an understanding of this so they were very much open-minded and of course prototype fund is a good project but if you compare to research and development budgets everywhere and in the innovation framework it's really too little so we would be happy if other ministries would join in to the strategy because we have to cover everything from health apps to like civic tech and it's only one fund at the moment so I guess we are at the beginning of a campaign of a campaign to to sort of like in enlightenment that would be too far fetched I guess but of explain still in the phases of explaining things to people I guess is that also what the FSF EC is do you still have to explain why open source and transparency is better than other solutions yes of course so that's why we started this campaign because we we just figured out that yeah there's a big lack of knowledge and for example when it comes to communities so governments see these who did heck out as a community and don't understand that they are the community that a bunch of cities could be a community a bunch of governments could be a community so they don't don't just have this picture in mind so they just see like they go to this conference and say are this next cloud community everybody of these guys is coding with net cloud everything is free and nobody can earn money with this so this is the picture they have and this is where we have to work on so and sometimes so for example when when red heart was sold so this was a game changer because then people understand that you can earn billions of dollars with an open source company and it was very good for us in terms of lobbying to tell people hey you see I mean it's a big business and we are just sleeping here in Europe and the business is done by anybody else in the US so step in and yeah support your local IT community your local IT industry by switching to open source and free software projects and cities who does this like Barcelona for example very successful for business so they they introduce something like a like a law and say 70% of our deep budget for for coding have to go into open source projects and the result is that 60% of the coders are from the community from the region and it's mostly SMEs and so you can support your local IT industry by switching to free and open source projects so and this is how we try to convince them other local governments and just how important this political backup or backing for that I've been involved a lot with the city of Munich yeah through all their failures through their success and through their be through them being sort of like ended yeah more or less for political reasons and as I see from a variety of projects that also the FSVE has reported upon a large-scale open source project in public administrations has a higher probability of success when they have like and a patron or an angel or how do you say this in English that that helps with that and so do you think this is right that it is very important and second question where are they yeah that's that's a good question that last part let me address that first so what we what we see is and I mean I guess you could call it a strategy I mean the way next what comes into organizations and that's true for both companies and government is usually because the people in there the individual some of them use next lot privately so that of course helps our sales team incredibly because they come into an organization and at the table they have one or two or three people who are huge fans and are telling their boss this is a great solution this can help you and they have already maybe even demonstrated it and of course in a political organization I'm not intimately familiar with all the conversations that we have there but of course this also plays a role yeah there are some politicians thankfully who are well let's say geeky enough to actually run or be close to a running next cloud and this this makes a massive difference and to some degree I always think on one hand it would be great if the product is the convincing factor there's being a better product but of course we all know and can mention some names where better products don't win and this of course even worse I think in government than anywhere else I mean our main competitor is this very big American company for which the European for which Germany pays 75 million a year apparently and this company just pulls open a can of sales people you know and we can do a few phone calls but it's really hard at that level to compete with that and you need organizations who we can't afford to tell them the problem explain them the problem and and then offer them a solution to the problem if if a government organization doesn't realize that what they're doing is bad first of all indeed for European business and for the European government and the European citizen because that's what it boils down to write put seeing all this money as well as this data as we talked about earlier today to the US is bad for the citizens it's bad for government because we lose a lot of money and it is bad for of course European business now on many different levels and as long as they don't realize this that we cannot sell this to them we don't have the time the resources to do this we need you guys to to do this to help sell the problem explain the problem and find it but I think in a way we live in a special time point in history at this moment where you can deploy the heck of framing it under the European digital sovereignty way which is special just as a brand because there's this trade wars everywhere and we have problems with GDPR and I think because it's this time in history we have the chance now or never I mean our biggest gift ever is of course the whole mass around Facebook and others right I mean the amount of awareness around these problems is bigger than it has ever been and that's a huge boom to us as a company and as a community right because directly and indirectly it you know pays for our drinks here and and and it helps I think all of Europe because digital sovereignty is a big thing and you know maybe it's not always the most efficient way that we go about it but it is definitely helpful if you can put you know the problem in a bigger picture and and this is indeed the other digital sovereignty is is the bigger picture I think actually the two of you just said it a bit next lot is really helping to support strategies like public money public code because because of the data privacy issues people in the ministry and also municipal municipalities really start to understand why we are doing that and why we want to be emancipated from the US the funny thing is the word standard for example open standards is something that is they don't understand it but it's like why Excel is standard so why is it strange that volunteers maybe don't have Microsoft Office and the funny thing is a good thing on next cloud is for example we we did it in a hidden way in a way offering next cloud together with Collabora so people are start to use open document as a standard even though they don't realize it and suddenly they realize oh there's different kinds of standards or different approaches and that actually helps awareness raising I mean I also made good experiences with framing it under the whole innovation ex framework that like a nation could be more innovative if you open up all the interesting technological concepts and don't like hide them away in the ivory tower and that's also something that the government seems to be interested in so maybe go down that path. Alexander do we do we have happen to not hit the right wordings when we talk about stuff like that because I just read between the lines that the word standard for example which for all of us probably here is pretty clear what we mean but I I see that I saw that also in companies where I worked that there that when people start speaking about Microsoft as an industry standard and I'm like no not really but do we have do we need different wording in approaching people? Well maybe sometimes but in general I think we are on the right way and we have a good wording in place I mean for example everybody of you say this video is very perfect and this is my it's the same experience if I'm going to politicians or people who have never ever heard of free software before and they understand it afterwards so I think it's it's fine also we have something like the talent declaration which is signed by every member state in the European Union where they agree on to use more open source software in the future so we already have text in place we have strategy papers we have whatever so it's we have the ISA Square program in the European Union which is talking about in the open standard so people are somehow aware of it but sometimes it's a political decision like in Munich and also there's a lobbyist on the other side so Microsoft have loads of resources to do lobby campaigns and we have a lack of resources so in the FSFE we are like ten people and it's kind of hard to lobby like all European countries and the European Union or from a local to national to European level and Microsoft can easily that does this so and I think it's more lack of resources than a lack of communication I just had an idea when I hear lack of resources because I was also involved in change management and I did migrations when I was way before I was journalist as I said I was involved also a little bit with the city of Munich so my I will ask all of you one last question before we go into the open question in face but that one will be think of it as a snowball system one thing one key learning in the city of Munich when they went after having little success spent but then lot of success within a few years was they did a different approach they found a different approach of getting the new stuff on to the people which is imagine German officers in administration they don't want no change yeah they're happy with a with a old-fashioned dos and curses interface from the 70s as long as it doesn't change yeah but when they found out how to approach them they went in every team spotted the one that is the technical guy the one that is the guy that or the lady that everybody goes to and asks what how this is soft so they gave them the new stuff and so everybody would eventually see hey this is the new stuff what is that yeah things work there it's not yet done but I am privileged you know I can see that and stuff so that was a like a snowball system that worked I've seen this also in a van and in a third world projects in Africa you go into a village you find that the one guy that that is known to spread this stuff so we've got lots of people here what is the one thing that you for think of what you would need or what we can we can do or is to spread the word or whatever about to make this more known because the other side that is not here that is never here in these discussions has lots of lobbies lots of money running around so what would it be should we talk to politicians think of it maybe you find something so whoever starts has the better start because the others will already say have said I think we need to spin around the narrative around how history of technology or development of technology really works that it's like very rarely one single engineer that has all the brilliant ideas and involve like more the view of community technology what that could be and what potential lies in it and we need to get more people members of parliament reading the book by Mariana Mazzucato the public value because she describes that everything that is patented and that we're paying for was already funded by the public and anyway and how much longer do we want to do this well okay so as part of the campaign we produce this brochure and this is for decision makers from a local national European level you can order a hard copy of it go to your local government hand it over and tell them switch to free software you can download the PDF and send an email and you can send the video around and yeah go to your local politicians and convince them to switch to free software or if you know a member of the European Parliament or of any other parliament go there they have offices you can just go there in and try to talk to him give them the brochure show them the video and sign our campaign I think we often need very concrete wordings like for the English word I don't know to Wendung's Bescheid that's yeah over the okay it's a grant regulations for example because we know that people in the ministries and so on they are actually not always against things but they don't know the wording then don't know what actually they have to write in order to make it possible so that is the thing we want to prepare together with lawyers maybe with you and on the other side what we could need and I'm looking at yours and all here continue with the great next-door development because it actually convinces people that open source software is so much cooler yeah I think building a building a good product helps a lot I agree but I also do really like what you said about the right words I think that connecting to the way the politicians currently think and I mean let's be honest they have largely been potty trained of course by big proprietary software vendors now have taught them that you know copying is theft and you know I'll just make a list of all the things that is not good and that is good standards indeed right Microsoft being a standard is well in many ways of course a joke and you know trying to find the right terms I think this focus on sovereignty is really great and the focus on open innovation I think is also really brilliant because there is sadly a lot of nationalism growing in Europe but you know maybe there is a slight positive edge to it at least in this area and I'm definitely enough of an evil marketing guide to happily capitalize on that even though I otherwise don't really like this trend as I'm more of a European than a Dutch I mean how I'm Dutch who lives in Germany and but yeah the words I think is really important and another thing you really notice a lot the misconception is that open source either means it's free as in money so suddenly when you have an open source solution the budget disappears which is really fascinating and of course highly annoying or controversially you know there's no problem spending massive massive amounts of money on SAP and on Oracle and solutions like that and then like a fraction of that would be needed for an open source solution to implement it properly to get support for it to maintain it and improve it and then no there's no money it's open source it should be free which of course well first of all incredibly counterproductive and pretty stupid because you're just wasting money and then you have something that actually you can build on right I mean every line of code you pay for an out to an open source project continues a to be yours continues to be available for everybody else I mean what the heck are you doing you know if you put your money in in a proprietary piece of software and you know a year after you paid they can just take it away from you I don't know open source you pay once and that's it isn't that like a hundred times better investment it's just frustrating so yeah we need to get this across call it an investment calling it I don't know it's maybe people here have suggestions for good words that that is a one wonderful bridge thank you so I take it that we have a make politicians read for example the book the public value they the FSF he has done a great job with this campaign with spreading the word and the video also Tim said use concrete wording admins administrations on the don't always understand what is meant right and also just said we need the right words and we need to connect to politics so and with with this I open this for for your questions to the panel this is a chance so raise your hand if you have a question that you would like to have discussed maybe you need to have yeah there's one shall I what you just saying and I repeat it I think that's easier so the question is regarding the massive amount of lobbyism and lobbying money that is spent in Brussels what the approach what the thoughts and the strategy of the panel the people on the panel is regarding open source in Brussels and in the European Union did I put that correctly around about who wants to start maybe maybe Alexander you're you know FSF he is yeah there's an E in FSF he it's that's true and yeah that's why we heavily work on the European level and try to convince the European institutions to switch to free software and also to make laws that require free software and open source and as I mentioned for example we have the talent declaration which states that all EU institutions as well as the member states they signed it want to use more open source whatever this means and but we are now trying to lobby for his concrete numbers like we want to have like 80% of the IT budget should go in open source project that's what we are trying to do so it won't be too easy but we can see it on the local level for example that's there or also on the national level that they're all already lost in place like in France Bulgaria for example and they are doing something like this so it's possible and so and it also during the copyright directive which might seem strange we had a big win for the open source open source environment so we have an exclusion in the copyright reform for open source software like co-chairing platforms and so during this lobby campaign we managed it to like talk to loads of politicians in regard of this article 13 or 17 and to get this exclusion for open source so which means now lots of people in the European environment understand what open source means and what it does and all the way FD as a square project for example which is regarding open standards we have the FOSAP project from the European Parliament and the European Commission they are looking for for for bucks and heavily used software by governments and states so there's a lot of progress there but also as I said in the case of Munich I mean we have heavy heavy lobby resources from the other side so Microsoft Oracle whomever they have billions of dollar and they spend a lot of money for lobbying and these are more or less our enemies and we are like 10 people so yeah it's always good to support us or other organizations in in Europe working on lobbying and trying to convince politicians to switch to free software so help us help other organizations who are working on this they are also national organizations and every member state more or less which you can support so this helps a lot that's the port does the portal join up that you still exist yes I used to write for them and that was a brilliant idea I thought it was not only open source it was country con collaboration country cooperation in any way and it was meant as a portal where specialists and that was where I came in as a writer a journalist would write about solutions that had been used for example in Gibraltar and the target of the portal was describing stuff that could be used in Finland for example so okay just one more thing so one of the results of this part of this is a square project and it's exactly it's still running and so what they are doing now for example as well is to do open source software awards so they like every two years they try to figure out the best European open source project and give them a price so this is also something which is very good in order to create awareness and also in terms of networking and telling governments that you are the community and that you should work together and that you should share your ideas and your best practices so if a city a does a really good job with the street app we just seen in the video shared with others they might use it as well so normally governments having more or less the same things they need when it comes to software so it's not like that they are doing totally strange things compared to another city or government right and I think not only governments need that software but also like the European digital digital civil society needs access and I'd like to see a horizon 2020 just for civil society and the prototype fund on a European level like with a big big budget and we try to make that happen like we're already talking to politicians and we have a European platform as well and the lobby work we do the best experience I think is well youth organizations are usually not so conservative they're more the other way and still it's very useful to speak especially to conservative politicians and also bring up real life examples like explain or whatever grandmas secret recipe book and you can share it and nobody hits you on the fingers except for grandma and such examples they really help that politicians on the start understanding also like the messengers it's one of the very keen core things public access to messenger services not just what's up and it's a golden cage they start understanding it if you compare it to real-life examples in other areas we have one no non minute left that makes it easier for me I would ask yours as also being part of the host what's your what's your European strategy yeah well we just tried to sell to them that's a little short but you know I really liked the idea I think so a lot of organizations like you guys are lobbying I think that's really good what I noticed is that sometimes politicians you know they would like to not hear from lobbyists for once and talking to politicians and I have some friends who always tell me that European politicians are actually quite easy to approach for normal citizens I would recommend people who care to do that there's one problem that I have I have been around open source for 15 plus years I'm in a bubble I find it impossible that you don't get that you are the community as you said right as a government I mean coin you the user of course you are but yeah at the same time of course I worked for government I know they don't think that way and I can try to get a message across but for me it is hard I I try to talk to the business world and I know some of the business words and that helps but on the lobbying level I think we at next slide are we try I mean I know Frank regularly talks to politicians here and there so we definitely do our best but I don't think we're very well equipped for it but I think normal citizens as in the people watching the stream and the people in this room you are actually in a privileged position because you are not a lobbyist and that gives you a massive benefit because they want to hear from you as citizen so sure what you have to say might not be as polished as the professionals here at the table can say but that itself often makes it stronger so think about you know how maybe just when you're visiting Brussels you know there's this fuss them thing yeah I think if you can visit you know a politician who represents you or who you have some kind of connection with try to ping them on Twitter try to talk to their staff give them a call they actually have people picking up I mean not always themselves of course but it is possible to make appointments with politicians and if you come to Brussels for example for for them or you come to Brussels for other reasons or to Strasbourg or try it try to talk to them it's really worth it shoot an email well there's another point yes so all your normal people out there come to Brussels there's lots of normal people at foster I can tell you but they also have beer but thank you very much time is up I'm already two minutes over time I'm very very happy to be followed by Jillian York hello and right here so thanks a lot to all of you I guess we will be around if you have any further questions during the next two weeks in this building and just one week okay good thank you very much