 So we're very fortunate to have as our speaker here today Dr. Charles Powell who is the director of the Royal Elcano Institute in Madrid, the premier institute think tank on foreign relations in Spain. He's been with Elcano for I think 17 years and he's been its director since 2012. Dr. Powell was educated in Oxford, St. Anthony's from which he has a D fill. He's currently professor of contemporary Spanish history at the CEU San Pablo University in Madrid and has researched extensively on Spain's transition to democracy on Spain in the European Union and I think also on Spanish relations with the United States. So without further ado I'd like to give the floor to Dr. Powell to address us on global Europe challenges and opportunities and the view from Madrid. I should say that his address is on the record and I understand that the Q and A afterwards will also be on the record. Please turn your mobile phones either off or onto silent and I forget what the instruction on the tweeting is but you're welcome to tweet using what's at IEA, hashtag IEA. Dr. Powell. Thank you so much. Thank you very much for your invitation and it's wonderful to be back here. I think this is my third visit to the institute and I'm really very very pleased to be here to talk about Europe from a Spanish perspective. In spite of my name I am Spanish. I'm the son of an English father and a Spanish mother and I'm one of the few people I know who gave up his British passport in order to become Spanish about 20 years ago and I have no regrets whatsoever. I didn't predict Brexit but I have no regrets. Let me just say something about our institute. Since I'm going to be talking about global affairs it's actually quite appropriate that I'm here in 2019 because we are celebrating the 500th anniversary of an event in which the person who gives his name to our institute took part. Elcano was of course Juan Sebastián Elcano, a Basque and Spanish explorer who was part of the famous Magellan expedition and Magellan was murdered by the natives in the Philippines and the expedition limped back to the Iberian Peninsula under the leadership of Juan Sebastián Elcano in 1522 having completed the first circumnavigation of the world. So we named our institute after him because we regard him as a precursor of globalization. I know you've all heard about Magellan but now I want you to remember from now on that Juan Sebastián Elcano, that great man, played a very important role. We've talked a lot over lunch about the Spanish election and we're happy to answer your questions about where Spain is going in the Q&A session. Admittedly the outcome of the talks which the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, is currently conducting and whether he is successful or not informing a government will determine whether some of the things that I'm going to say are realistic or not but we can come back to that later. Spain, as you probably all know, is very strongly in favour of the European project. With the exception of Vox, this new far-right party which obtained 15% of the vote which is slightly Eurosceptic, the whole of the Spanish political spectrum is enthusiastically pro-European integration. And there are probably these four reasons why this is the case. First of all because historically Europe was seen as an answer to many of Spain's long-standing problems. The socio-economic backwardness, the territorial issue, the fragility of its liberal democratic institutions and traditions and so on. One of our great philosophers, Ortega Yasset famously said in the 1910s that Spain was the problem and Europe was the solution. And to some extent this notion lingers on. Secondly of course the tangible benefits of EU membership have been phenomenal as is the case with Ireland. Spain today is the 13th largest economy in the world. The fourth largest eurozone economy with a per capita GDP of almost $40,000. Thirdly, and this is more controversial, European integration is perhaps the Spain's only widely shared national project. It is probably the only ideal, the only goal that the only long-term goal that a majority of Spaniards actually agree on. And the fourth point I wanted to make is that although Spain went through a brutal six-year-long double recession starting in 2009 which wiped out 10% of GDP of its national wealth and led to unprecedentedly high levels of unemployment, 26% of the worst point in the crisis. In spite of that, this did not significantly undermine support and confidence in the European project. Interestingly, Spanish public opinion did not turn against the EU as a result of the implementation of austerity measures by succession of governments. There was no significant increase for example in anti-German feeling unlike what we saw in Italy or Greece. Angela Merkel has consistently remained and remains today the most popular European leader in Spain. So I'd like to think that this is evidence of Spanish public's maturity which I think is quite refreshing given our tendency to Europeanized failure and nationalized success. Perhaps Spaniards have even gone too far in this direction. According to recent polls, Spaniards have more faith in the European Parliament than in the Spanish Parliament. They have more faith in the European Commission than in the Spanish government and that perhaps is not an ideal situation either. Let me quickly make four additional introductory remarks. First of all, Spain remains as committed as ever to ever closer union. Spain is strongly in favor of pooling and sharing national sovereignty with other member states. I think as a historian I like to believe that history matters and I think this is very much a legacy of the Franco period, a legacy of isolation and relative insignificance. Secondly, Spain is staunchly multilateralist. Again, I think this is a reaction to that recent authoritarian past and therefore strongly in favor of a rules-based international order. There is widespread political and social support for the notion of creating a strong multilateral order capable of dealing with this new multipolar world that we are living in. And for Spain has therefore traditionally been in favor of the EU being able to play a prominent role as a global actor. The specific reasons for this are manyfold. Firstly, I think the realization that challenges posed by globalization require worldwide collaboration and that this is best achieved via multilateral frameworks. Secondly, the belief that member states, even relatively large ones such as Spain, Spain has a population of 47 million, are increasingly insignificant in an era of growing great power competition. I think most Spaniards would subscribe to Paul Henri Speck's famous observation that there are two kinds of states in Europe, small states and small states that don't know that they are small. And finally, both Spanish elites and those sectors of the population think about these things, strongly believe that the EU should be and is a normative power to use Ian Maniz's expression. Again, I think that has a lot to do with Spain's recent historical experience. So what does Spain expect today from the EU as a global actor? First of all, it expects the EU to uphold this rules-based international order. And let me stress here that Spain was not a founding member of that rules-based international order because of the Franco regime. It didn't join the United Nations until 1953, sorry, 1955. And to some extent you could argue that Spain only joined that order through the back door thanks to its bilateral military agreement with the US signed in 1953. And the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that in a sense, in a very real sense, Spain only entered the, or became a part of this rules-based international order when it became a member of the EU, the EC in 1986. And therefore the idea that this liberal international order should not be taken for granted is quite, is strongly present. And therefore also any weakening of the liberal international order is also seen as a threat to European integration. Secondly, currently Spain sees the EU, the EU's global ambitions as basically an attempt to, or a result of the need to live up to the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and more specifically an attempt to Europeanize these goals wherever possible. Thirdly, the EU is seen as the only actor that can really contribute to the fight against climate change. It's very striking that climate change figures so prominently in Spanish political discourse. We conducted a poll recently in our institute and we, when we asked Spaniards what should the goal, the main goal of Spanish foreign policy be, the most popular answer was to fight against climate change. Which is, when I told the Israeli ambassador this, she almost had a heart attack. She obviously thought it was very post-modern and win-pish. But this is, I think, this kind of approach is very common now, certainly among the political elite, but also large sectors of the population. Why is this the case? Possibly because Spanish coastal areas are very vulnerable to future increases in sea level. Possibly also because Spain has often experienced flash floods and wildfires and the population is aware of this. So there is very strong support for the 2016 Paris Climate Accord, hence the Spanish government's immediate decision to host the COP25 next month in Madrid when it had to be cancelled in Chile for political reasons. In other words, Spain very much wants the EU to remain true to its goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2030. And Madrid governments are very active supporters of the EU's Green New Deal. This, of course, has an internal domestic aspect to it. All of our economies are beginning to slow down in the EU. Spain is still growing quite strongly at about 1.9% GDP this year. But given that monetary policy seems to have run its course, the only option will be fiscal policy, even when the next crisis hits. And this fiscal policy will probably have to be centered on the new infrastructure and the new technology that the Green New Deal would require. So this is another way in which the domestic, domestic social and political perceptions feed into perceptions of the EU as a global actor. Fourthly, Spaniards obviously would like the EU to help them deal with the migration question. The point I'm going to stress here is that until the 60s and the 70s, Spain was a nation of emigrants. In the 19th century, Spaniards have migrated to Latin America, and finally in the mid-20th century they began to migrate to European countries. But since the 1990s, like Ireland, Spain has become a nation of immigrants. And during the period the decade 2000 to 2010, Spain took in more immigrants per capita than any country in the world except the United States. And as a result of that, one in 10 residents of Spain today was born outside Spain. Now, you're probably thinking, what are the political consequences of that? And sadly, some people are arguing that this explains the rise of VOX, this far-right party which garnered 15% of the vote. I actually think that most of VOX support is a result of the Catalan crisis. But definitely, it is definitely an anti-immigration party. So the goal of mainstream parties is to fight irregular migration more effectively but also, and this is very important, to facilitate regular and orderly migration. As someone recently put it, it's not enough to build walls, you also have to build doors and windows. How do we do this? Well, there's an external dimension basically through more effective cooperation with countries of origin and transit. And in the Spanish case, this mainly means sub-Saharan Africa or origin, Morocco transit. And secondly, we need to tackle the root causes of migration, for example, via the EU's external investment plan for Africa. Let's not forget that the EU is already the world's largest aid donor. No one is seriously thinking of a martial plan for Africa. I wish politicians would stop using that expression because it's very misleading. But I think the next commission is very much aware of the importance of this. Additionally, there's an internal dimension and Spain would like to see more support for frontier states like Spain itself in times of crisis from EU institutions such as the European border and Coast Guard Agency. And finally, Spain is strongly in favour of completing the European common asylum system, which, let's be frank, is broken at the moment. The fifth reason why Spain would like to see an active EU is because of the need to cope with the most worrying geopolitical challenge of the 21st century, namely the growing US-China rivalry in the areas of trade, technology and currency. The big question mark here to quote Durao Barroso, and we were talking about high-level Portuguese civil servants a minute ago. The question is how to prevent a great fracture from emerging in the world between a US-dominated sphere of influence and a China-dominated sphere of influence. We already know that this conflict is first of all undermining the rules-based international order and at the same time having a negative impact on our European economies. I think it's true to say that in Spain there's very little appetite for a G2 world, but it's also probably true to say there isn't much appetite for a G3 world. In other words, the idea that Europe should try to compete with the US and China and buy into their narrative is not probably very popular. The goal, therefore it's not really a question of siding with the US and turning our backs on China, rather it's a question of how do we maintain a system in which all sides play by the rules. And therefore it's also about avoiding being squeezed or boxed in by the two rival superpowers. What's clear is we can't afford to remain on the sidelines. How do we do this? This is easily said, easier said than done. The future HRVP, Josep Borrell, in his hearings in the European Parliament said that the EU has to learn to use the language of power and to play power politics. I'm not sure this is entirely compatible with our self-perception as a normative power and I'm not sure that this is exactly where the Spanish mainstream would like to go. I think there is much more agreement on the need for the EU to use its trade policy much more effectively and strategically. Also the need to reinforce the Euro as a currency, the Euro's international role in this growing era of currency rivalry and we have an expert in the institute who's working on this in particular. And we also, I think, need to work much more closely with other like-minded democracies. We tend to be rather Euro-centric about this. We tend to forget, for example, many democratic countries now in Africa, in East Asia and, of course, in Latin America. And let me say something very briefly about Latin America in this context, which won't surprise you. Latin America has become a sort of geopolitical black hole. Nobody really looks to Latin America when we try to answer, when we face the big challenges of the 21st century. And Spain is continuing to argue that the EU needs to take Latin America much more seriously. It's true that it's difficult, given the current political climate in countries like Mexico, Brazil, of course. Argentina is raising a bit of uncertainty about this. But, again, the EU's answer has to be what it's always done best. In other words, ratify the EU Mercosur agreement, which, let me remind you, we have been negotiating for 20 years. And, of course, ratify the trade agreement with Mexico as soon as possible, as well. What about the Spanish perceptions of China? Or EU perceptions of China and Spain in that context? One of the difficulties we all face, of course, in the EU is that China is perceived very differently across the Union. According to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, for example, in Sweden, 70% of the population view China unfavorably, 25% view it favorably. In Greece, on the other hand, only 32% view it unfavorably, and 51% view it favorably. Spain is somewhere in between. According to this poll, 53% of Spaniards regard China unfavorably, while 39% regard it favorably. Now, one interesting thing about Spain is that it is not particularly exposed to Chinese influence. It is not really a part of the Belt and Road scheme. It is not one of the 17 EU member states that have signed a memorandum of understanding with China. China only holds about 5% of Spanish public debt, and Spanish presence in China is very limited, partly because the experience of its renewable energy companies was very negative. To be totally frank, their technology was basically stolen. And finally, there is quite a lot of competition between Chinese and Spanish infrastructure companies in Latin America. However, I would say that what characterizes Spain's position in this debate is its pragmatism. Spain does not demonize member states who are closer to China, particularly countries like Greece and perhaps Italy and some central and eastern European countries. The argument instead is that the EU should first of all do much more to enhance Asian-European connectivity. And you've probably all heard about the strategy to connect Europe and Asia, which has relatively recently been launched by the EU. We need to do much more to protect EU firms from Chinese encroachment and Spain supports the new investment screening regulation. It's interesting that many member states don't actually have a process whereby they can analyze the nature of Chinese purchases. There are no national institutions or national procedures to do this. And this investment screening regulation will enable the EU to supervise the purchase, the possible purchase of strategic companies. Spain also believes in the need to encourage national and European champions, for example via the 100 billion European future fund which has just been created to finance the IT sector. In other words, the answer is to stop regarding ourselves as inevitably passive bystanders in this growing conflict and to develop new policies to tackle it. As far as the United States is concerned, I think it's true to say that Spain has always defended a strong EU-US relationship. You may recall the new transatlantic agenda that was signed in 1995 in Madrid. However, to be honest, there are serious doubts and I think Madrid is not unique in this regard as to the extent to which we can have a constructive transatlantic relationship under President Trump. Again, according to the Pew Research Center, only 7% of Spaniards trust Trump to do the right thing in world affairs, that's the expression they use. Only 10% think that the US takes into account the interests of countries such as ours. And according to our own polls, President Trump is consistently the most unpopular world leader together with Putin. The reasons for this are some of them are general because of Trump's hostility to multilateral institutions and agreements such as the Iran nuclear deal which Spain strongly supports and also perhaps more specifically hostility to European integration, for example in Trump's support for Brexit. There are some reasons that are specific to Spain, however, for example Trump's hostility towards the Latino population in the United States and his policy on irregular migrants. And when Spaniards are asked which state they prefer as a world leader 63% still say the US but 26% say China which is quite interesting. And in recent months Spain of course has been a victim of the deteriorating EU-US trade relationship following the WTO's decision to authorize trade countermeasures against the EU in response to decades of subsidies to the aircraft manufacturer Airbus, Spanish agricultural exports worth about 800 million will face US tariffs we're mainly talking about tariffs on olives, olive oil and wine. A note about Russia for historical reasons Spaniards have never really perceived Russia as a threat and this was even true under the Cold War. Today Russia is not a significant economic player in Spain. Spain does not depend on Russia for its energy but in Spain's oil comes from Nigeria, Mexico and Saudi and most of its gas comes from Nigeria Trinidad and Tobago and Norway. The interesting recent development is that Russian meddling in the Catalan crisis and in particular Russian meddling before and during and after the illegal referendum on the 1st of October 2017 has raised an awareness of Russia as a hostile actor which did not exist before and it shows that you may not be interested in Russia but Russia is always interested in you and this is a significant change. It has also led to renewed interest in the EU's efforts to counter hybrid war, disinformation cyber activities and so on. In recent years Spain has sometimes been accused of being soft on Russia I would argue that it's actually more accurate to say that Spain sees itself as a bridging actor between trying to bring together those who are more tough and hardline against Russia and those who seem to be more accommodating and again as I was saying Spain can perhaps afford to perform this bridging role. Of course given its geopolitical circumstances Spain has always been much more worried about the southern neighbourhood. You all remember the Barcelona process which I still regard as the most successful attempt to Europeanize a national priority. However the successor to the Barcelona process namely the Union for the Mediterranean which was set up in 2008 has if you like enjoyed far less Spanish ownership. In other words I think Spanish political elites and the think tank community and so on regard the Union for the Mediterranean as something of a failure and perhaps a not very effective neighbourhood policy. Spain's priorities are in the Maghreb for obvious reasons above all Morocco and Algeria for two reasons immigration and Morocco here is seen as a gatekeeper a key transit country Moroccans by the way often insist that they are essentially a transit country more than a country of origin and also for because of where Spanish energy comes from 40% of Spain's gas comes from Algeria it's deeply sad I think that the border between Morocco and Algeria is still closed opening this border was one of the aspirations of the Barcelona process if you remember and this has not yet happened. The other source of potential source of threat or conflict is the Sahel our neighbours neighbours Sahel in Arabic means border or coast and traditionally the Sahel was indeed the border that separated the Maghreb from sub-Saharan Africa but as a visitor to our institute recently pointed out there have been three technological very simple technological innovations which have completely transformed the Sahel and these innovations are the Toyota Land Cruiser satellite, telephones and GPS and as a result of that the Sahel has become a six lane motorway ideal for every form of illegal trafficking so this is very much Spain's major security concern at the moment with the presence of Spanish troops in support of France for example in Mali so how do we respond to these challenges? One of the answers of course has to be a much more robust and credible common foreign and security policy which Spain has always advocated ever since CFSP emerged and I think I can provide you with convincing evidence of this first of all Spanish governments would like to limit decisions that are taken by unanimity which pressing matters of national interest and would therefore like to see an expansion of qualified majority voting in this area Spain currently takes part in every single EU civilian and military mission, I think it's the only country in the EU that is in that position and Spain also takes part in 24 of the 47 PESCO permanent structured corporation projects as you know these 47 projects vary enormously in terms of their ambition and so on I think the most important one from Spain's point of view is the fact that it's leading a command and control project Spain is also enthusiastic in its support for the European Defence Fund and the European Defence Agency partly this reflects concerns about the future of the defence industry Spain has a strong relatively strong domestic defence industry and is therefore keen to use EU funds and instruments to continue to modernise it and ensure its viability there is an incipient debate in Spain as well about the concept of strategic autonomy which as you all know features in my good friend Natalie Tocchi's European Global Strategy I prefer a different term, I would actually use the term strategic co-responsibility because I think the notion of strategic autonomy stresses a sort of willingness to stand up against the United States and not just a willingness to do things without the United States' blessing but this is a very popular notion in Spanish, among Spanish elites, the idea that the EU should have the capabilities and the wherewithal to conduct certain operations without US involvement is very very popular and the interesting thing I think from our point of view is that Spain has a problem in terms of its military spending, it only spends 0.9% of GDP on defense much to Donald Trump's outrage and it's politically impossible to increase this military contribution if it's presented as a NATO demand or let alone a US demand in other words the only politically viable way of increasing Spanish military defense spending is to Europeanise it if Spaniards understand that this is part of an effort to create a more robust EU military system then that will enjoy greater legitimacy and let me conclude very quickly with a few general remarks about leaderships and partnerships who does Spain want to do all of this with obviously France is the most important ally and like-minded EU partner I think on many of these issues but Germany of course has always been very important Germany is the most popular EU country in Spain by the way it always has been ever since the 1960s even under the Franco regime so the Franco-German tandem is crucial Brexit is going to be a blow not just because of the 200,000 Spaniards who live in the UK the 300 or 400,000 Brits who live in Spain but also because there is now very considerable Spanish investment in Britain as well as British investment in Spain but on the whole Spanish public opinion and Spanish elites are rather looking forward to Brexit Spaniards want ever closer union and I think the general perception is that Britain will always be an obstacle to that is there a possibly a different potential role for Spain in the post-Brexit scenario first of all as I think I mentioned earlier there is no appetite in Spain for a multi-speed or variable geometry Europe essentially because Spain is very communautaire and it would be unacceptable if this became more if this actually became institutionalized however I think there is this realization that Spain needs to move out of its traditional comfort zone its traditional concentration on western European partners and needs to be more proactive in central and eastern Europe needs to take Portugal more seriously as we discussed earlier and in general needs to be more strategic about its partnership combinations there is an incipient redefinition of Spain's role in the EU by the way and this hasn't affected the current debate about the next European budget but it may affect Spain's position in the next 5 to 10 years basically because during that period Spain will probably become a net contributor to the EU psychologically I think that's a very big change the switch from being a net recipient to being a net contributor and it will be very interesting to see how that affects Spain's standing within the EU as a whole to conclude then Spain very much I think wants to contribute to a more muscular and more credible EU role as a global actor but a great deal of force will depend on the domestic stability in order to achieve that thank you very much Charles for that certain navigation in the manner of Elcano of the globe and all of the issues that it presents currently so the floor is open for questions as usual if you would just please identify yourself before posing your question to Dr. Powell Jill absolutely brilliant presentation interesting. You didn't mention the MFF and I just wondered if you could give us a sense of where Spain is coming from in terms of the MFF particularly I think because Nadia Calvino played an important role in the commission and I think she's one of the first people that I've seen Martin Selmaier sort of stand aside and reference in such glowing terms we participated in a web seminar with them and she was highly complimentary about Nadia Calvino so I just wondered how that filters into Spanish views on the MFF thank you thank you in keeping with Spain's support for ever closer union and for an ever more ambitious EU Spain would like to see a more ambitious budget and sadly we all know that that is not going to happen Spain Spain is also in favour and is beginning to open up to the idea or has been opening up to the idea that there needs to be a serious rethinking which is actually ongoing of course about the nature of the budget as you all know part of it of course is on the one hand how we actually raise those funds but more importantly perhaps how we spend them Spain is in a slightly tricky position here because it is still the second largest beneficiary of the common agricultural policy and that therefore limits its a room for manoeuvre when it comes to demanding more resources for the Green New Deal and so on and other areas that affect technological innovation, digitalisation and so on the MFF hasn't figured at all prominently in the Spanish public debate yet which is interesting certainly didn't figure at all in the election campaign but then very little of any substance did figure in the election campaign it was mainly all about Catalonia and future alliances so basically my answer would be that Spain would like to see a new kind of budget emerging from the current negotiation process I think in private Spanish actors realise in German opposition to significant increases in spending the outcome will be less satisfactory than they had hoped for but I think most of the government's efforts are going to be invested in trying to make the best of the money that's going to be available for the Green New Deal in keeping with the argument that I mentioned about fiscal policy in the future Francis Francis Jacobs thank you very much for a very interesting talk I'd obviously very much like to hear your views on where Spain is going after the election in terms of government formation but my main question is really on Catalonia where is, how is the Catalan situation going to be resolved what are the perceptions of Catalonia not obviously in Castille and in other parts of Spain where as you said it there are a lot of interpreters to Partido Popular and particularly to Vox but what about in places like the Basque Country what is the perception there and then finally what about the European dimension of the Catalan question I mean other member states have strongly supported Madrid but of course there's a lot of criticism as well and I used to work in the European Parliament I think I'm right in saying that there are still free elected parties who haven't been able to take up their seats yet and so within the effective groups there's clearly a lot of criticism of Spain and Catalonia thank you very much well as far as the Spanish Government the future of the Spanish Government is concerned as you know what has happened so far is that in the wake of Sunday's election a pre-agreement has been signed between the Socialist Party and Podemos the goal of which is to form a left wing coalition government so this will actually be the first coalition government in Spanish history since democracy was restored in 1978 whether or not this government is actually formed will essentially depend on the Prime Minister's ability to bring on board four or five small regional parties and in particular to convince Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya and the Nationalist Party to abstain so as long as they abstain and as long as the government has the support of the small parties the opposition of the right wing parties the Popular Party through the Llanos and Vox would not be enough to block the investiture of Prime Minister Sánchez before Christmas is the current plan I would say there's an 80% chance of this meeting at the moment and basically the reason why I say this is because first of all for Catalan Nationalists of whatever hue it is from their point of view it is better to have a socialist Podemos government in Madrid than the alternatives which would be either an exclusively centre-right government or even perhaps a sort of German style grand coalition which in any case seems highly unlikely so the Catalan Nationalist parties have an incentive to abstain or at least Esquerra Republicana has an incentive the other two Catalan parties which are supporting independence will vote against Sánchez Junts per Catalunya and the CUP which is this very radical sort of semi-anarchist anti-system party so one question of course that arises is what does the Prime Minister have to promise in order to receive that support or the abstention of ERC and I don't have a clear answer to that yet he will probably have to promise some kind of negotiation process or talks about talks although in his pre-agreement with Podemos he has already explicitly stated that this will have to take place within the context of the Spanish constitution of autonomy whether or not that will in the end be enough is debatable but I think it will be in other words the largest Catalan party is basically trying to position itself as the only Catalan party who can negotiate with Madrid and this would presumably have some kind of provide some kind of electoral benefit when the next Catalan elections come around probably in the month of February or March 2020 it's very interesting to observe what the BASC Nationalist Party has been doing the BASC Nationalist Party is going to vote in favour of this government they're not just going to abstain, they're going to vote in favour although they only have six seats it's an important contribution and throughout this the latest phase of the Catalan crisis they have been a voice of reason and moderation so their advice to the Catalan nationalists with whom they've always enjoyed very close relations has been a unilateral declaration of independence is absurd it's not viable it's counterproductive it's going to divide Catalan society it's going to turn other parts of Spain against you and it will have no support in Europe so the PNV which in the past as you know also seem to be in favour of some kind of UDI with strongly pro-independence is currently playing a moderating role this may also be due to the fact that support for independence in the Basque Country is at an all-time low it's about 22% 25% support for independence in Catalonia also seems to be declining the Catalan government has a polling organisation and today they published a poll according to which about 48% of Catalans are against independence and about 42% are in favour so this seems to be simply a reflection of the fact that Catalan society is tired it is deeply divided this is becoming a national trauma a social trauma for a lot of Catalans who otherwise wouldn't be particularly politicised so I think there is a sort of independence fatigue kicking in as far as the European dimension is concerned well you know what the as you said Tajani the President of the European Parliament and Timmermans the Vice President of the Commission came out very strongly in favour of acknowledging that this is a Spanish internal question and I have no reason to think that this will change under the new Commission or indeed under the new Parliament there are of course some MEPs from certain countries where this kind of issue resonates more than in others who will continue to raise questions about the Catalan issue but I think I don't see that this is going to be Europeanised in any significant sense there is very little appetite for this I think in Europe at least in national capitals Hi I'm very concerned I'm from a military background so I'm curious about and I was really impressed by the Spanish support for the ESTP that we have there and your support of the European voice if you like in the military's field my question now is more on the Spanish attitude towards Turkey and with that if you could include in your response how NATO is either weakened or will have to change course in the future Thank you I haven't mentioned NATO much so let me just add that the idea that a community of European democracies applies to both Spanish perceptions of the EU and to Spanish membership of NATO and this explains why for example there are Spanish F-18s flying over the skies of Lithuania and why there are Spanish tanks German built Spanish built Leopard tanks in Latvia now this may surprise people and we spend a certain amount of time saying to Spaniards that there is a justification for this and I think there are two one is reciprocity and the other is solidarity and these are fundamental principles these are EU principles but I strongly believe that they are also NATO principles and Spain has also expressed this with regard to Turkey Spain deployed some of its patriot missiles on the Turkish border and in fact other NATO members have withdrawn them and the Spanish contingent remains and that is basically because of this fundamental philosophy in addition to that of course Spain by the way has always favoured Turkish membership of the EU of course we all know that that isn't happening anytime soon but Spain has traditionally been in favour of that I think on the whole partly because of what I said about Russia Spain has played a relatively serious role with regard to the debate about Turkish acquisition of Russian military hardware and so on but I think Spain is worried about first of all the integrity and the internal cohesion of NATO and perhaps more importantly how we make NATO and EU compatible because as the process moves on I think there is growing overlap between NATO and EU obviously the territorial defence of our countries will continue to be essentially a NATO issue but the more active the EU becomes and the greater its ability to project force beyond our borders I think the greater the likelihood that this will make NATO-EU collaboration at the cornerstone really of our defence and security policy yes you mentioned that Spain is in favour of ever closer union among the European project what form would that take among the 27 or whatever number of member states is going to be there given that you know that would it be one, I'm going to use the model of the United States of Europe which I believe to be the kind of thing that the federalists like being able to project power military power in particular which I see as something the French want to do and the British want to do and try to do it in the Libyan world successful because they didn't have enough ammunition munitions to continue would it be something I'm going to use the word a more Swiss model of let's say you know deeply divided by languages and culture and history with the weak centre but very strong regions and that even internally in Spain if I've understood it correctly there's very strong fiscal decentralisation for the vast country uniquely and you know to add a second question why is that not being applied to the Catalan case at central government level and thank you that experience of you know Spanish central government with the vast country is that a model that might be used to inform Spanish thinking on the form of ever closer union thank you very much that's a very interesting question and it allows me to link both the domestic and the European levels your question actually raises a very important very interesting academic question which is does membership of the European Union promote the federalisation of its member states or does it promote the centralisation of its member states and I would argue that it does both on the one hand European Union membership promotes the federalisation of its member states because much of the EU's methodology is federal in a very real sense for example in the way in which projects are designed but at the same time EU membership strengthens central governments I think we could probably agree that Belgium possibly wouldn't exist today if it were not for EU membership exactly but if you remove the EU component you know the limits to that federalisation would disappear the idea that we are witnessing a transition from nation states to member states is Spain a nation state well Spanish politicians could spend several days trying to answer that for Spanish constitution only recognises the Spanish nation but it also recognises what it calls regions and nationalities so what is a nationality is it simply an embryonic nation or is it simply a nation which that doesn't dare speak its name and some people talk of Spain as a nation of nations but of course this is not actually what the constitution says the constitution says there is one nation one Spanish nation which acknowledges the right to autonomy of its regions and nationalities I would argue that in Spain EU membership has encouraged federalisation but at the same time as I was saying it's facilitated the survival of the central state in other words there was a fear in the 1980s that central power would be devolved downwards towards the regions and upwards towards Europe and that there would be an emptying out of the middle of the Spanish state that has happened to some extent in some policy areas but at the same time since the member state remains the key protagonist of European council decisions that means that the central state is still able to supervise the whole process so as the fiscal question you mentioned the Basque country has a unique position as does Navarra another region which is next door why this can't be generalised to Catalonia is because the Basque country represents something like 5% of the Spanish economy the Basque Catalonia represents 20% of the Spanish economy so basically the Spanish system would go bust if the Catalans were given exactly the same fiscal privileges that the Basques enjoy what the problems with this by the way is that this Basque fiscal privilege is in the constitution and therefore cannot be changed but some Catalan politicians and academics have been looking at some kind of version of the Basque model as a way out of the current conundrum and this is an area going back to your question which might come up for debate and negotiation as a result of the current talks of course at the same time this would provoke the backlash of Spaniards in far poorer regions of Spain like Andalufia, the Canary Islands and so on as I was mentioning earlier Catalonia has a higher GDP per capita than every single French region except Île de France that means that it is an extremely wealthy part of Europe it also raises interesting questions about a future possible independent Catalonia of course that would share solidarity with other parts of Spain what makes us think that they would express solidarity with poorer parts of Europe that is highly unlikely going back to your first the first part of your question former Spanish Foreign Minister used to talk about the United States of Europe as his goal so this isn't taboo in any way in Spanish discourse we are all federasts as Chris Patton would put it a lot of us are federasts obviously Spanish elites know that there is enormous resistance to the federal ideal in other member states in France and of course in the Netherlands obviously in the UK but the UK is leaving we hope and so it isn't really part of the debate but in other words there isn't a debate about the finality of the European project but I would say that there is pretty widespread support for the idea of the United States of Europe that doesn't shock anyone in Spain I think there were were there two questions was there another one we could take maybe the last two together if there was and we would leave it at that then I'm Horst Siegelach member of the Institute if you speak about Europe what is Spanish view on enlargement in particular to the Balkan states and in this context is there a prospect that Spain may lift the veto on accepting Kosovo as a sovereign state I've pleaded enough with my question but I do have a second one if I may say so but I mean they are still they think there is no backers eye nor is there any those comments are possible in the context of immigration but I haven't seen any of the papers in the Irishman anyway in least times but I also I'm very interested here because there is also a Russian dimension to the Balkan well thank you both and it doesn't surprise you to learn that Spain has always been in favour of the Balkan enlargement as a result of Macron's very strong position on enlargement recently some foreign observers understood that Spain was totally 100% behind that position and that isn't exactly true I think philosophically Spain continues to support enlargement for all the same reasons that Spain applied for membership in the 1980s in other words we want a Europe that is whole and free secondly geopolitically as you mentioned if the Balkans are left to their own devices the danger of them going over to the dark side of the spectrum is quite large is quite significant and therefore that doesn't happen Spain is in favour of decoupling as far as Albania and North Macedonia are concerned in other words our perception is that Albania is considerably further behind in terms of the modernization of its institutions, rule of law etc while North Macedonia is in a better position so there is strong support for Balkan membership so is a special case and as you probably know future HRVP Borel has promised that Kosovo will be the first place that he visits as HRVP I think the reason for that is he wants to show people that there isn't a Spanish taboo about Kosovo there is a matter of principle it's about international law it's not because of Catalonia or earlier about the Basque Country because support for secessionism in 2000 was about 15% so it's about international law and it goes back to my opening statement about Spain's very strong belief in a rules based international order which again is related to the legacy of 40 years of authoritarian Francoist rule so Spain would like the international community to take international law seriously of course if other member states finally agreed to recognize Kosovo Spain would not be an obstacle in the final stages of that process Filtan Melilla are autonomous communities they are autonomous cities they enjoy exactly the same privileges and rights as the autonomous communities of mainland Spain and they are fully integrated in the Spanish political system migration is not really such a big issue at the moment you're quite right partly because of Morocco's ability to act as a gatekeeper as I mentioned earlier hence Spain's obsession with transit countries it is true that whenever there's political tension with Morocco the Moroccans have this ability to open look the other way and suddenly we have several thousand young normally sub-Saharan Africans jumping over the fence and this leads to a lot of well it's very traumatic because they hurt themselves when they climb the barbed wire fence it's not pleasant for them and it's not pleasant for anyone but that is a problem most of these people are immediately sent to the peninsula they're immediately sent to Spain because Filtan Melilla are relatively small territories and otherwise for humanitarian purposes that would be intolerable more importantly though is the question of Yihadist terrorism a very significant proportion of those arrested and tried in Spain for acts of Yihadist terrorism were people are young Muslims who were born in Thelta more than in Melilla but mainly in Thelta the reason for this is that the surrounding area in Morocco of Morocco is also the part of Morocco which sends most foreign fighters to places like Syria so it seems to be a regional phenomenon in which there's a process of radicalization going on among the youth both on the Moroccan side and on the Spanish side of the border so this is the main security concern that Filtan and Melilla offer Vox has won the elections in these places sorry Thelta Vox has won the elections in Thelta which I think is an expression of the fact that it's the economy is this is a very poor city that there isn't much there's very little industry manufacturing and so on so the social situation there is difficult and migration therefore security terrorism as I've just mentioned are part of the local debate so these places are under considerable stress shall we say thank you Charles I want to thank you very much on behalf of everyone here for giving us a much deeper understanding of first of all the very complex internal situation in Spain and you've given it up to date as up to date as it can be but at the same time you moved seamlessly to the broader challenges at global level that we face together as members of the union and I was happy to hear in the course of your exposition that a number of the things you touched on are ones that are very important too in Ireland's approach to these issues at EU and global level the cap of course which is always with us you may cherish it for different reasons but we won't see it as a very important part of the budgetary process the defence and support of multilateralism globally is something in which I think we will find a great deal in common and much to do together in years to come so I very much hope to see you here again to see the links between El Cano and the IEEA flourish in the meantime I know that Ambassador Castro who is with us here today will be doing all he can to intensify the links between our two countries on the EU agenda but thank you very much for your time and for your words here today