 The second time, it's still not the official welcoming timing. So I'm just here for fun. Let's just close this introduction session a bit. Thank you all for joining this pretty busy thing. But we hope that the whole conference will keep on being busy. We hope that you already met some people, some new people, and use the chance to keep on doing that. And then just a few last words. You have all been informed about the event safe space policy. Please go through it, read through it if you need to. And then there's also a bit of theory, but also very practical steps that you hopefully will not have to refer to, but just in case. There's a Wi-Fi password also written everywhere around. So please don't go around and ask every single volunteer you see for Wi-Fi password. Just kind of find it yourself somewhere on the walls. And then it will be very nice that if you're already posting about this event on social media, use some of the given hashtags and the tags just to make sure that many, many, many, many, many, many, even more many people in the outside world hear about the great things that are happening here. So don't be selfish. Don't keep knowledge for yourself. Spread the word around. And then we also have interpretation outside. You will see people standing with these super magical silver boxes. You can sign up for it and take the interpretation set because also some people will be speaking only in Polish. So even if you do speak English, we might want to have a headset for the speakers who will be speaking only in Polish. And we were also asked by the staff to please keep the drinks and food only in the foyer. So don't bring them here in the plenary if you can avoid it. I know that many people already entered with it. So let's just not have a mass exodus now to do the kitchen stuff. But yeah, just try to refer from that in the future. I will just repeat everything in Polish for those who do not speak English, Greek, English, and you can pick up your headsets outside before you just get to enter your name in the list. And then you can have your headset. And please do not bring any food or any drinks into the rooms. If you already have taken some food or some drinks here, it's OK. Don't need to leave now. But for the future, please do not do this. Enjoy the conference. We will still be sticking around, trying to make this even more fun for you. And then since we are not here only for fun, I released the microphone too. OK, thank you. And a round of applause for Kacen Vesna. Thank you for welcoming us. OK, good afternoon, everyone. Try to not hide the keynote's features. Before I start, if Joanna Talevich is around, not be good, you're expected for the keynotes. Please take a seat. Good afternoon, everyone. I will not repeat this in Polish after. Allez, gin dobre. Vitame. So I'm Laurent Stendard, the political director of the Green European Foundation. This is the European Political Foundation. What do we do? We do political education work in Europe. We partner with different political foundations. One of them, and there are many, but one of them, an important one in our network is Trefa Geleni, here represented by Eva Souffin-Jacquemar. This is the Green Polish Foundation, who's partnering here together with another important partner, the Einrich Bull-Stiftung Office in Warsaw, represented here by Kasia Orla. Thank you for all the support. Unfortunately, the director of the Warsaw Office, Joanna Talevich, is ill. So all our best wishes for recovery. And thank you again for their support. I wish to thank, before I tell you a bit more about what we will do along these two days, I wish to thank you, all of you, for being here, for being present, all the partners from around Europe and in Poland. That's the goal of such a European academy. I wish to thank also the party, Partia Geleni, represented here by the co-presidents, and I guess many of you. Ostra Geleni, the Young Greens, as usual with our foundation, we also work with the Young Branches. I wish to thank the European Green Party, represented here by Melanie, one of the co-chair, and other colleagues. They have been supporting some of you as participants. Thank you again to the EGP. And I hope I won't lose my voice before the end of the day. I wish to thank also the Westminster Foundation and the Groenlings Foundation. These are foundations that help us bring other European participants to these events. Last but not least, I want to thank our colleagues from Kiev, and especially the Heinrich-Bürg-Stiftung office. We have been partnering with them since the Russian War of Aggression on set in February. All my thoughts to them, to our Ukrainian colleagues working on the ground, past and present colleagues. Let me give you a bit of idea of what is the European Green Academy. And I promise I'll be sure, because the keynote speeches are the inspiring part, not me, but I ought to do this. For us, as a Green European Foundation, the European Green Academy has really, as a goal to bring together cohorts of activists, civil society people, and green activists together from all around Europe, but also very much in our transnational spirit of being in the place. So that's why we don't organize it as others do in the Brussels bubble, but we do it on the ground with our partners. So this is a mobile academy. We are here in Poland for the second time because we have decided that this was one of our focus countries, but also because this year was a special year for Poland, I'll come back to that. So the idea of this academy is for two days not to have an expert conference. This is not an expert place for think tankers and academic thinkers only, but a place where you can inspire yourself, you can learn from others, and more importantly, you can understand what the Green Movement is about, what are the ideas, what are the tools towards obviously elections, but also towards political life more broadly. And so that's really what we are about. I hope you will enjoy it. You will find everything in the program. The structure of the program is relatively simple. You will have a little bit of the classics, so you will have the keynote speeches, you will have plenaries, but the rest is organized around workshops where your participation is what makes this academy really a success more than only the speakers and the experts that come. They come to feed, to inspire, to give you tools to understand what is happening or some expertise, sometimes a reality check also. Sometimes we are a bit in our bubbles, so it's useful, but that's what they will do. We're here in Poland. This is important for us as European Greens, for Green European Foundation, but I think I can speak here as all friends in the European Green family. The last few weeks have been intense for our Polish Green Movement and Polish Party and all our friends. There's a bit of a glimpse of hope. I'll leave that to the ones concerned or directly concerned, but this is an important country as you know. This is a pivotal country for Europe as the biggest of the countries on the east and the biggest of the countries joining in 2004. This is the one that has the most important border with Ukraine. This is one of the country that has been symbolizing so much in the last two decades in the fight for freedom and democracy. So this is really important for us to be here. I want to thank because none of what we do here will ever happen without them. So I want to thank my staff and I want to thank the staff of the Stiftung and all the partners. In particular, I want to thank and ask you to applaud Alice, Alina, Kel, Kasia and Ola who have been making this possible. Now I leave my voice to rest and I would like to welcome before our keynote speakers. It's my great pleasure to have them. They've been carrying a lot of what is the hope here in the green movement. Ula, Gelinska and Szemeks Wojtek as co-presidents of the party. Thank you so much and promise we won't belong to keep you from these great people. Welcome on behalf of the Polish greens. Welcome you all wholeheartedly to Warsaw, to Poland in this very, very exciting time for us. I'm so happy you could be here with us just right now because just five weeks ago, Poland was pretty much on the way out of EU and democracy not really here and that was our reality for the past eight years. Even with some of our amazing keynote speakers, we were on the phone, days and sometimes at nights fighting for the basic rights of people in Poland. And just four weeks ago, 75% of people in this country went to vote and they clearly wanted to see the change. And now we can say firmly we back in Europe and we back on track for democratic country that is part of the European Union and it's staying here firmly. And I'm so proud, I'm just so happy to see you here on this day. And I wish you an amazing two days. Let's network, let's speak, let's build friendships. We will need a lot of ties and a lot of friendships and networks to face huge challenges we're facing all around us. But with a green family like here in this room, we can make it happen. I hope you brought your warm clothes. Last time we saw each other as in March this year, it was European Ideas Lab with the green family thanks to the foundation, thanks to Heinrich Bilsztiftung, thanks to European greens, they're all here again. Last time it snowed and I'm told today we can expect snow again. So that's our weather. It's November, if you're running out of hats and gloves, let us know we will make sure you're keeping warm. Przemek. Hello everyone. When the European Ideas Lab happened in March and we knew that European Green Academy gonna take place again in Poland and in November, we were thinking that wow, it's gonna be probably in new reality. We hope that it's gonna be in new reality, that we're gonna be host this time in a country that is again on the democratic side, getting ready to be back to Europe and we are here. We can say, yes, we won, we are there. And all the ideas on all the things that we're gonna talk here that we're gonna think about and we want to do, they actually, I believe, gonna have chance to happen in reality, to happen in politics because so far every debate, every consultations we have, we had basic problem that we didn't have the stability in the Polish rights, in the Polish system that would allow us to bring the ideas because we had to fight for the basics. Right now, I believe that the basics in the next few months gonna be established. We're gonna bring back justice and democracy and we're actually gonna have the chance to bring into the motions all the beautiful ideas of the green reality that we want to prepare and create. And I hope that we're gonna come out from here, all of you, all of us, with those great ideas that we're gonna be able to bring into life in next months and years to come. Thank you and see you around. And enjoy. Thank you. Thank you so much, Ula and Cemek. Let me introduce to all of you some of our, all of the keynote speakers. Thank you so much for making it here, the goal of keynote speeches are very simple. They are there to inspire and inform the way we see the world. And I have here for, no pressure, for amazing persons. So let me start with Anna Machinska, former commissioner for human rights. Thank you so much for being with us. Yamina Sahab, IPCC author and important for those of you who have been fighting that fight. She's also a campaigner against the Energy Charter Treaty. I belong to that club. Very, very proud to have you here. Melanie Vogel is the co-chair of the European Green Party and senator for the Greens in France. And Yonata Levitch, your president of the Strone Dialogu Foundation, if I'm not mistaken. Thank you so much for being here and I propose we start and listen to you. And I would like to ask you, Anna Machinska, to start. Yeah, please. A round of applause. Sorry. Floris, yours. Hello, good afternoon. Well, thank you very much for the invitation. I'm so proud that I can share with you some ideas and you are coming to Poland in a very historical moment, you know, absolutely. Well, Ula, she has just told you that it is amazing the change which we are confronted with at the moment. So why it is so important? This election, the last election is so important because if you realize that in the world there are more people living in an autocratic system than liberal democracy. If you realize that Poland, Hungary, are two countries, there are two countries going very quickly on the way to autocracy. Well, definitely we can say authoritarian regimes after a very dreary moment in Poland. Eight years of total destroying of democracy, human rights and the rule of law. And what Ula said that, well, I was very uncertain about our future membership in the European Union. Even I was shocked some months ago when the Prime Minister said, okay, we have to reconsider our obligation concerning the death penalty. Well, death penalty is not so bad. Sometimes we can use and, well, these words coming from the top, it's really, it was horrible. So immediately the Council of Europe reacted to these words and probably you know that in Reykjavik declaration after the Foreign Summit there is a very important, let's say provision or statement that well, the Council of Europe is death free zone and there is no death penalty and no absolutely we are against such a statement, of course. But of course for the government at the moment it is a huge task, huge task to return to democracy. Tomorrow we have a huge conference with the prosecutors and imagine that there are so many prosecutors against the democratic rules, against the rule of law. So it is a huge challenge. It is a huge challenge concerning all constitutional organs, constitutional tribunal, so called constitutional tribunal, judiciary. If you realize that in Poland or in Strasbourg there in the moment 485 pending complaints against Poland only concerning judiciary, 485. So it was a total, it was a horrible situation but I'm quite optimistic. I think that we should be optimistic but what is very important, there are many challenges and for me because of my previous activity the most important issue at the moment it is migration. Migration is not only important for Poland but well it's important to other countries and especially in Poland of course you can say of course we have Greece, we have a dramatic situation in Italy. We have also, we I mean in the Council of Europe Countries a very famous interesting judgment of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom because United Kingdom they plan to organize a kind of outsourcing and to send migrants to Rwanda. It is not a very original idea because in Denmark they said okay it's not a bad thing to send migrants to other countries they wanted to Rwanda and then they said Kosovo maybe Kosovo would be better. So it is something what we rely on you. We rely on you that you will be quite stubborn to be and you will ask the Polish government and we will ask the Polish government about future Polish government, about their idea what should be done at the Polish-Belarussian border. What we can do with a horrible illegal instrument pushbacks which is absolutely illegal. And well I, somebody can say okay in Europe most countries they use pushbacks. They built for, well walls. Europe becomes a fortress but even this kind of pressure, this kind of cruelty towards migrants are absolutely in human and in human treatment should be absolutely forbidden in a country which is very proud because it's a member of the European Union. So it is also something what is quite interesting for us and it will be probably because we have five minutes. So the nature, imagine that the eastern border is so beautiful border because well we have the Jauwierza forest which belong to Natura 2000. And imagine that because of this horrible wall they devastated totally the nature. And then what? There is no even one voice from the commission. Commission should initiate the infringement procedure against Poland, nothing. 1,600 experts ask the commission to start the infringement procedure. Nothing, no reaction at all. So now it is very important to go back not only to democracy, rule of law and human rights in Poland. But it's very important to ask the commission to ask the European organs, institutions. If you want to, if you want us to be very, let's say very rigid as far as the obligation and fulfilment or implementation of the obligation concerning membership in the European Union is well. So if you wanted to impose very strict measures, so we wanted to ask you about your activity. You are the guardian of the treaty and this is your obligation to look what's going on with the implementation of the EU law in our member states. So thank you, thank you so much. And well I hope that, well we have friends here so I do hope that you will support our future, let's say activity concerning democracy, rule of law and the respect for human rights. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Hanmachinska for this keynote. I now pass the floor to Yamina. Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for the invitation. I am really delighted to be here because I am a strong believer in the EU and I do believe that the Polish people are those who will guide us to save the EU and we must save the EU. So I am more scientist. I worked on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and what you see on climate mitigation, when you look at greenhouse gas emissions that are covered by climate policies, in our report we show that in 2010 we had 20% of global emissions that were covered by climate policies but in 2020 we have more than 52% of emissions covered by climate policies. When I show these figures to my students then my students say oh we are going in the right direction and then I show another figure which shows that during this period between 2010 and 2020 global emissions kept raising at a rate of 1.4% per year. So basically then the question from my students is we don't understand. What do climate policies do for greenhouse gas emissions? And fortunately climate policies we have today do not reduce emissions. And unfortunately especially for the youngest ones if we continue with these policies we will end up by the end of the century at three degrees of global warming for the overall planet. Three degrees of global warming for the overall planet. This means there will be more life for us humanity. I very often hear activists saying that we are going to save the planet but actually the planet does not need us and it will survive us and it will be doing better without us. What we have to save is humanity from this collective suicide that we are going towards. And to do that we must, the EU has an important role to play because we are leaders because we are an important economy and because we have the technical, the financial, the expertise to lead the world. But before leading the world we must first be leaders in our territories. And one thing that we, then my student asks, so what are you doing? You have been working on these policies for two decades and you come up with, well first thing is to admit that we faked. So all the generations who have worked on climate policies failed. But it's not enough to say that we failed. We must to analyze why did we fail and how to stop failing because we must stop failing. And one reason, there are plenty of reasons why we failed but one important reason is that policy analysts like myself, two decades ago strategy was developed to say that climate policies have co-benefits. So we try to think about co-benefits of climate policies. But today we have more and more evidence that actually it's the other way around. For example, it's the health policies that have led to reduce air pollution and not climate policies. But we do not think it in this way from our perspective. And again, you all heard about climate neutrality, zero emissions, et cetera. But actually the zero energy concept was not invented by a climate policy scientist. It was invented by the US Army. And the US Army did not invent the concept to reduce emissions. They invented the concept and I learned this, I was in Vilnius in 2016 from a very high ranked US military guy. They invented the concept because at some point when they had soldiers in Afghanistan, they died, they couldn't save them because they were surrounded by Taliban's. They couldn't save them because they did not had any more energy, they did not had any more water. And when the US Army invented the concept more than, I think it was 2008, 2009, it was about triple zero. Zero energy, zero water, zero waste. Yes, triple zero. And they had a strategy to make sure that the US Army operation will be triple zero by 2020. And this is from where it came the zero. But of course in the climate bubble, we took the zero, but we never talk about from where it came. Because we would like to have what we do as leading actually an overarching policy. Of course, for our ego is good, but for humanity is not good. And what matters is humanity and not our ego as a researcher. And that's why today we must change, we must recognize that. What matters for the people is their social rights and security rights. And that's why the EU for example, we are leaders if you compare the EU to the rest of the world, we are leaders in terms of climate policy framework. But this climate policy framework that we have is unlikely to deliver on the well-being of the European people. And if you take the Green Deal for example that we are so proud of, the Green Deal is in reality another extractivist deal for the single market. And it's not about the people of Europe. And this is what we must change. I give you an example on the Green Deal about what are the people's need and what the Green Deal is about. So in the Green Deal for example, we have objectives to produce X number of, X million of electric cars in the EU. But actually as citizens, we don't need cars. As citizens, we have a mobility need. It's different. And policy makers have been since the Second World, let's put it Second World for all the EU, though it's different from one country to another, have been responding to our mobility need by car dependency. They made us car dependents. And this has created mobility poverty. We do have in the EU fellow citizens who do not have any other option to go for their, to work or to the doctor or to school or to buy their daily food than cars. But the only solution that we have in the Green Deal or the main solution that we have is investing again and again in this car dependency. It has different implications. It has first an implication, social implication, socio-economic implication because those who suffer from mobility poverty are the low income families in our countries which we have locked in the policies that made them car dependent. And these people cannot afford electric car. It's just a reality. I am from France and even in my country, electric cars are a luxury for executives. It's not for the low income. Can we make the transition with only executives? The answer is no. Is Europe only about the executives? The answer is no. Europe works only if we, all the people of Europe, benefit from Europe. And this is why what electric vehicles, if we go with Green Deal as it is, will do, it will displace emissions. So yes, greenhouse gas emissions from transport sector will be reduced, but in practice, this will lead to more emissions in the mining industry, maybe not in our territory, so we don't care, but actually greenhouse gases do not care about administrative borders. No matter where you are emitting, they go to the atmosphere and the impact will be everywhere in the planet. And then they will also create more emissions, for example, in electricity production. Even in countries like France, where we have decarbonized between bracket electricity production with nuclear, we will need more electricity production for all these electric vehicles. And this is not really, the full picture is not there. And this is what we do that is completely wrong. And to change that, the IPCC, our report on climate change, shows that we still have small window of opportunity, but very, very small shrinking every day to do things differently. We could avoid to be at three degrees of global warming by the end of the century, but to do that, we must change the way we make policies, not just to make small and even the word energy transition is the wrong wording actually, we must do metamorphosis in the way we design policies. And what this metamorphosis would mean to the EU, it would mean that we must bring the EU to each corner, each village, each neighborhood in each member states, but we must also bring EU citizens to the, for example, to the candidates that we are going to have for the European election. So we do have an opportunity this time, we never had all the stars aligned like it is today to change the EU. And to do that, I do believe that this academy today could be the restart of your academy could be there is the opportunity for the rebirth of the EU. And having this academy in Warsaw with the demonstration that you gave to the rest of the world few weeks ago is actually shows that this is the best place to be able to give the rebirth of the EU. So let's do it all together and let's march towards Brussels to make sure that Europe is for us, Europe is us. It's not the single market and Europe is us, the people of Europe and as people of Europe, what we need is security of our social rights. We are not just a market of consumption. Thank you. Thank you so much, Yamina. And without further ado, Yonah. Hello, everyone. It's a huge pleasure to be here today with all of you. So I would like to also thank you for the invitation. My name is Yonah Talevich. I represent Towards Dialogue Foundation, which have been supporting Roma minority including Roma refugees from Ukraine. I also represent Polish Roma community and maybe you know that we as a Roma are the biggest ethnic minority in European Union and in current Europe as well. But unfortunately, we also are the most marginalized minority in the whole old continent. This week, I participated in the meeting of the Council of Europe, Dialogue with the Roma Civil Society in Strasbourg. One of the main goals was discussing the execution of Roma related judgment of European Court of Human Rights. We discussed issues as segregation, forced evictions, forced sterilization and violence towards Roma, not in the context in the past of the past. We are discussing about the issues that are still happening today in the 21st century in democratic European countries, unfortunately. We as a Roma, we are very, very diverse group. It's not very often discussed, but we are. We are diverse in the context of dialect of our language, social economic position, also religion, culture and so on. But there is one thing apart from our origin that connects all of us, all of Roma. The negative stereotypes and discrimination that all of us face, no matter which country we are a part of. Our voices are not heard enough by the majority and we lack of sufficient power to change our less privileged position. We are minority everywhere. We are minority in every country where we have been living. It means that we don't have a political representation and we don't have enough power even to create our own image. I have worked for and with Roma for more than, probably more than two decades. I have been asked hundreds of time why the Roma community doesn't want to be integrated into society. Why you don't want to learn? Why you don't want to educate your own people? Why you don't want to work? For a long time, believe me, for a long time I answered this question by giving examples, actually examples even, how the Roma are valuable, how the Roma are a valuable part of the society and underlining that we don't want to be separated from others. However, we want to respect and we have a right to respect our own cultural heritage. Every single time when I was asked to this question, I felt that I needed to prove our and also my own worth. The events of February 2022, I'm talking about the full Russians aggression in Ukraine, I understood and I felt in a very, very strong way that I should take a different approach to answer these all questions. I realized that negative stereotypes and biases and prejudice against Roma are stronger than compassion, are even stronger than humanitarian laws. Since the start of the war, Roma refugees haven't equal access to the same basic services than other refugees from Ukraine had. And today I'm fully aware that it's not about the Roma. Exclusion and discrimination are not our choices. Often we have no choice, we have no voice and we have no influence, we also don't have even visibility. We are faced with ignorance and indifference. This is not only about Roma rights, we have to be honest, it's not about Roma rights. It's about human rights and it's our common responsibility to have awareness about this as well. I would like to also paraphrase Eleanor Roosevelt who said that democracy is only as strong as weakest individuals. We have to remember about this. I know that if the Roma, if we have tools and opportunities to act, and we are fully included in the decision-making processes, we are able to live with a dignity. And this is something which I and my community fighting for, dignity for Roma. Democracy is in a state of crisis. We know about this. And we need to probably reimagine it. I encourage you to join us to, in building, more inclusive, more respectful, and more diverse society. It's not only about the better future for Roma. It's about for better future for all of us. Thank you so much for your attention. Thank you so much, Johanna. Last but not least, Melanie. Thank you very much. Thank you, everyone. I'm very happy to be there. I think it's really, really important that we find and create those spaces to think together, to learn together, to meet with each other. But most of all, I'm very happy that it's organized in Poland. I think this is a great signal. We are organizing this. I mean, we are, you are organizing this, this academy in a country that's shown to the entire continent what democracy fucking means. And congratulations for this. In a country that has shown that there is no fatality ever, that the autocrats can be defeated, will be defeated if we mobilize, that has shown to the entire continent that the European dream is still very well alive. And that if you have determination, courage, and if you get out and vote for your future, there is something very key and very important that will happen. And this thing is change. And that's exactly what Greens are there for, for change. So another thing is change what and for what. And Greens have for a long time been understood as the political force who is there to save the planet, save the climate and save the environment. And that's not true. I know it sounds weird to say it, but as Yamina just said, we are not there to save the planet. The planet doesn't need us to be saved. Actually the Greens were born 14 years ago because we wanted to save the human beings who live on this planet. But all of them, and that's probably a difference. And also another difference is that we kind of realized that there was a kind of connection between the human beings and the planet they live on. We have understood a while ago that the climate crisis in reality is in itself, at its root, a social crisis. It is the consequence of an unstable and unfair model that exploits our common resources and that exploits the most vulnerable of us. And that forces the same people who suffer the most in terms of health, well-being, purchasing power to pay the most to solve a crisis to which they contributed the least. So it's not double-penalty. It's not even triple-penalty. It's quadruple-penalty, actually. You get exploited the most by the system. You suffer the most from the consequences of the system and you pay the most to fix the system that you have contributed the least to sustain. And that simply cannot go on. And that is the thing that the Greens are there to change. And that's why, and that's basically the main message that I wanted to send today, the Green project is, in itself, in itself a social project. It is not that we are Green, but, you know, we are also social. It's not that we want social policies because we want Green policies to be acceptable. It is actually the only way, the other way around. It's exactly the opposite. We need Green policies for social justice. Social justice is not the tool to have the Green transition. It is the aim of the Green transition. And we are doing that mostly for the billion of people who are suffering, the billion of people who are suffering from the consequences of the extreme climate event. Those people who homes are too cold and too expensive to heat for whose outdoor works becomes more and more dangerous. They are too toxic to breathe, food less and less healthy to eat, clean water and available, mobility too expensive. And that's what the Green transition is there to solve, exactly that. So it just means building an economy that provides for all where everyone can live a dignified life and that is compatible with the boundaries of the only planet on which we can live today. It's as simple as that. And the thing is, it is not so difficult to do. The money to invest is there. Not at the right place, but the money is there. The solutions, the solutions, they are there. They are just not implemented, but the solutions are there. So the money that we need is there. The solution are there. So what is missing? What do we need? And what we need is basically just political will. And how do you get political will? You get it with people, with you, with us. What we are needing for the Green transition to work. So the EGP needs you for this campaign. The European Greens needs you for this campaign. We need to elect in 2024. And it was said we have a small window for opportunity to make the change. If we don't succeed next year, I don't know what is going to happen. So it's not that we really have a choice, an alternative we have to win. We need to send a majority in the next European Parliament that is going to put climate policy, social policy and the protection of democracy and fundamental rights that is also key to make them a reality at the core of its project. And like it was done in Poland, it can be done at European level, but it can only be done with you, with mobilization, with courage, mostly with you. So thank you very much. We are going to win this together. Thank you. Thank you to the four of you. Thank you to Ula and Chemeck. Thank you to the whole audience. There's quite a full room and back room. What I propose now, this was very inspiring. And this was the best transition into what is really the core theme of our academy, as you will have read in the programme. There's no real idea of security and protection if there's no social justice. And you have been wonderfully explained and inspired into thinking that, you know, there is no such thing as protection and security if we don't think about the world we are in, the kind of environment. I mean, there's no conflict. There is no war without actually having behind it an environmental crisis and questions of, you know, people needing food, needing homes, needing mobility. So that's why it leads very well into our next session. Because of technical issues, we will take a five-minute break. So I really ask you to come back in five minutes. We have wonderful speakers for the next session, which is the plenary on democracy and security. So that ties very well with the topic. See you in five minutes. And thank you again. We are slowly starting. I just wanted to notify you again that if anyone needs translation via an audio receiver, they're available at the door. The people who took them, please remember to get them back to the box. So we are not missing any. And now in Polish. So we are about to start. Those of you who have no accent, and would like to have that accent. They can take one of the entrance. So please remember to return your hats at your take one. And now a voice over to Larone. And he will moderate the next panel discussion. Okay. Thank you very much for this little break. This allowed us to have the screens around you. I hope you can hear me. We'll slowly restart and close the doors. This is the first plenary. We have two main plenaries. And the other sessions are mainly dedicated to workshops and smaller groups in parallel. For this plenary, we wanted to discuss the difficult questions of democracy and security. We have four speakers with us. Unfortunately, the fifth speaker, Luisa Bielasewicz from the University of Amsterdam, couldn't make it. She was tested positive to COVID yesterday. So she apologizes. We'll try to do our best to cover for that. So let me introduce the speakers. And then I'll start my short moderation and explain you a bit what we are trying to discuss. Here to my left, Michael Keating. Thank you very much, Michael, for being with us. Michael is the Executive Director of the European Institute for Off-Peace, to be precise. Next to Michael Olhar-Nikorak, if I pronounce it correctly. Thank you so much. You are the coordinator of the Human Security Programme at the Heinrich-Burch-Stiftung office in Kiev, and much more. But you can tell us a bit more about that. Next is Christina, Christina Kessler. And together with us as both a think-tanker but also an executive committee member of the Federation of European Young Greens. And last but not least, one of our board members of the Green European Foundation and MEP member of the European Parliament with the Greens EFA, Gwendolyn Del Boscofield from France. Why talking about democracy and security? I think you have understood before that these are intrinsically linked to the situation we are in today in Europe. These are difficult topics nowadays. I think one of the things that the keynote speech of Hannah Machinska did very well is that she started by a basic fact. There are more autocracies than democracies today in the world. When you think about security, you can think about security in so many ways. And the first question you need to ask yourself, a bit like Melanie did regarding social justice, is what is our goal? This is not a Green reference, but it is an interesting reference. If I paraphrase Karl Popper, what do we want security for? We want it for what? He said for freedom. I say we want it for democracy. There's no reason to have security and to be more secure if it's not for something. And so the tensions that we see today between democracy and security are difficult political questions. They are questioning actually our society project. What is it that we want? Certainly we want social justice, but social justice comes with a certain sense of protection, being protected from something, whatever the threats. On the other hand, certainly with the Russian war of aggression on Ukraine, but not only because let's not forget, although I'm not diminishing at all the importance of this conflict, let's not forget that there are many, many conflicts around the world. Security is back. It's back on the agenda. We hear about it a lot. It creates tensions. It's another sort of fight against Tina for those of you of certain generations that don't remember that Tina was there. There is no alternative. And somehow the securitization agenda that is sort of pushed and imposed upon us is back and without a sense of alternatives. What is this security for? And you know what kind of project should it lead to? What do Europeans want? Come back to the keynote speeches. And Europeans are facing certainly a poly crisis. Let's not cry too much on our own shoulders. We're better protected to face those crises than others. But clearly all Europeans do not stand for the same, exactly the same thing when it comes to security or even democracy, as most of the opinion polls show. So the questions of security, as greens, as a green movement we have been very uncomfortable, very ill equipped to face this question. But we have to tackle it. And this is why we wanted to make it so central also, being in Poland. This is becoming the first army in Europe, in the EU at least. It's very unfortunate but the reality that with the previous government the militarization was beefed up to a very, very worrying extent. This is a very, very important democratic debate. So the question of security and the tensions is what will occupy us now. In many senses security comes at the expense of democracy. It's imposed, it's a priority. Guns are better as it was used to in the past. And so that's something we need to grapple with and that's why we have here experts, people from civil society with us to, as I said at the beginning in this academy, walk with us into the topic and debate it with you. To conclude, as Yamina Sahaba said, we are very used to a concept of security that is human centered. Guns, tanks, and it's all about humans. Somehow we try to save humanity. But the question of security is intrinsically linked to the question of our environment. The first threat after all is climate warming but other sort of threats come with floods, with extreme weather events but also they drive a conflict and I think we will talk about that in a moment. What I will do now is I will leave the floor to each of you for a short five minutes to help us understand the situation we are in, the world we are in. That's what we are here for and then we will directly go into a series of questions because this is also the goal of an academy is to debate with you. I have prepared some questions as well. So again, thank you so much. I would like to start with you, Alha, if that's fine with you. So I represent the Ukrainian branch and I cannot omit the possibility to thank all of you for all the tangible assistance to Ukraine because the war fatigue is the most hazardous enemy of ours and this gradual putting up with the request of oppressor is what we can face if we do not take sides and a rock state which relies solely on force and the country, the population of which was ready to give their lives, not in 2012 but in 2014. So it's the case of Ukraine. My background includes academia as well as policy design but I primarily researched law fair and how law can be, even law can be weaponized in order to serve to the war purposes and also constitutional identity how every country treats its approach to neutrality, to national security and especially the balance between human rights and national security but what did I personally as a researcher as the policy designer learned during the war. I also learned how to fight for and defend something that is under the constant threat. What would be the point of standing up for democracy if we were sure that it was there for the long haul and nothing threatened this democracy? Times of challenge make us understand the real cost of living in peace and security. So people who experienced and understood the bitter truth that however desirable at the individual level peace is not a default condition. It seems to be only a short break between the wars and appeasement and surrender for the sake of temperate tranquility actually is worse and it serves the purposes of the oppressor and trust and goodwill in foreign and European countries. The relationship can cost lives of many civilians and independence of the state. As for Ukrainian context in terms of future enlargement the common foreign and security policy as an agreed policy of the European Union doesn't fulfill its role anymore because it's mainly for security and defense diplomacy financial assistance to third countries which is really important during the peace mode but not in the warfare as it is in Ukraine. And even though since the European Union has been responsible for carrying out some peacekeeping and policy and external actions more and more still it actually sees nature as responsible for reconciliation for all the peace building and peace building with unfortunately military means. So just imagine the plausible situation when for example Hungary leaves the EU which is quite plausible or the undemocratic governance in the United States then it's still dangerous for the European Union to remain without any armed forces which actually the only country that has really capable armed forces unfortunately is Ukraine now. So how this concept can be addressed through the lens of the green vision. First of all we all know about all the repercussions of the war that was caused during the warfare in Ukraine. Aside from the huge damage to the whole ecosystem of the Kahovka Dam there are many other negative impacts such as almost the whole coast of the sea is mined and also according to the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources some 30% of the country's protected areas covering more than one million hectares have been bombed, polluted, burned or otherwise affected by massive forest fires are spreading as the fighting continues almost almost all the territory was polluted by chemicals to leach into rivers and ground waters. Also there are results of other hostilities like bombing the civilian area which polluted air and also water. But there are other unexpected implications of the war because as for me Putin is far more interested in lithium dominance than in imposing Roskimir in fact. Ukraine's lithium deposits are plentiful but I cannot imagine the situation when European countries will purchase this lithium from the pariah state which will be Russia in the nearest future and mostly all the territory where lithium is deposited and in 2021 already European Union thought about the future cooperation with Ukraine in this regard and lithium is crucial for all the batteries that can be used as an alternative to fuel and to oil. So it is important to stand for ourselves also for environment issues. And as unexpected as it is and as paradoxical as it is, NATO's First Secretary General Lord Isme put it like that, the business, the permanent and the all-absorbing business of NATO is to avoid war. And yes, it is paradoxical taking into account the experience of Ukraine that the very proof of capability to rebuy Russian forces would be enough for deterrence, at least for temporarily deterrence. And vice versa, the alleged total weakness of Ukraine and the inability to strike back the absence of nuclear weapons with the simultaneous huge stockpiles of Russia of nuclear weapons only inspires war without any possible collateral damage for the aggressor. And I know that these issues are rather composting, especially for European Greens and as well for Ukrainians who suffered every day. But still, I can coin some I can offer some concept that can be an alternative especially for Ukraine to maintain the balance between democracy and between human security which is the concept of the fundscapable democracy which was coined by the Constitutional Court of Ukraine in plenty of its decisions starting from the full-scale war in Ukraine. And this is not a militant democracy and the importance of this distinguishing is really huge this emphasis on the human rights and human dignity adherence to the rule of law and the Constitutional values. So, thank you. Thank you so much, Ola. Thank you so much, Ola. This was very interesting and we'll come back but I think you underlined very well the reality of the tensions between security and democracy when thinking about it and how to reconcile them. Because the academy is also as I said earlier a reality check I pass now the floor to Michael who has a long experience in the security sector and will inspire us further. Well, thank you very much and really what a privilege it is for me to be here. I'm slightly a fish out of water I'm not really a security expert I'm more I've spent most of my life in the area of conflict resolution and worked in places in many places around the world. I mean I think I'm basically going to make three points. The first is that the nature of conflict is changing very fast. The second is that we actually have quite a lot of knowledge about how to address, prevent and resolve conflict. But the third point is the political space for us to apply that knowledge is shrinking including unfortunately here in Europe. I work for something called the European Institute of Peace and it's interesting in a way why it was set up, it was set up 10 years ago as a center of competence for European actors, the EU European states and civil society in conflict prevention conflict resolution dialogue and mediation and we're completely independent but we do pay very close attention to what's happening in European politics because clearly as the European Institute of Peace we would like to think that we are aligned with European values in the way we go around about conflict prevention and conflict resolution. And the question that you had asked me in preparing this this session is it time for progressives and I assume we mean the Green Party to reclaim security it's a very interesting question and does this necessarily mean being better armed than democracy than autocracies and my answer to these questions would be that it is very important to be prepared for to challenge notions of security and unfortunately I think we are losing the battle on how we define security. Security is increasingly becoming defined in military and hard security terms not in terms of what people actually most cherish which is the rule of law and jobs and livelihoods and dignity and access to opportunity. So having said that given that the trend now is very much to invest more and more in hard security what I would point out is that deployment of hard security absent a political strategy can be disastrous. I think we saw that in Iraq we saw it in Afghanistan we may be seeing it in the Middle East right now where for all sorts of reasons hard security is displacing a political strategy for addressing some of the drivers of conflict and some of the enablers of conflict. Where you have hard security deployed as part of a political strategy the results can be very positive and examples that spring to mind are Northern Ireland and Columbia where in both cases hard security was deployed but it was accompanied by a political approach that was informed by real political intent to address the root causes of violence and those root causes of violence because this session is short to be saying things which are contentious but just for the sake of brevity root causes of violence often come down to perceptions of injustice of perceptions that something that those who occupy positions of power are not accountable that they are behaving in ways that is exclusive and that is marginalizing ever larger numbers of people and of course there is a big dilemma for democracies when it comes to facing conflicts with autocracies and with armed groups that are extremists typically democracies are very ill-prepared to do this by the way wars between democracies are very rare and maybe that's one of the reasons that democracies tend to be ill-prepared but it's basically because in democracies we tend to resolve our differences through political dialogue we don't resolve them by resorting to weapons but when it comes to the international stage we kind of get taken aback that actually those forms of dialogue don't seem to apply so democracies fighting autocracies poses huge dilemmas so it seems to me that one of the things that we have learned over the last 10, 20, 30 years in democracies is that if you are going to fight autocracies, if you are going to fight extremism if you are going to fight intolerance it is extremely important to understand both what the root causes of this violence and for example recognize that often legitimate grievances are corroded by economic actors criminal actors who try and legitimize their agenda by associating themselves with legitimate causes and become mafia I mean Shabab in Somalia which I know is in danger of becoming a mafia but it was actually started for noble reasons a sense of injustice a sense of and that's often true of many extremist groups they start but they get hijacked so understanding what the root causes of violence are and being prepared to invest in addressing them and be prepared to invest in delinking the politics from the economics is extremely important but my point is that I don't think that is happening as much as it should the question coming to try and round things off is what can the EU do to improve its peace support efforts and I would say that this is not an easy question to answer right now although in some ways Poland has provided one answer relatively recently but I think the EU is going through a double take I mean I started my job four, five years ago and the number of times I went to meetings in which people said the EU is a peace project and basically what we need to do is export our model to the rest of the world and it is true that the expansion of the EU has possibly been one of the most powerful ways to strengthen democracy in certain parts of the world but actually the EU is now going into defense mode it's no longer in the mode of how do we export our model of society to the rest of the world it's now becoming how do we protect ourselves from forces out there that are threatening our values our democracy, our commitment to international law and unfortunately there are many factors within the EU that are eating away at that so and I think while February 2022 was a moment of extraordinary unity and clarity among the EU what's happened in the last six weeks has been actually the opposite what's happening in the Middle East has shown just how fragile the consensus within the EU is when conflict is more complicated than just a clearly an autocracy so to conclude my view would be I do not have a monopoly of wisdom on this so I'm very interested in hearing from colleagues what they think but one is the EU needs to use its strengths to help prevent and resolve conflict and it needs to be clear about what its strengths are it is not a military actor it is a normative actor it has money, it has a diplomatic network it can do things in those domains it needs to be self aware the EU can make a difference and where it's difficult second I think is the EU can do more to fight hate and intolerance hate and intolerance are corroding everything fueled by social media and much more needs to be done and the third thing is to maintain space political space for conflict prevention and resolution that space is shrinking whether it's in parliaments genuinely cross political fora for addressing conflict or whether they are fragmenting but they're certainly fragmenting in national parliaments the notion of bringing citizens in front of politicians whether it's in conflict zones or in Europe but it's also about supporting other actors who are on the front line of trying to promote dialogue and conflict resolution and providing real support to them not necessarily itself but using its financial and normative power thank you very much thank you so much Michael very clear and again lots of points we shall discuss in order to give as much time as possible for the debate I pass directly the floor to Christina thank you you earlier talked about how security is a sometimes uncomfortable topic for Greens to deal with and it certainly has been a very uncomfortable topic to deal with for the young European Greens so it's true the war in Ukraine did not start in February 2022 but for us for the Federation of Young European Greens February 2022 was the starting point for a lot of very very difficult and very emotional debates that we had amongst each other and those debates were difficult not just because as Greens the topic of security doesn't necessarily come natural to us and a lot of our parties come from a pacifist tradition but it's also difficult because as a European youth organization our members come from very very different perspectives and our perspectives are different depending on our history but they're also different on where we are geographically on the map your perspective on NATO might be different depending on whether you have grown up in Malta or whether you have grown up in Poland so one thing that has helped me a little bit to structure this debate and to think about not just the topic of security but also especially the topic of security was the distinction of two pillars that we can build off and the first pillar is the vision so the vision this is where we think big this is where we paint the utopia that we would like to see in a hundred years from now in a thousand years from now the world that we aspire to have one day and then the second pillar is policy concrete policy so we can answer the question okay but what do you do today in the reality that you are given and that you might not necessarily like I do think that it is very important to do both as a green movement as young European greens in the past when it has come to security we very often have focused on the vision on the very big picture thinking but come February 2022 we have realized that this is not enough because it just was not credible in the current situation when there are people coming to us with concrete concerns with concrete fears that are well founded it is not enough to give them answers by referring to some abstract utopia that we would like to see somewhere a hundred years from now it's not helpful and we are undermining our own credibility and the movement by doing that we are now doing a lot of work when it comes to the second pillar the policy of it and I'm really proud of that but in all of that I also don't want us to forget that the vision is just as important as the policy so while right now we might be focused on this concrete on this right now what is the current response let's also every now and then take the time to think about the big picture and think about the utopia and think about the world that we would like to build one day thank you Christina and again without further ado in order to allow for debates Gwendolyn and I have so much to say on that topic I will try to stay under the five minutes hello I'm Gwendolyn Debochscorfield I'm a member of the European Parliament I work basically on a democracy package I work on rule of law media freedom, digital rights women's rights but also the future of Europe constitutional affairs in free committee of the European Parliament that is AFCO, constitutional affairs FEM, gender equality and women's rights and Libé, this big big big committee of the European Parliament that works on migration justice security policy rights in general on behalf of the European Parliament the rapporteur on the situation in Hungary so most of my work this last five years has been to scrutinize what someone called Mr Orbander security it has been said has come back as a very important topic and through this term we as a green group we had to take decisions, decisions on voting for for example funds for arms and should we send these arms or not help Ukraine on this we had to discuss a number of things around Ukraine situation but also before the Covid and all of this that we were not used to and indeed this word security I think that we were not using it and we have started using it again there's another word that we have started using it's geopolitics I will come back to it and we had a bit put all of that on the side for a long time and they are uncomfortable probably discussion for us because indeed for a lot of people security will immediately come as people with tanks and guns and we don't love that very much the greens you probably know but I want to recall that a lot of green parties are in fact brought out of peace parties in Netherlands in England in France next to friends of the earth or environmental groups and next to feminist groups often components of the starting of green parties were also people taking care of peace issues I think that security it has been said needs democracy that is very important I think second that we need to look at security in the big discussion that is starting at the moment about enlargement and thirdly I would like to talk about the place of Europe on the global scale about democracy we have numerous examples of security being used as a pretext to in fact break rule of law and in fact put people in danger we have known this in various moment we have known this with the nuclear issue for example France is a country where nuclear has mean a lot of danger for a lot of people made because nuclear is you know the future for peace security because nuclear threat of course is very good for all of our societies as we know we also have seen how security has meant a lot of backsliding on rule of law with terrorism in 2015 specifically with the big terrorist attacks in France immediately it brought up it brought up a curfew sorry the time we had curfew thank you but we also had journalists seeing their rights diminished because of security reason we could go and see what they were doing more closely we had a number of people that were even more discriminated etc etc but it's not only in France we saw that in a number of country and in fact terrorism was also one of the protects used by the member states to bring back frontiers we had borders back in France in EU specifically between France and Italy but in a number of other places because of the threat of terrorism and we've seen this again lately because indeed certain central eastern countries are using also the question of security to say we should put the borders back in so we see that this tension exists a lot we have seen also that the question of autocracy the question of disinformation around the Russian topics and the Russian interference has meant that we have often started criminalizing civil society and there was this plan of a democratic big project of EU democratic plan for EU where one of the big concern that we had was that one of the project of the commission was for example much stronger rules about civil society and much difficult rules for them because maybe civil society would be one of the ways of the Russian to enter into the European debate so we see that in all of these cases what we need to do is to be careful every time it is a pretext to in fact diminish liberties and civil rights because of course civil society are also the main empowers empowers in countries to bring up European values and to have and to uphold democracy and then to uphold security on enlargement issue we have seen there again that we've been talking about enlargement again because of Ukraine and not for good reasons of the Balkans, western Balkans belong to EU and we should help the society of western Balkans to get to democracy and we are happy to work with them it was the threat of Russia that brought the discussion back and there again it could mean that we do the enlargement package in a very bizarre way where we go directly to Ukraine we ignore the western Balkans just because we want security with Russia next to Russia and we're not doing the work in deep and there again empowering the civil society we have seen also that foreign interference has been a pretext to there again dismantle a number of things and a number of liberties and we have seen that energy security has been used also to once again we are stopping a certain number of things we also have seen that the war has been used to stop to try to stop some environmental and the climate deal and that sort of things. Last thing on the place of Europe in the world we have in a moment where indeed we don't really know what we want EU to be anymore we are not fighting for values we have more and more national identity topics being used once against the others we are also not talking in one voice and when we do talk in one voice I always have the feeling that it has a very bizarre one of this why do I say that? It was very clear with Ukraine we were all solidary and very united but when indeed the problem arose in Middle East it was really not the same and I do think that there is there something about the fact that Ukraine was a migration country and it was much easier for all of EU to be very solidary in this fact and we also saw that with the issue of migration we opened very easily and welcomed the Ukraine people and that was really good but we have never managed for all these years to welcome anyone that comes from the other side of the sea so we don't know what we want to defend for this EU and we could become more masculine in this way of seeing the world and you know really fighting against China and Russia and putting itself next to USA in this very bilateral way of seeing the world without going on working on our values and saying that what is also the true identity of EU is that one of the thing is that in EU you have charter of fundamental rights you have article two of the treaties and what defines EU but one of the core thing is that in EU you can be whoever you want to be you are not defined by your colour of skin you are not defined by your sex you are not defined by your sexual orientation political opinions et cetera et cetera and this is something that we really say outside of EU and to not be more longer I think that we should also tackle one topic specifically it's the gender perspective we have seen in number of cases we forget the gender perspective then we also make mistakes I am always very surprised that in the dialogue that we have been doing all these years with western Balkans in the enlargement process there is very little done on what the woman had to suffer during the conflicts in the western Balkans and how it has probably traumatized societies and created violence and then we saw it come back with Ukraine and once again we are not challenging it there is an energy security issue there would be a lot to say about the fact that women will be the one suffering the most and we are taking at the moment big decisions that will have huge impact for the women it was said earlier also about the cars this question of having cars clean cars yes there is mobility precarity and women are the ones suffering the most about mobility precarity so we have a number of issues and we forget we just go into the social aspect of it and we should do and the environment should go together but when we forget the gender aspect we also miss huge opportunities to improve things thank you thank you Gwendoline because I am very aware of the time I do have questions but what I will propose because we have other sessions after and we run a little bit behind schedule is to move directly to questions of the audience together with some of mine mixed in the bag so I would like to see a few hands raised if you have questions please do not be shy this is an academy not an experts conference I repeat and then we will wrap them wrap them up for our speakers and I believe we should have a microphone somewhere circulating no we don't we have one question here in the centre please do raise your hands already if you have questions so I can see them please go ahead thank you so I am Luca, I am from Italy I am from the Italian cosport person of the Italian Young Greens so my question is for Michael Keating it was a very interesting intervention and about the sentence you said that made me think that there is this sort of tendency to say okay we need more peace let's spend more in our armies but today we have sort of like European armies of all the countries basically spending even more than like three times Russia we have the United States spending 12 times Russia so like and today we have around 180 words around the world so I wanted to ask what is the percentage in your opinion of course around in general the percentage in which that spending more is actually contributing to more peace and respect to having for example more autonomy in the sense of developing our renewable energies like being independent in that way so which one is the percentage on both like either spending on more armies or maybe thinking about our policies in terms of energy in geopolitical independence and so on and so forth thank you thank you Luca I'm looking at other hands raised I've seen a gentleman here but for to ensure that we go for not only gentlemen on security please I'm looking at other hands but nothing for now please go ahead okay Green Left Party of Denmark thank you to all introducers for very interesting speeches I have a question to Gwendoline Kofild I don't know correct said but never mind because you are representative in European Parliament concerning and you are revealed very much about Hungary well Autocracy of Hungary there had been a coalition between Hungary and Poland and that coalition is over now but you have also revealed that Hungary is a kind of coordinator of autocratic movements all over Europe do you think it's possible to weaken that coordination to weaken Hungary and this network of autocracy because of the Polish election and change thank you thank you and I have one last hand for this first round the lady at the back hello my name is Arianna do I have to stand up okay so my name is Arianna I come from Barcelona I'm very happy to be here and congratulations again to the Polish for like two weeks ago my question is more in a gendered perspective of security so basically in Spain some years ago we had the first defence minister who was a very young woman who was pregnant at the time this image of young pregnant woman leading the army and all the generals and that was causing kind of an image shock because that was not common but this also opened an identity politics question because of course we need more women in these leading positions but do we need more women in the army do we need the army to be led by women or instead we need to feminise the way in which we understand security because of course I'm realistic and I know that we cannot all of a sudden say okay so we're not gonna just have an army because that's not sometimes the wisest solution but if we want to make a stronger security but make it feminised at the same time how can we make this compatible and who ever who wants to answer I'll be happy to listen to the question thank you very much I will now pass the mic to the different speakers I propose to start with you Michael because the first question was okay it's a very difficult question from our Italian colleague but the first thing I do want to say is I was at an event in Brussels on Monday which Annalena Berbock spoke about European feminist foreign policy and what she basically said is that I hope I'm being respectful to what she said but she said this is about putting the human person at the heart of security and actually it's much more difficult than you think listening to the experience of women and indeed young people and civilians generally and trying to figure out how what they are saying is then translated into security policy it sounds like apple what's the word you know the motherhood and apple pie type stuff but it's really difficult and we have direct experience of this in places like Yemen and Somalia where we've taken a lot of time to listen what women are saying is driving conflict and what can get them out of conflict and what they say it's very difficult to cut through to politicians and power brokers who are interested in weapons and money and are not interested in what they say and that's why I'm saying that creating political space for conflict resolution and security create making sure that people are at the centre of those things so important in terms of the question from the Italian colleague you know I don't think there's some magic percentage that is you know represents some kind of ideal balance between investment on security and investment on other things and I'm slightly uncomfortable because me security is not just about hard security and armies security is a much broader concept and even if you take the hard definition of security are you talking about armies are you talking about police are you talking about intelligence I think policing is often underestimated as a form of security it's actually much more meaningful to most people than having armies but this clearly has to be a national decision that has been perverted somewhat by the Americans insisting upon everybody spending 2% which creates some kind of artificial you know number but essentially I think it sounds slightly lame but the answer has to be what you spend on hard security needs to reflect what you consider to be the best way to respond to the drivers of insecurity and if you decide the environment drivers of insecurity are terrorism rather than injustice in one direction rather than another thank you so much Michael oh hi you have the mic so I invite you to respond and in particular some of the comments were made about what is security what is security for and in the response of Michael it's very interesting because the definition the very definition of security is what you fight for and if you could elaborate further on the idea of defence capable democracy that would be very instructive I find this concept quite enlightening in the context of this discussion I will start probably with the gender perspective of hard security in Ukraine because for example a vice minister of defence in Ukraine was a woman also but still males prevail in this hard security field in Ukraine but for example as for the armed forces starting from 2014 there were 16-17% of women among armed forces in Ukraine but was the beginning of full scale war because of the conscription this percentage was lower and now it's 8% for example the quantity of women's officers who were holding higher positions were 2.5 higher but I can only agree with Michael that concept of security is far broader than just hard security and it includes a lot of different dimensions and in Ukraine the war caused probably two important perspectives in internal and external policy first of all in external policy what is the meaning of neutrality now because neutrality is not the same as non-maligerency and in case of Ukraine neutral state has to treat opposing opposing states in an impartial way but for example if to treat Ukraine which is a rather young state and a powerful Russia it only serves to the purposes of Russia actually and the the main international tool for neutrality is HAG HAG convention number 5 on the rights and duties of neutral powers and persons and it was signed actually in 1907 so it was 116 years ago before the two world wars before the hybrid warfare and at that time war was only about bloodlust about conquering equal states and about more and more resources and now for example for Ukraine the war is existential it's for our identity and for our right to live at home so it is important to think over this concept of neutrality and how to take sides in such cases for example because the last two legal documents that were adopted and entered into into force regarding neutrality were adopted in 2009 and 1994 and it concerns actually manuals on international law to armed conflicts at sea and to law applicable to air and missile warfare so it only concerns specific norms about new times of weapon about reassessment on the concept itself and as for internal policy of Ukraine this is this balance between human rights which are obviously restricted in the war time and especially according to the martial law and between the national security and national interest because actually for example rights of people to move freely car fuse for example or closed borders are limitation of human rights but they are necessary and here the demarcation line is the principle of proportionality whether these measures are necessary whether these measures are legal in the democratic society and whether this is the last resort to win the war Thank you Alha Good to Kristina I'll profit from the fact that the last two speakers here to my right are European Greens to to ask you to respond maybe to the different questions especially from two angles the one that was cited in different ways is the fact that the EU is a giant in terms of defence but it is actually not a military a military force I mean it has 27% of the defence market of the world it does spend way more than as it was said than Russia it is just behind in terms of capabilities behind the US and yet it is not a military actor it's not an army and certainly not in the context of NATO which I'm sure you will invoke as as good greens that we are so that's the first part of the question to what was said the second is indeed the question of security for most of the green movement it seems obvious you know people go like well it's obvious security is everything it's holistic it's way more than hard security but once we get into the debates as we do now we often get lost because I mean very quickly we'll talk about military very quickly we'll talk about hard power and we will tend to forget the rest but most even international relation experts will say there's external security and there's no such thing as external security without internal security just because you will breed onto an instability you know domestic instability if there's no internal security and so therefore those other dimensions and I would like you to obviously take up the challenge to answer as greens to those questions thank you to answer the questions on the first question so a week before the election in Poland I was in Budapest for the Budapest forum and we were all quite depressed because we were expecting the majority of peace to shrink a bit in Poland but basically that was it and not only didn't it shrink but in fact it was a clear win against just to say that Poland is a hugely good news and it's not only a hugely good news it also shows something that I really believe in and that's why we called the event that we're doing tomorrow in that way the participation of Warnemann in youth if you do mobilize people you have progressive societies surveys show that the Polish society was no more homophobic or feminist or less feminist than another society but in these last years women were dying because they had a dead fetus in themselves and we were thrown back 70 80 100 years earlier with women in a hospital bed letting to die for three days by doctors that decided they could not get involved even if they knew that this lady was poisoning herself and that was in you one or two years of it happened sadly a few times but the Polish society was not a less feminist society than others and I think that they proved it very well because these women they went to demonstrate week after week for months for years getting beaten up and all of this so they showed it the Hungarian society is not more racist than another one and the LGBTI laws today in Hungary are awful anti-LGBTI laws are awful but people don't really care about LGBTI issues they are exactly like us they think you do have people brainwashed but most of the Hungarian have no problem with all of this and you could repeat that everywhere in France surveys show very clearly that people are much less racist than they used to be and then there is a huge possibility that in 2027 you have a far-right government in France I think it's getting closer and closer and we're not fighting well against it why? Because we're not mobilizing on the other side not because they are getting that stronger Meloni's results are very interesting Meloni in numbers didn't do that much more than last time there was a transfer between Salvani and Meloni's votes so, but if you take the total number of them it's not that worse it's just that on the other side people didn't go to vote for the progressive forces and the fact that you got this 70% people voting in Poland and so many women and so many youth and these people also before the election going to mobilize society being so involved all these NGOs that did so much work next to the political parties that's what made the change and that's the only solution that we have I don't see another one and I really think that because institutions are failing us citizens are the one that are going to win the battle, that's clearly the case for the moment the European institutions are failing us and they are failing us repeatedly, I really thought that we had a breakthrough in the last month and I can see that we don't have it so institutions won't act on Hungary because the only thing that you need to do today is to just withdraw the voting rights to Orban that's the only solution I mean the conditional mechanics exam I always said was a good thing to protect the Europe and money but it was not something that was going to resolve in a miraculous way the systematic rule of law issue of Hungary but on the other hand today that this person cannot vote at council every two months and make a big influence on political policies European policies that will be a real and you know if we withdraw the sanction if we withdraw the voting rights to Orban as a sanction it will not affect the population it's not the Hungarian people that will be affected like they are today by a number of decisions that we had to take so European institutions are failing but citizens are the ones that need to fight and I think when we do that we are strong I think that Orban showed the good example of managing UK was the bad example so everyone knows today that you should really not exit EU you should try to use it as a single market with taking out its core values that's what Orban showed Meloni is taking the same way so yes there is a bit of coordination to answer your question and it is difficult to fight it but it is true also that they don't agree amongst them Meloni is not happy about Hungary today doesn't take any migrants not one it's the only country that manages to every day push back all of its migrants what does that mean that means that all the others are getting them so even in between them they're not happy I mean we were very afraid that FISCO would become a new piece and we would have an islands Slovakia, Hungary instead of Poland, Hungary but this country is really really annoyed with all these people that Hungary are getting to Slovakia and Meloni has clearly stated that she's unhappy with the fact that Hungary is one of this country that is preventing the question of migration to be challenged and that Orban is not helping in taking its share and I think that the question of the migrants the migration is one of the core question and until we have not tackled that one I think I think that indeed we have a problem still that the fire can be strong but I still think that when we fight we manage on the feminist issue I think that a feminist foreign policy is indeed a policy for all the feminist policies where you put the focus on the fact that you have more woman representative so indeed today in the field of hard security you don't have a lot of women so it does help to have more representative of course it does help to it would be also a solution to work on certain topics as I said I mean rape as a war instrument is a topic that is not working enough and we have seen repeatedly in the Balkans in Rwanda in Ukraine that it's more and more used as a war crime so if we had more women maybe we would have more of this gender perspective and there's a number of other topics that would need to be worked but that being said the problem I think with hard security is that you always come back to this thing that there's no criticism possible in hard security when you do war you don't take the time to discuss did my commander in chief took a good decision or not the rule at the very core of army is obeying and that is of course the contrary of a feminist policy and that is something that I think we that's where I'm not sure there's really a possibility for a feminist way of doing war I think we should avoid to do war but we don't manage all the time thank you just a few words to add on the EU as an actor on security I think this taps nicely into this idea that security is not just security and defence because yes the EU if you frame security as solely an issue of defence then the EU is ill-equipped to deal with but I do think with all that you said the current political realities are really not working in our favour but going back to the utopic thinking for a bit the EU because it covers so many areas and has so many competencies in different areas is actually really well equipped to provide us with a perspective on security that is broader than just defence so other areas of security that are not just military defence the EU actually is in a much much better position to address those than a traditional military organisation I would say to the feminist foreign policy yeah I do think when we define feminist foreign policy are simply more women in positions of power that is incredibly reductive and it's leading us to a sort of girl boss feminism that is not really the kind of feminism that I want and I personally don't believe that women somehow are inherently the better people and I do think women are capable of cruelty just as men are and I don't think our world necessarily would be a better place if all generals were women that being said I do think changing our institutions towards cultures that are more diverse and more open to different opinions is an important part of feminist foreign policy and then of course there is the issue that we already talked about putting the focus on the perspective of people directly affected and here just one thing to add because a lot has already been said but I also would like to add but because I think it's not just women but it's marginalised people in general so that's women yes but it's also women for example it's also the queer community marginalised people in general should be the focus of our thinking on security and this is how we get to a truly human security which to me is a feminist security policy Thank you Christina I'm aware of time so I want to give you the last round of questions for a few hands please be brief and we will ask the same from the speakers because I want to respect the next workshops one, two, three after the session sorry yes please go ahead we have mics please okay Katarzyna Katarzyna Naklimović takes up Europe I just wanted to give a short comment and maybe rephrase that question that I think was brought by Michael so how to protect our democracies from authoritarian regimes shouldn't we ask ourselves instead how to democratise our systems so that we don't fall into the trap of authoritarianism and dictatorship as we have the whole plethora of democratic innovations that are already tested and ready to be implemented including different models of horizontal governance, collective online decision making platforms and participatory processes that are reinforcing the liberative approach so democracy based on constructive dialogue, looking for consensus while having in mind diversity of alternative and constructive solutions so instead of investing in weapons and armies shouldn't we invest in democratic innovations, innovating our democracies and as Michael also said yourself that strong democracies are less prompt to getting involved in armed conflicts, thank you thank you, we have two questions here on the other side thank you so much for your contributions I'm Florian from Vienna I'm a local councillor the first question would be for Michael you mentioned earlier that the space for debate would be shrinking I think that I would agree and I just wanted to get your opinion on how we could keep it open and the second question would go for Gwendolyn since you said that you would be working on constitutional affairs also in the European Parliament I would be interested in your opinion on how you would actually organise security and defence as a European would you keep it on the national level have it on the European what would be the realistic approach also thank you and the last question I have two kind of related questions so the first one is what are your opinions on conscription and secondly in Austria we have conscription but we also have the option of alternative civil service and a lot of more right-leaning people choose military service and a lot of more left-leaning people choose the civilian alternatives we also see that the police is deliberately advertising new employees on more far-right newspaper sites rather than more neutral newspaper sites and we see that far-right people buy a lot more weapons privately as well so how do we kind of deal with far-right people becoming more weaponised and at the same time the public armed forces also becoming more right-wing thank you so much and sorry again for the other questions we have limited time I shall remind you that the program is far from over so there are other sessions for those interested in those questions there are free parallel sessions after one of them deals specifically with the questions of defence and hard security and the different green visions is based on a study that we have commissioned I turn to the speakers before I close same round I understood the first question correctly how to protect democracies from autocracies but how to democratise in a way autocracies and this is a very difficult question but the first thing I would say is we're not good at it the number of conflicts that have been fought in the name of democracy bringing democracy to Iraqis bringing democracy to Afghans bringing democracy and there's something very arrogant about it and there's something that reveals that we haven't necessarily understood the societies and countries and we presume that our model is appropriate for others and I was mentioning this at the beginning the export of the European model much better is to understand how these societies consider what they consider to be accountable government and to strengthen that with a view to ending up with democracies I think every society in the world believes in accountability but they don't necessarily express it through elections and democracy and by the way we haven't touched upon this but elections are highly problematic as expressions of democracy both in our own countries but often in many other countries they are incredibly abused you look at Afghanistan you look at Somalia you look at so many places where we've been supporting elections and they've either increased violence or not resulted in democracy let alone accountability so I think it is a good idea and a big scheme of things but I think a degree of modesty is required and the most important thing in my view is to invest in accountability to people to civil society and respect the way that has been done in many countries around the world and then the other thing question I think directed at me was about the space for debate the political space for nonviolent conflict resolution is shrinking and the short answer in the interest of brevity is we have to make the case we have to make a much more powerful case as to why nonviolent conflict resolution is as cost effective as using military and hard means by the way I think the space for both if you are confronted with a military invasion you don't start talking about nonviolent responses you have to be prepared for that but the case for nonviolent conflict resolution is very weak and as I say I wonder talking to terrorists for example people don't like it politicians don't like it and yet we know that you have to talk to people you have to talk to people is there real political space in the European Parliament to help organisations do that I doubt it so the answer is we have to make the case which is an economic case a political case an ethical case, a legal case a moral case and we don't broaden the coalition of actors who understand why keeping that space for dialogue a nonviolent conflict resolution open is so important thank you Michael important in this discussion that you just brought we haven't brought it but maybe for the rest of the academy is the fact that the imposition of democracy no matter what you even think about democracy is sometimes a beautiful demonstration of the fact that we haven't in Europe decolonised our own security thinking one of the things that makes us not able to access what others have to say is also the fact that we have acted as a colonial block and that is not to criticise all the new member states but to say that the mindset also hasn't changed hasn't changed much I can answer two questions first one about the conscription because it's a very alarming issue for Ukraine now I assume that majority of Ukrainian males will prefer to build roads than to be killed during the war and we tried it we tried to avoid this topic for nine years but unfortunately we have no other choice and that is connected with the other question about the capacity and capability of democracy instead of going to war we tried it as well and we failed because even according to our regulation of the armed forces the muzzles or weapons should be pointed downwards indicating the willingness to defend only to defend not to attack Russian for example we tried different ways of communicate with terrorists even during Minsk negotiations for example we also tried any armistice and any trusses but we understood on the 24th of February in 2022 that it will lead only to a bigger quantity of casualties so it's better to be well equipped with democracy tools but to be always aware and ready to defend oneself thank you Christina and Gwendolyn please keep it short I'll speak to the other aspect of the conscription point because from Germany and as some of you might know Germany also has a bit of a problem with far-right groups in the German army and this is obviously the problem if you have an army when there's no conscription so there are only people who want to join maybe the people who are drawn to a certain culture that already exists in the army and then maybe at this those people especially that as a citizen you would prefer not to be equipped with guns and not to be in the army so I do think this speaks very much to what we were talking about earlier our culture changing our institutions because yeah I think especially in police, in military there really can never be any kind of tolerance for people who are not behind the values of a constitution and behind democratic principles I don't think that conscription is necessarily the answer to tackle this problem but I do think this is something that urgently needs to be tackled and I do think this is also actually a very good example of what a constructive green security policy that focuses on defense can look like because for example if we say okay we see that abolishing our military altogether is unrealistic for the next 100 years or so then we accept okay there is a military but maybe we don't have to accept the military as it is in its current form maybe we want to be there certain rules in place where our military should look like yeah Thank you Christina Yes we don't have a clear a position that is completely unanimous in the green group on this very clearly more and more of us are convinced that unanimity for any topic is just and problematic if there is one question that will stay until the end for the greens maybe the one where we could accept unanimity would be indeed the security issues and going to war and giving arms and all this but I think that even on that we are more convinced that a very strong qualified majority would still be an answer then of course I mean the facts have shown in these last two years that we need to understand how the organization on how the money is used because as it has been said there's a lot of money you represent a lot of money in arms but it's not useful it's just France adding up and its own things and the others adding up their own things I'm talking about France because it's one of the biggest these arms cannot be coordinated we know that the Ukraine has five different styles of tanks and five different styles of organizing the guns and all this so very clearly that is a very easy thing where stupid sovereignty is really blocking us we need sovereignty on a number of democratic decisions but we don't need sovereignty for each member state of EU to have its own very specific way of constructing its tanks or its guns so that's very simple thank you thank you to the speakers thank you everyone for those interested in those topics as I said there's a session right after where we also talk about conscription I'm sure I think I will try to end because we are late on a actually very feminist slogan which is reclaim if you have listened to the speakers and I have listened carefully to your questions if there's one thing that the green movement can do is to reclaim the question of security to own it to diversify it and to bring it back into the realm of democracy rather than as we have heard leave the hard security the police and other jobs and other sectors to the other political forces and therefore to other parts of democracy without it being democratic so I think the political debate here was very useful at least from what I can see and definitely the question of security has to be back on the green political agenda thank you so much and good continuation with the academy thank you to the speakers