 Hello. Hello and welcome. Good evening. Good morning. Good afternoon. Whatever you are. I'm Lucas Febraro, standing in for our usual host, Merica Lilly, who's away this week, and we're GM25, a radical political movement for Europe. Welcome to another live debate with our coordinating team featuring subversive ideas you won't hear anywhere else. Today we're here to answer a simple question. Is this European Union war joining? The war in Ukraine is disrupting life across Europe, but some countries in the eastern part of the continent are finding themselves at an additional crucial crossroads. Should they join the EU or choose something else? From North Macedonia to Ukraine to Georgia, many countries have expressed interest in joining the EU at some point. In some cases, these are symbolic candidacies that exist only on paper for now. But in others, especially in Axiogoslavia, negotiations between national governments and Brussels are in advanced stages. A couple of days ago, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said, I am committed to the enlargement of the EU. That the EU continues to grow eastward is a win-win for all of us. Is it really? And if not, what other realistic options are there? We have a panel today of people with unique perspectives on this question, for which either live in or have roots in countries from Axiogoslavia, Ivan Lenadovic and Maia Pelovich from Serbia, Dushan Piovic from Montenegro, and the North Macedonia-born and Germany-raised Julian Azeta. In addition, we have Yanis Varoufakis and the rest of our campaigning and policy team to give us an European take. Lastly, we have you watching us live. If you have anything you want to ask, put your questions in the YouTube chat and we'll get them answered as best as we can. To start us off, let's hear from Ivan, Maia, Dushan and Juliana about their perspectives from some of the countries that are likely to be next in line to join the EU. Guys, the floor is yours. Thank you, Lukas, for this introduction and thank you everybody who's joining us tonight to discuss this not as simple question as Lukas introduced it, but we will try to clarify our stances or our perspectives a bit. And I would like to start with giving a bit of a context, because I feel it's necessary, because even in our coordinating collective, when we were agreeing about the topic, we were floating around different terms, like Axiogoslavia and where it should or could move. Are the Balkan countries next to enter the EU? Is the Balkan some joint entity? And what is Balkan? Is it a geographical term or it's just a handful of countries from this region that are not members of the EU yet? So, I think that, first of all, my opinion is that we cannot approach this as a Balkan question or ex-EU question, but we need to approach each country individually having in mind what was happening with each country from Axiogoslavia after the collapse of Yugoslavia and in the last 30 years. Is this EU worth joining a simple question with a simple answer is no. However, if we answer that simple question, the next one is what is an alternative and is there an alternative? Also speaking from a Serbian perspective and being on this very long session process and having this carrot on the stick during all of the conditions and conditionings that EU has put in front of us, one of them, for example, worsening our union and labor laws to adopt them to EU laws which are precarious and so on, while Serbia still had a good law about working rights from Yugoslavia. So, not all of the changes are good for us on our road towards European values. Some of them, of course, like fighting the corruption or adjusting our court system and exterminating corruption in legal system, of course, should be beneficial for each country, regardless of their membership in EU or any other group. Another maybe misconception is that it's up to these countries, it's up to us whether we want to join the EU or not. There is no choice, basically, and then we need to obey everything and we need to be good servants of our new lords. This might sound harsh, but I think that's the case. In Serbia, in particular, the other option because there is nothing in between either or black or white EU values or Russian hell. So, being an Orthodox country as well for Serbian people that are disappointed in everything that's been going on for the past 30 years and EU basically not wanting us, it's not about us not wanting to join, but EU refusing us all the time and finding new and new levels for us to pass. The other side to turn is Mother Russia as the Orthodox country and also there that we need to recognize the sentimental connection between Serbia and Russia dating from the Second World War when the Russian Red Army liberated Belgrade and Serbia and so on. So, there is an emotional connection. It's not rational. We need just to have that in mind. So, I would like to pass the floor now not to speak too much. I just touched upon some topics that I would like to clarify. I myself have more questions than I have answers and I would like us to maybe come closer to some answers and also answer a question how much is a non-EU country really sovereign before joining the EU. And how is it possible if it's even possible to keep sovereignty at this point and also how would non-alignment look like these days when we have in mind that for example Serbia doesn't want to impose sanctions to Russia, but then it will turn badly for Serbia. I'm not saying that the Serbian government is doing anything right. Don't get me wrong. But if we try to practice an alignment, then we are not standing on any side. So, this is it for me for now. Maya, maybe you would like to take it from here. Thank you. Thank you. Even a lot of time. I feel which also from Serbia before we pass the floor to Montenegro, which has a little different situation than here in Serbia, which is really weird because till recently we've been the same country, but the politics are a little bit different. So even a thank you for this introduction. I think it's very important that you gave this introduction to the whole in a way socio-political floor that we have concerning our position to the war in Ukraine and towards the EU integration. Lukas, you also mentioned one thing and that is that some countries are in advanced stages of entering the EU, which Serbia is in a way, but it's really very funny to say advanced stages when our process of becoming a EU member started in the early 2000s, 22 years ago. And now after, of course, the fall of Milosevic and getting the first democratic government. And it's been and in a way we have been going by baby steps towards this year integration and the end is not near. From 2019 to 2021, no new clusters were opened for getting a membership in the EU. And now recently, of course, we are talking about Ukraine becoming a full member of the EU, not mentioning these countries that have been waiting for it for more than 20 years. And now I think the date we have, the new date is 2030. That's the one we got the last date. So it's like 30 years of waiting to become a full member of the European Union. And of course what Ivan is saying, we have been doing a lot of things that we had to do towards our in a way non sovereign countries, if we can call it that way, thinking about us as in a way non sovereign countries. So I think this is also very important to know that it's been a very, very tough path for 30 years. So it's not weird to see that here in Serbia now in the 2002, you have your skepticism, and I'm not sure if there was a referendum, how many how many people would say that they would enter the EU because now I think 80% of people recently and some polls are for for Russia actually. And what even I was saying of this historical cultural and other emotional ties we have to Russia are very strong here. They are not realistic in any kind of way and I think the only thing we are doing at this point in Serbia is trying to obtain in this very, very difficult situation, because we are a poor country, we depend on other countries we depend on Russian gas. Also a very important thing for people to know is that Serbia got the gas from Russia for a third of the price that Europe was getting. So now at this moment we are trying to obtain some kind of micro sovereignty. And when even I and I were talking a couple of days ago about non aligned movement or an online position we would have. I was saying that we are now not in a non aligned position but more in a to aligned like too much aligned position where we have to grab whatever we can. Because in one way we are completely sure that the EU doesn't want us we are completely irrelevant they don't need us we are surrounded by NATO countries. We are surrounded by EU countries, even if some Russia troops could not enter Serbia if, even if they would they would be surrounded by NATO. So in a way, when we think we are relevant, we are not relevant. That is a big problem. And also we are not relevant to Russia also because now if we impose functions to Russia, nothing would happen to Russia they will be a little bit sad and they would be okay they gave us sanctions but nothing would happen. So our only position at this moment is a realistic one. How are we going to manage to get through this winter and that's what I think Serbia is at this moment trying to do. And I think it's a big problem to ask for Serbia to do a thing that would in a way maybe make a complete collapse of the whole country and the whole baby steps we're doing towards EU. Of course, we know that we will never enter EU before we enter NATO Serbia will never enter NATO because it was bombed by NATO in 1999. Maybe we can talk about that also because we have also this other military threat of NATO bombing a sovereign country just recently. And at the end of the day also I think it is a question of Kosovo at the end we have to we have to mention Kosovo I know that it's not a popular thing to mention but it is something that I think at the end of the day Serbia will say okay so what is the difference between the situation in Ukraine and the situation with that we had with Kosovo in 1999. So I think all of these things can be a good reflection to to think about and I completely agree with Ivana and I would now ask maybe Dushan to give an introduction about Montenegro we can talk more. Yeah, I completely agree with Ivana that I have a lot of questions and not many answers to this. Thanks. Thanks, Maya and Ivana. Basically, maybe we don't agree in some points but we agree in the core which is, there is no ex Yugoslavia, there is no Western Balkans, it's really country specific and country dependent. Even though we are leftists all of us would probably shed the tear when we hear a song about Tito and stuff like that but that just doesn't exist anymore. Why it's like that let me give you a brief context. First of all, we all have our, I will speak in terms of Montenegro we have our history, our current and previous burdens. We have our own tensions and none of that is any more in alignment with Yugoslavia or anything which is the third path of neither EU or Russia. That question does, that third path just doesn't exist. Basically, if you, why it's contextual? Well, Euro is in Montenegro since 2002. You're as a currency. We already have for decades multinational banks, we have neocolonial approach from both sides of course, but after 30 years of same party ruling, we replace them with extreme right wing conservatives. Extreme right wing conservatives, but what's incredibly important to stress here, it's not a ethnical division in Montenegro, it's ideological. So when you look at the census before the war of 90s in Montenegro, you'd see that 90% of people were Montenegrins. And then it passed like that for a few years and when the big part is plugged into neoliberal Montenegrins and conservative Serbs, people chose one of those nations as a pool of their ideologies. It's incredibly complex and really interesting, especially as I'm coming from social psychology background, and it's something that I call symbolism of nation and nationalization of symbols. Now, don't get me wrong, both sides have something that's bad and something that's good, of course, like Montenegrins are always, not, I cannot say always, but more usually prone to NATO and Serbs aren't. On the other hand, Montenegrins are pro-LGBTQ, pro-feminist, pro-integration of immigrants, but Serbs aren't. Serbs are more touchy about the topics of corruption and economy, and Montenegrins are more touchy about topics of social issues. I cannot say what's better or worse, but we need to integrate what's best of it and just forget about nation in the ideological sense of it. I mean, in a pool of ideologies. What's important to stress is that we don't have consensus here in Montenegro on anything, literally, like there's always 51% and 49%. But we have consensus on one thing, which is EU integration. Before extreme right wing won, we had like 80% of people that are up for joining EU, now after the war in Russia, it's still some, it's 75%. Not bad at all. The only alternative that is offered to either Russia or EU is initiative called Open Balkan, which a lot of figures said that it's just a first of all big state project and second of all a way of smuggling, easier smuggling cigarettes and drugs. That initiative is being supported by US and Russia, and it's not being supported by EU. Montenegrins don't want to go in it, people from Kosovo don't want to go in it, people from Bosnia and Herzegovina don't want it to go. But there are like these imperialistic tensions to dissolve the borders, which is crazy for me to say now because I'm an anarchist, I'm from for open borders, but we cannot talk about that in a phenomenological sense and neglect the realistic side of it. For example, right now in Montenegrins, the biggest imperialist narrative is currently pro-Russian pro-Serbian, because they have political power. They created the government in a church, our prime minister was appointed by the church and put as the first person that came in politics only because of the church affiliation and so on and so on. But I don't want to neglect other imperialism as well. Croats said that we are not yet done with the borders with Montenegrin and Bosnia. The same thing happened with Albania. So extreme right wing has political power if they are Serbs in Montenegro, but Croats, for example, also have some wishful thinking of territories. So basically Montenegrins are united in a slogan which is made by Yugoslavia and by Tito, which is we are not going to own one, which means we don't want what's foreign and we don't give what's our. Let me say this, it's more likely that Ursula will announce anarcho-syndicalism in EU starting tomorrow than for ex-Yugoslavia to come to life again, literally. So imperialism is just too strong. People just don't trust each other anymore. Nineties are still fresh. There are border advocates for border changes across countries. And as we speak, I cannot get my license plates because there are Russian hacker attacks on Montenegro because we are the biggest link of NATO and we have a port. We are insignificant. We have 600,000 people, no military other than NATO and so on, but we do have a port. So we have hacker attacks, we have Russian spies that were caught and we have head of national security agency taken down after he caught Russian spies and after he caught the ruling Green Party cigarette smuggling. Two days after those actions, he got taken down because the ruling majority now are just pioneers of Serbia and Russia and our Prime Minister is opening, his brother is opening biggest clinic in Europe with the sister of a Serbian Prime Minister. So it's a lot of corruption. It's a lot of smuggling that's being hidden under nationalistic tensions or even worse, being the battle against corruption is being presented in the form of rising nationalistic tensions. So it's other way around this time. And I know this is weird to hear from me, but for people who are following my work in terms of particle writing or speaking, but I think there is no alternative. Montenegro is not ready for yet another experiment, at least in terms of geopolitics, and we need to head towards EU if we really want to save our constitution that says that we are multinational, civic country that's multi religious and secular. I will just jump in here because I feel the need to emphasize what Dushan was saying about the situation in Montenegro these days where ideology became nationality. So instead of declaring to which party you are, you are a sympathizer of, you will declare yourself as a Serb or a Montenegro. And listening from this side, Serbian side, you will all again hear that Serbs and Serbian are doing something imperialistic and having territorial pretensions. I think it's ridiculous to talk about imperialistic tendencies of any country from this region where that's tiny. But we shouldn't forget that there are territorial pretensions from Albania to North Macedonia, from Bulgaria towards North Macedonia. And when North Macedonia had this question in front of them, their reasoning and I completely understand the reasoning was we are tiny and alone and it's better to join even a rotten alliance than to stand alone. Juliana, I think this is a good cue for you. Yes, thank you. Yeah, exactly right. I mean, we're talking about a two million people country here with North Macedonia. And I think just a quick recap. When North Macedonia became a candidate, I was 17 years old. Now I'm 34. That's like, you know, I doubled my age waiting, waiting for that to happen. And it's really for the people there. And I mean, I grew up in Germany, I live in Germany, and I go there and I have discussions, you know, I'm like, you and it's not what you think it is. And I've changed my opinion about them joining over the time because at some point I realized something essential for the people it's not about what the US and what all these politics, how all of this plays out and the geopolitics behind it. And for the people it's about their future, you know, it's like, for me, for example, people ask me why don't you have a German passport, and I'm like because I have to give up my, my, my North Macedonian passport and I have family there you know it's not like you. I'm not a patriotic personal it's not about nationality, but it's about choice. It's about the choice to keep my nationality and have the German nationality for example, I cannot have that choice until North Macedonia enters the EU. My family, you know, people want to work somewhere else in the EU, everyone who is in the EU knows how you know you can pack your stuff and you can go work in another country and you can go back and forth how you want. It's really about freedom to cross the borders. It's not about, you know, everyone wants to leave the country and then North Macedonia and all the ex Yugoslavia would be empty. And that's that's not that's not true. I don't think that will happen, but it's about the freedom of choice and this is what people actually look for when they see to join the EU it's it's not about the things we think about the EU when while living in the EU and being a part of it. It's easy, it's easy to condemn these aspirations of countries and say, you don't understand what the EU is and therefore you want to join because coming from a place now I, I can I have you know my green card, I can move around to you, and I have this opportunity to stay and work everywhere in the EU. And, and this kind of blinded me to the fact that they don't have this opportunity and this is the reason why they stick to that choice. And with North Macedonia will know the one reason why it took so long on one hand was the veto for Greece. And I think the veto of Greece did even much more damage because it actually gave rise to a kind of very protective nationalism in North Macedonia. We're talking about two million people so we're talking still about a part of that population, it's not like everyone, but all of those corrupt politics, I mean, North Macedonia 10 years of our horrible government, a really, really horrible government that took all the money from the people and put it into fake projects, putting it into their pockets. They emptied the whole country of its, you know, money that the people paid in taxes. And that happened because they, you know, they were the party that was standing against Greece. And this is how they get their votes. And I was happy when the press agreement was done. And many people in North Macedonia didn't care about what the actual name was. It was just the relief of this dispute having this dispute gone. And it was very important. And now, you know, there comes Bulgaria vetoing and going, yeah, wait a minute, you're Bulgarians, whatever. And it's driving you insane. And I'm still, and I have to say this at this point, I'm still proud of the North Macedonians, though, because they haven't lose their nerves at this point. They have changed their constitution. They will do it again. And they're still hanging on this path. And they're like, okay, fine, here, go ahead, you can have rights, you can have rights, just let us in for boxing. And I think this is for a small nation, something that even larger nations can look at and learn something from to be honest. So much for me. I completely resonate with Juliana. We are part of a small nation like Montenegro in scale 2000 Montenegro 200,000 Montenegro is on something like that. And I cannot emphasize enough, the similarities of imperialism. That's why I want to reply to you, because you know, it's public. That's half, I named them literally you can read it in my article, more than a half of parties in Montenegro are being funded either he, he, at least by a Serbian Orthodox Church or by Alexander Woodridge directly. When you hear speeches so I will name some of the key sentences from either president of Serbia, defense minister of Serbia or MPs of Serbia that are in government. One of them said, Ukraine will be Montenegro will be small Ukraine. One of them said, do cranes in Russians in Ukraine serves in Montenegro. One of them said, it's a Serbia's fault that Montenegro has its independence. I don't want to turn this into naturalistic tendencies, but you can just open the books that are being taught in schools for children in Serbia and you'll see that all of the Montenegro is dynasties that are being called Serb dynasties. I even had the situation in the end where a friend of mine, and I know it's not ill omens said, freshly formed nation of Montenegro. That's just not true. That's just not according to history. And I don't want to talk about history. I don't care about it. But even if Montenegro nation was formed today, it's still and it's not. But even if it is, it's still the same relevancy as any other nation because that's how nations are created. And basically, you know that when you walk across Montenegro, you'll see much more Serbian flags than Montenegro flags. The key party that's in government is calling for a referendum again to be together with Serbia. That party is being funded by Serbia directly. We cannot neglect those issues at all. That's it. Yeah, a lot to ponder. And we got a lot of comments coming into the chat as well. Dylan Hardy says it's better to be a member of a bigger club like the EU than being alone. The EU can be reformed, but the dictator minded authorities such as Russia, Turkey, China, Iran and many more would be worse. And I think that's sort of pervasive here. And I'm interested in hearing your take on this, Yanis, because there seems to be that the sense of fatalism almost with, you know, when we talk about EU enlargement, when we talk about the Eurozone enlargement as well. We just saw Croatia. It being announced recently that Croatia is going to be joining the Eurozone starting next year. Which is interesting because there's a sense of almost that it's unavoidable for some reason, even with the entire experience that we had in the past decade with the year and especially now with all of the instability going on in the Eurozone. What's your take on all of this? I'm very seriously and severely problematized. We've been around as a movement for six years. It feels like six centuries. The EU that we were hoping to reform, to democratize when we formed TM25 no longer exists. It is far more toxic than we ourselves imagined it could become. You saw in the last days what Borrel has said about this being a beautiful garden about being invaded by the refraf from outside. This is quasi-Nazi talk coming from the center of our institutions. The EU has become nasty, brutish and a threat to civilization over the last few years. Having said that, with deep-seated respect for those of you in Montenegro, Serbia and so on who feel that despite its toxicity, despite its deep reactionary nature these days, despite it having become anything other than a union and during a war that has rendered the EU an appendix to Washington DC, nevertheless I understand your position that you feel, not the position, the feeling that you have, that it is a kind of a safe port in a big storm that you're facing when you have budget on the one side and put in and so on and so forth. So allow me to just share some thoughts. Firstly, there is a very big decision to be made when you enter the EU because there is no way out of the EU that is not exceedingly painful as Brexit has demonstrated. It's one thing to say to consider entering, it's quite another thing to consider exiting. So there is hysteresis as mathematicians say. So be very careful. Once you're in, you're locked in and you have to be 100% sure that you really want to get in. The discussion that I heard from all of you from Ivana, from Dushan, Ljubljana, from Maja reminded me very much of the discussions that were raging here in Greece in the 1970s when I was a young man and Greece was on the verge of becoming a member of the European Union which was back then called the European Economic Community, same thing. Same arguments, same arguments. On the one hand, we were facing the specter of Orientalism, the condensation with which European, Central Europeans, Northern Europeans, the Brits, the Americans were looking at the Greeks as an appendage of the Ottoman Empire. What you experienced in Serbia, in Montenegro and so on. Then it was the uncurting, just a few kilometers from the Saloniki, the idea that, the reality that my mother grew up in a fascistic leadership. I grew up in a fascistic leadership in between, I had a civil war between the forces supported by Stalin on the one hand and forces supported by the Pentagon on the other and the British intelligence services. And I was also caught up in this wave of feeling that the EU is somewhere where we can be democratic and not have to fear the secret police in the middle of the night. So, and this is why, you know, the majority of Greeks were in favor of entering the European Community, but mind you, it was never tested by referendum. Because opinion polls at the time, even though they were tricky, but they're always tricky, the opinion polls, always unsafe. They were not showing a clear margin of victory for entering the European Economic Community. So, I am conflicted about it. You mentioned the, look, as you mentioned, you know, Bulgaria entering the Euro and Croatia entering the Euro. These are criminal decisions by the governments of Bulgaria and Croatia. It's nothing more than criminal to enter the Euro today. Effectively, you are giving up sovereignty in a manner which guarantees austerity forever. You just give away the right even to discuss economic policy effectively. Now, remember, if Serbia becomes a member of the North Macedonia or Albania become a member of the European Union, you're signing up to the Euro. You're effectively committing to enter the Eurozone as well. So, you know, I think that we should be very respectful of people in Montenegro, people in North Macedonia who say, well, you don't know what it's like to live here. And we feel that entering the EU is a lesser even. If that's what you say to me, Lucian, I would respect that. And, you know, I would support a referendum amongst Montenegro to enter the EU. I would never support the entry into the EU without a referendum. If I were a Montenegro, I would vote against. I'm telling you this, but only because I've had 40 years of experience of being in the EU. So being in the EU gives you a different perspective to not being in the EU. So I respect that. But let me finish on a self-critical note. Self-critical personally and also DM-wise criticism of DM. When we set up the M25 in February of 2016, we were hoping to transform the European Union in such a way as to make it a good place for your countries, for the Balkan countries and other countries to enter. We've done exactly the opposite. We've failed and the EU is a toxic place for the people who are within it, ruled by intellectual dwarfs who very quickly slide towards neo-Nazi language. This is the EU that you want to join. So it simply highlights the complete tragedy of Yugoslavia. After so many decades, you feel that things are so desperate that your best bet out of a bunch of bad bets is to enter this toxic EU. It's a collective failure of the whole of Europe. That's how it went. Thank you, Yanis, and to use this as a segue because you mentioned towards the end there the intellectual dwarfs with the almost neo-Nazi language. Recently, the EU's Foreign Affairs Chief Josep Orel used the Polish language in a public appearance in which he made an analogy and he referred to Europe as a garden and the rest of the world, most of the rest of the world as a jungle that has a growth capacity and wants to invade this garden and we should protect the garden. We condemned it and we launched a petition and as a matter of fact, calling for his resignation and the link will be in the chat and we invite you to sign in. To sign it and while you're there to join DM25 as well if you like what you're hearing here in this discussion. Eric, can I bring you in? Eric Edmund, our political director. Sure. I also was conflicted preparing for this live stream. I didn't know what my position was. Do we want countries to be joining the EU? And I say countries are not ex-Ugozavia, West Balkans or anybody because I think as DM we have a responsibility to at least try and have pan-European positions. So we either think that the EU is worth joining or it's not. If we sit there and say that it's worth joining for Montenegro but it's not for Iceland or whatever have you, I think we should be doing more than that. And the answer to whether or not it's worth joining, I think hinges on our answers on two points. The first one is, does the EU do more good than bad? We all agree does bad. We know that this is the very critical of the EU. But if we're saying that countries should be joining it, we're essentially saying that there's a little bit more on the side of good than there is on bad on the balance at the end of the day compared to the alternative. So first, we need to answer that. And the second question is, if more countries join the EU, does that make our task, our mission, our challenge of radically transforming the EU easier or harder? That's the other question that we need to answer. Is it better for changing the EU radically if we have more countries, more governments joining this EU? So taking the first question, is it more good than bad? You know, I'm not going to go into too much detail, essentially the point of these live streams is to talk about these things. The EU is killing refugees left, right and center unless they're white Christian Ukrainians. The EU has become essentially a geopolitical annex of NATO. The EU in the 2008 crisis, in the pandemic, in the refugee crisis, now with the energy crisis, every opportunity it's had, it's tried to bail out the rich and powerful, put more money in the 1% and throw the rest of us under the bus. What has the EU done to help Hungarians, Poles, the Catalunians from their governments, the Greeks from their governments? How have they helped? In Romania, we're running a campaign to renationalize energy, which was nationalized and is essentially brought by a bunch of European, Central, German and French, essentially, companies, to the point where Romanians are now paying more money to get energy to their houses than the state would be paying to have free energy for everybody. That's also, that's the EU, anybody would be joining who joins today. In Greece, we have a political party and government, who's one of the one of its core pillars of existence is fighting the European Union or the European Union is done together with the IMF. But the European Union was one of the main architects of this. So this is the European Union that we are basically asking other citizens to want to join compared to the alternative. And, you know, back in 2015, during the renegotiation of the Greek debt, we said that if we're serious about really changing Greece's position within the euro, we need to be prepared for Greece to leave the euro. I think we also need to apply the exactly the same principle when it comes to radically reforming the European Union. If we're going to have this fight with the EU, we need to also be prepared to not be a part of this EU. That's not saying that this is what we're aiming for, but we're saying that that is a preferred alternative to this European Union, continuing to exist another day long, or for us being a part of it for that matter. So that is my, I think, position after a lot of soul searching that at the end of the day, this European Union is worth existing. And although it hides behind, it's toxic how it hides under small perks, this idea that, you know, you have cleaner waters in the EU or, you know, in the EU, there's a pandemic recovery fund which is pushing us further into debt or that, you know, we bailed out the Greeks. This is all EU talk, which basically throws ashes in the eyes of radical activists and makes them think that it's worth, and not even that it's worth, it just plants little seeds of doubt. And it's really, really dangerous. And we need to be very honest about what the reality is about this EU and what you're really buying into when you join it. That's the answer to the first question. And the second point about whether or not it makes it easier to reform. The more governments that have joined the EU, the more sclerotic and inflexible and chaotic it's become, you can draw a line in 2004 before the enlargement of 2004 and after. And that is because this European Union was not designed to deal with this kind of political plurality because it's not democratic. Democracy can absorb that. This EU is not democratic, it cannot deal with it. So it's been completely failing consistently from the beginning of the 21st century onwards. And by adding more countries, more governments, more people to that, we're basically making that problem even worse. So I think, and I know this is quite heavy sounding because, you know, I live in Brussels and I moved to Brussels because I love the idea of the European Union, which is why I hate this European Union so very much. And if we're going to be honest about what we're trying to do in Europe, I think we need to be unequivocal about the fact that it's really there is no circumstance under which we can suggest that anybody should be in favor of joining the European Union, regardless of the circumstance. It's never a worthy alternative. Thanks, Eric. Juliana, you think you mentioned you have a question. Yes. And it has to do with something that Eric said just now. I mean, wouldn't, as you said, Eric, I mean it got more chaotic the more member ago. And if we look at members like Poland and Hungary, for example, they are giving the you completely unnecessary new spin, you know, of nationalism and so on. But couldn't it be also true that if you would have those those countries like Serbia like North Macedonia, if you if they would join the EU, that you could maybe also change the dynamic of such a of of the year with those countries. I mean, imagine all of Europe, what we consider Europe as a country on this continent would be in the EU. You're right, it would be more chaotic, chaotic, but it could be also maybe an opportunity to metal things up and to change things because it would also matter to people in Serbia and North Macedonia to get themselves involved in the debates in the EU and in all of that, which we do now already as in the EU countries, we are politically organized because of the EU and because we wanted to change it and now we are at a different point where we have to renegotiate ourselves what do we want to do with this with this union, you know, but it can also be like more, more helping hands, more people pointing to the faults of the EU. So this is kind of my question that it maybe and yes with the euro I agree with Janus completely. If I imagine like North Macedonia having the euro. It would be a really, really, really shit life for the people there. They wouldn't maintain what they have today even. I think when North Macedonia would join fully that's true, but it cannot not be also an opportunity to, you know, to unite the people and therefore change EU with all its citizens and not just with those who are now members and the rest is outside waiting for a union that's joinable, you know, so yeah. I think you got my question right so it cannot not have a positive effect for us. Also go for us Janus maybe. Then I wanted to ask a question of me as well. Very quick one just to put another perspective that I'm thinking. Okay, if all because you mentioned 20 and 30 years of waiting. If this waiting by itself, I'm sure, creates a different strategy, you know, in the economy of the country, and I'm wondering what would have happened in those 20 or 30 years or what will happen if you want to get in anymore, if there's a referendum, whatever, hypothetically, would that would all this energy and dynamics that are going to waste I suppose in a way have changed the economy and those countries could have been in a better position. I mean, the waiting itself, I suppose drains out possibilities for other things. And that's a question. Even in the case of Turkey, Turkey has been waiting as long as actually longer than any other country. In the process, Turkey stopped wanting to be part of the EU. It maintains its place as a candidate member state, just in order to annoy the EU, but I have zeroed out that even if you begged Erdogan and Turkey, didn't even the opposition to enter the EU, Turkey would say not on your neck. So it's not necessarily the case that you're waiting long enough, then not getting in is a tragedy. Let me look, folks. I have a question, Iliana. Might not the entry of Montenegro and North Macedonia help us progressives reshuffle and transform the EU. Firstly, from my experience, small countries are completely and utterly ignored by the powers that be. It doesn't matter whether North Macedonia and the Montenegrin is going to say in any EU council meeting in any case EU council meetings do not decide anything. It's all done by a central European cartel like decision making body. And what happens is the local kleptocracies that are represented, either representing Greece or Montenegro or North Macedonia, they simply fit into the model trying to extract some economic grants for themselves, which the central hidden directorate allows them to have to keep their mouth shut, get out of the way and stop meddling. If you look at the most successful, compare and contrast the government in which I served of Greece with Orban and the respective relationship with the center of the EU. Our government in 2015 tried to prevent the loss of 100 euros a month from pensioners who were eating out of rubbish beans because their total income was 300. They wanted to bring down their income from 300 to 200. And they shut down our banks for that, which is the equivalent of an invasion, a financial invasion, the equivalent of terrorism, financial terrorism. You close down a country's banks if you want to terrorize the population into submission. This is what they did. What did they do to Orban, to the Poles? Nothing, absolutely nothing. The neo fascists in Budapest, very smart people, extremely smart people know how to stay out of the euro. Look at the Polish government. They don't fall into the trap of entering the euro. They know how to use the single market in order to propagate the exports and the sales of the companies that are owned by the kleptocracy in the center of those regimes. They know how to support the worst parts of the EU and fight all the progressive things of the EU. So having countries like that that are ruled by a very right-wing kleptocracies is not going to help us reform or transform the EU. It doesn't make the EU a more progressive place. And it doesn't make those countries more prosperous. Especially not from now on because, you know, one could say with some reason that Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary benefited a lot financially from the EU. They did. That was a different time. The EU was much richer. It was before the crisis. And those countries that I mentioned were wired, hardwired into the German industrial machinery, something that will not be the case for Northern Macedonia. It will not be the case for Montenegro. If anything, the German industrial machinery is now rusting away as a result of the collapse of the German economic model. So I don't think that the, you know, the scales are weighing on the side of the pros versus the cons that Eric mentioned. This is my view. Again, I'm perfectly willing to defer to you folks who are in Montenegro, in Northern Macedonia, in Serbia, while maintaining my right as a member of DM to have a final view of this. But Eric is right. I think that we are not going to come to conclusions today, but it's a good start of a DM debate amongst ourselves. Leading perhaps to a series of AMVs, all member votes, for those who don't know what our acronyms mean. One question that Eric raised is, should we have a homogeneous position? That is either yes to countries entering to all of them, or to anyone that wants to enter, or no. Should we have a homogeneous position? Or could we, for instance, say that in the case of Turkey, we're against, because the people of Turkey will be worse off, and they will be financially worse off if they enter the EU. There's no doubt about that. The working class of Turkey is going to do much worse if they are inside the EU. Whereas to say that in the case of Montenegro, because the circumstances are very different, we would favor the entry of Montenegro to the EU. For example, we are neither here nor there. Do we really need Eric to be homogeneous, to say one rule for all? Either all of them stay out or all of them come in? That's one question. I don't have an answer, but this is a question that we can debate amongst themselves and formulate the policy. And the second question is, okay, if we decide homogeneously, is it yes or no? And if it's heterogeneous, which ones do we propose should enter and which ones do we propose shouldn't enter? This is a very interesting discussion to have to be had within the EU. Yeah, definitely. Maya? Yes, I would just want to add, because I think I had a question for Yanis, but I think that he actually answered it now. But I just wanted to add one thing, because it's not a black and white position. I think that now, after hearing Dushan was completely pro-entering EU and his position of Montenegro that I can of course understand, and then hearing the whole position of Yanis and Greece and having the whole reflection on how it went off with Greece, and us thinking if we should enter the EU after 30 years of waiting, and if we're good children and do everything we can, we can recognize Kosovo and impose sanctions against Russia and stuff like that. And I think that it is a question, it's also a question being raised maybe to think about it in the future. And that is that there is a problem that at this moment in history, entering the EU and being a part of the EU or European story is being a part of the right side of history. And that is what they are telling us here. If you are now, which we started at the beginning of this discussion, that they are telling us that if you are not pro-EU, you are not on the right side of history, but now hearing everything that Yanis said and other people, is this the right part of history and is there a further alternative? The most maybe difficult thing is to imagine this utopistic other alternative, and maybe we can try to imagine it in another live stream in the future. I just wanted to add that. Thanks Maya, and I think that's a great point because I think this is part of why it's so difficult to have these discussions as well, because the EU has done such a good job over the course of the decades to really present itself not only as inescapable, but also as something that sort of distance but positive on the whole and that we should just accept and sort of admire in a sense, even though as we know if you look closely, it has a lot of problems. Amir, what's your take on this? Well, I've been trying to get through this long report issued by the EU about where Bosnia and Herzegovina is regarding joining the EU, and well apart from the conditions being very market friendly, and that's all that matters, of course we know that. The goalposts also keep shifting, looking at even what Ivana was saying earlier on. So it's not only the 14 key priority areas that Bosnia has been communicated that they need to fill and an additional aid got added on just very recently. And I want to just quickly focus on this because we were talking about these countries joining, we're not joining, but we've also got our constant narrative around the lack of democratization in Europe and how that there's internal contradiction in this process. Let me just give me one minute to just go through one critique of the EU of Bosnia and then maybe help illustrate this, because in this report, the European Union is critical of the lack of constitutional electoral reforms in Bosnia, but it's completely fine and shamefully comfortable with the use of draconian use of power based in the office of the high representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina. This office is currently occupied by Christian Schmidt and benefits from zero accountability, and there's no possibility of appeal on any decision that this office makes. And just also to also mention that the deputy high representative happens to has always been American from the United States State Department and the previous high combinations have been German, Austrian and so on. So we can see perhaps, you know, that there's not there's no democratic choice here at all in terms of advice for making decisions for the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina. And this person has chosen is picked by the so called peace implementation council, which has no basis in international law. So again, we have zero democratic participation in any decision making here and so yet the EU is critical of how the Bosnians are, you know, running their fragile democracy you know right and at the same time they have a draconian person that is not fit for the sort of mercantilist EU future. And the latest use of this excessive power was on the second of October. Mr Schmidt imposed a new a new electoral law. As soon as the elections closed, so people went to the polls, put in their choice in the ballot box, polls closed at 7pm for him and sick and then a new law was put in place by the office of the higher representative, just like that. And this imposition actually further entrenched as no nationalism in a country where voters are trying to get away from national nationalism and into like just daily issues. And actually this law was first muted in July, and there was broad popular protest against it. Civil society, the public and political parties. But of course, again, when it comes to the EU. It's not the will of the people be damned because a representative of the garden knows better. Thanks Amir. And yeah, it's it's something that say what you will about the EU but something that they will always have endless supply of is an elective bureaucrat bureaucrat right. Ivana, now bring you in to to wrap up the discussion. Thank you Lucas and thanks everybody for this. Hopefully, beginning of this discussion because there are many layers and it's not just about whether or not five countries from this part of Europe will join the EU or not. It uncovers multiple layers. And I would really like to continue talking about this also reflecting on some of the things that were good in ex Yugoslavia. Most of the people who have any idea about this former country, think of war and how badly tended, but Yugoslavia was functional socialist country, and there are lessons to be learned both from those things that were good. As well as from its disintegration, because, you know, looking at Yugoslavia six republics in federation, they didn't, you know, separate its ways in a peaceful manner. And if you is going to collapse. I'm afraid that it's not going to be in a peaceful manner, but we can already have a glimpse of a bloody war that might come to end of this union, not to end it on this depressive side. I always believed that and that's why I joined him in 2016 that it's not possible to fight the EU bureaucracy that you just mentioned on your own, that you need more countries and more parties for the beginning in the EU parliament in order to fight the system from within. In these six years, a lot, a lot of things changed, and it's even worse than six years ago, but as DMRs, we should not give up the idea of united Europe for the people and not corporations. Thank you, Ivana. It's good to end on a positive note after such a torn discussion. It's a torn discussion that as a lot of people mentioned will will continue to discussion that we need to have within within DM, not not to mention European society as a whole. And the good thing is you can be part of this discussion. If you're not yet a member of DM 25, you can join by going to DM 25.org slash join the link is in the chat. And you can be part of this democratic process. As Janice mentioned earlier, all of our major decisions on policy are taken to a vote involving all members you can shape policy. And you can essentially be part of the the only movement out there really that is transnational and that is having those discussions and is progressive as well and radical. Thank you so much for joining us. We will see you again.