 The subject matter of his speech would be strategic challenges facing European democracies. He's going to speak on that issue for a little while, and then we're going to do Q&A, question and answer. David has agreed that it's all on the record. There's no Chatham House rules here today, for those of you who are interested in that type of thing, but sometimes we do Chatham House rules for the Q&A, but David is happy to just have an open session and it's all on the record. So David, the floor is yours. Bang. Thank you. Michael, thank you very much indeed and thank you for the invitation to come and speak here again. I think the first time that I spoke here, which is probably a decade ago now, I mean I remember that I was very honored to be introduced to the late Garrett Fitzgerald here as part of the audience. I always enjoy coming to Dublin and I have yet to fulfill the promise that I gave to the Tornish to some months ago that I would find a time to go to Cork and do the tourism and contribute to his constituency's economy in a generous fashion. What I thought I'd try to do this afternoon is while starting with the context of Brexit and the forthcoming negotiations on phase two, to try to take a step back and look at the UK-EU-27 relationship in a broader strategic context. Because what troubles me most is that on both sides, not both sides of the IAC particularly on both sides of the channel, there is a risk that people become so absorbed in the important and difficult detail of a complex negotiation that they fail to keep in mind the geo-strategic context in which the UK, Ireland and the whole European democratic world is now operating. If I can start with the outlook for the UK and the EU, the general election produced a decisive result and certainly the reaction I've had in my own locality is talking to people on the street. This is the first general election that I have experienced as an ordinary voter rather than a candidate since 1983, so this has been a very odd experience for me. There's been quite a sigh of relief, a sense that a decision has been taken for good or ill, now we can get on with things. A great deal of the appeal of the Prime Minister's slogan of get Brexit done was that there is an intense war wearing us in the UK, amongst people who are just despair of ever seeing this subject away from the headlines or top of the news bulletins. What they're saying is how does this make a difference to my life and to my family? I want you to be talking about fixing my local hospital or improving the education my children school or making it possible for my daughter and her boyfriend to get a house or having a social care system that means my 90 year old mum is looked after or just fixing the potholes in the road. I think we will see the end of January because the bill will go through, the House of Lords is not going to kick up a fuss over something that was central to the manifesto of a newly elected government with a clear electoral mandate. I think what we'll see then is energy going into phase two, but I think there will be an effort by the government to try to move the attention of the media onto other aspects of its domestic policy agenda, particularly because I think that is what is going to matter to the voters in the seats that the Conservatives gained from the Labour Party in cities and towns in the North and Midlands of England and in Wales last week. I mean no doubt that Boris Johnson wants a deal. It's very clear that he wants to get it done by the end of the year. I know it's true, you know how the UK parliamentary system operates, the government with a majority in the House of Commons can do most things. It can pass legislation, it can amend legislation subsequently. A huge amount of the content of the withdrawal implementation bill is going to be a series of important but technical amendments to the EU Withdrawal Act to hit the statute book a few months ago. But there's no doubt, I think one shouldn't pretend that the Prime Minister is less than genuine in wanting to have this done by the end of the year. And so I think the outlook is, you know, at worst you have a breakdown and you go to WTO terms and clearly that is good for neither side. If you don't have that, then you will have a deal. And I think that that will depend on the scale of agreement, will depend on each side's willingness to compromise about what in essence would be a regime based on zero tariffs and quotas with some kind of future process that was leading on towards further a further timetable to thicken up the relationship perhaps on things like security, cooperation that might not be agreed instantly. Although it's obviously our interest to do that, but because that would make security, cooperation would make it a mixed agreement that takes you international ratification as well as EU ratification and maybe given the short time scale that you have to have an agreement on a core, things that are EU competence only. And then you have a process with I would argue for clear time limited objectives and decision points to take that forward to thicken up the relationships in the future. Now, whether or not people on both the EU and the UK side think that our current arrangements can or should be extended, I think will be a matter for them. I think it's not what's in the Prime Minister's mind at the moment. I think that my hope is that we'll see that new partnership evolve and deepen further over time. My fear is that worst case we get an acrimonious divorce which will take place just at the time when the geo-strategic realities are putting a huge challenge to the European democratic model. And the risk is that on an issue like fisheries to take the obvious example, both sides get trapped by the internal logic of their position and they start to dig trenches and then find it politically very difficult to clamber out of them to make compromises. And so I think that is another reason why I believe that political leaders need to keep their minds on the broader global picture because the challenges I think that are facing the European democratic world are massive. If we start to look at the reasons why so many voters in so many European democracies have been attracted to parties and movements that might in the past have been described as extreme, that are termed populist or insurgent, then one of the prime reasons is that people feel that they have got left behind by economic and technological change that is upsetting long-established assumptions about work and about careers and about incomes and opportunities for the next generation. And while everybody's attention has been focused on Brexit, it would be utterly wrong in my view to think that the UK is somehow a case apart. I remember Carl Bilt saying to me more than a year ago, David, you have to tell Mr. Farage that he is part of a European phenomenon. And if you look at France where there's no sign yet of a serious recovery by either the Socialists or the Republican, if you look at opinion polls in Germany now where the AFD is ahead of the Social Democrats and where the Christian Democrat vote is at much lower levels than in most of recent history, if you look at Sweden where the most recent polling I've seen suggested that the Sweden Democrats were getting more votes than even the Social Democrats. If you look at Italy and Salvini's continued strength there, if you look at Spain and the fact you'd had an insurgent left-wing force in Podemos succeeded in a sense by a right-wing insurgent force in Vox. I think you start to get a picture that this is a Europe-wide phenomenon. I'll leave it to transatlantic specialists to say whether what we've seen with President Trump in the United States is an American version of this or has different roots. I personally, I think there's a lot in common in terms of the motivation of voters who have abandoned the traditional center-left and center-right parties. So those economic and technological challenges are grave. If you look at the state of Europe we are still as a continent recovering from the crash of 2008 and 2009. We're trying to do that while still working through the competitive pressures that have arisen as a result of trying to bring roughly a third of the human population into an integrated global economic system for the first time. That's been happening really I suppose since the 70s, since Dongjiao Ping's reforms in China, but that is having consequences in terms of global competition with the outsourcing of much of manufacturing to Asia that the final development of which we have yet to see. Even more strikingly we are seeing digital technology shaking up white collar and professional work in the way that factory floor working was revolutionized by robots a generation ago. So I now talk to accountancy and law firms in London who say that they can use AI to do much of the work that they have employed junior accountants and lawyers to do. They then go on to say they still think they'll need the senior ones and they haven't worked out the business model that delivers them without having the juniors. I talk to editors who say that there is quite a lot of technical journalism that you can now do with the right algorithms without the need to hire actual human beings as journalists and if we start to think through the implications of this we have all grown up in a world where parents will tell their children if they study hard get qualifications apply themselves. They can look forward to a career that is both intellectually and financially rewarding and if AI is disrupting that model what does that do in terms of the political impact and social impact upon those people. We are also well all this is going on trying to achieve across Europe a target of net zero carbon by roughly mid-century you know different countries prefer different targets but you know whether you're looking at 2050 or even more if you look at 2030 this is going to require huge changes in the way that people live their lives. Whether you look at looking at transport perhaps the most obvious example but also in terms of the design standards that are required of homes and what you do about the stock of older buildings where retrofitting becomes is much more expensive and complicated to them at insisting on higher environmental standards for new build and if I'm right in saying that economic pressure and insecurity over jobs and prospects the next generation is one of the prime reasons for the rise of new political movements and parties across Europe and I'm conscious speaking to the IAEA that Ireland is a rare exception to that model then Europe has to address not just the the issue of how we tackle Brexit but some of the longer term economic challenges now I do actually think that the approach of the both the outgoing and the incoming commission illustrates that some of those lessons have been absorbed there is a lot more to do after quantitative easing there are now few if any monetary policy tools left to cope with a further external shock or global economic downturn and I think that is true of both ECB and the Bank of England productivity growth rates in the continent of Europe have continued if you look at the the recent decades to lag behind those of the United States or Japan in service sectors in particular which are going to be the growth areas because those global trends are going to shift advance rather is it mass manufacturing and if not all specialist manufacturing to lower cost parts of the world service is going to be the growth area but services in Europe does not have a developed single market or a stable Aki and there are still far too many restrictive practices anybody who has looked at the German Meister system or who has as I have had the frustrations of trying to negotiate with German ministers about services liberalization you soon find that you know there are some very powerful long established vested interests that governments have been reluctant to confront Europe has an inefficient and fragmented capital market the whole debate on capital markets union stems from an understanding that you've somehow got to find a way of enabling particularly innovative smaller businesses to get access to venture capital which they have found it difficult to do and I would argue the UK has a better record than the rest of the EU at achieving and R&D spending in Europe this is one of those areas where the new commission is you know setting its sites higher but R&D spending historically in Europe content of Europe has lagged behind that in North America I also think that there is a structural problem in terms of the EU approach at something that Boris Johnson actually has in mind and his approach to negotiations which is that too cautious an approach to conservative and interpretation of the precautionary principle kind of principle risks driving some of the most exciting and innovative areas of new technology and new enterprise away from this continent to North America and to China if you look at GM you look at life sciences you look at nanotechnology you look at big data analytics it seems to me that those those risks are real and the pace of technological change and the pace of global economic change is so rapid that we cannot afford just to rest on our laurels now in that terms of that economic debate what does the UK bring to the table a G7 economy world-class universities Europe's global financial services centre which I think is going to remain as such even though there will be some relocation of particular functions within the the the EU area an innovative very dynamic services sector there ought to be synergy going into the future between the the UK economy and the EU 27 economy or economies there are big challenges I think the UK historically and still now tends to underestimate the complexity of EU negotiations and the extent to which the EU relies almost to find itself by process and by law and finds it hard to move from an agreed common position 27 once it has been achieved I think that the EU for its part underestimates the the strand of cussedness in the British self-image and attitude the I've all I thought for a very long time that one of the principal causes of misunderstandings has been the fact that both sides if I put it in terms of sides do not appreciate the contrasting experiences of the other in the mid 20th century I can remember sitting and having lunch in Tallinn with the then Astonian foreign minister who said to me and we were talking about you know European integration and the UK skepticism and he said David look we're a country of one and a half million people we lost a quarter of our population between the Ribbentrop Molotov packed and started crushing the partisans and about 46 we were fought over by the red army and the Nazis we then had to live under Soviet rule for 50 years if that happens to you you want to grab every little bit of European integration that's going to try and stop it happening to you again and I get that and I get that for most of the continent of Europe no there are exceptions Ireland Sweden the mid 20th century was a demonstration of how national identities and solidarities and institutions were not enough whereas for the UK the national memory of that same period was about how those self-same national identities solidarities institutions are what enabled us to survive and for about a year alone in the face of a monstrous tyranny and the threat of invasion and and and I think each side needs to understand some of those those very fundamental almost mythological assumptions that underpin their thinking about the European project let me move on from economics the other in major cause in my view of public discontent and disaffection particularly amongst people who feel that they have lost out from economic change is about immigration and integration and if you look again at what has driven support certainly for the lead vote in the referendum in 2016 in the UK but also the pen support in France at support for builders in the Netherlands for the sweden democrats for alternative or for Salvini a lot of this is about migration and integration and there's an irony here because we all know that Europe's population as a whole is aging not only does that mean the working age population is shrinking as a proportion to the total but elderly people will need more in terms of health and social care which are people intensive rather than just capital intensive and the central european countries get richer their people become much less willing to do lower skilled jobs than in the past and you talk to polish ministers you get that message very strong and it's starting out so the latvian foreign minister two weeks ago and he's saying that he's happy so they're starting to see some of those talented latvians coming back because they're not going to do the the meatpacking jobs anymore thank you very much and and yet there are real worry real worries in many of those losing out communities about how large-scale migration of people is perceived as a threat to their identity it's another change on top of the economic and technological change that they are experiencing and it's particularly noticeable in the uk but london which has had very large scale immigration where you know it is the most diverse city i think probably anywhere in europe um actually the the the support for ukip or the brexit party has been at a very low level where it has been very strong is in communities i'm thinking parts of the east of england where a lot of central european workers have come to do essential jobs in agriculture horticulture and food processing but in areas which have historically been sort of white anglo-saxon probably white viking there um and and and they don't have any of the infrastructure in schools to deal with significant numbers of children with english as a as a second language instead parental fears about their own children losing out a more acute um so you have to look at this in terms of a change it's not just about migration it's about integration as well and this challenge is not going to go away it worries me sometimes i remember you know when i used to go to forad affairs council for hearings i said well we've got to fix this for this year you know so what do we do with eda one to stop to get him to turn the tap off in the aegean this is going to be with us for two generations at least far as i can see by the mid-century half the world's teenagers will live in africa um there are not going to be enough jobs for all of them um climate change and conflict and misgovernment are likely to add to the tendency for young people who've got get up and go to do just that and if i were living in the central africa and republic you know why would i not try to get to a european country because i can see on my smartphone or my village tv that there's a both a better more prosperous more secure life if i can get there successfully um so those migratory pressures will be with us and to address this i think we're going to need a mix of cross Europe of different tools diplomacy development aid state building including working on services like police border enforcement staff and so on anti crime measures um trade opportunities for african countries so that people have a better chance of making a living at home and again the uk brings a lot to the table in terms of those capacities particularly its diplomatic network and its aid heft um so there would seem to be a mutual interest in finding a way to continue to cooperate together in a structured form in the future as well as to learn from each other about what works and what doesn't works in terms of integration because i think every european country is struggling with the notion of how in a liberal and diverse society do you delineate the boundary between respect for different heritages and traditions and beliefs and at the same time expecting people who arrive newly to conform to the mores of the society which they have come to join and i don't think any of us have got it got it right i mean neither the uk's approach particularly the Blair governments to to what was designated as multiculturalism nor the the french insistence on laicite and and and the french identity i think has solved the problem you can see that in in the realities of the streets third crime talk to any uk chief constable he or she will tell you that almost any serious crime these days now has an international dimension and i'd cite three areas in particular first terrorism and extremism those extremist and terrorist groups use the internet to disseminate extremist doctrines to groom recruits and to organize attacks secondly other types of serious and organized crime that can be both online crime fraud and financial crimes but also it's the use of the web by pedophiles by drug and people traffickers by dealers in counterfeit goods and then the risk of cyber attack whether by a hostile state actor or by a criminal enterprise and sometimes the boundary between the two is blurred uh and critical national infrastructure in all our countries is at risk from inadequate cyber security and that means things like water supply electricity supply health services are at risk from a well-organized cyber attack i think that in the european context the question of how to cooperate better in fighting crime also takes us to a consideration of the situation apropos the western Balkans we know that some hundreds of foreign fighters from the middle east have returned there particularly to albania kosovo north macedonia and bosnia and herzegovina and that those western balkan countries are being exploited by uh organized professional criminal gangs as a relatively safe space for their operations and the EU's rejection of enlargement seems to me therefore to add to the risks or to european security for the future and therefore in terms of thinking about that future not just as regards the uk but the content of europe more generally we have to think through if not formal enlargement then what is the alternative to that rather than risk those countries drifting back and being a potential safe haven for organized crime on our doorstep for both the uk and the EU the immediate risk in the forthcoming negotiations is we end up making all of our citizens less safe but we cut off access to each other's databases and i can remember how the time of the attacks in paris that the the importance of data sharing uh between scotland yard and uk immigration authorities and their counterparts across europe and so i i've always found during therese amaze negotiations that the frankly dogmatic attitude taken by the european commission towards uh uk participation in EU policing and criminal justice measures and institutions was defeating the very object of the existence of those systems which was to keep citizens safer i would not like to be a minister in any jurisdiction whose country was the subject of a successful terrorist outrage who then had to explain why the subsequent investigation had shown that another jurisdiction perhaps the uk had had uh information that would have could have prevented this might have prevented it but that the the rules forbade the sharing of information in the way that that is possible now and i i would hope that in the negotiations both sides give a high priority to this issue fourth challenge is that of russia we have seen in the last few years russia promoting criminal including cyber pressures on europe and seeking to influence the western Balkans we're seeing putin seeking to reestablish russia as a great power on a global scale and to push back against the advance of the european democratic space that we saw in the years after 1989 we've seen this at its most stark in ukraine and georgia but in the Baltics we have seen the abduction of Baltic nationals uh to stand a bogus trial inside russia and we've seen attempts at intimidation through military exercises close to the border sweden and finland have suffered russian incursions into their air and sea space the united kingdom has seen that but also a flagrant chemical weapons attack in solsbury that led to the death of a uk national in the western Balkans we've seen an attempted coup in montenegro a defense by russia of republic asepska uh and the cultivation of president vucic in particular of his political party in syria and i could go on about moldov and belarus but but we're not time to to do that it seems to me that putin has developed and practiced hybrid conflict his wars don't have a neat beginning and an end and they involve surrogates mercenaries covert action information warfare including exploiting social media economic pressure with the where it's the gas supply um uh whether it's the hungarian nuclear program or Nord Stream 2 and this is happening while the united states is openly questioning its 70 year old role as the guarantor of european security and defender of rules based into national order and i think it would be a mistake to say this is just a personal matter for president trump president trump was elected because he represented and appealed to a very important strand of united states opinion that believes that the rest of the world has been having a uh an easy ride on us coattails and pocketbooks and that it's about time their own political leaders put america first and whether or not president trump is reelected i think that one can expect that tendency in us politics still to be vocal i think you know it's partly due to the exhaustion of the us public with foreign wars it's partly this feeling you need to put us interest america first partly the us elite is seeing a strategic need to focus more on china and the pacific partly i think it's us self-sufficiency in energy that is actually reduced dramatically at the extent to which it cares about events in some parts of the world i think we're seeing that loss of interest in the broader middle east for example um and in spite of president trump very welcome support for nato expressed at the recent um london summit we should not underestimate us in patients with european unwillingness to face up to its need to show both to to to both deploy more resource and more political will in the collective defense of the transatlantic alliance i think take one example the us is going to increasingly expect europe to take the lead not america in dealing with any difficulties that arise in the continent of africa now again i just posed question that it is surely impossible to think of there being greater european capacity within that western alliance in terms of defense and security unless the uk is somehow centrally involved it seems to the risk for europe is you end up actually added with policy shifting more across european in directions that berlin would prefer with you rather than direction paris would prefer final challenge is that posed by china it's not sort of set a sort of threat in the way that russia poses a direct threat but under president g china has adopted a much more assertive posture in the world we're seeing it in the south and east china seas in the way which the belton road initiative is being used to extend china's economic sway we're seeing uh how china is investing in uh using investment as a strategic weapon whether that's in shrill anchor uh or whether that is in greece we are seeing attempts at subversion in australia in particular um and we're seeing diplomatic and economic pressure on pacific island states to uh to to back china in international fora we're seeing a willingness in china to disregard what they see as unfair and unfair global rules-based system you know which they would argue is was imposed on china at a period of national weakness um whether they talk about intellectual property or about conventional trade or about freedom of navigation you know those is what we have thought of is established principles of international conduct are subject to challenge and china makes no secret of wanting to they would say rebalance to shift that international order in a way that takes greater account of their interests and their rising power and china is going further it's asserting its model of political organization complete with the sort of ruthless state control and use of a i in digital technology that we're seeing in shinkyang to control uh as equally valid as a model to that offered by the liberal democracies of europe or north america or japan and for you know some autocratic states thinking africa in particular but other parts of asia this can be quite attractive we don't have these meddlesome western leaders lecturing us about human rights china is showing how you could deliver prosperity um while while not um having to fuss too much about um uh political liberalization we're also seeing from china a very clear a very clear strategy to seek to dominate leading technologies of the future i mean i think the that people often missing the point with how over the row on huawei it's not so much that the worry about a single firm the worry i think is that if we are not very careful china is going to be in a position such that 5g let alone 6g will not be possible anywhere in the world without the involvement of chinese enterprises in a leading role because they are pouring money and scientific time and energy into getting ahead of the game they're doing the same with ai which again again ought to serve as a wake-up call to europe when europe risks driving some of these technologies and developments away from its own shores so what is to be done to quote that image lenin um the first of all my my principle is this there needs to be in europe more strategic thinking and we need to be thinking about europe's place in a rapidly changing world and then not be absorbed important though they are just with the uk fta negotiations with with how that and our hopes for a future partnership fit into how we see that strategic approach how is the eu going to challenge unconventional populist political movements when the driving forces behind those movements rapid economic and tech technological change and large-scale migration are going to accelerate and not diminish how are we going to defend the european democratic space against both internal and external security threats and maintain rather than retreat from the games made after 1989 i think that you know we could have a day and a half seminar on on how we might do this um i think that the starting point for the european continent is probably to take an idea from president macron who has spoken about different circles of european cooperation and that to me points towards finding a a political method and a set of institutional arrangements that allow for greater the reality of greater diversity within the european democratic space while at the same time permitting active and deep cooperation where that suits our interests my own view is that for the european union for the 27 themselves there will come a moment of truth because it seems to me that the uh the members of the single currency must at some stage move towards greater integration of fiscal and economic policy in order to sustain the currency and monetary union and if they do that then there has to be political accountability that must be by some kind of institutional political arrangement whether it's a new chamber of the european parliament or a self-standing institution of national eurozone member i i don't know that's a brogol is publishing sort of various papers on this but but i think that has to happen at some stage in which case you start to get a divergence between those member states the full member states but but some are in that more integrated currents union and some are not and some will choose not to be some i suspect the current eurozone members will resolutely um discourage from seeking to to join but there remain full member states with the rights that go with that if you started look at that model for the development of the 27 where do you then say that the uk or switzerland or norway or iceland dock in to this european cooperative arrangement does circles start provide you with the conceptual language to start talking about this new framework for the western balkans because i think in western balkans history in the 20th century tells anything it's that for political stability you need to have some kind of supranational framework otherwise those those countries are largely too small at the moment that the political and ethnic or ethno-religious divisions are too raw to permit rapid political development there had come a long way since yugoslavia but they still have great difficulties and challenges that they're facing and you could then have a new another layer of the circles that is dealing with the eastern partnership countries so i think that there is a a conceptual model there that is helpful to us in trying to frame the way forward my plea and i finish on this point would be that thinkers and policy makers in all european capitals find time amidst the pressures that i is having been in government for nearly a decade really do understand about handling the day to day to keep in mind those broader strategic challenges because i actually think that the the the i still regard look back to 1989 and regard that as the best thing that's happened in international politics in my lifetime it would be a tragedy to see that slip away it was not the end of history it was foolish for people ever to think or claim that that was the case we are under challenge now but we have an opportunity to build on 1989 to strengthen and equip the european democratic world to surmount those challenges that now face us the alternative is that we risk slipping back not to the full horrors of the 20th century but to a world in which the idea that the whole european continent uh was a bastion of liberal democracy might seem to be uh have been a passing phase for a quarter of a century or perhaps a few decades after the 89 velvet revolutions i don't want that to happen i think we would all be failing in our duty to the next generations if we allowed that to happen so i want to see and i hope to see that strategic thinking across europe re-energized both during the uk-eu negotiations and in the other work that the commission and national leaders now do thank you well thank you very much davis that was a fantastic review and toward arrival of the issues involved and the strategic challenges i'm just wondering before we open the floor to questions i mean clearly none of these strategic challenges or not all of them in any event can be either addressed to say nothing of being resolved in the short period between now and the end of the year so over what type of timescale do you think it's it would be possible because clearly they're pressing i mean you know they're not they're not issues that can be left unresolved indefinitely so over what sort of a time period do you think we need to be able to address and hopefully come to some form of understanding about them it's a very difficult one to to answer with any certainty and i think it's almost it's almost it's it's probably a false god to say we need to have concluded these changes by a particular date because by definition what's happening in the world is dynamic we don't know exactly what's going to happen in china we although no the you know i i don't um i don't read chinese but the so what i i i learn about the the sort of micro blogs in china is that younger educated young people in china are pretty nationalistic you know that that intense patriotic pride is is real there and so i can't see the g star nationalism falling away and i think it's not certain but it's possible that whoever succeeds putin will be a bit more of the same but perhaps more nationalist and less harking back to uh this is a dreams of soviete era um but it i think the key point to me michael is that we we don't we don't waste any time in getting on with it i mean i would like to see every year's commission work program focusing on those strategic challenges and how does that get carried through i mean the european council it's the key institution and the european council is supposed to set the strategic framework for how the e u operates and too often the european council i don't that's an unkind or i'm doing this is something that's being regarded in the uk context as pretty pro european but they um too often we're part to blame for this it it it spends its time on the immediate and trying to resolve the technical dossiers that the more junior level ministers have been unable to sort out at sectoral or general affairs councils um and that is um i think wasting time so i think i think what's needed is is european council to do that i think that there are a number of there are a number of number of bricks to build this particular wall um the euk negotiation is one the future of the euro zone is another um and that will need to have clarity about who leads germany after angler merkel i think to to really understand whether there's a frank of german compromise possible that might then lead to a treaty change and it's a slightly different order for the euro um um we will need um let's say commission work program we need a policy on the western Balkans at the moment what you've had is disagreements and vetoes but there's nothing that i can see there isn't a clear european policy uh on the western Balkans to what the euk wants to happen there the uk has got to take decisions not just about um what we want the uh the the terms of uh separation and scope of future divergence to be but about where strategically we see our relationship with uh these democratic community of nations that's going to be on our doorstep so basically political leaders on all sides just need to get a move on on this and it's horribly difficult if you're in office then you thinking time is at an absolute premium um but i would hope that think tanks whether it's the ia or chatham house or broigle um you will be doing their bit to actually say this is an agenda we have to take seriously and push forward well we'll do our best here but anyway i go up the floor to questions so if you would just please we've got about maybe 10 minutes uh we'll take as many questions as we can and to introduce yourselves and uh and uh identify the uh organization that you might be affiliated so please uh we we have a microphone here and we take them in our interest okay thanks very much francis Jacobs thanks very much for very very stimulating address two quick questions one one thing which has always puzzled me about the uk of eight in recent years has been that the conservative party seems to have forgotten about non-tariff barriers because i can remember i worked in the european parliament style when it was conservatives whether thatcher and cofield or consented me please who were pushing for non-tariff barriers has been more important than just zero tariffs whatever happened to that strand of thinking and the second one you've argued very eloquently for structures longer term structures between the uk and and the new countries one such structure is um party to party links and within the european party families i can see the labor party a terrible problem it is at the moment but the labor party will retain strong links with the european socialist party the liberals made kumri and s and p will all have strong european family where will the conservatives be in this thank you thank you i think very quickly on those those two um non-tariff barriers i i completely agree with you but i think the the 2016 referendum campaign was fought basically by the leaf side on onto themes one was take back control appealing to this sense of being disempowered and secondly uh on the immigration question where the where the british public unlike public's in now other european countries don't really distinguish intellectually between free movement within the e you and immigration from elsewhere and i stood on doorsteps where people said to me yes well all these central europeans coming over and then you'd suddenly find a segue and the mosques and the veils and what people were perceiving was two things fast news aspect of loss of control because they said well you can't do anything about it even if you think that we should have more control you can't because the u stops you and secondly it was the sense of deracination and just the the the community where i live where i grew up has been changed i talked to pensioners living in suburbs who sometimes come to the door waving a copy of the daily mail um who would um say well look you know i grew up you know down the road in such a just a street it's not like that at all there's a polo shop and there's a you know a halal butcher and so and so it's that that was what was at the heart of the um the uh the the referendum the lead campaign in the referendum um uh but you know non-tariff barriers um i i i i think the the british government will tends to take the view look because we have common standards at the moment there shouldn't be a problem over this and there is still i think a wish in the part of the government to um somehow hope that um mutual recognition will suffice and that goes back to what i said i think not enough understanding is how the EU thinks of itself and operates because if you don't have a you know rules-based system in the 27 will want to stop the french or the italians from going their own way in terms of interpretations you need an arbiter take you to cj eu um but what i would say is this we're doing would have encouragement nothing i have heard or seen from boris johnson persuades me that he wants to see any diminution of uh employment rights or environmental or animal welfare standards he needs the former to uh hold on to those seats that he gained and he is a genuine environmentalist um and and so i i i think that in practice and i think this could be one of the the gaps we have to try to overcome because i think he he will see it i read him he will say look we're doing this we're not gonna we're not going to lower standards form in fact we just talk about a bill the self-standing workers rights bill being included in legislative program this year and there will be an environment bill included um uh i said well we've got this we've got legal guarantees so why do we need to have dynamic align what have you in the EU decide to go off and do something weird and wild um that just be ruinous expensive for us when we're achieving the same standards by a different route anyway and it it that conversation will be important party to party look i i can honestly say i publicly criticized david camera when he pulled the concerted party out of the um epp i think it was a great mistake um i think that parties party links on the center right through the idu will be important in due course the concern if i don't need to have some sort of relationship whether it's formally with the epp or with with the through things like conrad adder and our stiff tongue with the the german part or hand and hand side the stiff tongue and through the equivalent think tank with the moderat in sweden so there are ways of trying to do this finnegales always be always be really helpful actually trying to find creative ways of uh keeping the conservative party in conversations uh there and that's undetected a bit of a bridge between the epp leadership on the conservative party i don't know brolican um i want to raise something with you which you haven't actually mentioned um that is the rule of law you you indicated that the response uh the experience of the british in the mid 20th century was completely different to what european most european countries experienced but the response of the british then was led by churchlet one level and british lawyers on another was the european convention on human rights what's going on inside the conservative party that this document which promotes the rule of law is being attacked consistently being talked about as needing revision and i mean the convention on human rights not the the EU based charter fundamental rights and is this not giving sucker to uh other autocratic uh type uh people with autocratic tendencies uh dare i say it in in eastern europe but also in britain who attacked the judiciary now i'm not saying the judiciary can't be commented upon it can't be attacked but even the prime minister uh took a view that the checks and balances of of an independent judiciary shouldn't really be applied the way they were on the prorogation issue so what's going on inside the conservative party on this and secondly is there any countervailing force anywhere in britain in british thinking on on on this drive against european convention human rights and i'm going to say rule of law allowing for more arbitrary rule i think um couple points of that first um it's been a running theme in english and then uk political history since at least the 17th century about what is the right balance between parliament on the one hand and the courts on the other and nowadays of course that would be parliament as the expression of a public democratic mandate with universal suffrage and and to what extent should the court be able to come in and limit in the interest of a plural society and the rule of law um a decision that has a democratic mandate given by the people to to parliament to act in a particular way um i think that um the ironically the fact there's a government with a secure overall majority should reduce ought to reduce friction because um in the past coalition government treasonous government would sometimes use secondary legislation because they didn't want to take the risk of primary legislation that is amendable um and secondary legislation can be struck down by the court acts of parliament cannot be uh and and actually now you've got a majority if it push comes to shove you can amend primary legislation to make the law clear in the way you want it expressed um i think on the convention um there there are two things happening first of all um the court itself the court of human rights shifted um 10 or more years ago um towards interpreting the convention as a living document and that's led to a number of um the cases the prisoner voting being an example which were not in the minds of the people who framed the convention in the first place and if you like it's it's a bit of a reflection of sort of the us debate between the strict constructionists on the one hand and those who have sort of a creative view of the the constitution as a living document um and while i you know i i as minister i solved the the prisoner voting issue um and um i did frankly didn't bother me that they a too much that the relatively small number of prisoners got what would get the vote um but the British public it seemed an affront particularly because their acts of parliament saying that prisoners should be deprived of the franchise as a consequence of imprisonment um and there are also some real difficulties in a number of high profile terrorist cases i'm thinking for example one man abu katata who um uh was um subject to deportation you know he he was not a British citizen he could be deported he is known to be extreme and still a danger uh but we were being told by the court of human rights that we couldn't deport him um to because there are insufficient safeguards in the country to which we wish to deport him now Theresa Mayer's home secretary after a lot of work i think got him to Jordan at the end of the Jordanian government gave or acquired assurances that satisfied the court but that type of case which presented the ruling of the court as having a consequence of leaving British people less secure uh and with the police and others openly critical and saying this is suck up huge resource we tried to monitor this man we can't do it uh 100 percent that's that's what leads to it there are plenty of voices including the current board chancellor rob buckland who are very uh firm in speaking up for the rule of law so i i i think sometimes you know don't just don't trust a daily mail daily express headlines alone interpreting what's going on thank you very much chairman my name is john connor and a member of the institute david you spoke in passing about maybe the british underestimate uh the complexity of working out a trade deal with the european union which is under to be under process shortly maybe two and i hope this isn't off the agenda they might also be overestimating the complexity of negotiating a deal with the united states which is very much part of of the debate and indeed of the campaign now given that there might keep this in mind that in the year because certainly i hope it would happen that there would be a change of administration in the united states and we might go back to the obama line which would put you at two as quote the end of the queue in relation to trade negotiations so maybe we might have your thoughts on that so david please i think the americans um look if we get a some trade liberalization with united states i think that is a good thing i think that doing that in the u.s election year is going to be very demanding um and of course it has to be approved by congress not just by the president um you know once the the farmers in iowa um start to say what they want it's very difficult for american politicians in this year above all um i think that um p m has been pretty clear that he he's not going to accept a dilution of animal welfare stands and that does raise questions about um food imports i mean i didn't we go to america look we tuck into chicken over there we don't check whether it's been coronated or or not but it's it's about it's not about the food safety it's about the animal welfare and hygiene rules that on the farm that lie behind that and lie behind the need to chlorinate chicken gases yeah so i think that i think from the uk point of view of course some of what we really like is the opening up the u.s procurement markets and that tends to lie at state level um and i remember in the um t-tip the board of t-tip negotiations that that was you know really really tricky and every time you talk to somebody in washington they're terribly difficult this is all states you know we can't do anything about this um innocent as pie and so yeah i think i think it'll be difficult um i think that um it might be um more limited than perhaps initial initial and we have pretty open markets anyway one of the problem i think the challenge of the uk is that by global standards we have a very open market anyway for both trade and investment and actually what further gains are there from liberalized liberalization that we can that we can offer you know we can there's some we'd like to get you we've knocked down other people's barriers but we don't have that many of our own that we can offer to dismantle i'm afraid we're going to have to leave it there we just run past our our time just to say thank you to you david um listen to you speak and i'm hearing the kind of the force of your arguments i think it reminds us i think of one of the reasons why we missed the uk uh in the halls of the european union but of course you're not going to be too far away anyway and i think uh listening to you earlier on i think um the commitment also to to um to shoring up the relationship between britain and ireland and providing the mechanisms there to assure that into the future is something obviously to which you and your colleagues are our main uh commitment so thank you very much indeed we wish you the very best in uh thank you in your new life uh with freedom that you now enjoy uh including the freedom to speak openly without chat of house rules which is wonderful but thank you all indeed i don't know if we've any more events between now and christmas but if we don't um and i don't think we do the public ones anyway uh just wish you all a very very happy christmas and happy new year