 Okay, we're ready to start. Welcome everybody to the event tonight on Brexit. My name is Ruben Zajori, I'm the director of the Chamonix European Union Center of Excellence here at Dalhousie University. And one of the co-sponsors of this event, the other sponsor is the Law Faculty. I'd like to thank the Law Faculty for hosting the event and Aldo in particular to help the organization of the round table tonight. As you, I assume, are aware of the topic is definitely a hot one. Not just in the UK, as you might imagine, but across Europe and I would say also in North America. And if you believe in subtle messages that are sent by Theresa May, I think that the fact that we have in an event tonight on Brexit is quite telling. Not only she was yesterday in Ottawa, here in Canada, she was talking about CEDA, so the agreement, the trade agreement between Canada and the EU, but also making references to Northern Ireland. So we have, although coming from Ireland, but the sort of reference of one of the speakers here. And also to the fact that on Friday, she's gonna be delivering a major speech on Brexit and UK-U relations in the future in Florence, so in Italy, which is the country of the other speaker of tonight. So we have, and of course, test is based here in Canada. So as I said, I think Theresa May, the UK Prime Minister was sending us a signal so we needed to have this event tonight. Okay, so without much further ado, I want to start with tonight's round table. We're gonna start with Vincent Power, who's going to be providing sort of the big picture of the issues that we're gonna be discussing today. In particular, it's not just about what's going on now, but the future of Brexit. That's where the title is coming from. And then the other two speakers are going to be discussing some other aspects of the issue of Brexit. So I'm gonna introduce each of the speakers when they are ready to come to the podium. So I'll start with Vincent, because Vincent is Vincent. I'm going to be very brief. I mean, I could talk about him for a long time, but Dr. Vincent Power is a partner in an anal good body specializing in EU law, and you and Irish competition antitrust law, regulation law and transport law. He's a head of the firm's EU competition and procurement group. An award-winning lawyer, Vincent has advice on most of the leading competition, merger control, EU, cartel, state aid and related litigation cases, as well as cartel immunity applications in Ireland for over 20 years, including the major takeovers. He advises both national and multinational clients, as well public and private clients in almost every economic sector. And as I said, I'm not gonna cover all the, what Vincent does, he works at night as well. So you might not be surprised to see him here in Canada, working while everybody else is sleeping. So thanks, Vincent, for coming here and the podium to you. Thank you very much indeed, Ruben. Thank you for an introduction that my mother would love to hear, but my wife would never believe. I have been given four and a half hours to try and describe for you the background to Brexit, what is Brexit and to some extent what's going to happen next. Make four or five hours, if I might, for three and a half, okay. Now, before I go into the detail, I try to think of some way of conveying to you where we are with Brexit. And the best way to think about it is as a magician. There was a magician who stood in front of an audience, just like you, though the audience wasn't as distinguished. And he asked them for a watch and you handed them a wristwatch. And he held up the wristwatch and it was the most amazing wristwatch the world had ever seen. It had been created 60 years ago. It had been developed over that time. It had been yours for 40 years. But the magician decried the watch, saying it was inefficient. It cost so much. If you could only give that watch and spend the money, the health service would have 350 million every week. And it was so inefficient, it only told you the time of one time zone at a time and it lost time and it was so expensive. And the magician, what he did was he laid it down in front of the table and he got a big red cloth and he put it on the, and he got a huge hammer that his friends Nigel and Boris and Michael had made. And he lifted it and the whole world looked that Thursday night and said, no, no, no, no, no. They are not going to break that watch, are they? And the big hammer went up and it smashed. And then he took all the pieces and he held them up like that and you were all aghast. And he looked at the watch and pieces and you looked at the magician and you said, well, surely you're now going to do the next part of the trick and put it all back together again. Aren't you? We need to tell the time. And the magician looked at the audience and he said, I don't know the second part of the trick. And his lovely assistant who never saw herself as her lovely assistant said, well, magic is magic. Or Brexit is Brexit. And that's the problem. 450, 454 days ago, we had a referendum. We did that part of the trick. 17 million people came out and they voted like never before. Like a single proposition, never have so many people in the United Kingdom voted for a single proposition before. They voted for Brexit, but they don't know what happens next. It is exactly the same as jumping off the cliff at Acapulco. When you jump off the cliff, you make sure there's no water down beneath you because by the time you hit it, the tide comes in. The danger is if you actually jump when there's water there, the tide will have gone out. So we're in that space, we don't know what happens next. So what I'm going to try and do is in 20 minutes to set the scene and provide an overview to consider the issue from the UK perspective and the Irish perspective. And you might wonder why Ireland is so important. It is going to be the country that is most affected by Brexit. If Brexit occurs. And then to consider the process and to identify some of the key issues. So first of all and very simply, it's a very obvious issue is what is Brexit? Well, legally it's very straightforward. It's simply the withdrawal by the United Kingdom and Gibraltar from the European Union and the European Atomic Energy Community. But in fact, it's much more than that. Not only do they leave perhaps from the customs union and the internal market, though that's not yet certain, but actually the United Kingdom would be leaving the European Union. 10% of the population, but a very important member because not only have they been there for 43 years when you think about it, the United Kingdom has been in the European Union longer than the President of France Macron has been alive. It is in their DNA. It took them 12 years to negotiate to get in and over four decades it has permeated every area of law and every area of life. So it is going to be a huge phenomenon. Now, I've got a lot of detail in these slides. I'm not going to go through all of the detail. I'm just going to pick out a number of points. I'm going to say for example in this point that a lot of Brexiteers and Euro skeptics and Euro phobes said it'll be the end of the European Union. In fact, what's happened is the 27 have actually remained very tightly bound together. And what they see in some way is that the troublesome wheel, the one that slowed down the carriage is actually going to be removed. And that's very interesting. Now, I think it's a great pity if the UK leaves, but it is not at all clear that it will be the breaking of the European Union. In fact, according to some who will actually see further integration and further perhaps federalism, they would see this as the making of the European Union. And still the concept of Brexit, Theresa May said Brexit means Brexit. The problem with that is don't try that in a jurisprudential exam. What is realist jurisprudence? Realist jurisprudence means realist jurisprudence. There'll be no marks for you. But the problem is that nobody yet knows what Brexit is. In fact, it is a whole plethora of different concepts. The media talk about a hard Brexit or a soft Brexit. And as I'll mention later, there is no such choice. What there is is a spectrum of Brexit. Either the UK leaves and it is leave and it's a third country, like a country in Asia that has very little contact with the European Union, or it is somewhere along that spectrum where it's a little bit like Canada with the CETA or a little bit closer, like Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein with the EEA. It is a spectrum. And we just don't know yet where we're going to land on that spectrum. And all of this is due to take place by the 29th of March, 2019. As I say, it took two attempts and 12 years to get into the European Union by the UK to extricate themselves in two years. It is actually impossible. Now, why is it so difficult? Why is Brexit proving to be difficult? Well, it's proving to be difficult because no member state has ever left the European Union. There are 28 member states. 26 member states joined. They exceeded. They knew what they were getting into because there was a roadmap for them. But no member state has ever left. Algeria, Greenland, and Saint-Bartalamy did leave, but they were not member states. They were not members of the UN Security Council, not members of the G7, not such an important economic, political, and military powerhouse as the United Kingdom. So it is difficult. Now, the way the EU 27 have looked at it, and you saw Guy Verstoff said it yesterday, Michel Barnier has said it before, is, okay, you've made this decision. Now tell us what you're going to do. So for example, a simple issue about the border between the UK and Ireland, you've made this choice. Now tell us, come to us with imaginative solutions. And the position, even in the UK, is unclear. Bloomberg reported this morning that perhaps Boris Johnson was, as Bloomberg put it, living on Boris's time because they weren't sure whether or not he would resign over the speech on Florence on Friday. The essay that he wrote for the Daily Telegraph last Saturday, it is not a united view within the United Kingdom as to how they will leave or indeed what they want to leave to. So that's the problem. It is far from certain and far from clear. Now, it's also difficult because there is now disagreement on even how quickly it wants to leave. The Chancellor of the Exchequer would like some sort of transition arrangement. Others want to be gone immediately. Even the very fact that they could have had the referendum on the 23rd of June, 2016, the party conference in Birmingham in October, but not actually served the notice to the 29th of March, just shows the need for thought. And even still, even in August, when the UK were presenting papers to the Commission, it wasn't very clear from those papers I read them and it's still not clear what they actually want. The tone of the negotiation is very polite. It's polite aggression. It's very nicely done on both sides and they're very polite to each other, but it is far from war. Initially the European Union was very concerned about contagion, but that has eased somewhat after the Dutch, the French elections and so on, but they are still concerned about contagion. Now, so it's unprecedented, it's difficult, and now I think it's probably useful to dispel some myths trying to paint some of the background. Brexit is easy, we were told by the Brexiteers. In fact, it is not, it is extremely difficult. It is like waking up in the morning and deciding that you're going to speak English without using vowels because even the Brexiteers would tell you that the European Union permeated everything in the UK life for 40 years, therefore to extricate it is very difficult. Houdini said when he was asked how did he get out of safe, he said it's very easy. Safe is designed to keep people out, not designed to keep people in. The European Union, however, is designed to keep people in and keep everybody very close together. People say Brexit will be the death knell of the UK. No, the UK will survive. Now I think there's a famous Canadian, the most famous Canadian in the UK, Mark Carney who would say that it is going to stunt growth and so on and he may well be right. We just don't know. We haven't done this experiment before. Brexit is a new phenomenon, another myth. The first Brexit really occurred. There was a chap who had an idea at one stage to take back control from those foreign capitals in Europe, make laws in England, do it all in English language and stop paying money to those foreigners in that foreign capital realm. And he'd like to divorce six women at a time. The first Brexit was the Reformation. And look how that worked out. Now, Brexit was all to do with Trump. Well, when you go back and you look at the media, the social media and print media from the 23rd of June, Trump wasn't doing so well at that time. It was a long-standing, well-honed concept which was there for a long time. The vote was tight, it wasn't. The gap was 1.7 million. That's the entire population of Manchester, Edinburgh, Bristol, Belfast and Cardiff. That's a lot of people. London and Scotland were for remain. That was okay. No, 40.1% of the people of London voted to leave. 38.1% of the Scottish population voted to leave. Brexit will never happen. Right now, you've got to assume it will. Brexit is irreversible. Now that they've served the notice, there's no going back. Now, lawyers will debate this for a long time. I think politicians, if the UK were to decide to come back, much like Bobby Ewing coming out of the shower. Dallas isn't so popular here. Then, or you're all too young, yes, are not watching enough data on television. Brexit is irreversible. Politicians, I think it could be reversible. I think legally there's a good argument that it is because Article 50 talks about serving your intention. This is the end of the EU. No, it will not be the end of the EU. Now, very quickly about the UK's perspective, I'd just like to say that that is a series of examples where they had second thoughts about whether they should join, whether they should remain members, about fees, about the Maastricht social chapter, about EMU and monetary union, Schengen and so on. It was a semi-detached relationship from the start and it has always been semi-detached. So it was something which was bound to happen. Now, the only thing I'll just mention here is the 75 referendum, it was quite interesting. The bottom half of the UK in 75 were the ones who were in favour of remaining. The top half were the ones who were against remaining. And in 2016 it was reversed. So maybe the next referendum, it could get reversed again. Why does Ireland matter? Well, Ireland matters for several reasons. It's the only member state, I'm not getting to the Gibraltar Spanish issue for a moment, but it's the only member state which is contiguous. The border between the UK and Ireland, across Northern Ireland, is two and a half times the length of the English-Scottish border. There are about 110 million visitors, so we all go several times, around a common travel area on an annual basis. A lot of people work in one part of the north or south and they move across. Trade-wise, the UK is Ireland's biggest trading partner. And vice versa, Ireland is the fifth biggest trading partner and export market for the UK. Ireland is a more important export market for the UK than Japan, China, or India. There's about a billion in trade every week. So it's hugely important, enormous movement of people, but it's also very important from the peace process and the re-establishment of a border with customs posts and police and army and so on. Not saying the army would be there, but that sort of border and barrier could cause problems and the European Commission recognized this. That's why it was one of the three items that should be addressed at the outset. And indeed Theresa May in her letter, triggering Article 50 did so as well at the top page of the fifth page of that letter. So it is an extremely important part. You could find, just like CETA and the Wallonian Parliament almost derailed the CETA agreement, you could find that depending on the constructor, the structure of the Brexit agreement, there might be a referendum in Ireland if there are powers ceded by Member States to the European Union, then in certain circumstances, referendum necessary in Ireland. And it could be, you know, 500 million people being decided upon by five million people in a referendum. Very quickly, what's the Brexit process? Well, as I say, a Member State leaving is entirely unprecedented. There was no provision explicitly providing that you could leave until Article 50 of the TEU was added. In that context, it's an unusual provision. It's very short. It explicitly says a Member State may leave. You serve your intention to the council that you're going to leave, and then a decision has to be reached, an agreement has to be reached. That two-year period, which is provided for an Article 50, could be extended. There's no guarantee that it would be, but it is just possible that it might be. Or what you may well find is that the two years is ended, but there are transitional arrangements. And I think that there will almost inevitably be some sort of transitional arrangements that are there. Discussions are underway between David Davis from the UK side, Michel Barnier on the European Commission side. Personally, I think they're designed not to succeed, because at least in public, typically the way the European Union does things, it solves problems, but it does so late, and sometimes in quite a troublesome or tricky way. And if you saw that in the Greggsett negotiations, for example, you saw it in the banking crisis, the markets are about to open, and will there be a decision? Everything is done at midnight or at a minute past midnight. And you may well find that on the 29th of March, there's the suggestion that EU law will be switched off in the UK at midnight. So at the moment, it would be very unusual if there was to be a resolution of everything along the way. It is a, like a trade union negotiation, like an employer's discussion, it is everything is agreed and nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. So it's gonna be quite tricky. And the UK agenda is not clear. The fact that Theresa May had to give a speech on Lancaster House in January, and another one now in Florence on Friday, and there would be another speech and another speech trying to set out the agenda. And when you have ministers threatening to resign or whatever over the content of that, it is not a clear direction. It is not a clear cut destination. And that makes it an extremely difficult process. So the process itself, four parts, very straightforward. The referendum, the notification, the negotiation and the departure. So we've had the referendum, as I say, only the third UK referendum nationwide ever, but the largest voters in favor of any proposition. The notification, the Article 50 letter was served on the 29th of March. The negotiations are ongoing. There are a group of Sherpas who are doing the real work with some face-to-face negotiations and so on. There's been some progress, but not a huge amount. This will culminate in a series of summits which will do the work, and particularly one at the end. The idea that the UK had was that sufficient progress will be made by October, that actually the trade negotiations would commence at that stage. That's not happening, I think, in all probability. They're scheduled to leave on the 29th of March, 2019, and the bottom line is it's not that simple. So, a few points in general terms. First of all, Brexit is not a simple choice between hard and soft. It is a Brexit spectrum, as I mentioned earlier. And the reason for that is one of the key parts is the internal market. The way the European Union works is that from the Atlantic to Athens and from Sweden to Sicily, you can move anything around. Goods, persons, capital payments, services, everything can move around. And that's one of the problems. If, and one of the things that emerged from the referendum was that people seem to prefer goods over people. They said, we have no problem with goods moving, we just don't like the people. And when history looks back in the UK at the beginning of the 21st century, that's an interesting reflection. We want our goods to move, we just don't like the people. That's a serious point, but the internal market is a stitched, coordinated, coherent whole. It comes with the people, it comes with the goods, it comes with everything. And what would a soft Brexit look like? Well, a soft Brexit would look like that they would have access to the internal market. But that's the big choice. Now, the European Union has not yielded in any way to the UK. Perhaps it should, there are opportunities and ways in which it could yield to the UK. But it has basically stonewalled the UK since the 23rd of June last year. The soft Brexit would be freedoms, some financial contribution. The UK is an important contributor to the European Union, the Court of Justice. And when Boris Johnson came out in February of 2016, that Sunday afternoon out of his house, I watched it live, and he said that he was going to go, because it was unclear which way he would go. He said, I'll go for the Brexit side. And he said, and I'm objecting to the Court of Justice. I thought, my God, never before have sort of jurisprudence swung a referendum. But he was attacking the fact that the Court of Justice were judges, deciding matters, the supremacy of EU law over the UK, and so on. It was an interesting target to actually pick in a referendum, because they're the one institution of the European Union who will not speak back. Judges don't speak out loud, compared to the council or the parliament or whoever. The hard Brexit could be very simple. Now, I don't think it'll be completely as hard as that. It will be along a softer line. So there are various opportunities there in terms of the opportunities that we'll go through, and it will be in that way. Now, there is a whole range of legal issues that can be triggered, and any area that you want to talk about and can deal with in questions can be covered by Brexit. How will all this end? Bottom line is no one knows. It can be resolved. It will be likely to take years. There will be transitional arrangements and implementation ones. Don't believe everything you hear, okay? There's a lot of shadow negotiations going on. Don't confuse steps with the journey. Don't confuse activity with accomplishment. To give you a sense of how difficult it is to work out what it is, Craig Oliver, who was David Cameron's communications director, has written a really good book. It's well worth reading. And he describes the Thursday night in number 10 Downing Street, two hours before the polls closed. He describes how David Cameron and Samantha and all the people working there that were laying out this table in number 10 with Musaka and Elderflower, okay? Cameron, number 10, was not the court of Caligula. What they felt was they were going to win 52-48. Now, if number 10 Downing Street, two hours out from the polls closing, couldn't work it out. How can anyone work out two years? And it's even going to be longer than two years. So I'm going to leave you with a number of thoughts. It is unprecedented. It is unclear and it is uncertain. All of the rules will not be written by the time the UK leaves. That is not necessarily a problem. That photograph taken there in the 25th of March, 1957 in Rome when they signed the Treaty of Rome, it's a little known fact. They did sign papers, but the Treaty of Rome was not yet fully drafted. There were various aspects of it which they yet hadn't agreed, but goodness knows, they had booked the hall. They had lined up the photographers. They had traveled far and wide. So you just go ahead with it, just like Acapulco. And it is going to be a mixture of law, politics, economics, diplomacy, sociology. It is fascinating and frightening. It's going to be the experiment, I think, of prohibition. Do you remember when the United States banned alcohol? Because they thought it would be good for them. And then a little bit later they said, can we still have sherry trifle? And then they repealed it. And the same thing could happen with Brexit. Because Brexit and the European Union, it's like a lobster pot. It's relatively easy to get into, but it's very difficult to get out of alive. And that's part of the problem. And the ultimate problem is this. Now I'll leave you with this thought. The Brexit referendum was a referendum where everybody made the case against Europe, but nobody made the case for Europe. And if you think about something that we can all remember in our lifetimes, I don't want to play games with numbers, but if you think of 9-11, terrible, terrible things happened on 9-11. 2,996 people died. We don't know how many people died in the Second World War. But if you take the median number, it meant that there was a 9-11 every 45 minutes, every day and every night for six years. And what the European Union has done is it has helped to stop that. And that case for the European Union was never made. But the case against the European Union was certainly made. It carried the day, we're now living with the consequences, even with the broken watch. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much indeed. Okay, so we have, thank you, Vincent. I don't care that you watch. Anyway, so we have the second speaker for today, which is Francesco Munari, a professor of U Law at the University of Genoa in Italy, and a general professor of Transnational Environmental Law. It's been a visit in scholar Yale University and the University of Hamburg, where he taught international law, U Law, and European community trade law. He's a partner co-founder of Law for Munari and Associates with its offices in Genoa, where he acts as an avocado, and arbitrator in civil and commercial matters, domestic and international disputes. So he's gonna be talking about Brexit, providing some perspective. Thanks, Francesco. Thank you. Thank you, I hope I can start my presentation somewhere. Yes, there they are. So thank you very much. I will be touching upon a few topics that will be considered from the European Union perspective. Many things have been already mentioned by Vincent. I would go through the approach that the Union has adopted. As Vincent correctly pointed out, in fact, the reaction of the 27 has been so far unprecedented, because probably the UK was believing that they could trade on the bilateral basis with single EU members, and being good negotiators and having a good tradition in diplomacy could make a profit out of that. But the Union has been undergoing, as many of you know, profound crisis in the past 10 years, and skepticism or euroscepticism has been inflating so that the reaction has been quite smart from the Union side, namely to put at the end of negotiation a very solid French diplomat who is not particularly sympathetic with Anglicans, and to keep everything very straight. The position of the Union is, as Vincent mentioned, you made the decision, we stay here and want to listen to your proposals. But some guidelines have been anyway adopted by the Union, and they have been adopted without very much debate inside the Union, this demonstrating that the Union is so far very much unified. And the guideline state, as this slide mantains, that the purpose of the Union is to ensure the United Kingdom's orderly withdrawal so as to reduce uncertainty and to the extent possible, minimize disruption caused by this upward change. This evening, this event is concentrated on life of people also, and that's something which Union cares a lot. What apparently is not the same by the United Kingdom, which has been playing with people, but there are millions and millions of people involved in this decision. Many of them live in the UK, many UK citizens live in other member states, and it is fancy to know that there is a rush of British nationals to change their nationality into other member states because they don't want to be out of this situation. And that's probably unexpected by the United Kingdom government. So there will be many people asking for citizenship of other states of the Union because they want to preserve their rights because after so many years of being together, after so many years of being able to freely move to get a job, to enjoy the Union as a person, this idea of becoming isolated again is unprecedented. I mean, there is people with 45 that never experienced something like being isolated like you were. So there has been a lot of investigation who voted for the remain, who voted for leave. The oldest population voted mainly for Brexit, someone says, but this is not possibly the idea of young people. This sort of decision should have been explained much better, unfortunately. And that's a matter of democracy. You cannot just ask in such a referendum to play the magician role of the Vincent introduction because you have to tell people what's gonna happen. And this was never done. So the guidelines state, in the first place, we will not talk about the future of the relationship. We want first to provide as much clarity and legal certainty as possible to citizens against the first persons, the first name is always citizens, businesses, they call this an international partners on the immediate effects of the UK withdrawal. And then settle the disentanglement, and this is verbatim quoted just to mean how critical this will be of the UK from the EU. That's guidelines verbatim quotation. And from all the rights and obligation, the UK derives from commencement and the taken member states. And there will be no agreement on the future as long as these items have been progressed sufficiently. So the idea of the UK to start talking about the future before settling the condition, the terms of condition of the withdrawal has unfortunately for UK, fortunately for the union, not materialized. What are the topics that are now at stake? Some of them have been already mentioned. The first one, which is very important for the union negotiator is citizen rights. Who will be covered? Which rights will be covered? What will happen to a person having worked 20 years in the UK and 20 years in Germany? Will he retain his pension? Will that be calculated? Will the graduation of a person in Cambridge be valid also throughout Europe? And vice versa. This will be an enormous list of items that shall have to be covered. And if we take a look of what will be probably said, not by the European Court of Justice, which could be actually set out if an hard Brexit takes place, but the European Court of Human Rights, which apparently is still judging also on UK decisions, you can imagine that if a hard Brexit will take place, there will be a lot of claims before that court that will make for the British government very difficult to resolve and to deprive millions of citizens of their rights they have acquired throughout 40 and more years of being member of the union. Financial settlement is a big question as well, because the union has a strange financial regulation, namely that the budget is decided on a seven-year basis. So each country contributes during these seven years for a given amount of money. Now, termination will occur in March 2019, but the budget period will end at the end of 2020. That means that it is to be decided whether the UK will pay the bill as a contributor for this balance until the end of the budgetary period of the union or not. Of course, the position opposite in the negotiation stage and the bill that the UK may pay can be very high. And there are also a lot of other financial engagement, which at least in my slide, I just mentioned the probably known, well-known agreement, bilateral agreement, if it is so. There is three orders of tribunal of Luxembourg stated that it was not an agreement, but that's a very comic question, which I will maybe address during the discussion time, in which the union is going to pay 6 billion euro to Turkey in order to have Turkey stop the Syrian people from entering the union. And the big portion of this money is to be paid by the UK as a member of the union. So that makes, on top of many other financial topics, things difficult. And then there is the issue concerning the external borders and Northern Ireland border, which have been already dealt with by Vincent and they won't go back on them. But this is again a problem of movement of person, linkage between families, because Northern Ireland and Ireland are very close. And all of a sudden you cannot just strike a line like in North Korea, not in Western Europe, not in the third millennium. It does not work like that. It simply is not conceivable. So, and that will actually be another topic to be covered. Now, if the negotiation goes on, if these three preliminary points will be covered, which is still very open to question, there will be other topics that have to be solved or sufficiently progressed before we talk about the future relationship. I just pick up some of them. And you see that there are very many topics. Being here, I would like to mention only some issues. One of the tenets made by the UK government is that we will become the best partner of many third countries that now are in having relationship with the union. And unfortunately, the first hints we have of this new era of a globalized UK is not working that well. Because with CETA, probably there won't be any succession in the treaty. So UK shall have to renegotiate from scratch a treaty with Canada. Last week or two weeks ago, Mrs. May went to Japan and boldly wanted to start negotiation with Japan for a new bilateral agreement on trade. And the Japanese head of government said, sorry, you should stay in the line because we are now starting negotiation with the union. And when we finish with them, maybe we will have time to start negotiation with you. So, I mean, for them, it won't be that easy. But if these problems will be solved, there will be some formats to be considered. But because the union tends to repeat its practice because it's more convenient. So I have listed four possible items and I'm going to finish in a while. Just to let you know how far we are from reality in the negotiation or in the speeches coming from the media, for instance, the soft Brexit like UK joining the EFTA, European Free Trade Area and entering the European Economic Area, would imply for the British to pay about 30% more in contributions because now the UK pays about 100 Canadian dollars per year per capita to be in the union as a contribution to the budget. But countries like Liechtenstein in Iceland and Norway, being in the economic area, they pay more and have no decisional power. So at the end of the day, the money that should be saved from the wristwatch, Vincent mentioned, would be much more. A bilateral comprehensive agreement between UK and the EU may be another option, but it may take time. Apparently the soft Brexit which is now under scrutiny by Mrs. May is the Swiss format. Unfortunately, with Switzerland, the union has signed 120 treaties from exchange of students to national security or nuclear power. So how is that imaginable? Then in less than a year, all these treaty be signed is, in my view, not realistic or being treated like associated country, like Turkey, I don't know. And the fact is that we are very close to the deadline that nothing has occurred yet. Something has occurred in terms of showing the muscles anyway, because last week, the UK parliament approved the Bill to European the act which introduced in the UK all the secular realization. So there's thousands and thousands, more than 10,000 statues that have European origin and have been implemented in the EU through this European Communities Act. And they replicate actually the European Union law from an internal perspective, because otherwise there would be no more, it would be a huge legal vacuum. And this is something that has been so far approved, but I'm not very familiar with constitutional law in the UK. It is not yet enforced. It may be subject to a second approval by the parliament. People think that it is a gray area in respect of that. I talk about that already about the Switzerland Bill. Aside of the complexity, there is a huge amount of money at stake, because as I say, Switzerland pays 13 billion Euro per year to be part of the family of the European Union, even being outside of that. But that's a bill that no one has already made for the UK, it could be even much higher. And again, what is the advantage of all this mess? And since time is scarce, people are thinking that there will be eventually no agreement. This is something that is realistically considered. The latest news talk about the transitional period. I don't know whether this can be decided. Vincent correctly pointed out that we make decisions one minute before the deadline expires, but that would imply a change of primary law because Article 50 is very clear in stating a deadline, which is two years, which can be reused by two more years provided unanimously agreed by all 28, which is not the case so far. It is sufficient that a very small country in Europe says no, that there won't be anything. But if this happens, it will be, as I see at the end, the heaven for lawyers and hell for persons and firms, because the problems, the legal problems attached to that will be enormous. So if any of you is in the law school and wants to deepen this topic, he or she will have very good opportunities for her career. Thank you very much. Thank you, Francesco. And now we have the last speaker of today, Theresa Cyrus. Theresa is an associate professor in an economics department here at Dalhousie University. She received her PhD from the University of Berkeley, California, where her dissertation focused on relationship between trade growth and the effect of borders on trade. Dalhousie of research has continued to focus international trade, particularly on the social and cultural impacts of trade. So she's gonna provide the economic sort of dimension of debate about Brexit, Theresa, please. Yes, I'm the token economist. I'm also the token Canadian. I go, hey, good evening, everyone. So I'm here to talk to you about the implications of Brexit for Canada. And I wanna start by describing a scenario to you. So here's the scenario. An American president has threatened to raise trade barriers against the world in order to shore up the U.S. economy. United Kingdom has made a political decision that may hamper its trading relationship with Canada. But Prime Minister Trudeau has signed a trade deal with Europe. I'm referring, of course, to the events of the 1970s in which President Nixon raised tariffs on imports coming into the U.S., or yes, on imports coming into the U.S., the UK joined the European community, which had an impact on Canada and the preferences that Canada enjoyed as part of the Commonwealth. And Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau signed a framework agreement for commercial and economic cooperation with the European community. So what's old is new again. Now we have President Trump threatening to use trade policy to raise American interests above all else, including even a threat to abandoned NAFTA. UK, of course, is leaving the European Union, possibly putting its future trade with Canada at risk. And Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made a trade deal with the EU. Now, happily, the current trade agreement, CEDA, is a more powerful and more important agreement than the weak agreement of the 1970s. But a trade agreement without the UK will have lower gains for Canada. The trade agreement that Canada has signed with the European Union is the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, or CEDA. And it's been in the works for 10 years. It's been a very long, drawn out negotiation period, but it will provisionally go into effect this month. CEDA will eliminate almost all tariffs on trade between Canada and the EU. So that means more competition, lower prices for Canadians. And it also means that lower tariffs that were lowered below their most favored nation levels will be bound at those lower levels. So this does mean more certainty, more predictability for Canadians, for Canadian firms. CEDA also includes measures to foster regulatory cooperation. So what that means, for example, is that products that are produced in Canada exported to the EU can be tested for compliance with EU standards right here in Canada. So that, again, increases certainty and predictability for firms. And it means lower costs for firms, and therefore lower costs for consumers. CEDA has temporary entry provisions to facilitate labour mobility. One new thing that's in CEDA is that municipal government procurement is included, and not only provincial or national government procurement. That's, is possible that that will have an impact? It's likely that it probably won't have much of an impact because most procurements, so we're thinking here like things like buying new buses or a contract to build bridges or repair bridges. Those tend to be done by local firms anyway, or local subsidiaries of international firms. So well over 90% of procurement is done by local firms. So it remains to be seen whether this will have an impact or not. The most controversial part of CEDA has been the investment facilitation. Canada is quite open to foreign direct investment, so it's not necessarily going to affect investment very much in Canada, but the controversial part is the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism, which many researchers believe is actually an improvement on the process that we've had with NAFTA, which is quite ad hoc. In any event, the investment part of CEDA will not go into effect right away, so we'll have to wait until the entire EU ratifies the agreement. Now, Canada has always been a nation that relies on international trade. Our exports and imports together make up about two thirds of our GDP, which actually puts us number two in terms of trade share among the G7. So only Germany relies more on trade than Canada does. In 2016, our exports and imports together added up to over $1.3 trillion, which is $36,000 for every person in Canada. Now, clearly with our relatively low population and our chilly northern climate, we have to trade to get the things that we want to consume as individuals, and that's how economists view the gains from trade. We view the gains from trade as the greater variety of goods and services and the lower prices that our consumers can enjoy. So that's the import side. Now, the public and the government, for that matter, tend to focus on the gains from exports when they try to push through trade deals, and it is the case that exports account for possibly 20% of all employment in Canada. But whether we look at trade from the export side or the import side, increased trade does lead to greater competitiveness and greater productivity gains for Canadian firms, and that means increases in the standard of living for Canadian families. Our trade deals obviously have an impact on our trade. After the US-Canada Free Trade Agreement came in in 1989, our trade with the US really, really did rise, and at this point, about three quarters of our exports go to the US, and a little over half of our imports come from the US. Our trade with the EU is currently much lower due to geography primarily, as well as trade barriers, but our trade with the UK has historically been very important to Canada and to Nova Scotia, and the EU as a whole is now our second most important trading partner after the US, but they're quite a bit down. So the US comprises about 65% of our trade in total, and the EU comprises 10%. But that does make them our second most important trading partner as a whole. We're their 10th most important trading partner, so the EU is more important to Canada as a trading partner than we are to them. Our main exports to the EU are metals, mineral products, machinery, and chemicals, and many of these industrial products already have relatively low tariffs. However, eliminating tariffs and providing the certainty that tariffs will be zero will certainly raise trade, and from the point of view of Nova Scotia, removing the 8% EU tariff on live lobster will have an impact on us here, and the 3% tariff on frozen fruit, so those are our top two exports from Nova Scotia to the EU. Now, obviously what we're talking about tonight is Brexit, so let's focus on the EU. The EU is our top trading partner, the UK is our top trading partner in the EU, so 43% of our EU-bound exports go to the UK. In terms of imports, Germany is actually our number one source within the EU, but the UK is second, so 14% of our EU originating imports come from the UK, and in total, 25% of our EU trade is with the UK, and Germany is number two, a 21%. This is goods trade only, so on the one hand, obviously it's very important that we continue or that we adopt a CEDA-like model in order to have free trade with the UK. That was actually what our CEDA negotiations were predicated on, on having access to that UK market, but that doesn't mean that CEDA is worthless without the UK. Economists think of two ways that trade can increase along an intensive margin or an extensive margin, so the intensive margin means deepening existing trading relationships, and that's what a free trade deal with the UK would give us. We already trade a lot with the UK, so free trade would allow us to solidify those existing ties and allow trade flows to increase, but we also have a lot to gain from the extensive margin of trade, and that means developing new trading relationships. There are a lot of countries in the EU with which Canada does very little trade. The EU is a huge market, so over 500 million people, and 60-something million of those are in the UK, but that's still a lot of people to trade with. It's a 20 trillion Canadian dollar GDP, 10 times bigger than Canada's, so this is still an important market for us to access. This means that firms that already trade will face a reduced cost of market access, and more firms will be induced to start trading or to explore new markets, and there is evidence that exporters are more productive. They become more productive. Firms that export become more productive by exporting. Firms that export invest more in physical capital, they invest more in human capital, and they are able to exploit economies of scale that these bigger markets give them access to, and that does mean increases in productivity in Canada, which we are in desperate need of. Okay, so what are the problems that we're going to see due to Brexit? One is that the European Commission decided that CEDA is a mixed agreement, which means it can't just be voted on by the European Parliament, it has to be voted on by every national government within the EU, and only a handful have done that so far. So the UK was CEDA's strongest proponent, and now who is CEDA's champion within the EU? Brexit obviously has to be at the foreground of negotiations, so that means CEDA's on the back burner, okay. Now it is being applied provisionally, but only the aspects regarding trade and goods, so everything else has to wait until every country has ratified the agreement. The second question that's already been discussed tonight is how the UK will negotiate its EU trade agreement, so does that really mean starting from scratch, or does that mean adopting CEDA as the model and moving quickly into a trade agreement with the UK? Some aspects can be easily adopted like tariffs, but others are more problematic, like agricultural quotas, which have been really contentious in the negotiations, and things like rules of origin. So rules of origin determine whether a good is counted as an EU good. So with the global supply chains now, it's common for goods to have a little bit of production taking place in many different countries, so if part of a good is produced in Germany and part is produced in the UK, is that an EU good? Can it come into Canada free of tariffs? So this is something that can be negotiated, so we can determine rules of origin based on the cross-cumulation of value added, but it's not something that happens automatically, so this has to be part of a negotiation. And the EU has 38 trade agreements, so how is this going to work? Is every agreement going to start from scratch? So from Canada's point of view, the softer the Brexit, the better. I thought it was just soft versus hard, but evidently there's a continuum, so let's go to the soft side, but for now, we need to keep calm at trade. Sorry, all right, thank you. Okay, thank you to the speakers. Now we open the floor to questions and we'll start with individual questions, but if there are quite a few, we're gonna collect them. So anybody want to break the ice? Yeah, please. Brian, this is a joint in Canada. It was Newfoundland, to use a phrase that once heard when it came to amalgamating the credit unions in Newfoundland, he said we had to keep the vote until they get it right. And in Newfoundland's case, in fact, it's surprising how many people don't know this, but in fact, they voted twice. Why is it that this, I'll still call it, a reasonably close vote. There's no conversations about giving the British voters an opportunity of voting on the deal itself when it's all gathered. For the divorce agreement, call for it. Thank you. Do you want to move? Yeah, we can start with them. Yeah, it's a very, very interesting question because if you think of Member States like Denmark and Ireland, who have had referenda on EU issues and they had second referendums, indeed, until they ratified them. There were various changes and commitments made. I suppose at one level, I tried to reason this out myself last July when I spent a fair bit of time in London, July 2016, and the immediate aftermath of the referendum. And I think it's almost something to do with the British site that it's okay we'll keep calm and trade on. We voted, we may not like the outcome, but that's the vote. And it would be not cricket to expect that there'd be another vote until the right result came about. So there are an awful lot of people who were very firm remainers of the view, well, the people have voted, and that's what we're going to do now. That's the first part of it. The second part of it is the role of parliament and the sovereignty of parliament, that if you actually have an active parliament and Theresa May said in July of last year, well, Brexit means Brexit, therefore that's what's going to happen. And if that's the approach, then it does seem unusual to have, not to have a second referendum or to have a vote on the final deal. I think the third point really is that the Labour Party and the Liberals are not very strong. So the Labour Party has actually been very much of the view that it's hard at times to work out quite where they are, but they seem to be on the Brexit side of the house. So when you've got the majority of the Tories and the Labour Party on the Brexit side of the 650 members, and that's the preponderance of that, then you're most likely to continue on heading towards Brexit. Now, the arithmetic, however, of the fixed term parliament, which of course was broken this year, means that it is possible that the next British general election, depending on the timing of the deal, could be a proxy referendum. So you had one referendum in June 75, you've had another one in June 2016, I wouldn't rule out the possibility of a third referendum, but much sooner than the earlier gap. So I think it's possible, but so long as you have the Tories and the Labour Party both talking about Brexit, there just isn't enough, there aren't enough people talking about Remain or have a second referendum and the Lib Dems, but they were proposing and advocating that for the June general election, they didn't get very far with us. Okay, good question. Yeah, please. This one is specifically for Dr. Cowher. You mentioned that you felt like nobody made the case for Remain or for the EU in kind of the round for Brexit, and reminding you of a lot of the post-warms that are read after the 2016 election in the United States that if only Hillary Clinton had this positive economic vision, then they wouldn't be in trouble. And I don't know if I totally believe it, but I like the explanation that you provided. Just because I do remember people making that case, and I just felt like the case, for whatever reason, is less compelling for people. I totally agree with you. I think the comparison between World War II and 9-11 is a very apt one, but for whatever reason it doesn't seem to resonate as well as kind of taking power back does. So if you can go back to, let's say, April or May 2016, and you're in the huddle with David Cameron, how differently do you kind of articulate that case? And then as kind of a second partner, why is it that for the people who, as we were talking about the demographic breakdown of the Brexit vote, is that they, who were just overwhelmingly voted to leave, why is it that it's so tough to make the case that the EU has made the world better for the people who have been around the longest, if that makes sense? Wow, two very big questions. The first one about what would you say to David Cameron in May, 2016? I think I would remind him of Hillary Clinton's husband. He famously said, people vote not by what you tell them, but how you make them feel. And right through the few weeks, through March particularly, but April and May, and right through June, it was project fear. It was, if you leave the European Union, it will cost you this amount of money. It will cost you, and there were figures like 4,637 pounds or whatever it was, it was almost quite precise. And when you have people who had suffered from the Northern Rock, Barclays, Nat West, Orbeez, all of that sort of issue, and you had that sort of argument by Michael Gove, don't believe experts, and you'd gone through with people who had gone through the car crash of the recession. Fear wasn't going to work, and it didn't. What instead was being offered was almost a sort of an emotional, sort of visceral sort of idea. You can take back control. You can have sovereignty. You can decide things yourself. And in an era when people have Facebook, Twitter, Twitter, as Donald Trump said, is like owning your own newspaper without the losses. When people have won that sense of control, then it actually appealed very much to that sort of spirit. And you had silence from Brussels. Now they may have made it in the calculation and said, the more we get involved, the more we'll actually create a sort of a Pavlovian reaction, a counter reaction. But nobody made that case for the European Union. The fact that students at UK universities can go anywhere in Europe because of the Erasmus program. That the fact that yes there are 70 or so Spanish people retired in Britain, I think it figures 70 or something. There are 70,000 British people living in Spain in retirement. But the media was very much contrary to the European Union and it was very difficult to get that sort of message of hope out there. But it was needed. And the language was very, very specific. When a British person went and lived in Spain, there were an expat. When a Romanian came to live in Britain, there were a migrant. So it was very difficult to get through that. But that language of hope was needed. The second part, just about the demographic aspects of it, the tipping point seems to be around the age of 43, plus or minus. Now, younger people were overwhelmingly in favor of remain, but less likely to vote in a country where it's not compulsory to vote. So those who were more likely to vote were more likely to want to leave. Now, putting it maybe a little bit poetically or metaphorically, as opposed to some extent, I think the UK wanted to get back to 1955. They wanted to get back to that moment just after the winning the Second World War, before Suez, with a hope of winning the World Cup in about 1966, and driving around in a Morris Minor. And at that era, when you think about it, Churchill had spoken on September 9th, 1946 at Zurich University about the United States of Europe. But it was the United States of Europe for everyone else. And I think the point was that, for countries like Ireland and countries like Malta and countries like Cyprus and so on, for them to join the European Union was a step up. For the UK, it was a step down. This was a victor of the Second World War, a permanent member of the Security Council. And now they had the equality of Luxembourg or Slovakia or Slovenia. And there were unequal terms with that. And I think that is too much. And I think then, ultimately, and finally, migration. Something that Canada doesn't understand because of your openness and being Irish was stunned when Justin Trudeau came to Ireland and the statistic was used about the population of Toronto, I think it was four times or five times it mushroomed because of the Irish migrants after the famine. This is something that a Canadian audience probably can't understand. The level of, call it xenophobia, call it fear, call it whatever you wish, but there is a resistance towards migration. So I think that demographic was actually quite important in that way as well. Hope that answers the two questions. If Brexit occurs, so let's sort of, and then they say that we want to talk about how Brexit is likely to occur. So what's your events with the stop this? Sorry, Ken, what were the last passive part of your question? Was it in purpose? Yes. Like we're all here thinking that Brexit is going to occur in talking about a couple of times, you said if Brexit will occur. Well, do you mean whether this is a certainty or not? Well, from the international legal viewpoint, I believe, but I am a minority in legal scholars, that Article 50 of the treaty on the European Union does not allow playing with the withdrawal. So once you have declared you want to go out, you cannot withdraw your declaration. Because this would put the parties in a very unequal position. This would enhance strategic behavior by other European Union members just playing with the threatening of withdrawal. And this would be very, very dangerous for the Union. But I think that the situation is so complicated. And I don't want to have given the impression that I'm happy as a remainder or a person suffering Brexit that it will be a bad bargain for the UK. We are all sorry in Europe. I think there's no, it will be a lose-lose situation. And I am personally sorry about losing an important partner and member on which we have been very much relying on the past 40 and more years. And then, but if in good faith that the parties realize that Brexit is going to be truly a problem and an inextricable problem for many, many reasons. And I just mentioned the millions of people which will be touched, but consider that, for instance, British universities are those that get the most, the largest part of European financing for their research. Now if you go to British universities, they are met about Brexit because they will lose a huge amount of money and what will become out of that? So if at the end of the day, there will be some realism in UK politicians which is not necessarily to be taken for granted, not at least with the people we are used to here in this period, I think that if they say, sorry, we made a mistake, I think the other partners will overcome that legal constraint and be, okay, let's start from scratch. That would be a good lesson for all your Europeans. It could be the proof that rockers are profits like in Hotel California by the Eagles. You can check out any time you wish, but you can never leave. But you know, I think that at the end of the day, things have become so complicated that people are starting hoping that they will just say, sorry, we made a huge mistake. Just forget about the referendum. Or, as it was correctly pointed out, there may be some more, let's say, intelligent way to go out and ask for a second of further referendum on that to the British and get this result through another vote. I think that, I will say that during lunchtime with Ruben and Madeleine, I think that the issue has to do with democracy. And your Supreme Court said that during, in the judgment of 89 concerning the Quebec secession, you cannot ask people in a democracy to take such a decision without explaining entirely the consequences of this decision. Vincent pointed out very clearly that it was a bunch of sorts of fake news to use a popular wording about Brexit. And people were totally kept ignorant on the consequences. And if I were a politician bearing the responsibility of guiding millions of people, I would just be more frank with that and not try to play with short-term electoral success talking about the Polish plumbers that have been taking out jobs to the British plumbers or whatever. This is fake. I mean, the number of immigrants, immigrants of European citizens residing in the EU is much less than other non-European persons living in the EU. And normally they are white-collar people and or people doing jobs that British don't want to do anymore. So the fear for the central Eastern Europeans that are barglars, thieves, corrupt, and so on is in the numbers, not real. But this has been played as a record constantly to people in order to push them for Brexit. And that is, in my view, very, very sad from the politician standpoint. They have a role and they have a responsibility. They didn't bear in this situation. I hope I have answered. I want to see if there's anybody else I'll let first, I'll leave it to the mind as moving back please. Did you hear from that side the question? Anyway, maybe you can rephrase it just in case you haven't heard. I'm not sure that I told, so first within the UK how they're going to, well, I mean, yeah. So I was focusing more on trade but of course, the UK pulling out of the EU means, well, as Vincent pointed out, it's not just the movement of goods but also the movement of capital, of money as well. So that does mean fewer sources of funds coming in for investment, which, yeah, will definitely affect the capital markets within the UK. I mean, it all depends on how things are going to be negotiated because as I said, like Canada, we're very open to foreign direct investment and it's likely that, I mean, on a unilateral basis, not on the basis of any kind of agreement, right? Our trade agreement with the US does not have foreign direct investment as part of it. So if the UK is the financial capital of Europe wants to maintain open borders in terms of capital flows, then that would mean not necessarily as much impact in terms of investment in that sense. So it all depends, I guess, right? on what kind of system they want to move to. Thank you. I also have a question for Theresa, a very interesting presentation, more three presentations. In a worst-case scenario, Theresa, the worst-case scenario of a hard Brexit has been two, three years. Is there any thinking in Canada as to how quickly we could enter a trade agreement with the UK to preserve that special trade initiative where in that country? Well, according to what I was reading this week with Theresa May's visit, UK is not allowed to negotiate, right? I mean, so as long as the UK is part of the customs union with the EU, then they can't really have a different trading relationship with any other country. So if people aren't aware of the difference between a free trade area and a customs union, so a free trade area means the countries within that grouping have no trade barriers among themselves, but a customs union means they have the same trade arrangements or the same trade barriers against outside countries. So right now, all of the countries in the EU have the same tariffs against Canada, but if the UK were to be on its own, then it would be starting from scratch then. So as long as it's, if it wants to maintain itself within the customs union, then there's no possibility of doing any negotiations. But from what I was reading this week from Theresa May, it really sounds as though we have to wait until 2019 before we can do any negotiating. We can't even sit down and have a discussion. So if it then means 10 years after that, the same like the time it took to negotiate CEDA, then that's quite a long time. Probably in the meantime, the WTO rules may be applied, but of course it would be a major change in terms of bilateral relationships. Of course, for us it's not so much where there are trade rules. There will be trade rules, but will they help us maintain the market service that we have? That's a special preference relationship that we enjoy as a result of the UK being part of the EU. I don't think that's going to be a discussion or a great discussion, you know, that's a problem. I think just very quickly, I think the incentives and the issues were very quite considerably. Like if you think the UK agriculture makes up about 0.75% of its GDP. Agriculture, on the other hand, for the European Union is extremely important. Countries like France, particularly Spain, Ireland, Denmark, and so on. Belgium. Or Belgium and so on. So when they come to negotiate, agriculture would be less important to the UK and it would actually be probably more interested in that side of the house, at letting people, letting the issues in. Whereas on the other side, it goes the other way. So to be quite interesting, but the converse point is that it's supposed to be easier for Canada to negotiate with a market of 50 million because if you come with a market of 500 million on the other side, the most advanced, wealthiest, internal market in the world, you come a new negotiate against the 500 million person gorilla. It'll be easier from Canada's perspective to negotiate with a more slender UK. The skinny lottery. Okay, we have time for the last group question, please. Yeah, so what state do you think will come forward after the power back in black by the UK just regarding the France and Germany? Pressure, you're all getting it, you're getting it by the UK. Was it really the question? Can you repeat the question? Do you want me to repeat it? Yes. So what state do you think will come forward after the power back in black by the UK just regarding France and Germany? We cover some of the vacuum left by the UK in terms of political dynamics within the EU, if any. What state will come forward? What country? Country in particular, Germany. Germany is already ahead of everybody. We will leave into, let's say, Germanized Europe. And that's gone, this is what is likely to happen. I think many, it depends because I think that the legacy and the role of the UK will be divided among many states. For instance, I believe, and I think Vincent agrees, that one of the major, one of the states that will have a major advantage from Brexit will be Ireland. Because it is close, because it is close to the US and the North American countries because it is an English speaking country. And because multinational enterprises have a very good environment to be there. As far as banking sector is concerned, I think that many will move to Germany. And in other areas, what will be left out by the UK will be taken by other countries. In terms of political power, Germany has gained a substantial advantage. And please believe that it was very, very correct what Vincent pointed out earlier, namely that the UK has made a strong contribution to the Union, but always in a semi-detached way. So it was a sort of counterpart. It was never a leader in the Union. And I think France is no longer as strong as it was, even though they claim to be, but in fact it is not the case. Germany has grown in strength enormously after the reunification, so there is no comparison. In Europe, there's always this saying, this French, German, let's say Axis that brings Europe forward, this is not the case. I think Germany has taken the lead and will keep the lead for a while. So last thing, very quickly. First of all, to say I agree entirely with the idea of Germany is already there. I'm reminded of a comment made by an English footballer, Dari Lenaker, who said soccer is a game which you play for two halves of 45 minutes and in the end the Germans win. So I think they're already in a very strong position. I think France is trying, and if you look at Macron's speech in Athens last week, I think they're trying to carve out a role for themselves but I'm not sure it'll be there. Thirdly, I think the UK, if it leaves the European Union, it may well try to establish another form of trade agreement or trade area just as it did with EFTA when it had seven members in EFTA and the European economic community at six. It was at a time when Europe was at sixes and sevens. And they may try to form some sort of trade block with the likes of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and a number of other member states in Europe, perhaps. Sorry, states in Europe. And finally, just to say about Ireland, I think that, sorry, but ultimately just to say about Ireland, I think it will be a beneficiary. I think there will be severe shocks. I think like joining in 73, there were certain industries which disappeared. I think there will be certain industries which were really badly affected by Brexit. But at the moment the value of US foreign direct investment in Ireland is actually more than the value of US foreign direct investment in Brazil, Russia, India, and China combined. And that's very much part of the, as Francesca was saying, Union speaking, common law, European member state. And I think that's going to continue there. The last part is I do hope the UK will come back if they leave, but I think the great problem is that there may be a real shock and a real problem to get them back in. Because if it goes well, they'll stay out. But if you want to hope that they'll come back in, unfortunately this is going to have to be nightmare on Leidenholme Street. That's very, sort of, we last time. No, I'd like to again thank the speakers. And today we're engaging the talk. Thank you all.