 Bonjour à tout le monde, qu'est-ce qu'on donne? Bonjour à notre conférencié aujourd'hui. Vous êtes le bienvenue. Merci d'être venu. Manuel Lafond-Rapnouy is going to address us this afternoon on an important subject really in Europe today, and that is globalization, which has been requested more and more, and indeed a good deal in France as you have seen and witnessed from the events there, but elsewhere that people have lost out. It has left people not able to manage and that something needs to be done and of course the argument is to retrench again but that's not acceptable in this world of course. And of course populism has and those parties who specialize in populism have benefited from the maximum. Manuel is very qualified. He is a senior fellow at the Paris office of the European Council on Foreign Relations and he's had an interesting career even though he's young in my books, an interesting career with a French diplomatic service and he was visiting fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington based think tank. So I would ask you to switch off your, I left this as a reminder to myself, to switch off your mobiles, reminder that the main part of the proceedings are on the record, but the question and answer session is chatter rules, in other words, off the record. So without further ado, we have about half an hour or so. Yes, thank you very much and I'm looking forward to the discussion. You will see that I will open much more doors than I will close, partly because they are quite difficult to close. So I'm looking forward to discussions and reactions. But first, if you made a bet on how long it will take before I mention President Trump, you've lost because I will start with a statement last September at the UN General Assembly, which actually was precisely an attack against globalism and that's the word he used. And it's not just the traditional issues that successive U.S. administrations have had with multilateralism. We all know that at least since the end of the Cold War, it's been a lack of multilateralism, as Richard has said in 2001, and that's very much the case for this administration, which has, for instance, in the first phase of its dealing with the proliferation crisis in North Korea as insisted on UN and UN Security Council Cooperation to put pressure both on North Korea and on China. So you have sometimes, most of the time, a policy which is multilateral when we can, unilateral when we must, which was Mademoiselle Wright's phrase. Actually, less often than it may happen, you have the reverse unilateral as soon as we can, multilateral only if we must, but I think that Trump is different from that. It's not just the issues that these specific administrations, the Trump administration has with the UN, and yet there are many issues. I will just remind you quickly of the fact that under Trump the U.S. withdrew from the Paris Agreement on Climate, from the Iran nuclear deal, decided that it will not sit anymore at the Human Rights Council, withdrew from the Universal Postal Union. You maybe didn't know about that specific organization, which is one of the oldest multilateral organizations, and quite important if you work in mail affairs. It withdrew from the list of funders from the UN Relief and Work Agency, which is the agency that works in support to Palestinian refugees, et cetera, et cetera. But the reproach from the statements were much broader and deeper than that, and what Trump said when he criticized and attacked globalism is that the major threat for the U.S. right now, the major threat as easy as it is a threat to U.S. sovereignty, and that threat comes from, quote, global governance, and, quote, again, new forms of coercion and domination that has to do with international institutions and international rules. So what is it that this means, and what is it that this means, especially for Europe, is something that I believe is very important for us to realize. And I think this approach is a possible problem for Europe for at least a free reason. To start with, it's a problem because of the importance of transatlantic relations, obviously. We have a problem when we diverge on substance, that's the case on kindness. We don't agree on the fact that there is a problem and we need to tackle it. There is a problem when we diverge on strategy and tactics. That's also an issue, for instance, on trade with China. I would argue that the U.S. and the EU basically share the same reproaches against the Chinese, that they have the same economic interests at stake, or at least very similar interests, and yet the Trump administration has decided to deal with this issue from outside the WTO framework, whereas the European preference would be to deal with it through the WTO framework. But that's even more of a problem when it leads to doubts on the nature of our relations, for instance, on security, obviously. Is NATO still a security alliance, meaning an alliance based on the idea that there's a commonality of security interests at stake? Or is it an organization based on the fact that there are burden-sharing and that the Europeans should pay for U.S. security guarantee? And obviously you don't believe the same way, you don't trust security guarantee the same way, when you think it's based on commonality of threat assessment and threat perception and commonality of security interests, or when it's based just on how much you pay to the common budget, or to your security-gallant budget. And obviously it's even worse when you have some degree of confrontation, and I think that's very much the case with Iran's secondary sanctions, where, for instance, on climate, the U.S. said we'll get out of the deal, but basically we agree to disagree. We go out of the deal and therefore we don't follow these rules and commitments that we see as constraints, but you do whatever you want to do, it's your problem, it will constrain you, we don't care about that, it would be the U.S. approach to that. On Iran it's not just that, it's not only we get out of the deal, but we don't want you to do what you should be doing within the framework of the deal. And therefore we'll take sanctions not just against Iran, but also against European actors who want to have economic relations with Iran, because we want you to align your foreign policy on ours. And that's a very coercive and quite different approach. So that's the first problem. The second problem for Europe with this approach from the U.S. administration of multilateral cooperation is because we know that what the U.S. is doing is very much a short-term strategy and that leaves intact quite a few problems. We just discussed with a few of you the fact that the U.S. attitude in the U.N. system is creating a vacuum and that these vacuums open the risk that the U.N. is handed over to China. It wasn't the case in 2002-2003 when there was the Iraq crisis that China was able to actually take advantage of U.S. policy. Certainly now China is in a much better position to actually exert and increase its influence in the U.N. system much more than it was 15 years ago and much more than it would be if the U.S. was still quite active and committed to the U.N. system. There's also the risk that non-cooperative policies usually make the problem bigger when the problem has to do with basically our non-zero sum game and have to do with global public goods. So migration, biodiversity, you name it, you have just this idea that non-cooperative policies kick the can further down the road but it's not just that it kicks it further down the road it's that in between the can gets bigger. And third risk, even from the U.S. perspective, you have the risk that your bilateral solution, your bilateral issues does not really serve all of your interests. If the U.S. is able to get a good bilateral deed on trade or on economy and financial relations in general with China, it leaves the problems of U.S. and China competition in other markets intact. What happens to U.S. and China competing in Sub-Saharan Africa, in Latin America, the rest of Asia and the Pacific and obviously in Europe? That's why you have a World Trade Organization and that's why before the WTO you add efforts to put in place multilateral framework for trade. And last, another problem for Europe which clearly is not the least has to do with the fact that the EU is based on cooperation and we are so much less at ease in an international environment than we are based on cooperation. It's not just that we have invested so much on multilateralism and then cooperative policies that we have more to lose than others from the undermining of cooperation and of these rules-based order but it's more than that. It's the fact that the EU is based on interdependence. It's built on the idea that not only is interdependence good but on top of it it will actually force us into more cooperation which also is good. And we realize that not only interdependence is not enough to force countries even within the EU into cooperation but actually interdependence may be asymmetric. And when it's asymmetric it can be leveraged by the sides which has the asymmetry in its favor. And that's what happens for instance in the relation between the EU and Turkey on migration. There's an asymmetry and the asymmetry can be played by Turkey in its favor. You have that on cyber, you have that on energy and you have that on economic and finance and that's the very basis for the power of US sanctions not just with smaller, less developed countries but also with the EU in spite of the size of its single market and the fact that it has a common currency etc. And we Europeans are faced with our very own challenges in this cooperation versus sovereignty topic. So let me go precisely into this idea of sovereignty and how the discussion about sovereignty plays in this context. One of the source of this fight against globalism policy is the idea that a rules-based order, a rules-based world order is providing false comfort at best and more likely is imposing illegitimate and or dangerous constraints on your foreign policy. That's one of the reasons why the US have withdrawn for instance from the INF Treaty. They don't like it because they think they're the good guys so that illegitimate to be constrained and it's dangerous because in the meantime China is developing its own intermediate nuclear capabilities which will have a big role in the strategic stability of the Asia and Pacific region. So it's not just that Russia is cheating with the treaty but it's also that on top of it you end up being the good guy and yet being cheated by your partner and being disadvantaged in another trade. But it's the same with WTO. It's not just that the US wants to have its own bilateral solution to the trade issues, the pending trade issues with China and deal with that bilaterally. But actually the US policy right now on WTO is to undermine the dispute settlement body. So there is a sense that this body which was seen when it was established as a progress is actually putting constraints on deals that the US would be able to get if it was a more kind of a pure rapport de force, pure balance of power issue. And I'm not going to mention the ICC which I'm sure everybody has in mind but I'm going to mention the Marrakesh pact on migration and the reason why I take that as another example is that unlike the ICC the Marrakesh pact on migration, compact on migration was interesting because there were also EU member states voting against it at the UN and there were a bit more EU member states not endorsing the compacts at the final ceremony. So you have this idea that this is about your sovereignty and preserving, safeguarding your sovereignty and I think that's the reason why it's mistaken is because if you only look at one side of the coin it's the idea that sovereignty is, and it is, obviously the authority to govern yourself. But that doesn't mean that it's unchecked power to act. The other side of the coin is that sovereignty is also the political and legal ability to interact with other states. So it's also about being politically and legally able to underwrite roles and to contribute to collective action. One of the key pillars of the idea of international order for sovereign states is the principle of the sovereign equality of states which means that there are boundaries to sovereignty if only because of other states' sovereignty. So you have this issue and this issue is all the more complex in a context where first sovereignty is, at least in democratic societies, also about people's control. And the issue being that it used to be that people's control of a foreign policy could be only remote because what was at stake democratically on foreign policy was less direct than many other public policies. The fact is this is not the case anymore. You deal with foreign policy that means you deal with trade, it means you deal with global pandemics, it means you deal with migration, you deal with refugees, you deal with terrorism, you deal with all these issues that people feel have a direct impact, not just on their lives in general but on their day-to-day lives. It's not the case anymore that trade is these kind of far and distant issues. It really changes whether your children will have a job tomorrow at the nearby factory or not. It's not just that it deals with big issues but deals with really what is going to happen to your neighbors, to your cousins, to your family, to your friends, to your children all the time. And this is something that you see populist movements much more aware than mainstream political parties. I have only a few examples you can find many others but you will remember I mentioned the Marrakech Compact on Migration, the Belgian government fell over the issue of endorsing that pact or not. And in Netherlands you had a referendum on Ukrainian association agreement. It really seems weird that people would actually sign a petition and ask for a referendum on this but it was the case. It had enough signatures, a referendum was held and it was negative. It was only consultative so the Dutch government could go ahead and it did so after asking its partners to clarify a few points. But this is something that we are not used to, I believe. So this issue certainly is something for us Europeans. It's not just a multilateral issue and I will now just quickly talk about European sovereignty. I know there is a problem with terminology. People say European sovereignty is a legal contradiction in terms. Some people say it's politically very inflameable. Let's not use these words. You can give the impression that you are going to deprive nations from their sovereignty. But on substance there is this different approach between people who have a more kind of purists or theological approach to sovereignty and those who have a more pragmatic approach to it. The key divide is how do you answer the question about is collective action the best option to weigh on world affairs and to be a rules maker and not a rules taker? And obviously the views that I call theologists would say yes that's all very good in theory but just it doesn't work and that's why we need to be able to stick to our own national sovereignty and I will address that in a minute. They don't answer the issue on how you weigh on world affairs and how you remain a rules maker not a rules taker if you go on the international stage just as an individual nation and how everyone can do that because that's the other difference. It's not just between pragmatism and more theological approach to it but it also has a difference between individual and collective approach. Collective action is the best tool to preserve people's sovereignty and equality. Obviously it makes sense that Trump has this kind of approach when he's motor or he's America first but all governments have to care for their country first that's for sure but first does it mean at the expense of others if you want to take into account the fact that precisely you need that the system works for everyone then you need to find a way to preserve people's sovereignty and equality and not just the idea that some people can be sovereign and the rest will have to be rules taker. Obviously this is not easy from inside there are many questions how do you organize that what do you do when there is difficulty to reach consensus that has to do with all the current discussion in Europe about viable geometry or differentiated integration how do you share the burden that's very much something that is discussed in NATO but that is also discussed in the EU but if you look at from the outside it's much more pressing that there is a need to work collectively so is there a way to do multilateralism without falling into this kind of globalist fitting this globalist or anti-globalist argument I think first we need to recognize that this is not only about the Trump administration that there were hints of this trend before Trump came to the White House but also because it's not just about the US more generally there is winning appetite for multilateral cooperation and that's including in the EU and outside of the EU it's not very hard to meet with doubts on how universalists the multilateral system is and that's the case both from the political perspective where people will say behind this kind of multilateral appearance actually this is Western hegemony but also culturally it's not just Western hegemony in terms of those who are in power but it's also Western hegemony in terms of your trend to impose your interpretation of what is the right norms etc for instance on free trade go to any Latin American embassies and they will tell you that you are free trade except on agriculture for instance and last one of the issue has to do with the ineffectiveness of multilateral policies that we need to recognize I think the multilateral system is at best good at crisis management not always so good but it's doing what it can it certainly is not that good at crisis prevention and at addressing long-term challenges and you mentioned globalization in the introduction and certainly the system has been quite unresponsive at addressing people's concerns with globalization especially on the economic front even if not on the economic front so what do we do in front of this there is a temptation because that's such a big challenge there is a temptation to confuse the defense of multilateralism with the defense of the status quo the idea that it's going to be very hard at least let's keep what we have already and I think this is not going to do it precisely because of these issues of how the system is not effective enough and not responsive enough of course it's of the utmost importance to keep the time of deal working to keep Iran in the Iran nuclear deal by dividing by its commitments to keep to find more funding for the UN when it's deprived of funding for instance on humanitarian affairs but there's a need for more reform there's a need for different policies on trade, on refugees, on climates that step up to the plate given what we know of the challenges and there's a need for institutional reforms we've mentioned WTO there clearly is a need for a reform of the dispute settlement mechanism the UN Security Council which is a good example of in some cases a deadlocked institution so the reform should not be just about membership it could be also about WTO the Bretton Woods Institution is another case it was striking how China moved to the Asian to create the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank after the US Congress deprived China of the reform of the Bretton Woods governing bodies there's also a need to move towards more work with non-state actors this is something that for instance the French presidency of the G7 is insisting a lot in terms of a digital economy there are discussions on how to deal with digital platforms but on climate I think it's a very good other example where one way to counteract after the US withdrew from the Paris deal was to work with foundations local governments, big companies, unions from the US and therefore keep the US actors more or less on track even if the federal government was actually not willing to abide by its commitments under the Paris deal and that is my last point there is clearly a need to build a more democratic way to do foreign policy I think what happened with the Marrakesh Compact on Migration which was known by everyone to be negotiated for months and even years which ended up in a few weeks in the kind of total mess up that it was it's a good example that we need to deal with these issues quite differently not only at the multilateral level not only at the European level but also probably at the national level thank you