 Let's talk about power. Power has many dimensions, so we're three very different people, three very different backgrounds around a table. So let's start with a brief introduction. My name is Sven Biskop. I'm Belgian. I'm also Belgian based in Brussels. I work two hats. I'm a professor at the University of Hent and I'm a director of research at a think tank, the Royal Institute for International Relations, Echmont in Brussels. And I deal with two big topics, defense, so really the most classic dimension of power, if you want. And then I deal with relations between the great powers, you know, how to position Europe, the European Union, in the power games between China, Russia and the United States. And then of course that game has a military dimension, but also an economic dimension, a political dimension. Thank you. My name is Sarah Kavipur. I am a lawyer by training. I had built my expertise in the public sector for some years in different ministries. I moved then to the private sector where I consolidated this expertise by working in banks, more in the regulatory environment of finance. And today I'm an independent director. I sit on different boards of different banks and I also advise banks. So I'm coming from the financial sector. My name is Geert Loving. I'm a media theorist, internet critic and activist. I run a small research unit in a polytech, Amsterdam's high school, the Havia. And there I'm leading the Institute of Natural Cultures. And I'm doing that since 2004. And I have a background in the Squatters movement, in media arts, internet activism. And yeah, I'm still, you know, I'm here in the museum at home because I'm very closely tied to, you know, the concerns of artists. And we spent a lot of time working with artists in my center. All right. Now maybe to kick us off. I was thinking that many people in my view, they hear power and they immediately attach negative connotations to it. Maybe especially, you know, our audience who knows, you know, people interested in the arts. I have a more optimistic, optimistic positive view of it. And I think our problem, as Europeans, is rather that we have stopped to think about power and we have forgotten a bit what power is and how to use it. Because we always think, ah, someone who is powerful, they begin to beat up their neighbors. You know, a powerful country, then the first project is an always, you know, let's invade our neighbors. Let's annex a province or two. But my view is rather that you need power also if you want to implement a positive project. Always like quote, a notion of realpolitik, you know, it's another notion that everybody in New York thinks, ah, this matter, in case the M justifies the difference. But the original meaning of the concept is very positive. The guy who invented it in the journal, obviously, the music from the novel, he was in 1948, there was a failed revolution in the failure of great democracy. He was involved in it and afterwards he wrote a book about realpolitik and he said, look, we have beautiful values, but dreaming about them, just dreaming about them is certainly a purpose. You need power and if you have power, then you can bring them into practice. If not, there will always be an illusion. So for me, this is the challenge that I see for us Europeans is to understand that we need power in all dimensions, classic military power also, just in case, certainly economic power that includes technology, certainly also political influence. And we need that power, first of all, to safeguard our own way of life. It's maybe a very American term, let's say the type of society that we have chosen to build. We need to preserve it and improve it. That requires power. And we need power even to pursue a constructive project for the world. Because you cannot say from a position of weakness to a big power like China, I'm going to work with you because then the risk is very high that you will export them. So even if you want to engage other powers in the world, you need to be a power yourself. That's sort of my starting point in all of those dimensions. But perhaps my two co-conspirators here in the basement have already widely different opinions on that. Yeah, I want to say something about the let's say historic trauma of power. Because in Europe, when we're talking about power, many would say in our generation, roughly speaking, after the war, there's a trauma of power. And I think I come from a generation that clearly put as its task to dismantle power, to question the power, to locate it, to see precisely where it is, for instance, functioning within people in relationship between genders, race, to put it in a colonial and post-colonial perspective, and to fight the power, let's say, to use the term. And yeah, this is very much connected, I believe, to Michel Foucault and he wrote in the 70s particularly. And I think his writings and his thinking about power is very, very multilayered. And yeah, it's something that I grew up with or grew into. And this whole idea of the European power, of course, is something that very many, many people wanted to question, because the relation between Europe and power has been pretty disastrous, especially in the 18th, 19th, 20th century, or coming from the Netherlands, maybe even the 17th century, for that matter. So yeah, my generation put it to task to not end the power, because if you read Foucault, you will see that power will always be generated and there are always new and different power relations. So it's a naive idea to think that you can do away with it. But what we can do, especially as Europeans, I think, is to analyze it, to point at it. And maybe this is naval gazing and this puts us in the situation that you just mentioned. But this is probably what's up for debate this afternoon here in the Moudam cellar. Yes, this is all quite fascinating. I've been thinking about how this concept of power would relate to the financial world. And if I look at what happened in Europe, but then in the world also, since 2009, one can look at power from different points of view. So power as a force, as a force in society and in this particular context deregulation of finance. So in a certain sense, an abuse of power, because a certain force got out of hand and started to affect other aspects of life. Then power also in the sense of abuse of power, but then also of powerlessness. So I think it's interesting to look at also this financial crisis as a dialectic of these three dimensions of power. And then to think of how this dialectic then relates to the different protagonists in society. Who are the protagonists? There are the individuals, the institutions, and then the community or the collective. And how did this, let's say, dialective of power affect these three protagonists in society? And if you now take, for instance, a definition that you were alluding to in your presentation, at first when you say people associate something negative with power, then you would think of people being in positions of power just deciding things, just doing things. Are they legitimate or not? Does it make sense or not? And of course, for many, many years, there were a lot of meetings in Brussels, there were meetings all over the world to understand how one can move from a deregulated environment to a regulated environment again. And a lot of power was used to do that. It's interesting then to think of what we have today in terms of a framework that was put in place, whether it was the consequence of power of powerlessness. This honestly is not very clear to me yet. The only thing that I really draw from this experience is that in order for power to be meaningful and to actually lead to a constructive result, it needs to be framed. It needs to be channeled and it needs to have a value system that it obeys. Because it's when it leaves that moral framework that power then becomes actually a negative source in society rather than a positive source in society. So maybe at a more conceptual level, this is probably true for all the forces in society, not just in the financial sector, but it is something that looking at what happened since 2009, I could clearly see in different moments of this crisis as it was unfolding. But then also, and to some extent, there's still an aftermath of the crisis that we're still experiencing, how this concept has been building up and implemented. It's very interesting what you say. I mean, I would say you need a project, power is then the tool to achieve that project, and that project can be very positive. Your project can be to build a welfare state, for example, but that requires power also. But of course, others can have a negative project as well. As you say that the regulation, I find that interesting, is a project of some players, clearly some states have an old-fashioned type project, or what we regard as old-fashioned, of creating spheres of influence and dominating other countries. I think my feeling is why many in Europe immediately look at power as something so negative, because we have of course made an honest attempt, as you said here, to overcome war among ourselves and to make sure that within our community, the European Union, we do not use power directly against each other anymore. And we've created what in an academic term we call a security community. Any dispute, any difference is settled through legal means and by peaceful means. And we try to make it unimaginable that you would use force against one another, and also practically impossible to use one market, and for most of it, it's one currency, so it's difficult to attack another country if they're fallen in the same European central bank somehow. But I think what we often forget is that the rest of the world is not like that. And for a long time we thought, you know, just it's efficient that we, the EU, we are what we are, and the others, they are also rational people, they will look at this and they will say, oh yes, this is a way ahead, we'll move in the same direction, but they haven't, of course, because their circumstances are different. And so sadly in the world around us, yeah, there are still players who use power also very aggressively. And so I think we have to balance the two, our own model, but what you can't just transplant to another place of the world. So we must also have, in a way, the power at least to defend ourselves, to deal with that, yeah, with that other part of the world. Would you maybe say something about, you know, your personal encounters, because of us three, you probably came closest to the tradition or political power, because you worked in the ministry, right? Yes, I did work in the ministry of finance from 2009, in fact, until 2014. Yes, here in Luxembourg. So it was really the beginning of the financial crisis, and I had the opportunity to work closely also with the minister of finance. Then it was very interesting to see how, when you are put in a position of challenges, of a crisis, how power then becomes actually something that is very connected with responsibility, because you need to really take in charge a process that is affecting society at large, that is actually questioning the functioning of society. I mean, when we think back about the bank runs, how this whole question of do we let banks that are of systemic nature fail or not, how that really affected also the morale in society, there was a huge responsibility that policymakers had to take on at that point, and also in a moment of some panic. It is not a moment where you can actually say, well, we will take time and profoundly think about this matter and design. So there was also the markets that were pressuring. So how do you then use that power in a context that is not ideal to make the best decisions for that time? So it was interesting to see how then policymakers deal with that, because then power, as I said, is responsibility. It's pressure. Often it's also fear. But then you have some that deal with it in a more humble way than others. Some become personally attached to it. Others don't. So that personal dimension then also comes into play and affects the quality of that decision making process. And for having been part of many meetings where policymakers would meet, it was very interesting to see that one discussions took place in a certain context, environment with certain attitudes, decisions that came out, were obviously impacted by that mindset. I mean, you remember how Greece was affected, how Spanish financial sector, the Irish, Portugal, etc. So all of these were very personal, very emotional discussions where policymakers had to really, to some extent, have a discipline not to let their personal bias affect the use of power that they were elected to represent at that moment. And everyone deals with it in an extremely different way. Although there was also a risk of the opposite at the time, I think that it would become a purely technocratic exercise. And I remember debates about how far can you go to force a state like Greece to cut back on its social welfare, for example, because I remember writing at the time at Pipps and yeah, there's no point in saving the euro at the price of destroying the welfare state, because the euro is not an objective in its own right. The welfare state is in my view. So if you have to destroy it in order to save it, that's like Vietnam. In order to save the village from communism, we bombed it into the earth. Yeah, perhaps not. So I found that at the time very, very tricky. It linked back to what you said about the moral framework in my view or the project. You have to know very well what is the actual objective here. There's no point saving only the banking system. If the price is you destroy the buying power, the word power again, of every individual citizen. It's also linked, one more word, to my geopolitical take, because that's also the year 2007-08, the financial crisis to which you can date the breakthrough of China as a great power. Since then, indisputably, China is again a great power. Just to build on what you said, this question of power also had an either dimension that I found very interesting to observe is that, I mean one says money is power, but I could literally see it happen. So a country starts to lose power because it is losing its money. And somehow that then also made it lose its voice. And how is that working out, especially in the context of the European Union, at some point we were just talking about Greece, not with Greece anymore. And so we took that power away because we felt that Greece owes us. And I was always wondering what that is actually right. Is that correlation that we created, are these consequences, are they morally right? Just a question. Can you maybe go more in detail? Can you tell something about, did banks for instance or investment funds go bankrupt in Luxembourg at the time in those years? Or was it just a threat from outside? So Luxembourg back in the day decided to intervene. The government did rescue one or the other bank, except in one very specific case, which also was not of systemic nature. There were, it was feared that it could have a larger impact. The government did intervene. But that question was open for every country to decide. And we also know from other countries that other decisions were taken. So that question of at what point do you intervene and let also some events go their course, natural course of let's say construction, deconstruction was also interesting to see how far do you use that power to prevent certain things from happening. In Luxembourg in any case, the government or policymakers decided that it was in the national interest not to not to let certain consequences unfold. But we know that this was not the case in all the countries where they these interventions followed by a policy of long term austerity like in many other countries. So during that time in Luxembourg, I would not say austerity, but there was definitely a policy of budgetary discipline where there was a prudent policy that was adopted. But it was also a policy that was going beyond just budgetary measures, but also trying to redefine a model for the financial sector. And I think this is a reflection that many other financial sectors were also engaged in what is the place of finance in a world that is growing out of this financial sector and also in a very regulated environment. I think this is something that we still are trying to adjust to ever since the crisis. We also have a European framework that is extremely dense. I would say that has a lot of power. And some would even say is it legitimate or not because we all know that these institutions are not elected institutions. So I think you can really go into some detail here to see what are the consequences of this crisis that in fact has created an infrastructure that is huge and powerful in Europe. I found it quite surprising at a time that one could even talk of the possibility of for example Greece being pushed out of the Eurozone because in my view the EU is not just an organization. It's a state-like organization. It's somewhere in between an organization that you can join but also live again in a state. In a state you don't just join and leave, not just like that. You know, as the UK has now found out. So I think in many ways, in my country Belgium in many ways we're a province of the EU, of the single market of the Eurozone. We're a province of it and you implement what's decided at the central level. So I mean no American would conceive that as a result of the financial crisis you would have to push Texas out of the union. So that we conceived of pushing Greece out. I found very disturbing in a way because my desired end state is the United States of Europe also because in my view that's the only way to aggregate power in sufficient strength is at the central level not in every field but if you have to hold our own in a world of intense competition between China, Russia, the US. If you have to hold our own in a technological race and economic race then I think we need to centralize in some areas much more than we do. So how does the internet play into all this? Yeah, there is a FinTech turn and yeah I've been very much a part of that since 2013. We have an international network called MoneyLab and these are a lot of around let's say 800 or 1000 artists around the globe who you know work on these issues. So it's a network of investigative journalists, researchers, artists but also activists and yeah the financialization or the monetization of the internet is in our circles seen as a very good thing. First of all it radically breaks with the dogma of Silicon Valley which sorted out a very sneaky business model for itself namely to give away all the services for free and in exchange you know get your data behind your back right and this what we call you know economy of the free luckily is now slowly coming to an end. It took really long time and a lot of people are still hooked you know to the social media and that's still a case but let's say the financialization or monetization of the internet is in general considered as a very good and radical answer to break the power of Silicon Valley. Also because they are not at all involved they were asleep they are still defending their monetary system the old model so they are not at all involved in the new solutions. Do you have a concrete example here of what that means? What it means? Yeah a concrete example the monetization. Yeah well you know but also just go to China and go to China and look at how you know the platforms there are fully monetized and people can trade they can sell goods and you know there's a fully functioning payment system which the Americans have always blocked and are still blocking to this day and that is also the explanation let's say why since let's say 2009-10 coinciding with the last financial crisis bitcoin grew so rapidly and the whole crypto blockchain developed more or less as a completely parallel system primarily because Silicon Valley refused to implement it and they refuse it up to today right so today we have a system that is completely free which is ad-based and we have this very strange yeah what I call right-wing populist crypto dream which is primarily you know against the state against not only the state banks and their fiat money but it's also against the traditional banks unfortunately this whole crypto thing is not going into a direction that you know is now implemented in China so China is you know really way ahead in this sense that we in the west have this this kind of dual system of an internet that is free and kind of half hearted attempts to implement some payment systems in which some banks are involved but the traditional banks are also very you know cautious and they don't really want they want to keep control in the back there are of course the the American credit card companies that also don't want any peer-to-peer payment systems to be implemented so on the west side it's a very very chaotic picture whereas you know if you look at the way that for instance in China these platforms are implemented there's a much more integrated idea now I'm not saying that you know it's going there like hanky dory that the communist party is now intervening and it's intervening precisely at the level that you know this is caused by this venture capital backed american system in which systems grow very very fast and you create monopolies and very very rich you know founders and very very small group of ultra-rich people and yeah China the communist party is now trying to do away with that kind of very speculative monopoly side but in general we see that in China let's say ordinary people have much much more possibilities to to set up you know their own e-commerce and payment systems whereas here in the west it's still very much in the hands of traditional banks for me it somehow makes me think that still the natural incumbent of power is the state and that in the end that's the only that's still the most legitimate actor and if it acts it can really wield its power because often here you know well but the big IT giant and so on they they are replacing the state the internet has democratized power but I don't buy that I think for example the rules in the Microsoft they become very powerful because we've let them but if the state says tomorrow it's finished we can do that but we but we or some policy makers just don't just don't want it but for me the state it's still a world of of states and I think it will be for a long time to come and even in the cyber world it's the most powerful states that wield the most power in the cyber sphere logically because you need resources also to develop that but you oh sorry no I'm just drinking you know and listening to the two of you and then trying to put it also again in a context of how our understanding of power has maybe evolved over the past centuries to some extent it seems that we think of the power system of always suggesting that there is a hierarchy of the powerful and then there is those who have no power so basically you know there are different categories but even within those that have power there are differences there are those that have more power than others and I'm trying to think whether at this point also in in in society whether we don't need to rethink completely and profoundly this way of organizing society you know what would a world look like where nation states actually have you know equal power in the sense that they're equal peers where the point is not to compete against each other but to work together towards something common you know what would what would happen to the concept of power if you would think of the world like that or even you know among people when where it is less about having power over something or somebody but it's more about empowerment or power too or power too and and and maybe it's it's it's important of course we observe things and and and we conceptualize them but then also how are we trying to rethink the system because we also see that it's not a perfect system it is a very dysfunctional system and then why is it that society today is starting to think like that and why didn't they think of it 500 years ago you know what is changed today what is in our awareness different and also our level of maturity and it starts let's say in the family where we have children today that challenge if to some extent the power or the authority of parents because they want to be treated differently now 500 years ago that probably wasn't the case also to look at to look at at how how is society at large maturing and how is this maturity affecting the way we look at concepts that have always been there have always been implemented in a certain way and is that way today still valid somehow i i doubt that there will be any great change because we're not in a greek city state anymore you know where you can say at that time well every male citizen which actually a lot of people well half of people already all the women but also the non-citizens okay you could bring them together physically and discuss everything if you wanted but i think you know representative democracy you know i'm a church you know it's it's the worst system except for all the others because i i don't think it's you cannot you cannot be strategic if you have to at any moment decide everything with everybody then then you're always then you go for the end up in ad hoc i think that's that's my that's my fear then so again if you need to have power also requires consistency and the sort of conflict okay i have a certain i have a certain amount of time to develop my project if whatever i decide can be revoked because tomorrow someone calls a referendum then nobody can ever get anything done so you build in breaks into the system right in our system it's the elections every four or five years some dictatorships managed to organize that too right in the chinese system until now they had discovered a way because every every dictatorship struggles with the same problem the succession right if put in has a heart attack this afternoon who will be a successor nobody knows maybe they have a guide they're hiding behind the court is what we don't know for we know there'll be a huge succession crisis and chinese had a system they said two terms and your your second term we prepared the next one shijin ping is now breaking through that by by going going for a third time big but that also was was a break even in an authoritarian system you know that power you have a finite amount of finite amount of time to to use it so still i'm i'm not i'm not a big fan of um referenda the vox properly all kinds of direct democracy i think it it sounds like to me it stops you from actually exercising power also exercising for the good just to clarify this is not what i was suggesting yeah i was not suggesting direct direct democracy i was just suggesting at this at a level of system you know to have to think of the possibility of what a world would look like where the u.s china russia and the rest of the world would actually a little bit like it was thought of at in the european union speak at level playing field equal footing what would happen to that world where the and it has nothing to do with democracy as such i mean we're talking about legitimate governance here but what would happen to the to to to the order also in the world to the way countries would interact with each other and then therefore also the people in these countries if it was less about fighting each other but more about working together towards a common cost and and if you think of of power being something like this it becomes a very positive thing it looks i mean this leaders back into the concert of powers that we had in the 19th century after feet of napoleon congress of vienna the powers sort of organized a system for europe and of course those same powers then all developed an imperialist project and began to control the rest of the world but for to an extent it worked within europe but again it it meant of course at those few great powers five six they decided the fates of the smaller states right and belgium separated from the netherlands that was up to them they decided we accepted or we don't it was not up to the dutch or the belgians in the end um well i think we could achieve today when we have for the moment four big global players china russia us eu is a concert of powers but embedded within strong multilateral institutions so the the great powers they have to take the lead because they have the scale to do that but but working also for the others not just deciding over the other but working with the others within the multilateral system i think that's the best we can hope for in the current in the current setup and i would say i i always distinguish between competition and rivalry i think competition between states is inevitable just like in the economy if i open a supermarket along corner of the street i'm competing with with you if you open on the other corner of the street but doesn't mean we're enemies so a state you know every state is looking for export markets for natural resources for influence uh it doesn't mean that the other state is also looking to increase is export is your enemy because sometimes their interest overlap and you so you compete to cooperate at the same time but rivalry is something else that means that i decide not only to to defend my interests but that i actively try to undermine yours on purpose and that that's something that we ought to try to abstain from um because that that's that's pure negative power right um i think what we are missing a bit on the you know europeans and certainly americans this is our positive project right i think far often the americans say well we're not china we're against china so you have to be with us and but i can say yeah but china has a lot to offer a belt and road initiative investment so there's an offer on the table you're against china okay but what's your offer for us what's your positive project um but it and but it's very easy to fall into this you know cold war rhetoric of us against them and then you don't get that cooperation or that comes yeah i don't believe in competition it's simply not happening on the internet and it's a classic example why this new liberal idea of competition in the market you know it's simply not there so we have uh near monopolies uh that uh once you are inside that monopoly you can open your shop and you you can open yours but you do that inside amazon right so um and so this is a not market and the internet has not fostered any any market right uh so in that sense um yeah the competition uh is is in fact completely uh absent and the economies of scale are such that uh it constantly creates let's say new uh monopolies and okay so yeah there is this kind of strange uh uh competition also within us within my generation within the people who build up the internet between this dream of the decentralized distributed nature of the networks and the ugly uh reality of platform capitalism in which uh you know there are only very very few monopoly players which then you know decide inside that platform your fate if your small shop is is going to it's going to make it or not um so this is kind of the the the what i call platform realism so this is kind of uh maybe the real politic if you like um versus um you know the idealists that hang on to this this original idea that you know there might be a a decentralized peer-to-peer uh possibilities in which uh also we can redistribute the wealth uh that um is uh is created right and that position yeah is is in fact uh becoming weaker and weaker and in fact there is at that level there's no concept anymore about counter power right there is this idea is simply not uh existing anymore right so in the in the in the times when the labor and the working class was fighting the you know the uh industrialists the rubber barons and the bourgeoisie there was a very clear idea of organization uh social organization and this idea of course has completely faded away in the 60s and then after 68 and the trauma of 68 especially in the 70s right and this is where my generation comes in that we only see a kind of a fading away of the notion of a of a vital counter power in society right if we are thinking today if i'm honest in europe but also in on the level of the nation states about counter power we primarily think of populist national uh right wing uh you know xenophobic movements and they in europe they are the only let's say real uh counter power uh that we have seen over the last 10 20 years but between the state itself could be that counter power in europe i mean to break well the issue is the state has withdrawn on so many levels right and given all its vital functions to to the market and to reintroduce an ocean of the state yeah maybe you know maybe we could say with ganti the western state you know that it's a good idea yeah but uh you know seeing is believing for many many people uh the the state has uh has withdrawn and is no longer absent and the farmers are really really very clear about this lower the whole corona crisis now you saw that in the end the state was to take control of return that's definitely that's definitely true and we're very uh you know we're only one and a half years into that and yeah it's an interesting question you know if corona will provoke this return of the of the state because you see that classically in times of crisis i mean times of war the state takes control of the economy gradually and if total war is becomes all absorbing then the state mobilizes all the resources and so in a time of crisis too you saw in the end the state the state stepping in but i wonder whether we can make it more permanent you know sometimes it strikes me that we very easily criticize china say oh there are state owned companies and state this and and it's a factor it is bad but i'm thinking well not necessarily and we tend to forget that that you know many you know all european countries organized a planned economy after the war to kickstart their economy i'm not saying i have to go back to nationalizing the coal mines and so on but but somehow we're now at the other extreme and we're so stuck you know i always irritate lots of people and i remember giving a talk for the um america china chamber of commerce and when you say that well maybe the answer is not to beret china for having so many state owned companies or not only but also to organize our own state intervention where it's necessary people can get very very excited but i think it's what we need to do especially then again at the level of europe greater scale and then intervene a lot more actively where that's necessary would be my take but i'm not sure whether yeah you must really inform us because tell us what what is being discussed in the board of directors banks today maybe just before i answer that what i thought was very interesting in the financial crisis is that when it really came down to it when the crisis was especially acute as let's say for instance in italy at some point there was a big issue the the government was replaced by a technical government i don't know if you if you remember that so and and and you know it was called you know and that was the the solution for for national unity as something similar was done in greece now i was always wondering so what does that say about our systems that when really you know it it it comes down to an existential crisis we actually put our political system to the side and we decide that we need to all be unified because otherwise it's not going to work and and so how how do we what what learning do we draw from that so on the one hand of course it is very important that as a human beings we we learned to express ourselves and and we are emancipated and we don't have oppressive systems anymore that that that kind of prevent from from freedom of expression to take place but on the other hand i think we need to seriously question whether freedom of expression comes through opposition that that is the point i'm trying to make also when i when i want to think of a of a system a model of collaboration rather than of opposition if if and i did that experience when when i was in the ministry you know sometimes a policy was defined and then you would discuss with stakeholders and and basically behind the door some would say you know i actually agree with you but outside i can't say that so so i'm thinking how how does that make sense how is that actually an an expression of of someone's position it's not it has become a trap so so in this and this is where i want to point it out because these are the incoherences of the imperfections of the system that has a lot of good things but on the other hand also has developed some aspects that are actually preventing us from from moving on that that is just also maybe in in in questioning the model and this is why i wonder for instance so we actually need a counter power if if and and i thought it was interesting in samuel huntington's book a clash of civilizations how it actually clarifies that we have lived until now and let's say history of defining ourselves by negation so i am not you but who am i you know as you said you know we we we don't want china we don't want this but then who are we actually how do we now go from an a state of mind where we reject what we are not to a state of mind where we first of all welcome who you are but then also define proactively who we are that seems to be quite a challenge in in in the way we also look at power because it is always it has always been used as a tool to protect a tool to reject a tool to impose but how can be a tool to communicate to develop to construct to build to carry so so i'm just trying to put all of this in the context also of experiences that i've made what you now ask is a completely different subjects because when the what i'm seeing now and i actually find it fascinating this is one of the reasons why i decided to become a independent director is now the power of good governance as you would call it so and and you can look at it at a level of a financial institution or or country or or any any other sector i don't think it's it's specific now to to to banks but what does organizational health mean and you know what does this this health in a in a non-physical term actually mean who needs to do what and decide what for the whole to function in an organized structured and healthy way what is the role of a board of directors vis-à-vis operational management vis-à-vis every single person in that institution for the whole to work and and we are of course now with the financial crisis it has become much more present and we are more aware of it what is the role of that entity up there that you know is in charge of policy and strategy and and and and the financial performance of an institution what have they been doing until now and how can they now take on that responsibility they have and actually really steer the boat and and and what kind of a power is that and how do you construct that power in a way that it is also legitimate and it's a reality connected because one of the problems that we often have when we talk about power is that we we also feel that those who have power don't necessarily understand reality they are not in the field then they are not close to the needs of of of of of of of society of a bank etc so i think also there that concept of power is being redefined but in a context of how does the collective work and of course in a bank you have everyone has one objective in any company that would be the case it's it's it's survival it's it's performance it's making sure that entity is doing well and how can all the protagonists in this governance model actually contribute to that and not just some parts and and and others basically just have the power but don't exercise that responsibility in a in a wise way so also in that sphere this concept is being completely redefined but is that because of pressure from outside do you think this good governance is a response let's say to well let's talk about lux leaks let's talk about the Panama papers and the recent Pandora papers i mean there and you know if you open any of them there are numerous you know references to in fact the place where we are now to Luxembourg also to the Netherlands of course the discussions in the Netherlands are you know on the same level the lasting paradise yeah i mean odd narco state narco state which is kind of you know the next chapter of that so not not just taxation heaven but in fact an active involvement in you know in illicit money laundering and is it do you feel that pressure and is it pr related or would you say it goes beyond the image no it definitely goes beyond i mean concretely if you look at how the financial ecosystem has has evolved you have regulators that are now very deeply looking into into the inner life of financial institutions to see how are they doing their business how clean is that business are they complying with with regulation etc so there's a lot at stake then then the question is who's responsible for that and i think as our concept of responsibility and liability has developed over the past years so also have this has this governance model had to to evolve ten years ago sitting on the board of directors of a bank meant something completely different than today you actually today feel very responsible and sometimes people tell me about you crazy to do that because you are you're going to be liable for for everybody's happening in that bank and do you have the tools to to to to be liable to to to know what is happening in a bank so I think our understanding of what it means and to have a governance model that acts responsibly is is evolving because of the context that you mentioned and public opinion wants that but but what's the what's the issue at stake what's the deeper root of that phenomenon and and it goes to a certain expectation of ethical behavior in the world of finance but also vis-a-vis people that are considered to be wealthy and rich you know and then and then we're very close to the concept of social justice you know what do i consider to be just or not just is it fair that you pay your taxes here and someone else pays his taxes elsewhere uh what does transparency mean uh what what what does it mean to to to actually establish and a concept of finance that is ethical you know i i am a lawyer so i i am naturally attracted to laws and regulation but i have to say the amount of regulation that had to be put in place to regulate human behavior i wonder is that really necessary is that the only tool we have to suggest that some things need to be done in a very ethical way is there no other framework that we can think of than the regulatory framework what happened to to you know a common uh set of principles in society you know if if we all had the same concept of um of uh of let's say you know paying our taxes like every citizen would we wouldn't need to have all this regulation and i'm just picking one i'm not even talking about financial crime like like money laundering and and financing of terrorism as and fraud etc i mean those are extreme things but this here this this tax from transparency concept is something that affects every single person it is a much broader issue this is where where everyone has an opinion about we're not talking about just a few criminals criminals that are going around and that are a select group of people i think it leads you back you already mentioned here to talk about the labor movement and if it leads you back to the very beginning of the labor movement in the 19th century is where what they asked was regulation laws because it's the laws that create the freedom and i fear it's it's not realistic to think that that the common sense of purpose or values will be sufficient because you always have people who will be then driven by selfish selfish motivations you know so where you have um yeah where you have laws then um then it actually creates power for those who operate within the regulated system i would say um so you have to know what society you want when i teach about strategy i always say rule number one of writing strategies know yourself you know who do i want to be which kind of society do i do i want to be because if you don't know that you also don't know what you're defending actually you know or what you are what you are promoting what you're trying to export so you have to know that yourself and then i would say what what distinguishes let the way of life that we've built within the EU broadly speaking and for me the key notion is equality of course not total equality so it doesn't mean everybody has to have the exact same level of prosperity but but equality in terms of everybody who participates in political decision making everybody has equal opportunity to be educated um everybody is equally protected by the state um but and everybody gets a fair enough share of prosperity so that he and she can really take part in society in in in the way they want i think for me that notion of equality ought to be the the principle that that binds us and that maybe provides an ethical the ethical dimension that you refer to that inspires regulation but it seems to me that we've become afraid of saying that that or that we push it aside a little bit i say if equality is a luxury product it's nice to have fun things are going well but when you're in crisis and you sacrifice it i would say no it's the the other way around the point is equality and the worst things go the more you must maintain it right and um we already talked about the the european project that is sort of an a peace project you know keep war out of europe but for me that was always only ever half of it because it's the same uh founding fathers of the union who also built the welfare state after the second world war and for me the two went hand in hand you make sure there is no war among the states and to keep the state stable internally we had the welfare state i think those two peace and equality i would say that's the core of who we are as as europeans and again you need power to implement it and to enforce it and to safeguard it from any external threats and don't be too shy about it i would say i i would almost have to say don't be too american uh about it yeah i would like to bring in a term we haven't really um uh talked about yet and that's the term that is associated with power from the very beginning namely sovereignty and of course there is sovereignty on on many different levels right i'm not so interested in the let's say the classic definition of the of the king and queen and monarchy or you know this kind of um very traditional uh political definition of sovereignty i think today there are different manifestations uh and i would say and many have pointed that that especially in the covid crisis right there was a lack of european sovereignty right it couldn't produce its own things it had outsourced all its production elsewhere in the world and many many people were kind of longing for for a redefinition of fields in which you know we were in charge and we were able to let's say uh you know produce the vital goods and services that were required and of course yeah especially in my fields we know uh you know there's not just um in china that's now the the global factory there's also something like uh you know outsourcing especially also very strong in in the financial sector of a lot of work that is being done in fact elsewhere outside of of the u and it is the is this kind of lack of sovereignty that very often leads to a feeling of insecurity of precarity of um feeling of um you know financial insecurity and uh my question really is doesn't make sense to reintroduce this idea of a sphere of sovereignty for instance you know in your uh field of finance or in your field um the of the let's say the military uh and foreign policy levels because on the technical uh technological and internet level the answer is straight out yes we need data sovereignty in europe we need uh uh tech sovereignty also on the level of data centers hardware you know it let's start this enormous debate um on the EU about strategic autonomy um because sovereignty i would say has two dimensions you have the capacity to take your own decisions then the capacity to implement implement on yourself also and in many areas we're lacking that right and so you need to pool your sovereignty in a way at the european level in many areas to to regain it um the military field this is the example par excellence if i look at my country belgium okay we can in all freedom uh decide not to do something in the military field but if you want to actually do something then you realize belgium alone there's only one military operation that we can do strictly by ourselves that's the annual national day parade we don't need anybody we just need people to come and watch it that's it so your sovereignness and you take your own decisions but you're not sovereign in the sense that you have no strategic autonomy you cannot implement the answer is to pool it but then strangely you hit um nationalism again um and i think sometimes the EU has made a mistake by presenting itself as a post national project and we said you know to be uh to feel polish or to feel french that's old fashioned you should forget about it um but but it's strong it's there you can't wish it away it's a strong emotion perhaps not in belgium and all the belgians are the least um patriotic because but because we're all unpatriotic together that still makes us patriotic somehow um anyway that's another it's another discussion maybe we should have said you know as EU by all means uh be not a don't be a nationalist because nationalist is more negative for it's me against some of this would be a patriot it's me for a project so be a polish patriot be a french patriot but it's no longer enough so in addition be a european patriot and and do at that level create a sovereignty at the level where you can exercise it right and the EU has the principle subsidarity the lowest possible level fine we don't need to bring everything together in in in in brussels um but think about it you know that uh you may be a polish patriot or a french patriot and so you may think you need to gain power back from the EU but you know gaining stuff back from the EU probably means opening the road for china maybe not the best way so so maybe european sovereignty is indeed what what we need in many areas so i would entirely agree this also leads to the question you know if we need to uh reindustrialize your way maybe i'm i'm looking at you away from the financial services or you know maybe finance with a purpose or you know where and then that debate of course is uh is strong when we're bringing in climate change and and all the you know catastrophes ahead uh where people ask the question you know can finance you know play a positive role uh there in in in this very very urgent um transition that we that we need to somehow organize and can this go hand in hand for instance with a reindustrialization of europe or or is this a project that we simply have to have to forget about and and accept that for instance china is the is the is the global factory and you know that we will not have anything to say anymore about that specific part of of our lives of society it's an interesting question i uh i just just to come back to the word that you used earlier sovereignty and and trying to understand it in maybe in a new way in this context it is very close to what i called earlier just taking responsibility again um and and it's not it's not an exclusive thing it's not because i'm sovereign that you can't be sovereign so i think it's also interesting to to think again of of how sovereignty is because i think that the the the sovereign nation state is is the most efficient uh a system that we have developed but you know how can we still perfect it and how can we create a model of sovereignty again that um that that that take responsibility because i think what what is what is sometimes misunderstood is and you you talked about layers is that you know things are not necessarily dichotomies they can coexist you know i can be sovereign you can be sovereign and there cannot be another layer of sovereignty above as well you know we can be part of the european union and the un and be sovereign states you know that that collaborative system does not exclude that one has the possibility to to decide and and do things it just creates a framework for that that's that's what it's fundamentally does so i i i think to to put it back into a context of of giving power back somehow where we think that we don't have power anymore and i think it's wrong to think that i think in fact you know sometimes it's also maybe just an excuse not to take responsibility you know to blame it on on someone else doing something you know i mean there are many different reasons why why both states and and and people do or don't don't do things so i i i very much like this idea of of connecting this this concept in a in a new way to power and to responsibility as as as one coherent framework you mentioned the role of finance in this context i mean you you know that in the year we talk about green finance now quite a lot and the european commission has put forward actually a great deal of regulation very dense very detailed and and that this will be a huge workload for the financial sector to implement so so there is that that awareness that also policies need to be coherent you know and this has been for instance one of the challenges at the european level you know you have your policy for this and a policy for that and and another policy so you have now policies that are starting to converge you know when you talk about the environment we cannot not talk about finance because it's one of the tools so and and i think that is a positive thing again it doesn't take away from the validity autonomy of a policy it just creates it in a in a larger context on a very very different subject i've been following a little bit how the policy on migration is also evolving and interestingly enough there has been an effort now to link it to a policy on agriculture it and it wasn't done until now so also creating this coherence between policies makes the policies much more powerful because if we start seeing how they impact each other we can create a coherence that makes them all much more effective so i see also in that approach actually something very powerful and i think that we need to pursue it a lot more because we do create incoherence incoherences in in in the way we approach certain subjects and we're realizing that this is impossible to do and the fact that we have now really also coined this concept of of green finance with all the detail that's in it is a very interesting step in absolutely the right direction can you maybe split it up a little bit because green finance to me sounds a bit like well the banking sector itself needs to become more energy efficient and and it's more about products yeah so what what products to invest in yeah no it's also that of course also you know financial institutions need to look at their own use and and and and investments but then it's it's it's also about the product offer that you develop and that you offer and then what what are you going to focus on and of course also investment in the environment has very many different degrees you know you know and what do you look like a company can invest in different areas what percentage do i need to consider you know i mean with all the discussions that we have also about energy you know i mean there is a transition that you want to also respect that come that that an industry is also trying to adapt to to new sources of energy so how do does the world of finance accompany that transition by focusing on the products that actually promote a certain type of energy it's it's not an easy it's not an easy solution a decision and it and i'm very uh and it's the beginning of it so this is happening right now uh where banks are are are reconsidering their product offer reconsidering their own approach and deciding their level of ambition we also talk about esg which has the e for environment the s for social the g for governance it's part of that thinking of how some elements of our policies are interconnected that we cannot uh and tonight an interesting discussion with the bank in fact uh in russia that said that if we now pull out of this type of energy we will create a social crisis so so that that cannot be good especially not in the short term it might be necessary to consider that but then how can we create transitions where we allow for her whole industry to adapt uh it's it's uh it's um it's approach this is why i i point out this question of coherence because you can create undesired side effects that are actually not really side effects that can have a huge well remember you know this is one of the dogmas of silicon valley right and this has been uh very very big in fact hegemonic and all business literature had to preach the disruption and disruption has been you know the the keyboard of the last 10 15 years so why not disrupt the energy sector you know tell me yeah i mean sorry but this is uh this has been uh you know what has been driving let's say venture capital led investments for for a really long time the idea was consciously to uh to let's say accelerate the you know the disruption of entire societies and social structures that's a good question your russia example is interesting because it goes to show that that one is sometimes afraid of having two powerful neighbors but we're also worried about neighbors that lose so much power that they implode which creates problems of its own right and again it leads you back to someone has to be in charge somewhere ideally the state in order to keep things stable and maybe somewhat predictable and sometimes maybe we wonder whether we're not all powerless in the face of the big global challenges we talked just talked about migration which would be an enormous challenge especially for europe i think um demographics economic development in africa depopulation and climate of course but to me at the same time reinforces me in my idea that still therefore states remain important and great power politics remains vital because it will be very difficult to effectively tackle any of those if you don't have the big players with you you know you're not going to tackle climate change if china says well we don't care um no luckily they begin to carry if only for the best increases on the ccp on sustained power but so maybe this is a story i tell myself and while everybody is working on new topics like climate i work on old-fashioned topics like geopolitics and great powers maybe one topic that we really haven't tackled um is the most absolute use of power is is to make war and to kill some of it and it's a very sensitive one of course and is this an instrument that we europeans that we still need and that that we occasionally need to deploy outside our borders you know and if so under which circumstances um it's a very tricky debate you know my line is always we need as europeans a credible power projection capacity the capacity to project force into our periphery um but to use it as little as we can but if you don't have it which is the case today then other players will not take us into account because they will say well whatever we do the europeans they they will they will not interfere so occasionally they cross our red lines and we are obliged to intervene but we're not well prepared for it whereas i think if you would have a more credible capacity but also a credible will to use it um some of the actors around us would maybe take us more into account um but what are the red lines very tricky question our discourse is always the same if we do occasionally use military force outside our borders somehow we always feel obliged it's because it's because we're bringing democracy and human rights but a that's not true usually we that's usually that's a side effect of an intervention but but it's rarely the only reason why we deploy somewhere we go somewhere because our interests are threatened to the risk is that if you declare every war to be a war for democracy and human rights that every war becomes a war without ends without end because you know when will a place like Mali for example ever be democratic enough to pull out you know or you end up in situation in kanistan you pull out after 20 years and you go exactly back to the status quo until exactly to where we uh we were so it's a tricky debate for europe because as we already mentioned a few times now the EU per se is a peace project that's about peace among ourselves but there is no peace everywhere around us so do we still need the capacity to make war when it is forced upon us so to say yeah from my perspective of course there is the cyber war cyber warfare you know which is now an integral part of the internet business and yes there are you know the very harmful let's say militarized drones but you know there's also another type of economic warfare with ransomware it's a whole spectrum in fact which is happening and which is kind of replacing the old cold war techniques so um the cold war was usually done with espionage and with of course a great deal of propaganda and occasionally of course also in fact real warfare maybe not in the center of europe but but elsewhere and this is kind of what what what i what i see happening the definitely the war theater you know is is changing but what i would not say that it replaces it i think you just added to it and all the other stuff is also still happening and classically what you see let's compare the people you know first we just fought wars on land then we learn how to sail we have to fight wars on sea then we discovered the we invented the airplane and we had to make war from the air in the beginning always have people get the air to your wrist of the 1920s oh the future war will be fought only from the air no you still fight it on sea and on land as well and i think now it's the same it's another dimension now cyber is there and so we begin to make war in cyber but it's added to all the rest and it makes it of course very expensive for states because for example the belgium forces as obviously an army navy and air force all the minister of defense decided to create this kind of cyber force um and so it may but but the old techniques sadly don't don't disappear and espionage is still certainly brussels is often called the espionage capital of europe because everybody is there and so all the spies are there yeah but the warfare yeah i mean i'm often think about this case i have good friends in taiwan and this is very much on my mind i don't know if you read a little bit about the debates currently happening in the us will we go into war for for taiwan and what what is it worth world war three to defend that particular island and what are the you know what are the the stakes in fact and i think that will be with us for you know the next couple of years when we're talking about military power i think the taiwan test case is going to be quite an interesting one because a lot of people say that the west will not really care about taiwan right and so what what does that mean what what does it mean that we don't really care i'm i'm quite intrigued about that we care but not at any price it's an issue i follow because my husband is from taiwan actually so um and i think few people on taiwan itself expected to us would go to war with china when push comes to shove um but what we could signal i think is that if if china were to let's say change the status quo by force of arms it would totally change our relations with china because i mean my point of view is that china has a great power that's normal given its size given its history would be strange if it were not a great power in itself it's not problematic it depends what they do with that power they use their power more or less within the rules of the game then i think we will come and we'll have to live with china but if they decide to become an aggressive military power then we ought to say well we cannot have any economic relations with you i think the regime in Beijing has to realize it would be enormous gamble uh to to put all of that on the line so then the economic dimension of power comes into that but the question is will be because when russia invaded ukraine and and took away the kramia did we then cancel our economic relations with russia no but because we we applied sanctions against russia but carefully isolated the energy sector because of the mutual dependence so then again you say yeah well the kramia they speak russian anyway it's been russian before and and this is how some people may also react about taiwan they speak taiwan or belarus crisis there i'm wondering can you say something about the presence of chinese banks it's very obvious here in luxembourg they are very present here at the same time the chinese banking sector is also facing massive problems you know with debt not just only in the real state sector but how do you look at this this kind of model of you know debt driven banking what do you make of that it's an interesting concept that driven banking i think that is a global phenomenon this is the way our financial economic system is built and and you absolutely right to say that the the level of debt is is huge but not just in china truly if you if you look at at at at the european market and not just public debt but also private debt it is absolutely huge what what do i say about chinese banks in europe well it's an interesting market chinese banks want to to be in europe and and and not just them other banks as well and luxembourg is is often considered as a as a headquarter a place to to to be able to to do banking in in in europe so as such it is absolutely natural and normal that you would find so many chinese banks but also other banks with banks etc etc in in luxembourg to be able to to to organize and coordinate banking activities within the EU market from from from luxembourg so this is the this is why why they're here and we're quite happy they're here can you join a board of a chinese bank well as a matter of fact i am on the board of a chinese bank i am on the board of a icbc europe s a which is the headquarter structure for the branches in in in the EU and and it's quite interesting to to to work at that level of the of the board of directors to understand the chinese approach to to banking to also understand how their strategies develop um how they do take interest in the domestic markets they do want to be part also of the economic reality of the countries that they're in is not just about chinese business it's also about domestic business and this is a strategy that i have seen is developing very recently so um and is it a let's say a traditional shanghai-based industrial bank or what what type of bank is it well icbc is in fact the largest bank in the world yeah yeah yeah so but it is it is of course like like most most chinese banks the standard bank maybe a final question um um what what power do the three of us think that we each have as an individual what power do we have if any not much apparently no in fact i think this is uh this is the most relevant question because at the end of the day the question i ask myself is what can i do and uh and this is a question i mean i used the word earlier on of empowerment that i like very much and that i find in fact a much more modern concept of power than than maybe what we what we are used to and as an individual i need to ask myself how can i make a contribution every single day to this to the betterment of the world for things to improve and what is my let's say sphere of of influence what can i influence you know and at the end of the day it's a sum of a lot of actions in the world that will make a difference that will make us go into one or the other direction so as a as a human being as a mother as as a friend as as as just simply a woman also in in in a society where we have still no full equality between men and women i mean these are all the dimensions of an identity that one one needs to explore needs to be aware of and then really think so what is my very valuable and unique contribution today uh in this society for us to move a step forward and of course everyone has a different answer to that question but this is today what defines me as a human being to be able to understand how i can be of service to the betterment of the world that for me is the the most powerful state of mind that i can imagine yeah i think to design and promote critical concepts i think that's a very you know very deeply european trade and i think well we're in a contemporary art museum here and yeah if we follow as a repounce idea of artists the antenna of the human race it's really you know my task to work with artists and many others to develop those concepts critical concepts that in my view you know question and dismantle the powers to be and envision you know other worlds so there's always a speculative element in the concept and in my case always also a critical one yeah yeah well myself one would wish you know as a think tanker a think tank in Brussels that you have great power to influence the decision makers but i'm very very pragmatic about it i think occasionally from time to time you have a powerful idea between big brackets that resonates and then sort of begins to circulate of itself but i've never seen it happen that think tanker a comes up with an idea which leads directly to a decision b but i say if you have a good idea it becomes part of the context within which the decision maker decides um so i think the most power that is the word that i have is is by teaching and i like to teach so it's fun but but but this is teaching and sort of hopefully pushing people to think for themselves what i also like a lot is not just teaching my belgian students but to teach international students and for example i think the the last thing we should do is to close academic and cultural exchange because think of a russian or a chinese student who spends a semester or a year um in in in belgium the Netherlands or luxembourg um she will have lived in another system for an entire year and of course we'll not go back as a revolutionary but we'll have a you know a very hopefully a much more nuanced nuance too so i think teaching and and then exchanging um remains very powerful and uh and very important maybe maybe an additional thought to that i think as human beings we have one power that distinguishes us from everything else in this world it's a power to reason and it's really a capacity that that we need to develop far more and especially in a consumer society where we are trained to be passive it is a double challenge to use this power to reason but i like this this statement of einstein i don't actually know if he said it or not but i like it anyways where he said when we solve problems we cannot use the same thinking we use and we created them and i think this is something that we really need to assimilate that when we look at reality today and and and we want to make changes we need to challenge ourselves in our assumptions in our definitions and and have that capacity to rethink a completely different reality and i think we have that capacity and sometimes we don't use it to the fullest and this would be something that i would at least hope for that is a power that we would collectively use far more here here i think we can end on that very positive note thank you sarah and thank you thank you both of you