 Okay, well, welcome back everyone. I hope you had a nice break. Personally, I did my five minutes of yoga since I've essentially stuck on the stool to 9pm this evening. That was seemed like the best thing for it, but I hope you enjoyed your drink or however else you spent the time. We've got a really exciting session coming up now with four trade specialists joining us to debate essentially the issues that we set out in the earlier session. In case you're just joining us, I'm Natalie Bennett, Green Party member of the House of Lords, and I'm chairing this for the greenhouse think tank and the Green European Foundation, trying to be as minimalist as I can. So what we're going to now is a debate around the question starting from the UK, but of course from many different perspectives. We've got trade and climate negotiations that are happening in parallel, beside each other and pulling in very different directions. But we've only got one world. They both set the policies have to operate within it. How can these agendas be reconciled? And we've got four great speakers to address that question. We've got Saskia Brickmont, who's a Belgian Green politician at an MEP since 2019. It's on a number of committees, including the Committee on International Trade. We have Jean Blalock, who's the Campaigns and Policy Manager for the Campaign Organization Justice Now. Anna Kavaziani is a German politician from the Alliance 90, the Greens since 2019, also on the Committee on International Trade. And Ellie Chownes, who's joining me on a Zoom call for the second time in a week. This was our MEP for the West Midlands when we had them, as we now sadly don't. And he's a councillor on Herefordshire County Council and the International Spokesperson for the Green Party of England and Wales. So I'm going to call on our speakers in that order to answer that question of trade and climate negotiations pulling in different directions. But to make sure everyone's staying awake out there, just a reminder that after these speakers have spoken, we'll go again into small breakout groups and have a discussion before we come back to the speakers for a Q&A. So starting with you, Saskia, if we may, how do we reconcile the trade and the climate agendas? Hello, everybody. Thank you, first of all, for this invitation and for allowing us to speak today with you. And for the very insightful presentation and this also excellent study that would be very interesting to reproduce in the other countries. So this is a big question and with Anna Cavadini, we will present you issues that are no on the table of the European Parliament and that are being negotiated now and where we can influence because as you pointed, the Green Deal is presenting very strong objective as zero carbon society by 2050. Although what we see is that to main European policies where we could act where we could influence, which are the cap. So the common agricultural policy, which also emits a lot of emissions and the trades policy needs to be reformed in order to really become compliant with the agreements and the Green European, the Green Deal at the European level. So I will focus my intervention on the TPR, the trade policy review. It's no open and it's after the trade for all strategy from 2015. This trade policy review is no open to consultation. It has been launched in June and the purpose is to review the EU trade policy, its achievements, its functionings and its goals. So the European Commission has submitted 13 questions and every NGO citizen, the national parliament also can answer and contribute to this reflection until mid-November. So I invite you all to contribute and of course a specific contribution on climate would also be helpful I think. So what is at stake is of course to bring trade policy within the framework of the European Green Deal. That's one of the main goals we want to achieve also. And this is something that we wouldn't have achieved with Commissioner Oghen, the previous commissioner, but we're not putting our hope. Even if it won't be a revolution, but still it has another approach. We think it has another approach as the new commissioner designates Don Brovskis and we will be holding the hearing soon, beginning of October. And of course we will ask him questions about his view on the future of trade policy at the European level and how he thinks he can make it compliant with the Green Deal. So what we have to know is that today there are about 250 multilateral environmental agreements that are into force dealing with various environmental issues and around 20 of them contain provisions to control trade to prevent environmental damage. But the enforcement mechanisms are absent today in most of them, which is something we need to improve of course and what also needs to be known is that their consistency and compatibility with the WTO roles have never been challenged. So this is important to know because it's often we hear that new mechanisms, new regulations need to be compliant with WTO rules and that's of course also a debate will have when it comes to the debate on the carbon adjustment mechanism at the borders. And this would be also an interesting topic for a new session because it's debated now at the parliament level. So free trade agreements and investment agreements should explicitly reckon that multilateral environmental agreements will prevail over trade provisions. This is something we're working on of course and in case of a dispute. We should discourage parties to initiate WTO disputes to challenge other parties adoption or implementation of FTAs consistent climate response measures. We can do that through our trade agreements. It's today not sufficient to solve the problems only by focusing on environmental provisions and commitments because we know that trade liberal liberalization growth in exports of particular products is correlated with the development of unsustainable production techniques. However, environmental degradation is in general highly linked to other issues like poor institutions poorly defined property rights or inadequate regulatory and fiscal policies. We also need and this is another challenge to make the Paris Agreement an essential in essential close of the free trade agreements. So it's possible to mainstream climate and biodiversity and also human rights goals in trade policy. I take an example and I think Anna will come back on this issue specifically of the EU Mercosur agreement. The deal as it is drafted won't prevent further deforestation while studies and a recent study on the impact of trade on biodiversity really shows it. Studies show that deforestation significantly increases over the three years following the enactment of a regional trade agreement, which coincides with an increase in agricultural and land conversion of course, because of the new deal. We also need to improve and to work on a real grievance and remediation mechanism. And this is interesting to note that the new chief trade enforcement officer which has a transversal role to also include the sustainable development chapters issues in in trade. So he announced forthcoming initiative yesterday in in time to really adopt grievance and remediation mechanism. It's important also for compelling partner countries to to act. A reform of the WTO is also needed. It should offer an opportunity to push forward the possibility to distinguish products according to their process and production methods. It has been said, we need also to work with developing countries and they should be compensated in case of adverse impacts of such measures and take into account the common but differentiated responsibility principle. This is also something really important for us. It's also something we mentioned in the EU Africa strategy where Inter also inter international trade also plays a role. And what we should really also keep in mind is that when we as Europeans implement the European Green Deal. It has consequences it has consequences for the partner countries for instance a higher protection of habitats in the EU can also result in important devastation water and air pollution in other countries and more generally natural resources depletion. So we need to bear that in mind in order to really work in partnership because of course we need to work on resilience and relocating strategic productions and it has been said before in the previous panel. But we really have to think globally and act together with the partner countries in order also to allow their to develop their own resilience and not to impact further the situation in the partner countries and specifically the development developing countries. So I will end it here for the trade policy review I think it's a real great opportunity to rediscuss the future of European trade and international trade. Since the outbreak of the crisis and the Covid crisis we feel and Anna can contradict me but I think in the European Parliament there's more sensitivity to issues such as resilience and the need to work on the supply chains and to go forward on the climate issue in order to revise the way we lead trade policies although of course colleagues and right wing colleagues of course are still in a kind of a conservative approach and this is something we really face really hard in the international trade committee which is much more conservative and business as usual minded than the environment committee which just adopted which just voted on the new climate law and adopted a more ambitious goal diminishing by 60% the emissions by 2030 which is ambitious so we'll see where it leads and of course for more coherence trade policy needs to be aligned on this climate goals. Thank you very much Saskia and you know it's good to have some positivity in there. I suspect more positivity than we're going to hear when we get to the UK, although I will also note that the David Newman was commenting in the chat box that you chaos theory at work that it was the rules the Covid rules being broken at a golf day in Northern Ireland a golf day in Ireland that led to lots of things changing about the approach to EU trade policy. But now we're going to move on to Jean Blalock who's the campaign and policy manager for global justice now, who I assume is going to reflect on what's happening in the UK Parliament and you we might be overwhelmingly optimistic about the EU but I'm afraid certainly from my perspective, it looks worse in the UK but you know Jean, hopefully whatever good news you can give us as well as the bad that'd be great. Over to you Jean. Thanks very much. So yeah just to I work on the trade campaign at Global Justice now for anybody who doesn't know us where a democratic social justice organization which campaigns as part of the global movement to challenge the powerful and create a more just and equal world and for us trade campaigning is a key part of that and the question posed around that we have trade and climate negotiations in a single world pulling in different directions is a key example of why trade campaigning is one of the things that we work on because yes this is this is this is a major issue in the in the UK. We the UK government is attempting to do several high risk trade deals in a hurry. In the context of Brexit of which the most scary and frightening is the US UK deal. We know for instance leaks from the negotiations about that that in about the second meeting that they ever had the UK tentatively raised the issue shall we talk about climate and the US said no. Absolutely not. Never. If you want to talk about climate the entire deal is off and in all of the meetings that those leaks showed the responses from thereafter. There was no further discussion about climate. And I mean the question the two to two sets of negotiations. The problem is that trade negotiations and trade agreements trade deals are powerful other than a military or security issue on the international stage. A trade agreement will override everything else including climate negotiations. We have given trade agreements teeth we have given them meaningful sanctions and we have allowed them to dictate to everything else and that's a problem. Because trade deals therefore can block climate action. They you know in a couple of ways in general we know that at the minute we've had a lost decade where we've had more than one lost decade but the you know of inaction over the climate and we really need a step change to actually change it step up a gear in what's actually being done and for that we need binding regulation. It's the only way that we are going to force major corporations and changes in policy around the world is to have real binding regulations that will make people change direction but trade deals are written to prefer and to privilege voluntary self regulation. They will have clauses written into them they're called necessity clauses that say that regulations and rules and laws should be the least burdensome necessary to achieve an object and it is therefore always possible for corporations so will the least burdensome necessary is voluntary self regulation and that's a strong driver against any climate action that we know that we need to take. Trade deals also have provisions in them the notorious corporate courts ISDS investor state dispute settlement which allows corporations to sue governments outside of the national legal system for amounts far higher than they might be able to get for anything that they might challenge within domestic law. In courts that only have to look at investors rights and we've already seen these being used to challenge climate decisions so we seen in the Netherlands at the moment where the Netherlands is facing out cold power and is being threatened with a corporate court case from a company Unipa which owns cold powered fire stations. And we see this is being used in a way to sort of create a chilling effect for other governments who might consider the same or at least ensure a massive payout for corporations so that if they're going to lose out they want to get they want to get more compensation than they would otherwise be entitled to which is something that we can see happening in Germany at the minute the same sort of thing is happening in Canada as well with ISDS trade deals can also make the climate crisis worse. So they encourage trade in fossil fuels and fossil fuel intensive sectors at a time when we should be keeping fossil fuel in the ground, and they can undermine a just transition. So steps that we need to take some of the enablers that are talked about in the report. We need to have targeted subsidies to build a sustainable economy they need to make sure that things are focused on building decent jobs so that people do not lease out globally the need for technology transfer between the north and the south. All of these things could be ruled out by trade deals. So what do we need to do well to record you can't really reconcile these two things what we need to do is take away the power of trade deals. We need to stop them being able to override the rest of international law and the and ensure that instead they support the policy and goals of other areas of policymaking whether it is climate whether it is health whether it is food. All of these things that go towards building up a more just and sustainable world. I mentioned the problem of ensuring that the things that we want to do do not conflict with the trade rules. Trade rules are not given they're not you know they're not just a fact of life they are created from policy decisions. If trade rules are causing a problem for us taking action on the climate. We need to change the trade rules. We need a fundamental change really in what trade deals are for so that they are not about removing barriers from the from trade they're not about enforcing an extreme free market view but they are instead about pushing boundaries and responsibilities on trade to ensure that they can actually support the goals that we need from elsewhere. And as well as that basic change to trade policy in the short term we need to stop the bad high risk trade deal so we need to stop a US trade deal we need to stop the EU Mercers for trade deal. I'll leave it there. That's great thank you very much, Jean and that set that out very clearly and you may hear some of those words repeated back to you from the House of Lords. I'll be borrowing some of your phrases next week. We're going back to the broader European perspective now with our next speaker, Anna Kavazieny, who's perhaps a European but also a German perspective and part of the trade committee so over to you Anna. Yeah thank you Natalie and also thanks Saskia and Jean for for your input and I can very well build on what you have said already. And also of course thanks for the invitation I also read the report with a lot of interest. So because we usually face difficulties in calculating the CO2 impact of trade agreements and not so many researchers are doing that so for me, the report was very very interesting to read. And also some of the conclusions. I mean, we for example as German greens have really difficult to speak them out like we need less trade. There are very hard times to really be super super open about this we have like a lot of things we want to change but the report is also really making a point for like having less trade at the end and I think it's a very valuable thing to to discuss as a kind of end goal. So Saskia and Jean have already outlined the big problem like the scenery and also talked about the huge things we need to change. I want to give two very concrete examples. Saskia and me are working on in the European Parliament and privacy also Ellie who was also a member of our international trade committee in a very very good and smart colleague that we are missing a lot. As Jean has put out the big problem is that trade agreements really have kind of the function as an international constitution. So they have like the above EU right above national law. So the way how international trade agreements are shaped really has a huge influence on our policymaking. And you can see this very well with two examples that I want to address today. One is the aforementioned micro sewer agreement. The EU is already negotiating since 20 years with the micro sewer countries like Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay and a trade deal of the old sort because the mandate is 20 years old. And we think as gruelines that this micro sewer deal is really one of the worst examples and probably the best illustrations why international trade agreements are bad for the climate, because as Saskia mentioned already, you have on the one hand, rising agriculture exports from the micro sewer countries, especially Brazil, that, yeah, will very likely lead to more deforestation because the cattle and the poultry and the ethanol has to be grown somewhere. And on the other side, you don't have sanctions mechanisms or proper enforcement mechanisms for good things like human rights or deforestation of Paris agreements that is also mentioned in the agreement but cannot be enforced. So, we are at the moment, trying to really stop the negotiations or bury this agreement, because as the European Parliament we cannot put forward amendments for us it is like impossible to put forward amendments this is also one reason why often it's so hard to change trade policy or to change the course of trade policy we can only say yes or no at the end. So the green strategy is at the moment to bury it. When we talk about which kind of deal we would like to have, if the greens were like in having the absolute power or whatever. We always try to say that it is important that we have deforestation free supply chains to really make sure that none of the products that is exported needs to hire deforestation rates in the micro sewer countries and that mostly clean goods are basically traded but not the dirty goods. And other bad example of trade policy or of an agreement that is out now in the world is the energy charter treaty. It's when she talked about the very dangerous investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms, so the energy charter treaty is an old treaty from the 90s. Several states are members like the EU countries but also former Soviet Union countries and some other countries so in total I think 58 And this agreement makes it possible for fossil fuel investors to sue states when they change the energy policy so when they kind of phase up coal, when they phase out fossil fuels and then it is possible for them to go to a private international like It's not even a judge or it's not even a court, it's just like a private kind of court system and sue the states for a lot of money so we think this treaty also really hinders the energy transition. And the interesting thing is, we are fighting at the moment to reform it or to end it at EU level and it's not even only a green position, it's also a position of the commission and a majority of the groups in the European Parliament but it's so hard to change. Because any change of the content of the treaty needs anonymity and as I said you have like 58 states, you have also states like Azerbaijan or Kazakhstan or Japan who don't want to change anything. And if you get out of the treaty, you have a 20 year sunset clause, meaning all these like dangerous rules, they still apply for another 20 years. So the energy charter treaty is another example of first how international trade agreements or investment agreements hinder the energy transition. And it is also an example second for how difficult it is, even if you have a consensus, you have a kind of consensus in the European Union on that to change something because they're kind of set in stone. So, with this I also lead to my last point. I think the problem is at the moment that trade policy is likely or trade agreements, international trade rules, the WTO rules are really set in stone and are really hard to change. And even if in the European Parliament we managed to kill an agreement, for example, probably we killed the Microsoft agreement, who knows. We kind of killed the TTAB agreement because, yeah, it was so much activism and campaigning before, okay, then Trump was elected but I still think it was mainly the activism and politicians who killed it. But that doesn't mean that then the structural changes are coming. So you kill an agreement but still you haven't won the big, big, big run. And that's why it is very important what Saskia mentioned the trade policy review that we at the moment put so much pressure on the Commission that they come up with some structural changes. And campaigning and civil society is again super, super important. And of course I think this is my last point, it is important to change a little bit the rulemaking of how international trade is made. And for example, we Greens ask for the European Parliament also voting on the mandate. So the mandate is at the beginning of a trade negotiation. So far it is only the Council and the Commission who decide on what is in the mandate. It's like the negotiation directive. And the Parliament can only say something at the end after like six years, seven years, 20 years of negotiations. So we want that the Parliament is from the beginning included in the decision maker on the negotiation directives. And that also ideally we are able to put forward amendments to the negotiations or to the text because like this only having a yes or no at the end puts a lot of pressure on the parliamentarians to say yes, because it was negotiated so long. And the narrative is always like, yeah, we need more free trade and whatever we need more export opportunities for businesses. So it's, it's very hard to only say yes and no, I think it would be better if we could put forward also amendments. And I leave it here I could talk forever about trade but I hope it was like more or less understandable what my points were. Thank you. Thank you very much, Anna. I think that was very clear. And it's really from a British parliamentary perspective, just hearing, I understand why you want more control and control that starts earlier but the idea that Parliament has any control at all over trade deals. That's what we're fighting for what we'll be fighting for in the trade bill because at the moment effectively. Since we've left the EU the British Parliament has no say in this at all, which is something that I suspect Ellie Chowns might be going to comment on but we haven't had a pre discussion for this. So I'm just going to hand over to Ellie to say what she wants to say on this topic and before I do that just a reminder that we'll be having a short group discussion about this. So at any time they occurred here to post questions in the chat that some people are already doing. So over to you, Ellie. Thank you, Natalie and thank you everyone else and I have to say it's such a pleasure to see Saskia and Anna again after all this time. And thank you both then to Jean for your really interesting and detailed contributions. I'm going to be much more general and broad but and I'm setting a timer for three minutes I'm just going to be really brief, I think. And partly to make up for the fact that I don't have any detailed knowledge on this topic really anymore from the, from how I did the, when I was on the International Trade Committee but I just want to talk about a couple of things. My first response to that question how can you reconcile the climate and the trade negotiations when they're operating completely separately with I don't know, you know, isn't that the kind of core real difficulty operating in separate tracks we need to get them embedded so that trade and climate are kind of really working together and I think people have touched on a couple of things so Regulatory, regulatory, right, so we've talked about how there can be environmental kind of clauses in trade agreement, but they need to be enforceable and they need to be enforced which requires political will and pressure. Perhaps there's more to be done in terms of valuation so that the environment is valued in similar terms in which kind of the benefits of trade are valued economically and so that that can be integrated to that's one dimension. So I'm talking about you know the carbon border adjustment proposals that sort of thing. The second dimension is kind of philosophically right we've had decades of emphasis on globalization in which the globalization that's been talked about has all been in terms of trade, increasing, increasing kind of financial connections around the world and you know look where that's going, it's not been, it's not been a great path, but we have to admit that it has had poverty reduction benefits from a lot of people. The massive reduction in monetary poverty in China, for example, is directly related to their engagement in trade. And so, you know, what we need to do is move away from that type of globalization to one where we're thinking globally in terms of the biosphere, but we're trading locally as much as possible and I think that that is what the report, the greenhouse report that we're discussing today, has set out so clearly in terms of the kind of blockers and enablers, how we can move to that. And that's not in any way similar to the sort of dynamic that we've got in British politics at the moment, which is talking about kind of more local control over trade in a really kind of closed-minded, terribly destructive sort of way. We can see that trend within global discussions as well. It's not just a UK thing, but it's really, really kind of emphasized by Brexit. And that brings me on to my third point really, which is politically, how can we get these agendas aligned. And the truth is, by getting people into positions of political power, who are absolutely committed to integrating trade and climate. Now, we have a particular problem in the UK. We've got an appalling electoral system. We have total under-representation of the sort of progressive views that are represented by Jean and by Anna and Saskia. We've got to change that. And I think that there's an element of kind of hope in what Anna was saying just then about activism, changing things, you know, activism on Mercosur, activism on TTIP, activism even on the Vietnam case, you know, we didn't kind of win that, but activism is important. It does kind of, it keeps the pressure on, it makes some shift happen. That takes me to the end of my three minutes. I'm going to stop there, but I think we have got to not give up and be active in politics and on the streets on these things. Thank you. Well, thank you very much, Ellie, for your very much discipline, self-discipline, and also thank you for setting out a positive vision of doing things ourselves. You know, I have a saying that politics should be what you do not have done to you, which feeds very nicely into our next session, which is discussion in groups of four. You'll be sent off to rooms. You should be familiar with this by now. A chance to toss around with a few other people, share your thoughts, and perhaps come back with some questions. Do type them in the chat box as they occur to you, and we'll come back to our panel to reflect on those questions and what each other sees. Okay, so welcome back, everyone. I hope you had a nice chat there. A reminder to everybody to stick any comments, questions that you have in the chat box, where are we picking things up from. And I'm going to start with the question that David Newman put in about, and perhaps broaden it out a little as well. David asks, with the UK government willing to break international agreements. And here, of course, we're talking about the internal markets bill in the UK, which would overwrite tear up the withdrawal agreement that was only agreed earlier this year. And I'm going to drip this to either Saskia or Anna, whoever'd like to pick this up to start off with. Could this be a precedent for other states overriding trade agreements on non trade policy grounds, which is an interesting positive take potentially David on this. I'd like to throw into this mix, starting with Saskia and Anna. We didn't mention that the UK, and I know the government is very keen on the idea of free trade zones and setting up free trade zones in the UK. At the end of the Brexit transition period. So I guess you what impacts positive and negative do you see current and future UK policies having perhaps Saskia if we could start with you. Thank you. I didn't find a mic. I think Anna is really much more on the UK EU negotiations. And so it would be interesting also to go to her. I have to say I'm, I'm in doubt about what what's going to happen and taking a little bit. D zooming a little bit I just chatted briefly with Gina about the possibilities to still in some way influence each other positively also how can, how can we keep or types or links. UK and EU in order to go hand in hand together and I don't think it will be possible with Johnson. Let's hope that the future politics will will will of course change and that will be able to build on new basis even if if Brexit goes through. We still together need to work hand in hand. And I also believe that we can be a model as greens and and I don't talk only about the political side but also as as Ellie mentioned that we have to be stronger together and geo civil society and economic academic level and political level in order to show that we can work together. I take the example of the insane flows, imports and exports of products of salmon for example from the UK and the EU that is exported and the other side we import almost as many tons of salmon from from other countries, and we have together to rethink those flows those imports and exports in order to relocalize and become more resilient and this is true for the UK this is true for the other countries and I think we have to to to keep working that way even though on a political level for the moment we are in this trouble with with Johnson. Thanks for reminding us that this is only a temporary situation. Perhaps Anna if you'd like to sort of come in on your thoughts on on the UK's impact and what what what difference it's making in the current situation. Thank you so much. First of all, one word on on the question of breaking international trade rules. I mean, it is always somehow possible because as you know there's not an international police or not an international army lucky that will intervene if you break international trade rules. But what you can really see is that trade rules are much stronger enforced than for example, human rights conventions or other environmental rights so I think this is a huge imbalance imbalance there's human rights and trade rules basically an international enforcement. And you can also see that very little states actually break international trade rules because at the end. I think it's also about international reputation. It's about fearing the loss of investors or whatsoever but often really trades as states, for example, do if the what the WTO says if there's a court case at the WTO or something. But of course the person who's at the moment, breaking all international trade rules is Trump and no surprise he's just doing whatever he wants to. And you can see that this also creates a huge chaos and a huge like time download spiral so I guess the option is probably not breaking international trade rules but really trying to change them. This would still be my personal, my personal way forward on the second question. I find it quite interesting that the European Union has such a such a strong stance on this level playing field. Not only the Greens, as you know it is really like the EU Commission, the chief negotiator brand the majority of the parliament, even the conservatives, you know they kind of make this very very strong and level playing field is of course at the tool to prevent social dumping environment dumping and prevent what Johnson was talking about these like export zones or whatever to make great Britain like a assembly hub and work with dumping. So, I think probably like, and I'm sure you're doing that already like greens and also civil society should at this point of time really trying to influence put pressure on the government to accept this level playing field idea because it means high environmental and social standards I guess. So, what is the last sentence on that was really surprising to me is that the US so firm on it because when we started negotiating whatever in February. I was sure that the greens will be probably the last one once in the European Parliament at the end fighting for that, and that the you will just give into Johnson but so far they didn't and I think this is at least a good thing, although of course I'm also worried about that. This chaos continues and then there will be no deal at the end. Thank you very much Anna and yes, I mean worrying about no deal and just offering a personal view I think crash out as I would describe it is now the most likely outcome but perhaps Jean, you're the logical person to come to with that question about asking about civil society what's being done what pressures being put on UK government and how you see really the political landscape. So over to you Jean. Yes, I mean, I think, well, there's a lot of pressure at the moment around both the EU negotiations and the US negotiations because it's, it's not a it's not a coincidence that the government has chosen to run the two negotiations in parallel but at the start of the year very deliberately decided to start formal negotiations with the US at more or less the same moment as it began the formal negotiations for any new deal. And that's because I mean this issue of the level playing field. I mean, there is pressure from so many as somebody in the chat was talking about the CBI for instance, I mean, what one of the unusual things at the moment in the is that you see organizations like the CBI struggling to have any influence whatsoever over the UK government. Because for, for, for many of the people within government who are the leading components of Brexit, it is exactly to change our regulations that they saw the point of Brexit as being so I mean there's a story in the news today about that Dominic Cummings say talking in not about climate issues but around digital issues online issues, and saying well one of the, you know, the great opportunities of Brexit is to tear up the EU's rules on privacy and GDPR. So, I mean, I think it's, it's important to understand that for many people the purpose of these kinds of trade negotiations is to move the UK away from the EU's pattern of regulations towards the US pattern of regulations. And here I mean I, as a trade campaigner I end up talking about chlorine chicken far more than I would ever really want to talk about chlorine chicken you cannot escape it. And, but it's, it's merely iconic it's the issues that come around an issue like that. They're not, it's not the issue is not about one product whether we're going to start importing one product onto a supermarket shelves. It's whether we're going to import the entire US regulatory approach, whether we're going to move away from the precautionary principle of the EU. The whole approach that basically puts the burden on a manufacturer or a seller to prove that something is safe before it goes on the market and that if there is uncertainty to, to take a better safe than sorry approach, as opposed to the US approach where the burden is put on the consumer. Or the regulator to prove that something is dangerous for it to be taken off the market. And that that means it's entirely clear that for many in the UK. Well, okay, so for people like the trade minister Liz trust for Boris Johnson, that's an opportunity for them to move to the US regulatory approach, which includes on environmental regulation and on climate action. And it's clear that one of the reasons that Trump wants a deal with the, with the UK is to undermine the EU. I mean, it's not that the UK is that important to him and himself, but one of the things to do is to peel the UK away from the EU's regulatory system. I mean, there's a lot at stake in these types of trade negotiations. It's not, it's not just about sort of what you might think of as trade. It's really about. Well, in some cases, our entire approach to how we want our society to be governed and regulated. Sorry, that got a bit apocalyptic. Thank you very much. I think perhaps you've illustrated particularly to our European guests. It's something that I think generally across Europe has not perhaps been widely understood, although perhaps is becoming more understood is how much Britain now has a far right Trumpian government. And also just to comment on the chlorinated chicken, one of the things I find whenever I talk about that, because it is a useful shorthand for that whole deregulation US type approach. I get lots of people coming to me saying well I'm vegan or vegetarian so I'm not really worried about the chicken. At which point I point out that there's also scores of pesticides used on fruit and vegetables in the US that are banned in the EU and currently in the UK. So, you know, being vegetarian or vegan doesn't get you out of the chlorinated chicken argument. I'm just going to come to Ellie for some final comments because we're just about out of time. But I think there was a question in the chat box from Liz Levedal talking about how often, I've lost it on the spot, but basically talking about how you as greens as people from our side of politics on the left of politics, we tend to get really involved in engaging things like environmental committees, getting engaged in committees about labour rights, those kind of issues. You were on the trade committee when you were an MEP. I guess it would be interesting to know why you did that, what barriers you found, how that's influenced your thinking going forward. I think this whole report today obviously is greens very much engaging in these issues, but what was the experience and what kind of reception did you get over to you, Ellie? Interesting question. I mean, I chose to be on the trade and international development committees because that's kind of my professional background and that's sort of what I've gone back to now with my work at the university. But I suppose, you know, there's a broader question there about greens getting involved in areas that are traditionally not seen as green. You know, people expect us to do environment committee type stuff and maybe not the kind of the stuff with numbers on it about jobs and international trade and so forth. And I think, of course, we've absolutely got to engage in it. And for me personally as an experience working with amazing people like Saskia and the rest of the team, you know, actually greens have got an awful lot of really important stuff to say on trade, as this report kind of demonstrates as well. And I think that I suppose we bring a kind of, you know, we're very values driven, right? So we bring an approach to discussions of trade that is very much rooted in concern about people concerned about the environment. We don't just think that trade numbers are abstract, we know that they have real, real costs. And I mean, if I could just kind of reflect back on a couple of the questions that David Newman also asked in the chat that were reflected on earlier. You know, that one about whether Boris Johnson's example of breaking international trade law could be a model for others. I mean, absolutely not. Obviously, we've already seen that Boris Johnson's government is very happy to break our own domestic law, as they did with suspending Parliament last year. Now they want to break international trade law. You know, where, where does it end? I really don't know. And I'm totally with Anna on this, you know, breaking stuff is much easier to do than building it up. But that is actually what the European Union, that's one of the things that I really believe, believe in and believed in being part of it. You know, it's doing that careful, patient, close, you know, detailed work of trying to build up better ways, better rules that we can all collectively live by and work by. And then there was another question from David, actually, which was about having decision makers share the costs or pay the costs of the decisions that they make and the environmental damage that that does. And that, you know, that fundamental principle, pollute to pay is so kind of fundamental to what greens are trying to achieve. And absolutely, you know, perhaps there's stuff that could be done to extend kind of magnet steel type laws to cover environmental damage as well. I don't know, perhaps that's an agenda, but fundamentally, I think that as we've seen actually with GDPR, the gene was just talking about, you know, greens actually got a lot to say in areas that maybe traditionally, you know, beyond the sort of environmental areas, like privacy, like digital, but actually it just is just so important to have greens in the room saying those things and making those arguments. I can, I can only absolutely agree. And I want to say thank you very much to all of our panelists. I think that was a really fruitful discussion. If I can just take the chair's property for a minute or so to reflect back on that, I must admit I agree with everyone who said you breaking rules is not the answer. I think Johnson has done lots of rule breaking in the UK and I very much suspect we're about to see with Trump. If he loses the election and attempt to break entirely break the US Constitution, which is going to put us into some very difficult challenging times for the US and possibly for the whole world. And I think what you just said, Ellie, about Jitski style sanctions, of course, that makes me think very much of the push to have a global law and ecocide balancing the, the, the genocide law. And I think that something that we haven't perhaps really focused on all, but we've certainly talked about an around a lot in we've seen lots of questions in the chat is the question of do you ban things or do you tax them really heavily. Those are some of the questions that we really are sort of asking and tackling today and perhaps this report tackles. So I'm going to finish now we're going to finish pretty well on time. So I'm going to hand back to Anna or whoever from Greenhouse is go to sort of do the final wrap up technical things. But I really again want to repeat my thanks as chair to everyone who's spoken today, everyone who's come along and participated and had a chat and posted questions. I think we've done our best. We've had lots of discussion about democracy, and we've done our best to make this within the limits of our technology, a democratic kind of event. And I think that's really made it much richer. So thank you everyone for your time for your participation for your knowledge and contributions and handing back now to Anna, all the organizers. Thank you ever so much, but naturally for doing such a great job chairing. I'd like to thank all the speakers and everybody for contributing and everybody's put questions in the chat and we participated in the discussions in the breakout rooms. I particularly like to thank Peter for doing all the technical stuff as well as doing his presentation and everything. And Sarah Finch, who's perhaps hasn't been prominent in this, but has been very much done a lot of the behind the scenes work in organizing this event. And so please fill in the short feedback survey that you could be getting. And on that survey, there's a couple of boxes that you could take if you want to receive news from Greenhouse and from the Green European Foundation. So hopefully won't overwhelm your inbox. Now as part of this project, there's a few mini reports that are that will be be produced soon. One is about how to frame sustainable resource use and how this intersects with climate climate challenge. And the second about the infrastructure requirement for zero carbon. Can we build our way out of the climate emergency. And the other just to flag finally a few other greenhouse publications that are relevant to this issue. One is another Brexit is possible by Emma Dawney. So that's putting the sort of case for the UK post Brexit becoming more self-reliant if you like, rather than going for the global Britain type aim. And and also Jonathan Essex's report, the UK climate emergency plan that faced up to climate reality. They're both on the Greenhouse websites under publications and reports. So if you scroll down on that page, you can see all our various reports. So I think that's it. So thanks ever so much for taking part. So thank you very much everybody.