 Mae'n ymddi, fel ei wneud yn mynd i roi'r gweithio yn y Hws. Mae'n mewn gwirionedd, mae'n meddwl i'r meddwl. Mae'n meddwl i'r meddwl i'r meddwl, am y Brexit ac yn y rhan o'r bydd ydym yn rhan o'r byd. Mae'n meddwl i'r meddwl i'r meddwl i'r meddwl i'r meddwl i'r meddwl i'r meddwl. Mae'r cyfrifio ar y centre fflaesig ym ysgrifennu yn Unig. Mae'r cyfrifio ar gyfer ystyried ymddir iawn yn unig, ddylu wedi'i distantu cydyddion iawn i'r Rhôl Ffraithetaeth. Mae'n meddwl oherwydd yw'r籼wch ystech chi'n meddwlion ffobl. Mae'n meddwl oherwydd yw'r籼wch yr Gweinidag Pwgr James ac mae'n meddwl oherwydd yr Gweinidag Pwgr James ac mae'n peddli i'r Majestyiff Bwlin. Mae'n meddwl oherwydd y chyf muitaeth ystod o'r ddyliadau yn y Gweinidag Pwgr James. A nad yw'n gŵr ynghylch gwn oherwydd yna. Mae'n hely efo'r tych pa i'r Proses. Thank you very much, Catherine. It is a great pleasure to be back here. I was really very happy to be invited. It is always very good to be here, and especially in my new role at the European Council on Foreign Relations, of course, we are trying to bring European voices into Berlin, into Germany. There is a great deal of work that we are also doing and trying to explain Germany to those who are interested in the outside world, in particular in Europe, but I think it's more important and even more challenging at times to bring the diversity of European views to Germany. As a big country, as you know, we are a large group of German speakers, and you have a lot to talk about as a German, and I think in the support of a European reality going beyond a German reality, this is also, I believe, very important. Times are by no means easy. I was about to say earlier on when we had a sort of quick gathering that for Germans, it's been particularly difficult to see two pillars of their foreign policy starting to crumble. That is the European Union with the Brexit vote and a strong sign of disintegration of the Union on the one hand, and the uncertainty about the future trajectory of the United States engagement with regard to Europe in particular. But then I noticed that there are some countries, probably including your own, where this must feel even more difficult development. I thought, Catherine, to really keep it relatively short because we want to have a conversation if this is acceptable. And I want to really focus on a major shift that I see in the German-European debate, which came really to me in the course of the summer where I very often go and travel to various British German conferences. There is this business that you might be aware of, of Königswinter and the British German Forum and the like. I've been really engaging in these over the past years, and of course this year it has been particularly interesting because this was really right after the Brexit vote. It was really striking for me to see that already months before that the German conversation had been a lot less about the European Union itself. As you know, you can always interest Germans for institutional and constitutional debates. There is a big contingency also amongst policy analysts, among lawyers, constitutional lawyers. You can cater to a big audience if you're doing that. But this is really not what the major European debate is about in Germany at this point in time. It hasn't been for quite a few months, if not years. And interestingly, this of course is a stark contrast to the debate in the United Kingdom where the Europe debate and the EU reform debate has been sort of really in a more narrow way been about institutions. And this is really ironically where Germany and the UK are really miles apart at the moment. Of course Germany cares about institutions and the cohesiveness of the Union and no doubt about that. Germany is very strongly pushing back and continues to on any attempt to undermine for freedoms in the single market arrangement etc. But Germany I think is interested in conversations that are not necessarily EU-European conversations but questions of European prosperity and security at large. So the lens of Berlin policy makers there has been a particular, I think, shock or two senses, two shocks in a certain way. The first shock was the one about the Euro that revealed that this currency union is not sustainable and the attempts that you know very well and the difficulties to go through this period of uncertainty of trying to craft a better Eurozone governance, which is unfinished business as everybody knows, but the big promise of prosperity as part of the European Union dream has been challenged and this has come as a shock to those in Germany that have been and continue to want to build the Union and the Eurozone. And the second one, and I think that is probably even more formative because it's more existential, is a different risk assessment now about the European environment, the neighbourhood that we are all living in. And that really started with the Russian annexation of Crimea. We know that Germany has been one of the countries and continues to be with strong ties and business interests in Russia if you look at the engagement of its companies. But the debate over the past year since the annexation of Crimea has been driven by the political argument and not by the business argument. And there has been, in my experience, a real shift and a real sense that Moscow is trying to undermine what, as far as the Germans are concerned, has been a stable security order on the European continent. And it feels very close to home for Germans and for German policymakers in Berlin that suddenly borders are starting to be moved around on the European continent. And this has been a real wake-up call and probably what brought in the German public more into this discussion is the refugee crisis, the refugee management crisis, you might call it, where we can discuss also the role that Germany played itself in this, and it has been a controversial one, as we all know. But the impact it has had at large on the German public is a realisation that the world around us is one that matters at home because people arriving literally on people's doorsteps, fleeing the war, looking for a brighter economic future as well, is something that has been going to every corner of Germany where refugees and migrants have started to arrive. And the idea that we can close off is certainly very tempting, but it's something that, of course, you cannot really promise looking at the geography of Europe. And the German government, the Chancellor in particular, has been trying to navigate that. She's been trying to make the case for Germany still needing to keep open against even a powerful discourse that talks about re-nationalisation in many parts of Europe. That comes up with a framing that is about national interest first, et cetera, et cetera. She knows that Germany is heavily dependent on a European and an international environment that keeps its openness in terms of trade, in terms of its own mindset to the world, and she's been really fighting hard to preserve that. Having said that, and this brings me back to the sort of argument about the second shock, the security shock on Germany, or on Europe at large, and one where Germany is playing an increasing role. The debate about Germany stepping up its commitment in European security and defence had already started even before the annexation of Crimea. If we remember the Munich Security Conference in 2014 with the speeches by President Gaukin, Ministers von der Leyen, and also Minister Steinmeier, who is about to be elected, I believe, as the next German president in February next year, the debate was starting to roll, and then the annexation of Crimea happened, and then the refugee crisis happened, and now we have an unpredictability about the future commitment of Donald Trump's administration when it comes to European security. Within really a very, very short period of time, probably by the time Trump takes office, three years time, embracing of the German political elite of a different security discourse and the changing environment, not to forget of course very important the attacks, the terrorist attacks on European soil, on French soil in Belgium, not yet in other countries, but not unlikely to happen, including in my own, God forbid, but we should not, I think, forget that this has also been very formative for Germany, so in these three years there has really been a tremendous change in the situation, and this is why in my reading of the German political class, mostly in Berlin, which is where I'm based, of course, is looking at this through an instrumental lens rather than through an ideological lens, brings me back to my first point to say that yes, there is a European debate in Germany, it's not an institutional debate, it's one that says with all these threats to European prosperity and security, and with the ambition to still shape an environment that is more conducive to German and European interests and not less, what are our instruments? And of course there is always a very strong reflex in Germany to look at the European Union, this is where a lot of resources are still being invested, and there is at the same time also a very, I'd say, sober assessment of other instruments, ways, means, coalitions that Germany has, in particular with its European partners, to work towards a better outcome of the challenges to prosperity and security, and that includes NATO, there is a serious debate about the role of NATO in Germany's engagement, nowhere near the 2% that in many corners of Europe and in the US, any German speaker will always be confronting, maybe less so here, I understand this country is also having a different approach to its foreign and security policy engagement, but there is also a question of what are the four we have, the United Nations, how can we play a role, the G20 in which Germany is about to take the presidency on the 1st of December, the OSCE, outgoing presidency of this year, a real assessment of where is our leverage individually and collectively, and this brings the German political leader Weisbach of course to the European environment, the EU environment in particular. The British question then against the background of discussing security is one that is a big challenge, also from the point of view of Berlin, when we don't know yet where the UK is headed and how much can you build in a spirit of trust and a series of internal and external security while the United Kingdom is negotiating a new settlement with the European Union, being aware that this is particularly pressing also for Ireland as a country, but this is the real debate in Berlin at this point in time, and this is miles away from what we've had throughout the 90s and in the early 2000s when Europe was mostly discussing institutional reform, the big treaties that maybe some were involved even in negotiating, so there is now also an understanding that is worrisome for the political elite in Germany that at this point in time when the challenges are probably stronger than ever in the history of the European Union, the European Union looks weaker than ever, and that has to do with the centrifugal forces that many analysts have been describing and politicians have been discussing that Germany probably has also partly contributed to, to be discussed if you wish, but where Germany has a strong sense of ownership to work against the centrifugal forces in the Union and to keep the Union together as a community of committed countries that are willing to sit around the table, debates not being easy and not leave the table until there is a joint consensus, and there is a question mark to what extent at the moment that can be achieved amongst the EU 27 even. There is still a thinking in terms of EU 28 in Berlin, but it's getting less as well as we can see. There is also a realisation, the foreign minister talks about that more than Angela Merkel herself, that old debates about flexible integration, the flexible Union might be important ones to have now because the centrifugal forces are so strong that all the negative aspects that we know flexible integration can entail might still be outweighed by a positive outcome if a core group of member states started to really rebuild the trust amongst the citizens that the Union or countries of the Union working together can actually achieve something and work together in a spirit of trust, in a spirit of joint ownership. For me it's quite interesting as you can see, I mean my lifetime has not been endless in discussing these things, but over the past 15 years that I looked at these questions, again this is a completely different environment where we have to discuss the trust amongst European governments, whether they can really achieve things together and they can trust each other and they can give each other the benefit of the doubt. Now just briefly, and this would be my last point on coalitions, that Germany has been starting to explore a little bit more, of course the old argument about the Franco-German alliance that we've had for quite some time now that even France and Germany can't pull the Union along has gotten ever more difficult with a president in France with relatively limited room for maneuver at this stage and Berlin trying to support I think in my reading France succeeding in overcoming some of the questions about its own prowess and strength I think the Franco-German cooperation in foreign and security policy has been a very strong case in point. The Normandy format and the role France and Germany played in dealing with the situation in Ukraine but also the more recent defence joint announcements between the two ministries of defence. So there is a serious commitment of course to continue working with France but there needs to be more to gain traction within a very diverse union where we've seen coalitions emerge that have started to position themselves in opposition to Germany as well in particular on the refugee crisis. There's a lot of talk in continental Europe and at least in my part of Europe about the Wiesegrad IV and to what extent this is a coherent group or not. I think Germany does not have a problem per se in seeing coalitions being built that don't even include Germany but I think Germany is concerned about the German government about coalitions that want to shape common ground rather than block and sort of not take the union forward to some goal of ever closer union but to take European countries together to a place of policies that can be owned jointly and that improve in terms of deliverables the life of citizens of our countries. So and that for Germany has been particularly difficult to see that Poland relations with Warsaw that have been very strong, even sometimes underestimated by other parts I think by other capitals in Europe have gotten of course more difficult, more challenging over the past year with the peace government and also not really if you look at the table that Angela Merkel convened in Berlin last week not really necessarily very predictable allies in Italy where Matteo Renzi is facing a very difficult referendum I'm being told by our colleagues in Rome that things are not looking particularly good for him in this Francois Hollande will no longer be president and the question what happens in the French elections next May of course is looming. Theresa May who was also around this table is no longer part of this club where I think the assumption is that there is an ownership for the wider European Union and then where is Germany left and here I think there is a real shortcoming a real shortcoming of the German Europa Politik of the past years and this argument has been made a lot but I think it remains very valid. There is a lot of underexplored potential in my reading with a whole number of countries in the European Union that are not part of this big business of big countries sitting around the tables but these are countries who share preferences with Germany countries that will also have a common outlook on governance and countries that are like-minded probably the Nordic countries, the Netherlands, Austria to some extent many of these countries have difficult domestic conversations when it comes to the European Union which I believe is less the case here in Ireland but I think still and we know that because we made the effort to talk to a lot of people representing these countries there is a great deal of interest in Germany in trying to understand its policy machinery, its decision making the moves and shakers, the preferences really trying to interest Berlin for their own interests and I think this has been in many ways not exploited enough I think there is a lot of underexplored potential for coalitions that are not necessarily the co-group that Wolfgang Scheuble and Karl Lamers probably had on their mind in the mid 90s and those that were engaging in the constitutional debate on flexible integration in the early 2000s including Joschka Fischer and others where they talked about countries taking the lead we're not so much interested and this is a policy brief that I drafted with a colleague of mine Josef Yannig who has also been here in the past and we worked jointly with Catherine and others on this question of coalition building so we tried to bring this, take this argument further by saying that there is still room to build a new political centre in the European Union that is not a static centre that is probably needing more often continued engagement in the process of coalition building of countries who are willing in sexual policies to really create common ground, sit around the table develop traction for other countries in the European Union and to move forward a joint agenda and this is not static like I say the static understanding but it's a place of constructed consensus which is difficult of course to achieve it needs a diligent investment it needs mutual understanding sometimes I feel over the past years the German government perhaps did not have much time because it was doing a lot of jobs but perhaps has also underestimated that German power does something to others even though they might be interested in cooperating with Berlin so we believe there is a lot more that can be done in Berlin and building those alliances going beyond the usual suspects as well and I believe countries in terms of like-mindedness that still also have a very strong support for union membership that share ownership for the union at large in particular in this very difficult environment and I would count and I'd be interested to hear Ireland as part of this list of countries there is an interest in Berlin to really build on that and I also believe that Germany in many ways has had the experience of being quite a lonely leader and made mistakes over the past years as well would be quite conducive to an environment where others were to say we are also taking ownership again more for this we want to engage we want to invest political capital we want to invest the resources because I fundamentally believe this is the way to keep Germany also interested in the European Union and this will be the very last point I believe we should not take for granted the commitment of the political elites in Germany to building the European Union or European consensus forever and I'm not saying this when I'm looking at the current situation I feel there is a great sense of ownership and a great European-ness but my sense is and I'd like to even conduct my own polling about this or surveys amongst the wider public that Germans are increasingly asking what's in there for us we are doing so much in our perception Greece for the refugees now even in European security and defence which is very difficult for Germans and will have really controversial debates I'm sure about that we are doing so much and the others are not really there how long is this to last again it's not happening at the moment but I see already tendencies of that partly of course driven by parties or one party in particular the alternative for Deutschland but also by some wider perception in the country but the case for Europe that Angela Merkel at the moment is really bravely and very clearly fighting and others are as well is no longer to be made very easily and if that was a lost battle at some stage then I think European Union politics would be in a completely different environment