 We have a very distinguished guest and speaker this afternoon, as you know, Jürgen Trithin, who will be addressing us shortly. In a remarkable context, he is going to talk about the German Federal elections which we know are coming later in the year. I think there were also some regional elections that the weekend has just gone. You might touch on that. But this is the next big iconic electoral event in Europe this year in the year of You've got many such events and I suppose the British one really is, but I momentarily forgot about that. But obviously the French election at the weekend is a very interesting context for us also on all of the change that's occurring and the political forces that are at work. Mae'n defnyddio'r clywed o'r newid pethau sydd yn eu gwaith, maen nhw'n cael ei fod yn gwleidio'r greu, ac mae'n susbyn yn gwiel arall eich tanfr mewn eu hyfforddiadol. A at yw'r newidiad ar gyfer'r angen o'r effeithio, sydd wedi'i gweithio'r dynysig oeddol yn y fwrdd y gynpledd, mae'n gwybod bod hyn yn meddwl ar hwnnw, ac mae'n ymnyddio ar y DUA, ac mae'n ymwybod â'r enthusiasm yn y parbyneddol. Mae'r ddysgu'r eich bod yn byw i'n gyfnodd, y dyfodol ffordd neu yfodol ar y byd. Dwi'n golygu eich bod yn gyfnodd, Alex White, yng nghyddon o'r gwerthfeyddol yn eu hunain iawn. Felly, mae'n gweithio i chi, ac mae'n gweithio i'n gweithio'n llawer o'r sefydliadau. A'n gweithio i gweithio'r rhai oedd yn gweithio'r frans, ac mae'n gweithio i chi'n gweithio i John Gormley. Mae'n gweithio i'r gwaith, dwi'n gweithio'r gwaith. I'm not going to pick out people, but I think it's just nice to see both, I was going to say colleagues, but they're not colleagues, but they're both former ministers. And Amy, of course, is the leader of the Green Party, so it's very good to have you, but to have everybody here this afternoon to participate in this discussion. In 2015 and 2016 he co-chaired the Commission on the Financing of the Nuclear Phase Out in Germany from 1998 to 2005. He served as Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. Without any further ado, you're going to hand the floor to him. Thank you very much for coming. Thank you very much for inviting me. I think in this room it's easier for all of us to have a discussion, so I will shorten my remarks a little bit. If you look on these three high-stake elections, as Time called it, in the founding member states of the European Union, Netherlands, France and on the 24th of September, Germany, you can have, we are now in a stadium where the uproar of nationalism inside the European Union, I think the increase has delayed, but still has not stopped. If you look on the Netherlands situation, for example, it was the strongest outcome that the Wilders Party ever get on the national elections. And if you have in mind that even an association agreement with Ukraine was stopped by a platysid, you can see how dangerous, despite the fact that with a quadrupling of the green result in the Netherlands, the situation is. And if you look on the French situation, the first thing is it reminded me a little bit to Austria. In Austria, even the conservatives and the socialists didn't play any role. It was a green guy, Alexander van der Belgen, who had to stop the populists and to save the Austrian democracy. And a little similar situation you found in France, not the traditional left-right split, but a split between those who uphold of the system and those who define themselves as anti-system. And I do not agree with any policy of Macron, but I'm happy. And I underlined it was a historic mistake of Mélenchon in this situation where the pen is in front of the Elysée not to support a Democrat. Maybe he's a neoliberal, but he's a Democrat. And that is what should unite us. And I think that was what left parties should have learned from the 20s and 30s years of the last century. But if you look on the outcome of the presidential election and compare this to a similar situation, you have to look on 2002. In 2002, the elderly pen reached the end game of the presidential elections. And communists, socialists, conservatives, liberals united behind a guy named Jacques Chirac. Most of them didn't like them. But they stood together to defend the republic. And in that case, they get 80% and Father Le Pen didn't get 20%. We had not one-fifth to four-fifth. Now, we are in a situation that in France we have two-third to one-third. And that's our problem. And that's the problem we have to deal with in the next years. Nationalism is not a privilege to populists. If you look, for example, inside Europe, you must not look across the Atlantic. Trumpism is not only in the US. If you look to Hungary, within the European Union, you see a Victor Orban pressing companies out of business because he wants to build up a more or less oligarch system, closing universities. Or if you look on the tendencies within Poland and on a more not authoritarian way but nationalistic way, who was the first one who flirted with Brexit? This was not Nigel Farage. At the end, Nigel Farage and John's were the winner of that, but the beginning of that idea was created by David Cameron. And if you look on other conservatives, even on the side of Germany, we had another example for an exit. It was Germany he tried with Chancellor Merkel, with Wolfgang Scheupler to push Greece out of the euro. The Brexit was one of the paths that led at the end to Brexit. So I think if we don't want that, for example in France, because Macron don't have a party and don't have parliament majority in seven years, we will have a 50-50 and no longer a two-third, one-third situation, a situation as an Austria, for example. We have to change something in Europe. And the good news is that it's not only populism that's growing. We have a lot of people who stand up against them. On Earth Day this year, in my constituency, was part of a demonstration march for science. It was organised by the university against fake news, and this idea is coming from there. We have every Sunday in the German citizen at two o'clock the Pulse of Europe assemblies with a lot of young people. So there are more and more people who say to quote one of the founders of Pulse of Europe, everyone is responsible for the failure or the success of our future. No one can make excuses to hope everything will go well is not enough. That is a good development on that. We have a lot of polls that show that still until now there is a majority especially of young people in favour for Europe, but they begin to lose trust in the institutions. So what we have to do, it's a very conservative message I have for you. We have to reinstall the basic promises of a common Europe. Peace, democracy, prosperity. These are the three pillars for a common Europe. The European Union has guaranteed peace for over half a century and in many cases you know for yourself from this island it has started to stop wars and to create forms of peace in the conflict of Northern Ireland. The European Union has overcome fascism and dictatorship in Greece, Spain and Portugal. Younger people don't know what. It's my experience. They have overcome the authoritarian regimes in Eastern Germany. But the promise of prosperity for everyone, the promise of being part of a society, the promise of participation that has suffered under political majorities in the council and the parliament and it suffered very much stronger since the financial crisis of 2008. This crisis is not over despite the development in the island, despite the good economic development in Germany. And I think the question whether we are able to reinstate the EU's core promises is not only a question whether Macron will succeed, but also is a question that will be decided in the elections in Germany. The situation in Germany is different to Netherlands, Austria or French. There is no right wing populist who will come to power. There is no serious political force that wants to leave the European Union. And some people believe that the Germans have the key for the future of Europe and this as a member of our opposition party is seen a little sceptic that Angela Merkel is seen as the last defender of the West, New York times. But it's very popular in Europe. Last week in my flat in Soyer on the island of Mallorca I had to fix my dishwasher. This was done by Enrique. Enrique is a guy who was born in Fortsheim in Germany by a child of Spanish migrants and he worked most of his working life at Bosch and now runs his own service company on the island. And he asked me, what will happen on the election in Germany? He said, oh, it's a pity. The Grand Coalition will go on. Oh, that's wonderful. The Germans are the only ones in Europe who are not crazy. There should be no change. My message to you is that sounds good, but I think Enrique is wrong. The prospect of another Merkel win should worry you. And I will explain why on two scenarios. One scenario is Merkel will stay or can say more Merkel or no more Merkel. If you look what happened last weekend, the signal from Kiel was it will be more Merkel because the Conservatives became stronger. We got a good succeed. We succeeded, but the Social Democrats lost 5%. That means for Schleswig-Holstein we had three possible outcomes. The Grand Coalition, the so-called traffic light coalition and the so-called Jamaica coalition, all named after the colours. The Grand Coalition is the most unlikely outcome because in the moment, as the Republicans are feared to go back to opposition, they even would accept to do a coalition with the Social Democrats because that's the first priority to come back to government. In that case, the Greens, the Social Democrats and the Liberals would form that so-called traffic light coalition. But the priority of the Christian Democrats, the winner of the election is the so-called Jamaica coalition with black, green and yellow. This will be a real problem for our federal campaign, but it will be decided there. Why do I think it is a bad outcome if we go on with Merkel the fourth? We end in Austrian situation. There is no real left and right debate, and in that situation, where a centrist coalition driven by a right-wing opposition, the whole society moves to the right. And the possibility of changing and opening that has become more and more unlikely. And there is a European argument that has to do with the example of Brexit I named at that time. Merkel and Scheupler, under the pressure of these forces on their right side, I understand it, but I do not accept it. Under the pressure from their side, the right populist in Germany grew up with opposition to the euro as a currency to the guarantees we gave to Greece, Spain, Ireland after the financial crisis. Sometimes the Green Party has to ensure the majority for Merkel, because their own party members left at this guarantee. She had no own majority on the European guarantee at that time. But now they are very, very fixed not to move in that kind of thing. And there is a problem. Germany has the world largest current account surplus. It counts to 270 billion euros. This is not a Trump hoax. This has been named long before by the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund, the US Treasury Department, the OECD. They all have criticized Germany because we are causing with that surplus imbalances in the European and global economies. And even within the system of the European Union you say you shouldn't oh stretch that surplus. Germany is simply not investing enough. That is the problem. There is an investment gap known at about 100 billion euros annually. And whereas Merkel and Schäupler are urging other countries to do the same, not to invest. They have a priority for austerity. And what will happen? The youth unemployment in the euro zone is more than 20%. In Greece every second under 25 is unemployed. In Spain it's 40%. Well trained young people. If Europe cannot offer these people a future, Europe will break up. That's the simple message. It will break into the net exporting and importing countries. And this would be much more and much more severe than the complication you are facing in your direct neighbourhood with Brexit. And that is the reason why financial times say another Merkel win in September could play straight into Mr Trump's hands because he hopes that the European Union will break apart. It's easier for him to negotiate with the Czech Republic with then with 450 million customers in the largest single market of the world. So we are fighting a green fall in another situation. We want that Germany overcomes his surplus by investing. Investing in a green new deal in digital and energy infrastructure in the European Union to have an effect on that. And this effect is necessary. It's not enough that the European Central Bank guarantees low interest rates. We have a lot of capital flying around, but we don't have possibilities for investment. For that investment you need, I think, a number of 2% of our gross national product in the European Union to do so. That is one of the key demands we see as a Green Party for the elections here on the situation in the election campaign. I think there are some things also Europe touching. The European Union should stop exporting instability. We do so if you look what we are doing in the Middle East, for example, helping Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States to bomb Yemen back to Stainach. We have to stop these arms exports on a European level. It don't help if Germany stops it and France uses it as a form of industry policy. We have to complete the energy transition. Climate change is not a Chinese hoax. Climate change actually is bringing people to flee from the hams, destroying small... Every second thousands of people are running left their homes because of natural disasters. That's a bitter truth. But the problem in Germany is that Germany will fail to succeed his agreements. They imposed on the European Union for 2020. Germany will not reach the 2020 climate targets. If there is no change inside Germany, they will also fail to reach the 2030 reductions. You are very successful on building up a renewable industry. The best times the nuclear industry had about 35,000 employees in Germany. The development of renewables in the last 15 years created nearly 400,000 jobs in Germany. In the last three years, we lost 40,000 of them. It was done by bureaucratic hurts for the solar industry and was mainly lost in the solar sector, not the new sector. It's ironic that China cuts 100 coal-fired power plants while Chancellor Merkel pays 1.6 billion to hold on the 20 oldest coal power plants on the grid. That is one of the reasons why we urge in our election campaign at the Green Party to phase out coal, to have a step-by-step phasing out process, a consensus without kicking out people out of jobs, as we have done at the end of the coal mining industry. The third thing we are fighting for is to be fair. We have to end the obscene global inequality, a world where 8 billionaires own more nearly as much as the poor half of the world's population, 3.6 billion people, will never be safe, never be. That is the reason why we are in favour of closing tax havens. Perhaps you should more speak on tax swans. And it's not only the tax havens for Messi and Ronaldo in Panama. It's also the tax havens for Apple here in Ireland, for IKEA in the Netherlands, for BRSF in Malta, for Volkswagen in Belgium. You are not alone. And even the Germans have their own tax havens or swamps. Look that we tax wealth and inheritance less than 50% than the average OECD country. We have to overcome that situation. We have to stop tax evasion, tax agreements and we need international binding rules. We should not go on the race to the bottom that should be initiated by Donald Trump. This was one of the problems within the G20 this July. Inside Germany we think we need a real perspective, especially for the young people. Poorness, if you are old, is not an actual problem in Germany. My generation is well, most of them. But now our children pay up to 20-25% of their income for their later pension. That's a lot. And at the end, if they are old, a huge share of them has only a perspective of a minimum pension. This destroys the social cohesion inside the society. So we are fighting for a guaranteed pension that gets everyone who has worked more than 30 years and without means testing and above the minimum subsistence level. At the end, we will be in our campaign a strong pledge for Europe for a green new deal inside Europe to overcome the unemployment, to overcome the crisis in the eurozone. At the end, about the future, to speak, has problems. I'm social scientist, we are very good at looking back and explaining what happened in history, but the prognosis is complicated. But one thing I'm convinced of, there is no end of history. The future of Europe is open, but we have to reinstate the European core promises. Peace, democracy, prosperity. We have many roads ahead. The national road is a dead end. The European road is bumpy and curvy. But you don't have to turn back on this road to a bloody history of wars which this continent has experienced for centuries. Once we know which route the German population will pick in September, we will again face many more new roads. But this openness also holds a promise. It's a chance for Europe to quote Jean Monnet. Europe will be forged in crisis and will be the sum of the solution adopted for those crisis. In Germany, we call this echternacherspring procession. Thank you.