 Good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for being here. My name is Federica Bindi. I go under Fed. I'm a non-resident scholar here at Carnegie at the Europe Program, which is headed by Eric over there at the other side of the table. So my role here will be to introduce you to tonight's panel, introduce our speakers, say two words to on Italy, on which I will take questions afterwards. All right. So this is the first official kickoff of a project we brought to Carnegie, a Jean Monnet project as the whole. You all know that Jean Monnet, not to be confused with Monnet, the painter was the father of the first European communities. There is a grant, big grants, in his name. And this is the first time Carnegie has won. So our goal is to explore euphoric policy and transatlantic relations. And this is a particularly interesting year to do so because 2019, as you know, we're going to have the elections. Big question mark on the results of the elections. We are going to have the new commission, new UHR, new president of the European Council. And so we're going to have Brexit, whatever that means. We'll talk about that afterwards, whatever will happen, but something will happen. And of course, other challenges that has been going on in the last few years, like immigration, like crisis, or what we could define as a North, South, East, West gap and divisions, are going to be there. So even if sometimes in Washington we tend to forget that Europe exists, especially these days, 19 is going to be a very interesting year for Europe. You want to watch it also because there are going to be consequences for transatlantic relations above all defense. Not many people notice that something called PESCO, which is the Nance cooperation in defense and security, has been created. And the Europeans are more and more integrating. And the more they proceed, they can't count on the European-American ally. They are integrated on themselves. But I'll stop with that. And just one word on Italy before I introduce everybody. Italy, I'll take questions on that. Afterwards, if you wish, I think the problem is really not a monetary and economic problem. The problem is really a political problem. And I'm not sure the European Commission is plain smart. Actually, what they're doing is plain right into the hands of the government. The government, all the government wants to do is to say, either to say, oh, we got what France didn't get, or we couldn't do it because the evil commission didn't allow us to do. So for them, it's a win-win for the commission is a lose-lose. We can talk about that later. But let me introduce our speakers. I go from here to there. So Pierre Vimont, many of you will remember him as French ambassador to the United States before he sadly left us to go to Brussels and really create the European external action service, which is the European Democratic Service. He has had an impressive career as a diplomat. He was an advisor prime minister. He even has a film, actually, a comic book, free comic books, and a film after him, which I strongly encourage you to see if you haven't seen it because they're wonderful. And I think the actor really represents your peer. And to his right, Karen Donfried. She is the president of GMF, German Marshal found on the other side of the street. She also has a distinguished career in government and GLs. Congress, most notably before she went to GMF, she was the senior director for European Affairs at the National Security Council and special advisor to the president. Moving farther to the left, ambassador Jonathan Vazjevov. Forgive me if I made it wrong. You're like me. That's why I go under Fed and not Federiga. It's the currently is the Estonian ambassador to Washington. He brings us a different Nordic perspective. He also has a distinguished career in government. He's not your typical diplomat, so we expect a lot out of you. He was previously Secretary of State at the Ministry of Defense, which was the top of the distinguished career there. I think you're on your third tour in Washington and you're a German-speaking expert on transatlantic relations. Last but not least, our very own Eric Bratberg. Eric is Swedish. He is the director of the Europe program at Carnegie, which is doing a really excellent job at holding the European flag and European affairs up. And he has been in Washington several years. We met at SICE a few years ago. I don't remember how many. I don't want to tell. He also was at the McCain Institute with Kurt Volkner and at the Atlantic Council. So I think this is going to be a super interesting panel. Thank you very much, everybody. Much, Fed. And good afternoon to all of you. As Fed explained, this panel is really about looking at Europe and where Europe is heading, going into 2019, and what the consequences are for the future of Europe, but also for the United States as it looks to Europe. So I want to kick off this discussion here, and then we're going to open it up. And I wondered if I can call on Pierre initially. I think one topic that's on top of everybody's minds right now when it comes to Europe is, of course, Brexit. We, after almost two years of very intense negotiations, there is now an agreement on a withdrawal agreement for the UK to exit the European Union. European leaders have endorsed this. The British cabinet have agreed on it. But it still remains to be seen whether not only the European Parliament, but also, more importantly, the British Parliament will agree on this. Where do you see this is going? And is there, in the event of the House of Parliament voting down the current text, what are the different scenarios that you see playing out as we're moving forward closer towards the cliff edge on March 29? Thank you, Eric, for this very nice question. Thank you for inviting me to this conference. With regard to the first part of your question, the European Parliament, I think there will not be too much difficulty. The European Parliament knows very well about this agreement that was reached. They have been monitoring the whole process of the negotiations. And they know that there is not much room for maneuver. And therefore, I think they will go for endorsing this withdrawal agreement. It's going to be much more complicated on the British side, of course, with the Westminster vote. Because there, it is obvious that at the moment, the British prime minister doesn't have a clear majority. She's going to miss not many, but let's say, 20 to 30 votes on the conservative side. The MPs from Northern Ireland will not vote for it. And even if she can get some reinforcement, I would say, from the Labour Party, it may not be enough for her to get a majority. So the odds at the moment are not in favor of a positive vote. But there are two things, I think, that are important. The first one is that wherever you go now around Europe, there is a huge Brexit fatigue. On behalf of the EU 27, this has started a long time ago. Very early on, in fact, the leaders from the 27 member states have given the whole mandate to Michel Barnier and have told him, you negotiate a way out of this. We have many other things to look after. And we have no intention to spend our time on this whole issue. So that's on the part of the European Union members. On the part of Britain, after two years of domestic turmoil, I sense also the beginning of some sort of fatigue on the British side. And I think Theresa May has understood that and is going to play with that as much as it can. So maybe, through a very close vote, she can get it over. If she doesn't, if unfortunately, I think the date now is for the 11th of December, if she doesn't get the vote by that time, I'm not sure she can go back and negotiate again something else. There's no room for maneuver there. This is something that sometimes is missed by public opinion, which thinks that it's easy to go back around the table and find some sort of new compromise. The reality is that the Brexiters, those that have been supportive of this idea of running out, of getting out of the European Union, don't want any kind of fudge compromise. They really want to get out. They want to get out of the single market. They want to get out of the customs union. They want to be on their own. As they said during the whole campaign, they want to get control, back control of the whole thing. So any kind of compromise where you will have Britain being halfway into the customs union of the single market, which is the only way to find a solution among other things, but the only way to find a solution for the whole issue of the hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, any kind of compromise of that sort, they just want, the Brexiters don't want to hear about it. So we're stuck with the kind of agreements that terrorism has reached. So I don't see much room for renegotiating. The EU 27 have already said that bluntly, and it's not that they're unfriendly with the prime minister from Great Britain. It's just that nobody knows how you can do anything better than what we've got at the moment on the table. So the two other options are general elections. I leave it to the prime minister to decide if they want to follow that road. But of course, that means for the average conservative MP the risk of finding themselves in opposition very soon. And then there is the referendum, the second referendum. And I don't believe very much in that option either because to get a new referendum, you need to get a bill through the House of Commons. And I think here again, the prime minister would face a huge opposition from a fear of majority in the House of Commons. So where does it leave us? It leave us nowhere. It leave us moving closely to the cliff edge, to the cliff edge, sorry, to the cliff edge, to a no deal, and to what will be for both sides. For the Europeans, just as for Britain, will put us in a very difficult position under the risk of major turmoil in our economic supply chains, air transport, whatever, think about whatever sector of the economy. This is going to be very painful. And how will European leaders deal with that? Will they grant the UK a transition period in such a scenario, extend the Article 50 strike many deals to address these particular issues that you're mentioning? The way of doing this would be to go into a lot of many lateral deals on each issue where you may be facing a problem. It's an endless process. You will never find a solution. Extending Article 50 in order to do that makes no sense at all because it could only be very short. And never forget that as we are at the moment in the present situation, UK legislation has in its provisions the date of the 29th of March of next year. So they would have to change the date. They would need a vote in the House of Commons. I don't see why people who have voted against the withdrawal agreement would suddenly vote to extend the date of their departure. So no, my impression is that as they will go on and approach the cliff edge, the business community, more and more people will go and talk and discuss that with the MPs in one semester to tell them, listen, shouldn't you not have a second look at that withdrawal agreement? And maybe at the end go for another vote and tend to go along with it. That's really the kind of realistic approach I think may happen there, but I may be totally wrong. Let me turn to you, Karen. Of course, one of the consequences of Brexit is the disappearance of the United Kingdom as a major player within the European Union. And that will of course shift more power to Paris but also to Berlin. So I'm wondering if you could help explain what the thinking is in Berlin right now about the post-Brexit emerging dynamics within Europe, thinking about the so-called Franco-German axis and where that is going. It seems like on many of the issues where President Macron had very ambitious ideas, Germany has been maybe holding back and now it seems like Merkel is potentially getting weaker with some of the regional elections in Germany. Her party is also appointing a new leader. So how will this impact Berlin's ability to become the major shaper of the EU moving forward in the post-Brexit environment? Well, it's interesting. I suppose if politics were only messy in Britain, we'd be in a better place than we are today, which is politics are messy everywhere. But before I jump in, just thank you Eric and then for hosting us. And it's a particular privilege to be seated between two ambassadors. And the German part of this equation is also one where it's a country that we've become quite comfortable seeing as the anchor of stability in Europe, but increasingly we see that politics have become tumultuous in Germany as well. And there are various places you could date the start of that, but we could take last fall's election in Germany, which certainly showed us that the parties that are in the Grand Coalition today were weakened considerably in that vote. We saw for the first time in post-war German history a far right party, the AFD, jump over that 5% hurdle to become the third largest party in the German parliament. And we saw the chancellor unable to form the coalition that she wanted. She wanted to form a coalition with the free Democrats and the Greens, the so-called Jamaica Coalition, because their colors are those of the Jamaican flag, and instead need to revert to the Grand Coalition that she had been in in the previous, in her previous four years. Just to remind, she's in her fourth term as German chancellor, one of the reasons we've seen Germany as so stable. But a telling statistic is that the Grand Coalition in her third government comprised 80% of the seats in the German parliament. The Grand Coalition in Germany today has just over 50% of the seats. So it shows you how those two traditionally big parties have really lost support. And what we've seen in recent weeks is the chancellor, her party, did badly in a state election in Hesse. Her sister party, the CSU in Bavaria, also did very badly. The mix of recent events led her to say that she was not gonna run again for party leader at the CDU party convention in early December. And that set off a scramble of three leading candidates who are seeking to succeed her as party leader. Why does that matter? Because Merkel has always said, to govern Germany effectively, you wanna be both chancellor and party leader. So she's voluntarily giving up that party leader position leading all of us to wonder, can she actually remain chancellor to the end of her term in 2021? And so what we saw over the weekend when EU leaders got together, essentially to approve the Brexit deal was a seemingly weary Angela Merkel saying on the one hand how sad she was about Brexit, but on the other hand say she was a little bit relieved to have the process over with. Now, to Pierre's point, the process probably isn't over because you may not get that vote in the House of Commons, but at a time when there are so many issues swirling in the EU, Brexit, of course, being a key one to have the second largest economy in the EU decide on balance, it would rather be out, that's a big deal. But to your point, the Franco-German relationship is bedeviled by the weakness of the two leaders, Merkel and McCall, at a time when they're also trying to manage the eurozone and we're hoping to breathe reform into that seems unlikely, still trying to manage a refugee and migration crisis. So there are so many other issues that they're not effectively dealing with at a time when illiberal populism is on the rise across Europe. And so the ability to show you can govern effectively is being brought down by the inability to actually nevermind solve, not even manage some of these tough issues. Let me turn to Ambassador Vespio, of course, the United Kingdom has traditionally been seen as, I think for many countries in Northern Europe but also in Central East in Europe, as somewhat of an ally, a like-minded country that represents free trade, global outlook that is changing now with Brexit and the departure of the UK. So wondering from an Estonian perspective, what do you think are the consequences of Brexit in terms of some of the issues where the UK has traditionally played a very important role such as enlargement, such as trade and other issues? And are you concerned that this could really change and alter the future direction on the EU? And is there a need, therefore, to think about new partners or other constellations of countries to work with? Nordic Baltic or the 3C's initiative, how do you see the landscape playing out as a result of Brexit from your perspective? Thank you. First of all, let me apologize for my voice and my coughing on the weather outside, which does remind me of Estonian summer. This is no snow, that means summer, is still getting to me. Secondly, thank you and everybody in the audience for your interest in European affairs. I remember the last time I was posted here in Washington, which was five years ago, you couldn't get this group of people when discussing European affairs or trans-American relations. So things have changed and to a large extent, they have changed because of awful developments. We're talking about the problems relating to managing the European Union. Populism was mentioned, obviously Brexit. We haven't mentioned the war that is taking place in Europe these very days. It is a war in Ukraine. It was reminded, we were all reminded these days when the situation heated up now on the Black Sea, that this war has been taking place. It's not on the front pages of our newspapers. It's not the main news on our daily or nowadays also, constant TV news shows, it should be. So we ought not to forget that this is taking place. None of the traditional security challenges have disappeared. History, as we now know, did not end with the fall of the Berlin Wall. It didn't even end with our accession to the European Union and NATO. None of the new modern security challenges have gone away, cyber security, information operations, malign activities, influencing our domestic developments and none of this has disappeared. So these are indeed difficult times. If we were to characterize the times, then I think with one term, and then I think what we're going through certainly in the West these days is the crisis of the traditional institutions. Media, the elites, the universities, and most importantly, the institution of the expert, if you will, have been witnessing what I would call is the biggest crisis they've gone through since certainly the end of 1930, 20th century. There was always the expert that told us why the transatlantic relations matter. The housewife in Iceland or the farmer in Estonia or the coal miner in Germany might not personally understand the importance of transatlantic relations. But the way we govern ourselves, the one man, one vote principle, has always been dependent upon the institution of the expert who tells us that the world, that the earth is indeed not flat, even when we don't experience it firsthand. That institution is in crisis because of technological developments, societal developments. It's affecting us domestically. It's affecting our international relations. And I'm sure it will, if it hasn't already started to, affect the authoritarian regimes as well. The difference between us and our authoritarian colleagues is that in democracies, we may bend. Every few years, we let out steam and we may elect people who promise to tear everything down. And if we don't like them, we kick them out and we elect new leaders. Authoritarian regimes over small periods of time seem more stable and then they break. And when they break, everybody's surprised. All the Sovietologists get kicked out of the institutions, because the Soviet Union disappears. And then everybody thinks that the history has ended and now all the Sovietologists are being brought back in to try to figure out what is going on with Russia and the charges that they pose. Brexit, we didn't want to see Brexit. I remember it was a huge surprise to me personally, to probably many people in the Stony as well as the rest of Europe, that that was indeed the result. It was the result. So it is, as an Estonian, as a European and as a citizen of the world, I am interested in making sure that the process of Brexit and post-Brexit is as seamless as possible. Now that's not easy, obviously, and we know why. But the United Kingdom will always be a European nation. It will always have a huge role in European security. We know this firsthand, because obviously it is the Brits that have a leading role in NATO presence in Estonia. We know this because of other bilateral conflicts that we have with the Brits. And this is indeed what each and every one of the representatives of the UK government we have talked to has told us they're leaving the European Union. They are not, obviously, leaving Europe. So we see the UK as continuing to play a huge role in European security. Whether there are blocks in the European Union and whether we should change the way the EU functions internally, I'm not sure. I don't think that there have been blocks to start with. It has been fashionable to look at these developments within the UN and label certain groups of nations as a voting box or blocks in general. I don't think they actually exist. There are issues in the European Union where we agree with the French more than we agree with our Nordic friends. There are issues where we agree with our Nordic friends more than we agree with the French. The way we vote, the way we decide depends on a topic. And that's what's made the EU successful. I think that the result of Brexit will obviously have a huge effect on the way the EU functions. We're losing a valued member of the union, but we will survive. The EU has survived several rounds of expansion. I'm sure it will survive this Brexit as well. Just on the topic of populism, I mean, I think Estonia is interesting because it is a country that in many ways have withstood a lot of these pressures that we've seen elsewhere on the continent. And I wonder if you could share any insights in why that is. Why Estonia? Is it because you're very much, see yourself as a success story of European integration? You wanna be part of deepened European cooperation. You're part of the eurozone. You're a transatlantic country, but you're also a pro-European country. Why is it that at a time when populism and the liberalism is spreading, there are these exceptions to this broader trend, not to say that there aren't issues in Estonia, but there seems to be that you've found some kind of solution that others in Europe can maybe learn from. You know, Estonia is interesting for that reason, but for many other reasons as well. So everybody who hasn't visited should visit immediately, a wonderful place. We are affected by all of this as well. I mean, we're not immune to what's taking place in the world. And we never integrate it into Europe. We reintegrate it. And the best way to teach somebody the value of freedom, for instance, is to take that freedom away for some time. It is very difficult to understand what you have if you have no understanding of what losing that could mean. For 50 years, we were taken forcefully from Europe. We worked hard to regain our independence. And the moment we regained our independence, we worked hard to reintegrate ourselves with the West. With Europe, which is our rightful place. So that's part of the reason why we value the European Union, for instance. And don't take what we have for granted because the generations that are empowering Estonia today, they very well remember the Soviet occupation and the times when we didn't enjoy the freedoms that we now enjoy. I mean, I remember standing in a visa line to get into Finland. And in Finland, it's 60 miles from Estonia. We could almost see Finland from our windows, very close. And yet we couldn't get there. So yes, that helps. Understanding what it means to live without the freedoms that we today enjoy helps. Another thing that helps is education. And a egalitarian education system that doesn't leave anybody behind is really the key to fighting all of these malign influences. It's not gonna solve any of the problems we have overnight. But over long periods of time, if we think that we can deal with misinformation, fake news, trolls, all of these problems that we're facing today, by simply attacking the cause, the effect that the cause, then we are mistaken. Over time, the more people are aware of what is going on, the more inhuman they will be. The more people are informed of what is taking place, the more inhuman they will be. I'll give you an example. By the late 1980s, we had been occupied by the Soviet Union for close to 50 years. And that was the most brutal of propaganda regimes you can imagine. So people went to kindergarten, they were told that they live and breathe because of the ideas of Lenin. So three-year-olds came home and told their parents these stories. By the time they were 15, or in many cases even earlier, nobody believed none of the stuff that the state pushed them to, nobody. Because when people looked out the window, they saw what Soviet reality was like. And then when they put on the TV and when they had figured out a way to get finished TV, they saw what life in the West was like. You can't fool people all the time. So by the late 1980s, we were totally to Soviet propaganda. So I think we're going through these phases today. Technologists changing and it's changing our society in more fundamental ways and people probably realize. Democracy, as we know it, has been possible because of the invention of the printing press. Our ability to get news to everybody, to that coal miner and that housewife news that affect the way they then make a decision at elections. That now is changing and we can now get the news, more news, but from people who already agree with us and only those people. So us adapting to this new situation, we'll probably take some time. Us as a society is adapting to this situation. But sooner or later, we will become immune. I think we're already seeing the effects of this immunity increasing in European elections. The very same techniques that worked previously no longer seem to work. People no longer seem to believe automatically the outrageous news stories. They are starting to check other sources as well. So I think as time goes by, we'll be better off. All of this, however, is dependent upon an education system that teaches our next generations to think critically. If we lose that, then in a few decades, we will certainly be in trouble. But there also seems like there's maybe a divide between the North and the South. And in that sense, I'm wondering, Fed, the situation in Italy right now, it's obviously has to do with the budget and the fiscal realities in Italy, but there is also a dimension here that relates to Berlin, that relates to the ECB in Frankfurt. Is the Italian financial situation unique, or is this part of a broader schism between different parts of Europe? It's a mix actually. There is a part of a fault which is totally Italian, as is often happened. And the main problem was that when the transition from the leader to the euro to place, Italians thought they were smart. And the overnight, because we had the leaders, which was like one euro was about 2,000 liras. So the transition was not properly controlled. And the fact of prices doubled overnight instead of changing one euro for 2,000 liras was equal to 1,000 liras. So all of a sudden, the buying power of the people was diminished by half. And that is a purely Italian, and for instance, if you look at Slovenia, one of the late cameras, they were draconians. They were really strict in enforcing that nobody cheated on the exchange rate. And that coupled with the economic crisis that came afterwards, after 2008, has created a stagnation from which the country has not exited yet. Add to that the immigration, which in absolute terms is not huge, but because of what Ambassador was saying before, because of how we get our information today, it seems much bigger than it is. And it also seems much bigger because the country is very homogeneous at the end of the day. So you see it more. It created a sort of an explosive situation. There were a number of mistakes that were done from a political point of view. I think the major mistake was done by President Napolitano when he ousted the Berlusconi government, because that was a government that was elected by the people like it or not. And it was sadly ousted, and it was replaced with Mario Monti, which was supposedly a genius, and all he did to solve the crisis was just raise the taxes. So it really created more stagnation, more stagnation, and people were very unhappy with that. Then came Renzi, which he was young, he was very good at talking, and everybody thought he would change Italy, and instead he was basically a sink in his own arrogance. You can't invent government if you want. And so people have become very disilluded, but not disilluded enough not to fall for the next, I wouldn't use Charlotte, but for the next politician who comes up and promise the promised land. And this is where we are now. Again, there were mistakes done by the President of the Republic who forced the five-star movement and Lega North together. On the assumption, they would not make it to make a government. So his idea was, okay, I'm gonna ask them to get a government. This is not gonna happen. I'm gonna call on the next technocrat, he already had the technocrats in his own pocket, Cattarelli, and I'm gonna do my own government. And politics, you can't, you can't govern them in so much. And the donuts didn't come with the whole as you thought. And now we have the situation where you have one party with people which have no clue whatsoever about government, the five-star movement, and a party which has very clear ideas of how to govern it, and very skidded about government, but with very extreme ideas. And the mix is very complicated. My take has always been that we're gonna have elections in May together with European elections because Lega can't afford this, because it has the support of the productive part of the country. But how will this play out with the EU on this particular budget issue that Italy is facing? That's, you know, it's complicated. So they, the government has a choice of the Minister Savona, which was one of the people who negotiated the euro. The President sucked him. They took, they instead, they took my actual Dean, your friend Giovanni Tria, as a Minister of Treasury. And Giovanni is a very nice person. So Giovanni goes to the commission and he said, yo, I completely agree with you. No, no, no, no, we are not gonna do the budget. I completely agree with you. And then the commission is happy that Giovanni goes back to Rome and Salvini and Dimar is like, no, no, no, no, I don't understand. We're gonna stay with the high deficit. It's really a non-dialogue. It's people who are not listening to each other. And what the commission doesn't understand here is that is a lose-lose situation for the commission, is a win-win situation for the Italian government on the short term. On the long term, the damage will be huge. But on the short term, which is all they care about, they can either say, we managed to get more than any other government, or we didn't get it because the evil commission was against us. So for them is a win-win, which is all they care in the short terms when elections come. On the long term, it could be a potential disaster for the country. I wanna peer if I could come back to you on the issue of the European Parliament elections next year. Normally, these elections don't receive a whole lot of attention to be fair. This time it seems maybe different. It seems like there are a lot of forces that are converging here. You have a rising gap between pro and anti-Europeans. You have political fragmentation within a lot of the member states. And you have a lot of changes taking place in the EU. So how do you see, first of all, the significance of the European elections, but more importantly, how do you see them play out and what the consequences will be? Will this impact the next European commission? And really the direction of the EU project over at least the next five years? You're right to underline the fact that the European Union is a bit of a, the European Parliament is a bit of an unknown quantity for public opinion in Europe. And the result of that is that the turnout at European election has always been very low. In fact, if you look at the trend for the last 15 or 20 years, the turnout has been regularly decreasing in most of the country. And now on average it's gonna be less than 50% or something like that. Will it be different next year? It could be, even if pollsters are very cautious about that. But it could be because it's gonna be a bit of a confrontation between the populist supporters and the wave of populism that we have seen in Italy, in Austria, a little bit in Germany, in Poland, in Hungary. And the anti-populist. What President Macron calls the progressive trend on one side, the progressive camp I would say, and the nationalist on the other side. So that could make a rather nice narrative for the European election that could attract many voters. Yet, what will this mean in the end? What kind of result will we have? I think we will still have a very much fragmented European Parliament, maybe even more than we had in the past because if you look country by country, this is more or less the current political landscape. In other words, in most of the countries, still a strong center-right coalition, even if in Germany the Christian Democrat have lost a lot of influence, there still remain the major party. And on the other side, the socialist will lose also a lot of seats, but they can still remain an important significant political group. What will be interesting to watch is the two other groups that may become important partners and important players in a future European Parliament. One is the center, what is usually called the liberals, which are the moment, are the third largest political group inside the European Parliament. But with the help of Macron and his new political party that has been set up in France, even if at the moment, in opinion polls, they're not performing all that well, it can still bring some reinforcement in the liberal party, in the liberal group and make them a very strong group in the next Parliament, a sort of king-maker, and this is what the liberals are hoping for. And then you have the far right, this populist wave. But be careful about this one because at the moment in the European Parliament, this far right wing of the political spectrum is totally divided between the British MPs from the UKIP party. The UKIP party has disappeared. And these 30 or 40, a little bit more than 30 MPs will disappear also because at the next European election, Britain normally will be out. Then you have the French far right, Madame Le Pen, which has set up her own group. And then you have another far right group at the moment. Well, all these people unite together. Well, for instance, the MPs elected on the agenda of Mr. Orban in Hungary, which at the moment are part of the Christian Democrats political group. Will they leave the Christian Democrat and join the populist new group? Not sure. It's more interesting maybe to be in the main, most important political group inside the European Parliament and have enough leverage than to go to a group that may be only second, third, or fourth in importance and strengths. So nobody knows exactly how all this will come out. There is only one certainty. This Parliament is gonna be more fragmented than ever before. What was still possible a few years ago is that having a sort of coalition between the center right and the socialist that could be considered as the center left, and which was more or less the way the European Parliament had managed to find a way through in recent year, this has gone. The two, these two groups will not be strong enough to create a full-fledged majority. They will need the support of either the liberals, maybe a green party that will be there, maybe for some of them the temptation to go and see if they could work with the populists. So this is gonna be very interesting to watch. All the more so as this, as you all know, will have some immediate political impact on how the European Commission itself will be set up and who will be inside that European Commission. As you know, at the end of the day, the European Commission must be endorsed by the European Parliament, and therefore a little bit like what we see in many of European countries where you have a coalition of different party, this European Commission will need to find the right coalition inside the European Parliament that will allow it to govern. And of course, the head of the new European Commission will come out of that kind of new political landscape that we're facing at the moment. Very difficult to say who it will be, but coming back to the point I was saying earlier, this liberal group that may be re-enhanced being the kingmaker, they very much hope that at last it will be one of them who could become the president of the European Commission. Karen, I wanted to see if you could bring in the transatlantic dimension here. Of course, the United States have traditionally been an advocate for European cooperation and deepened integration in Europe and pushing for enlargement, for instance. How do you see the current US administration's approach towards the European Union? And are you concerned that in some ways Washington is maybe even leading to more fragmentation within Europe? What do you see the current US approach being? And what do you see the consequences of that approach being within Europe itself? Well, it's interesting just because Pierre was talking about the European Parliament election, you can take that as a case in point where Steve Bannon, who formerly had been an advisor to President Trump in the White House, now has an office in Brussels. And Salvini has joined forces with Bannon in trying to fuel an alliance of populists to have a particularly strong performance in those European Parliament elections next May. So that's a very concrete case of where the US is engaging in European politics. Of course, we've seen President Trump pursue an untraditional approach for an American president toward the European Union. As he has said, the European Union was created to take advantage of us Americans and to rob our piggy banks. That flies in the face of history and that the US in the Truman administration and beyond was very supportive of the project of European integration because we saw it as the one way to prevent the countries on the European continent from ever going to war again. And that idea of the European community in today's European Union as a peace project is something that it's very easy to forget because it seems so long ago. But it comes back to your point, which is maybe Estonian's value their freedom more because they didn't have it for so many decades after the end of World War II. And I hope that we are not condemned to repeat our history. But certainly there is much over the past 70 years to suggest that the United States has been fitted from the creation of the European Community and the European Union and facts are stubborn things and our allies in Europe are our most important trade and investment partners. And certainly they are also our most important military and security allies. And I think it's worth remembering that the only time NATO has ever invoked Article 5 was after the US was attacked on 9-11. And it was our allies saying that we support the US after this attack. But how that plays out in terms of dividing Europe further, it's also worth looking at how our European allies are responding to the Trump administration. And I see very different responses depending on where you are in Europe. And when I, it was in France last month and the conversation there is all about strategic autonomy. And basically America's gone bad, wake up Europe. We Europeans need to take charge of our destiny and we need to put more resources into our militaries. We need to stand up and take charge. You then go to Germany and in Berlin, I think for many Germans, this idea of strategic autonomy is actually quite appealing. But there's another school of thought in Berlin which says, you know, this is a singular American president. And we don't know if they'll serve another two years or another six years. But whomever succeeds him may welcome back to a more traditional view of US interest being served by a strong alliance with Europe. So we need to keep the connective tissue there and what we need to do is exercise strategic patience. Then you go to Warsaw and you talk to polls and they say strategic autonomy, strategic patience. We are all about strategic embrace of the United States because we have a big, bad country called Russia on our eastern border. And we don't really believe the French and the Germans are gonna defend us from Russia. So we want that US security guarantee. And we saw this in the recent visit of the Polish president, President Duda, who came and reiterated the Polish offer to spend $2 billion if the US is willing to establish a permanent base for US troops in Poland. And he offered to call it Fort Trump to boot. So, yes, we clearly are a forced divide in Europe today. But what about that notion, Ambassador Vesvio, of strategic autonomy? We've also heard language from Paris in recent weeks about a European army. Do you see this as a realistic trajectory for where European defense cooperation might go? Is there really widespread support within Europe between the member states for essentially developing an independent defense policy aside from NATO and aside from the United States? How do you see this from your perspective? We, as Estonia had the presidency of the European Union Council when PESCO was initiated. I worked in the Ministry of Defense back then. We were in star, strong supporters of bringing the European Union into defense or bringing defense into the European Union in whichever way you want to look at it. Now, because of the word defense is such a wide term, it is easy for people to confuse what the European Union is doing with the actual territorial defense or military defense of Europe. When we set up PESCO, when we had discussions about it with other European nations or when we discussed amongst ourselves, there never was an idea to create something that would or could substitute for what NATO was doing. It was understood then by the ministers who gathered in Italian or eventually by prime ministers and presidents when they gathered and made decisions that what European defense developments are about is making us more effective, is increasing defense cooperation amongst European Union member states, is bringing the Union into defense matters where the Union can really have a positive effect like military mobility, for instance, and regulations that concern military movement within the European Union. Nobody ever wanted or was thinking about diminishing the role of NATO around the country. All of this is necessary for NATO to be able to do what NATO does, which we are now relearning to do, which is collective defense. European defense. For anybody who has spent some time on working on actual defense, there, the European defense is dependent upon American participation. And I think it's equally okay to argue that American security is dependent upon a viable transatlantic relationship. It is not only about the troops that Europeans send to fight alongside American soldiers in Afghanistan or Iraq or elsewhere, which are huge numbers. It's not only about... Tony, I believe, was the biggest per capita contributor to Afghanistan. One of the top, yes. But every European nation, almost, I think, sent troops to Afghanistan. The European allies have joined the Americans, wherever the Americans have gone. And the United States can be certain of the Europeans when it comes to defending the United States from the challenges that the US faces. But it's beyond, it's bigger than that. And when we argue amongst ourselves, when we throw around dangerous rhetoric, which we do to a large extent to satisfy our domestic constituents and their appetite for inflammatory rhetoric without concern or without paying attention to the fact that other people can hear what we say as well in other countries, creating this cycle where our leaders are almost forced to use short sentences against each other, which is creating a dangerous cycle in our province. When we do all of this, we seem to forget the reality of where the world is. Federica Mogherini, the high representative, liked to say, or she said, I heard her say about the European Union, that the European Union is made up of two kinds of countries, small countries, and then there are countries who are yet to realize that they are small. I think the same can be argued for all of us, with the changing dynamics in the world, all of us in the West, including the United States. We're getting smaller. And the way of life that we hold dear is not, should not be taken for granted. So I don't think that we have time to argue amongst mundane things to throw tweets or one sentence statements at each other. We need to go beyond that. And actually, when you look at the substance of actual transatlantic cooperation on defense, for instance, as for years, we've moved in the right direction. In any area you wanna look at, more US presence in Europe, more seriousness in NATO when it comes to planning, more agreements when it comes to threat perceptions, we've been moving in the right direction, but it doesn't seem that way when you only look at the headlines and the social media. And that's a concern, because I'm not sure how sustainable this situation, when the substance is moving in the right direction, but the rhetoric is going in the wrong direction. How sustainable that is. I think we should get over the rhetoric's part as soon as possible. So in short, no European army anytime soon. No European army anytime soon. The European defense expenditure is increasing now. That is all very positive. The European Union will have a positive effect on our ability to actually get a bigger bank for the bucks or the euros that we spend. That's very positive. There's a lot more that we need to do in building up our own capabilities in Europe. There's a lot more we can do to tear down barriers for military mobility, for instance, in Europe. But there is never going to be a European army. I hope there will be European armies of significance, but that requires a lot of money and we're now spending more. Excellent. So I think we've covered a lot of ground. Let's go ahead and open this up for questions, comments, please identify yourself and direct the questions to anyone you like on the panels. We can get the mic to the gentleman here in the middle with the blue suit, please. Thank you, Austin Dohler with the Center for European Policy Analysis. Now to turn to Brexit, let's assume that we have the worst case scenario. There's no deal and Brexit just crashes outcome March 29th. Could the effects of that result, whether we see them five or 10 years down the road? Is there any chance that they could be so bad that a silver lining for the EU is that they disempower the anti-EU forces in Italy, Poland and Hungary, making them think, wait, the UK was really hurt by this. Therefore, we actually need the EU and kind of create a reconciliation of more centrist pro-EU political forces. Thank you. I'll take the gentleman next to you as well. We'll receive it. Both the European Union and the current currency union were created as political targets. Nevertheless, there's no way to ignore the underlying economic situations in these countries. And I was a little bit surprised that this did not come up at all. And if I may address you with Italy, you said these political issues in Italy. Nothing could be further from the truth. The economic issues. Italy is suffering from a very low growth for many years. The current government aims at creating demand because the economy is not growing. Is this the right way to reduce the taxes, to create additional expenditures so people will spend money? The North and the South in Italy are so different when it comes to productivity levels, yet the unions made sure that the wages in the North and the South are the same. This is normal, it's behavior. Yet you totally ignore the political events. One more thing, Italy will be decided, the budget financing by the capital markets, no matter what they say in Brussels. As long as Italy can finance its budget deficits, either by domestically hold debt or foreign debt, the government will do what it will consider to be correct. Will the European Union and the currency union bail out Italy as it did Greece as an act of solidarity? All these are fundamentally economic issues. I was really surprised that they didn't address them. Okay, let's take the Italy question first and then we'll come to Brexit. Maybe Fred, you want to take that? Well, no, you are completely right and I probably should explain myself well. When I say it's a political issue, it's a political issue between the Italian government and the commission. There is a political game which transcend the economic situation. On the rest, you are completely right. Yes, and this comes back to the North-South gap that Eric was addressing before. Ever since the creation of the euro and the 2008 crisis, all right? So an endogenous problem and an exogenous problem. When the two problems got together, Italy has had no growth. Too many taxes, way too many taxes and very limited buying power. So it's a real problem. I mean, a house, I'll give you an example, a house costs more or less the same amount of money it cost here in DC with the difference that the salaries are way less, way much smaller than they are in here. I can give you the figure of my salary as a full professor. It's $2,000 a month, yours a month. Yeah, of course, I have social benefits which I wouldn't have here in the same way but it gives you my buying power and if I say it here, people think, I'm like, you must be a loser, you get that little money. Besides, there is no negotiation on salary. This is a state salary and that's the way it is. It's not that I negotiate my salary at the university. This is just the way it is. It's the same for everybody. So there is a true economic problem and the previous government haven't addressed. You have to pump in money and you have to cut taxes if you want the economy to restart. And this is where the political problem begins because the European Union doesn't allow and the Northern States do not allow it. And that's why the resentments of the Italian that get that Eric was talking about is coming in. If you wanna resolve the economic problem, you have to go political. After all, the treaties allow a plus 3%. So why not a 2.4%? Because the reason is that it's not really the number that the commission is thinking about. The commission is afraid that the growth measures that my friend Giovanni gave to them are too optimistic. So what the Italian government is saying, we're gonna do more deficit but we also growth more so we're gonna go and balance them. And the commission say, we don't believe you. That's substantially the not of a problem. And this is not an economic problem. It's a political problem. There is the Italian sort of thing for the good or for the best whether it's true or not, they think that the Nordic don't really trust us. They have a part of truth. I mean, at the end of the day, Italy's that country twice in World War II changed sides. And in Italy, we forget it. In the north of Italy, in the north of Europe, they remember it. So there are these historical, political things that makes it different. So it is economic to, and I shut up, it is economic problem, but the economic problem that they cannot be solved, could be solved politically. Okay. Let me bring in Pierre maybe on the Brexit question and we can come back to the North-South issue. But on Brexit specifically, what about this notion, the question about impact of Brexit in maybe not immediately, but in a few years, having almost a reverse ripple effect where it actually deters countries from pursuing a similar path and actually emboldens a pro-European sentiment. Do you see that playing out? Yes, to some extent, it's already playing out. This is what's very interesting. Is that, we had the impression that after the referendum vote in Britain, that they would create a sort of ripple effect among other member states. And of course, the first candidate, maybe for a Brexit, was thought to be Poland or Hungary. And it's exactly the contrary that has happened. Even if you look today at opinion polls, the European Union at the moment is much more attractive than it was at the time of the Brexit campaign two years ago, among the EU 27 member states. European Union has never been so positively perceived by the average citizen. Interestingly enough, if you go and look at the very recent social unrest in France, what is called the yellow jacket movement, and you talk to these people in the streets, they're not anti-European. They think that Europe is not efficient enough in protecting them, but they don't want any sort of a Brexit or whatever. They want to stay in, because everybody has looked at how the Brexit process has unfolded in Britain, the extraordinary political turmoil that we have been witnessing in Britain for the last two years. For those of us who have been working with our colleagues in the British administration to see the disarray of many of these colleagues facing the whole Brexit issue, the irrationality of the whole debate, this is something that to some extent immunize you against any idea of going along the same road. And I think this is really where we are at the moment. Now, if we really go for a no deal, a cliff edge, as we say, and therefore it's complete chaos for some time, not only once again in British economy, but I guess to some extent also in the EU economy, what will be the impact of all this? I don't know. But one thing I'm sure is that the European Union will recover more quickly than Britain because they are together, and they will help each other, and the single market would be a major asset to try to recover from that catastrophe, whereas Britain will be left on its own. And in addition to that, the reaction of the markets, financial market and other places, is going to be very strong. And they will have, leaders will have to react to that. I personally think that you will have a lot of cooperation between Britain and the EU 27. They will have to work together to try to calm down the situation and the tension that will be there. And this is something that we will see and that we may see very clearly also in the case of Italy, because on this I totally agree. It is the markets who will make the difference, if only because the European Commission has a very long process of monitoring the Italian economic situation. But interestingly enough, and this is something that I find quite amazing, so far the markets have remained rather peaceful and serene with regard to Italy, which is a bit surprising if you consider the importance and the size of the Italian economy, not to talk about the size of its financial debt. But the markets along this old tradition that I think to some extent Federica was alluding to is that that's Italy and we will find a way out as we usually do. And this is what is being said also, not only in Brussels but in Paris, in Berlin and elsewhere. No, no, we'll find a way out because this is Comedia dell'Alte. This is Italian politics. This is where Federica is right. It's more about Italian politics than anything else. It's about Mr. Matteo Salvini surfing on the wave from one year ago having 13% of electoral support to 34, 35% of support in the opinion polls nowadays. That's why he relishes the prospect maybe in a few months of a new general election because he will be the first political party in Italy. So it has nothing to do with the substance of the migration debate or the substance of the debate on the Italian budget. In fact, Mr. Salvini, if I remember well in his agenda was in favor of strong discipline financial fiscal policy. So he's very far away from his traditional dogma at the moment. And that's why he can't stay, he can't hold like that that much because the Lagos Basis is at the north-east, center north-east where the productive part of Italy. So and they're very, very upset about this whole debt and things situation. So he has all the interest, the political interest that Pierre was saying that the support of his electorate to go to election as soon as possible and get three double five stars movement. Karen Ambassador, do you want to come in? Should we pick up a few more questions? Why don't we go to the gentleman in the front and then we'll work our way around. Gentleman in the front and then lady over there. Thank you, Chris Bledewski from MAPI. I'd like to bring back the transatlantic angle. Pierre Vimo, Ambassador Vimo, very eloquently predicted the fragmentation of the future European Parliament and Karen Donfred, I think, backed him up by pointing out how this has already happened in Germany. Does this political fragmentation at the European Parliament level, does this, will this impact the transatlantic relationship? For example, we are entering into the negotiations over the successor to TTIP. Will the Parliament's flavor, if you will, or color impact that? There's Russia, there's inevitable conflict between Europe and Russia, where the United States will be a party. China will not go away. The steel and aluminum are just a prelude to a wider policy that will nearly really involve Europe. In other words, does that fragmentation at the European Parliament level, will this be a factor in how the EU and the United States structure these three, just as an example, structure these three policy platforms going forward in 2019? Lady in the green behind you. Hi, my name is Mary Amadavi. My question is regarding, you know, now that the EU is sort of separating itself a little bit from US or becoming more independent, how do they bypass some of the issues such as the Iran contract, that, you know, the Iran nuclear deal, which is really still no information if the EU can by itself work on that, bypassing US sanctions and all that. Is it a possibility for EU to collaborate more with China and India and other big economies that maybe that way they separate them when they separate them? Some for a little bit from US, they do have the other side that maybe will, you know, involve countries that are not necessarily, you know, in favor of, for US or US allies. Maybe I can go to you first, Karen. This notion about fragmentation, especially after the European elections, impacting the traditional transatlantic agenda. Trade was mentioned, but also maybe Russia sanctions policy. China, I think for instance, there's this discussion in Brussels about investment screening. Could these issues that are issues on the transatlantic agenda potentially be impacted as you see it by a new European parliament with potentially a greater populist footprint? Well, we have a European parliament today that has a pretty impressive populist footprint. I mean, 30% of European parliament members today, I would argue are very solidly in the Eurosceptic camp. I think we're likely to see that group grow post-May. How much? Could it go up to 40%? Maybe, but maybe 35%. So we're still not talking about a majority of the European parliament. And the European parliament, of course, would be a key actor if there were to be a trade deal with the US, if there were some TTIP version. I'm relatively pessimistic that we would get to a place where we actually would have something, even a smaller version of TTIP agreed. I'm actually quite concerned that there's still a very real prospect that the United States could slap car tariffs on Europe. And the reason I worry about that is even though Juncker and Trump had their smoke-to-peace pipe and we have averted that for now, what we've seen over the past year and a half is that President Trump really has done most of the things he said he was going to do. I mean, he pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement. He pulled the US out of the Iran nuclear deal, which you referenced, and we could go down the list. We're all familiar with it. And he's had a bee in his bonnet for 30 years about European cars, particularly German cars driving down Fifth Avenue. And so I worried that we're more likely to see greater trade friction in the relationship with Europe than we are movement toward a trade agreement. That said, brush the sanctions certainly. I mean, we'll see later this year whether the European Council will in fact renew those sanctions for another six months. I think we're very likely to see that. Even though we know there are differences of views among the 28, we have seen a consensus that's held since 2014 in the European Union around those sanctions. I think the reason for that is Germany's been such a strong backer of those sanctions. And I think when certain smaller EU countries that have deep relationships with Russia make the calculation of which country is more important, they come down feeling like, well, let's not break the consensus in the EU. Interestingly, Italy has been the most recent country to say that it is eager to break that consensus. Deputy Prime Minister Salvini has been leading the charge on that. And we will see if he decides to break consensus in December. My guess is he will not. There may be too many other fires burning that Salvini needs to attend to rather than breaking that consensus. And what you mentioned earlier, which is what's playing out right now between Ukraine and Russia, I think will make it very difficult for EU member states to not keep in place existing sanctions, never mind, consider putting in place new sanctions. And the Iran pieces are really interesting one because there we've seen the EU, and in particular Federica Mogherini sort of stand up and say, hey, we are gonna develop a special purpose vehicle to allow the European Union not to have to be subject to secondary sanctions that the US is putting into place. And the challenge there is the US dollar is the major reserve currency in the world. And US banks play an outsized role in the global financial system. So it's actually very challenging for the EU to figure out how to circumvent those secondary sanctions. A, and B, we've already seen virtually every major European company that had invested in Iran say we're out because the US economy is far more important to our company than the Iranian economy and we can't take the risk of the US imposing those sanctions on us. So I think there are places where the EU does have leverage. I'm not sure that that's a place at least in 2018 or 2019 where the EU has that option. What about, Ambassador, what about this notion that the cost of the disagreements Iran was mentioned but one could also think of transatlantic disagreements on the Paris climate accords, on trade tariffs, and the list goes on and on. What about this notion, again, going back to the debate of maybe strategic autonomy, the need for Europe to stand on its own feet apart from the United States, not just on defense but on wider foreign policy issues, maybe strike its own relationship with China. Do you sense that there is appetite for those type of conversations in European capitals or is the focus really on trying to manage these disagreements with Washington and maintain the transatlantic agreement? Well, these ideas are as old as the European Union is. Nothing new here and I think it's important to keep in mind that the disagreements that we have are more tactical in nature. There is no disagreement on Iran as to the end state strategic goal, the European Union, their free Iran, as is the American administration. The difference is in the tactical realm. The strategic autonomy, of course, who wouldn't want to be able to implement their own policies? There's nothing shocking here. The European Union is a major economic zone and it wants to play a bigger political role in the world. It has been the case for decades now. We set it out publicly. There is no desire in Europe to divorce from the United States. There is less anti-Americanism in European political circles today than there was in the 2000s or even in the 1990s. There is more interest in maintaining strong trans-line ties today than there was 10 or 20 years ago. So of course there will be arguments and there are arguments these days that we can hear better than we were able to hear the arguments 10, 15, 20 years ago because of the way media has changed. And now the more inflammatory the rhetoric, the more important for political leaders it is to be seen as acting independently. That's obviously taking place and there is no desire for a divorce from the United States in Europe. We have a few minutes left for questions. Let's start with the gentleman in the back. Move our way down. Just a quick question. There are perhaps five high-profile EU membership issues that have not really been discussed today and I wanted to invite the panel to comment on the outlook for any of these five if you care to project Scotland. Turkey, Catalonia, Gibraltar and Northern Ireland. All candidates for EU membership of some sort or another what is the future for any of them? Excellent, so let's park it out and let's go to David in the middle. Hi, David Armitage, State Department. You've all done a wonderful job of analyzing many of the issues that were expected to see in 2019 and I wanted to ask and invite any of you to look at what you think in your own personal analysis would be a wild card in 2019. Something that the majority of people are not currently looking at. Apart from Catalonia and Northern Ireland. Thank you. Finally, gentleman up front here. Thanks, Jean-François Bertin with CEPI, Paris Think Tank. It's a question to the ambassador from Estonia. How wise is it on the part of Europe to bet on a sort of eternal commitment of the US to European security given the comments made by the previous administration on this issue and the likelihood that the US is going to be in a quasi-Cold War with China in the years to come? So we have excellent questions. We have about four minutes. Why don't we start with Fred and work our way down. So we have the first questions about the first questions about the outlook and we had these various regions part of Europe from Scotland all the way to Gibraltar. We had a question about the wild card and then this final question about US commitment. Sure, if ambassador want to go first. Yeah, that's a very good question. There's a lot I would like to change in the world that I cannot. Estonia is a country of 1.3 million. I'd like Estonia to be a country of 1.3 billion. We're getting richer and richer every year. I think we're number 37 or 38 in the world when it comes to per capita. We'd like to be number one. No question about it. There are things that we however cannot do that are not realistic in the time that we live in maybe in a hundred years. As I understand it, when the 13 colonies declared themselves independent, the population was close to 2 million, 2.5 million and in less than a few hundred years, the United States has grown into what the United States today is. So who knows, maybe in 200 years we'll all be speaking Estonia and eating Estonian cuisine in France. We're gonna make Estonia a great country. Not vice versa. Estonia has always been great. Once the United Kingdom leaves the European Union, the defense expenditures of the European Union will be an even smaller percentage of NATO defense expenditures than it is today. We need to start fixing these problems and we are on the right path. We are increasing defense spending. We are becoming more effective when it comes to building up defense capabilities, even though progress is awfully slow as progress always is. So I think we're on the right path. But when we look at the challenges that we face in Europe and in the Western world, it is not simply possible for us to handle all of the problems alone, even if we'd like to do it. So Estonia would obviously love to do everything alone, as I'm sure Europe would as a body politic. But the reality is that at least in the coming decades we cannot. The other aspect of the question is do we want to? Do we want to? At the end of the day, we on the European sides of the Atlantic share so much with our friends and colleagues here in the United States. When it comes to the basic values, the way we organize our societies, our economic models, we share more with the Americans than we share with anybody else in the world. So why would we not work on the problems that are increasingly global in nature together with the people that we share our viewpoints most with? There will always be disagreements. And there will always be disagreements amongst Europeans, not only between Northern Europeans and Southern Europeans. There will be disagreements between Northern Europeans and between Southern Europeans. There will be disagreements within our societies. That's the normal way of life. But as the world is becoming more complicated and as the problems that we face will increasingly be global in nature, it not only makes sense for us to stick together in this transatlantic alliance, this is a natural for us, I think, for Europeans and for the Americans as well. Quickly, Karen, any wild parts that you can think through? Three quick points. For David's question, Pierre was mentioning the quiescence of the markets in the case of Italy. And I think all of us still believe the world is as it was and rationality wins out over emotion. Even though over the past year and a half we've seen so many of our assumptions challenged and not hold. So I think we should be preparing for a cliffhead to break it, a hard break it. That is not impossible. We should imagine that the Italian government is not gonna say, oh, we'll change our budget and we'll do what Brussels is asking. So I think on all of those cases where in the past we would have said, oh, common wisdom will prevail. No, all bets are off. So I think there's a list of wild cards that we really should be thinking about. EU enlargement, I just don't see it happening for a very long time. I mean, some of the places you mentioned would be predicated on the UK breaking up. I don't see that in the short term. And I just think there's no appetite among existing EU member states to bring in more countries. And then just the last point, because I don't think we've talked enough about it and it's the China point. I think that if you're an American looking out at the world the major strategic challenge for us is arising China. And that's what we should be focusing on. And I don't think it's a Cold War approach to it. I think we should be reflecting on how can we bandwagon with our closest allies. Whether you like TPP and TTIP or not that certainly was a strategic approach to how to extend a rules-based order and encourage China to accede to it. No doubt we need different policies today, but today the Europeans are in a different place. And I think Europe sees China as a strategic challenge in a way it didn't five years ago, never mind 10 years ago. You see it in the conversations around the Sipheus-like model, how do we manage Chinese investments. You see it because the Europeans, it's not about the Europeans going to China, it's about China going west with Belt and Road. And so I think if this administration were interested in thinking about how to engage the Europeans and work strategically to try to engage China, that could be a very positive area for transatlantic cooperation. Sure. Listening to Karina, which I very much agree, I was struck by this idea that we could be facing suddenly a world that is totally changing. I thought that that was very much under the influence of Trump's politics to a large extent. And I think you're right, you're absolutely right, because Trump has quite often done the unexpected. But Europeans from that point of view are totally different, I still think so. And there is a resiliency more of when they face all those huge challenges they have been facing in recent years that show that the traditional way of muddling through, of finding compromises, whatever, as the ambassador was saying, managing in spite of our divisions to find a way through, this is really what is going to go on for many years still in Europe. So on the five, the five, my point would be, it will be most, I may be wrong, and I hope I'm just maybe to some extent but I think it will be mostly status quo. Northern Ireland, Scotland, Catalonia, I think the Catalonia crisis is behind us to a large extent. Gibraltar, I don't see much change there and I don't see much change with Turkey either because nobody at the moment is really believing that Turkey is gonna be soon a member of the European Union. So that's my first point. My second point about what has just been said about China and I totally agree here again that the European are living up to the challenge of China. But our main problem with the current American administration is that I don't think we have the same strategy about China, it is in its usual way the European Union will be looking from some sort of win-win situation where we can push back China but at the same time find a way of working with China. It's the new communication on connectivity with Asia. We need to have transparency, a level playing field but if we got that it's okay, we can work with China. I don't think this administration in this country is looking for the same outcome. They're looking for something that would be much more hard, a real fight pushing back China to a large extent and I think that makes a real difference and one of the reasons why because I think this administration is very smart, they don't want to discuss, they don't want Europe on board with them when they discuss with China. They want a bilateral confrontation. They don't want the help of Europe on this and it's not only Europe, it's Japan, it's Australia, it's Canada. They want it to do it on their own and every time the Europeans are coming back to this administration saying could we do it together? We have the same agenda. The answer is no. Last point, the wild card, if I may, West Balkans. West Balkans, whether it be Serbia against Kosovo or Bosnia-Azegovina, the Europeans to some extent have lost sight of the ball in recent years and I think this is going to strike back with a vengeance in the year ahead. Final quick word. Super quick, in a way I agree with everybody. I agree with Ambassador that we should really Europe and the US should really work more closely together. This is why we're doing this program as well. I mean, we are each other's best partner even if we should get it. But I also agree with very much with Karen that we live, we analyze the future with an eye on the past. And if you think about the great empires, the Romans didn't really realize when the empire was crumbling down and I'm afraid six more years of this will be very far apart, Europe and the US. Talking about China and Italy, Giovanni, one of my major issues of disagreement with him with Summer was that his first mission was a whole week in China for God's sake without having set an agenda for a visit in the US. And I'm saying, you're not going for a week in China and not have a visit in the US. This is not who we are. This is not our politics and yet he did. This was the first out of four high-level visit in China, all begging them to buy our debt. The result was what? The Italy bought the Chinese debt. So beware, white card, this integration of the UK as we know it. If you read, history has this large colonial library I narrated my book from my great grandfather. Ireland doesn't exist among the British colonies because it was part of the country. I think Brexit is the last act of decolonization, the last of the UK as we know it. And in the midterm, it will lead to a much smaller Britain. We'll see. Well, certainly this conversation will continue. Thank you all for joining today. And please join me in thanking our panel. Thank you.