 Delighted to be joined by Hans Goodinani, Senior Research Fellow at Chattopaz and Associate Fellow at the Institute for German Studies at Birmingham University. You're very, very welcome to the Institute today. Thank you for having me. Hans, I'm wondering if I start with the global shift in power has substantially altered in recent years. What do you think the European Union can do to be a more effective global actor? And then what can Germany's role be in this? Well, to be honest, I think that Europe has got, I mean, if we're talking about the EU, has enough of its own sort of internal problems, frankly. And I think that it's going to be quite difficult for the EU to play a global role until it fixes its internal problems. I mean, this is basically the whole set of problems that go back to the Euro crisis, the sort of four lines between the north and south of Europe, the west and the east of Europe, that came out particularly in the refugee crisis. And I think that those internal, those internal kind of four lines really prevent Europe from being able to play a bigger global role. So I'm rather skeptical that Europe is going to be able to play some big role as an actor. And in relation to Germany, do you think it can play more? Well, I mean, Germany I think is in many ways is a big part of the problem. I think it's holding back Europe from playing that kind of role. The most obvious way in which it does that is the way that it doesn't spend enough on security, which makes it quite difficult just for Europeans to defend themselves without, for example, American support, unless alone playing some kind of role, for example, you know, beyond European Asian security, for example. It's pretty unthinkable that, you know, it's pretty difficult to imagine how Europe can do that unless Germany starts to play a much more active role in European security. Okay, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel played a major role, a leading role in EU politics for well over a decade. But Angela Kramp-Karrenbauer was widely seen as her chosen successor and she's recently announced that she will not stand for the position of Chancellor. So how has this affected internal politics in Germany? Well, I mean, it means that there'll be sort of protracted leadership struggle, you know, in terms of who's going to become the next leader of the Christian Democrats. And that then will have a knock-on effect for who the next Chancellor will be. So it means that Germany will be preoccupied with that for the next, you know, months, perhaps a year or two even. But actually, I think that it doesn't make that much of a difference in terms of German policy. It's not partly because, you know, in a way, regardless of who the German Chancellor is, the way that German politics functions is that you have to have such a sort of... There's such a consensus in German politics in the first place around all of the big issues, whether it's economic issues or security issues. And so I don't think the new Chancellor is going to make a huge difference one way or the other. But in any case, structurally, because of the way that German politics works with the federal system and, you know, often the need for, you know, coalition building, actually, you know, you have to sort of reach this kind of consensus with other parties anyway. So I don't think, you know, I don't think there's going to be a big change in German policy almost regardless of who the next leader of the Christian Democrats or the next Chancellor is going to be. OK. And you've described Germany as a semi-hegemon in the EU. What do you actually mean by this? And how do you think this position might be changing as well? So that's really interesting. Basically, I've been arguing for the last, you know, five years or so against the idea that Germany is a hegemon in Europe. Lots of people have claimed that it's a hegemon or a reluctant hegemon, which kind of suggests that it's not yet a hegemon, but it could be if it's overcame this kind of mental block that it has about leading Europe. I think that's wrong. I don't think Germany has the resources to be a European hegemon. In fact, I think that's one of the lessons of European history is that Germany is not big enough to be a European hegemon. And one illustration of that, one very, very simple illustration of that, is if you look at the size of the German economy as a share of the eurozone economy, so forget Britain, forget, you know, the other EU member states that aren't members of the eurozone. If you just look at the eurozone, German GDP is 28% of the eurozone's GDP. That's quite big. It's not that big. If you put Italy and France together, that's a bigger share of eurozone GDP than Germany's, which illustrates that Germany is not really in a position to be a hegemon. So I think Germany is in this kind of in-between position that it was historically as well of being a semi-hegemon. It's not quite big and powerful enough to be a hegemon, but it's also somehow too big for the sort of balance that existed in Europe previously. And so that, I think, creates a certain kind of instability. Having said all that, it's clearly not like the classical German question, which was all about military power. This is basically about economic power. So I'm not suggesting that, you know, there's any kind of danger of war in Europe. What I think is now changing is that with the uncertainty about the US security guarantee to Europe, suddenly I think now the balance between France and Germany has shifted a bit. Basically France has become more powerful relative to Germany. Germany has become a bit weaker relative to France than it was before, which I think actually could be a good thing because I think the problem went wrong in the EU in the last decade or so is with the balance between France and Germany, you know, it was basically off. And so in a funny way, I think the uncertainty about the US security guarantee could be a good thing for Europe. It could help restore the balance within Europe and ultimately it could help, I think, resolve some of the economic questions around the Eurozone that France and Germany and the rest of the Eurozone have been fighting about for a decade now. And speaking of that Franco-German relationship, it's always been described as the driving force behind the European project. How do you really see that unfolding in the future in the coming years of how that relationship will work out? I mean, I think that the first thing to say is that historically it was the driving force, but I think that with the widening of the European Union in the 2000s, that ceased to work in the way they did before. It wasn't enough anymore for France and Germany to agree on something to get wider agreement in the EU. There's a whole new set of fault lines now, particularly between West and East, and you see them on many issues, France and Germany actually on the same side of the argument, and many member states on the other side. So I don't think the Franco-German relationship in any case works in the way that it used to, at this kind of basis for a wider European agreement. But in any case, my hope, as I say, is that the new uncertainty about the US security guarantee gives France a little bit more leverage than it's had over the last decade, and that could lead ultimately to a kind of a new kind of deal between France and Germany that would be good for the rest of Europe. And finally, turning to the European Commission, the Commission has made climate change and climate action one of its key or top priorities. Where does Germany stand on the European Green Deal? Well, it's a very interesting question. Germany talks a good game on the environment. I mean, it's rhetorically very committed to preventing climate change. I mean, on the surface it looks like one of the greenest countries in the world, Germany. But actually, if you scratch the surface a little bit, actually Germany's record is not that great. And again, to come back to the Franco-German relationship, another good example of this is the way that Germany bans nuclear power but continues to rely on French nuclear power. One of the other consequences of banning nuclear power is that it's had to increase its dependence on fossil fuels. So actually, the reality is a little bit different from the rhetoric in Germany on the Green New Deal. But also, the really interesting aspect of that is that, you know, Germans are so opposed to basically Keynesian kind of deficit spending that actually a real Green New Deal is quite difficult to do in Germany, not because of the lack of commitment to environmentalism, but because of opposition, as I say, to investments, basically. So I think it's quite interesting when I compare the debate about the Green New Deal in America with the Green New Deal debate in Germany. In America, the bit that lots of Americans have a problem with is the green part. In Germany, nobody really has a problem with that, but they have a problem with the New Deal part, i.e. the idea of actually investing in a big way. So as I understand it, what's happened is that, you know, the Green New Deal European Commission is now putting forward, has been basically hollowed out, involves very small sums of money, and that's partly to do with German resistance to the idea of spending a lot on investment. Okay. Thank you very much for joining us here today. Hans, good night. Thank you.