 Hi, I'm Alias Palme, I'm the EU Affairs Researcher at the IIA, and I spoke with our Director-General, Dave Vassouloune, about his key take-aways from the State of the European Union address by persons along the line, Presidents of the European Commission. So, looking at the themes of the speech, I think strategic autonomy was one of the major ones. Are we looking at a more muscular European Union in terms of economic policy, possibly economic intervention? What are some of the proposals? I think there's no doubt about that. The State is back post-pandemic, with the war in Ukraine. There is a strong case for more public intervention. I think she did a very good job of putting the notion of strategic autonomy in context. In other words, we cannot be excessively vulnerable to external dependence. Whether that's oil and gas from Russia, whether that's rare earths from China, or even other products, we have to develop a capacity to produce some of this stuff ourselves, not all of it, and we have to make some choices, and that's not easy. She mentioned the batteries as an example of a success. Will the chips have the same success? Needs a lot of money, but it's highly ambitious. But also to diversify our supplies, and to build relationships around the world that enable us never to go back to being excessively dependent on one supplier who may turn out not to be a friend. I think in that sense, she's made strategic autonomy something more understandable than simply an abstract thing of, well, we depend less on, we're less reliant on America or whatever. It's about our ability to continue our way of life with less risk of being destabilized by the bad behavior of some key partner. In terms of the foreign relations of the European Union in terms of the US, of the UK, Russia, China, further roll, etc. Do you see any changes coming there from the enlargement agenda to kind of Europe's place in the world? Yeah, I mean, obviously, the immediate challenge we face is the neighborhood, because we have this ring, he's made Benchie's expression, we have a circle of friends but who are, you know, looking for different types of friendship. So we have the countries that want to join the European Union desperately, the Western Balkans, now Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia. We have Turkey, do they still want to join the European Union? Are we still keen to have them in the European Union? And then we have the countries who are very important partners, but who clearly don't want to join the European Union. So the UK is perfectly level, because they just left, but we have Switzerland, and we have Norway. So how do we kind of build all of this into some kind of coherent, wider European circle? That's the idea of the European political community, which will meet in Prague on the 6th of October, and let us see where that idea goes. And then of course we have Europe's place in the world, obviously. I thought she was quite outspoken on China, pointing to China rather as a source of concern, and then as a sort of important partner, which we sometimes refer to. She didn't say too much about the United States, but clearly the war in Ukraine has made the relationship, the transatlantic relationship ever more important. On the other hand, we cannot ignore what is happening in domestic American politics. We don't know what the midterms will bring. We don't know more importantly what 2024 will bring. If we were to find ourselves with Mr Trump back in the White House or Trump 2.0, that could change that dynamic. But I thought overall she got the balance right on that today, particularly the emphasis on our immediate neighborhood, because that is the area over which we can have most direct influence. And I think a final question would be the prospect of treating reform, the idea of opening up a convention for the European Union to use of inserting a clause on intergenerational solidarity. Is that a likely prospect? Do we see something coming out of that? Look, I think it's very courageous to put the prospect of a new European convention on the table. We know it's controversial. We know many member states do not want to go near treating change because it could mean a referendum or a difficult domestic debate in one form or another. On the other hand, she's absolutely right that if we want to enlarge, we will also have to reform. I was a bit surprised, to be honest with you, with the relatively narrow entry point to the idea about intergenerational, I mean, we're not going to have a European convention only on a clause of intergenerational solidarity. It could be part of the discussion. But if you have a convention, it clearly, the agenda will be much, much wider than that. So that just surprised me a little, the way it was presented. But I think sooner or later we're going to have to address the fact that our treaties as presently constituted are not fit for purpose of building a union of 20, 37 countries of the diversity from Portugal to Moldova. It's just, it won't work. So we're going to have to find a new way of working to adapt to that new reality.