 You're all very welcome to the IEA this afternoon. Just before I go on to introduce our speaker, the usual housekeeping rules. Mobile phones either off or certainly on silent, please. And Fern von Daal's address when it comes will be on the record. But the question and answer which will follow will be under the Chatham House rules. I'm just thinking that given the news this morning, Brexit does seem to consume all of our time and attention these days. But it's good to be reminded of the much more wide-ranging scope of this institute's ongoing work. And that includes the broader question of the future of the EU, presumably an EU of 27, and the various issues that are posed in that context, greater or lesser integration, the future of the euro, institutional change, and so on. And on one aspect of that, namely the EU and its place and potential in our changing world, we've had the benefit already at the IEA in recent days of sharing views with a distinguished speaker from Chicago, the Council on Foreign Relations there, on the apparent abdication of the United States leadership in the world. And yesterday from a speaker, Dr. Biscop, from the Eggmont Institute on EU external relations in an era of great powers. So to continue in this vein today's address is on opportunities for the European Union in the changing international order. And it's a great pleasure to welcome and introduce our speaker, Baron Transfondal, to this theme. He brings a very varied and deep experience to his presentation on the EU role and potential in a world undergoing significant repositioning of the major global powers. He has represented his own country, Belgium, founder member of the EU, in a number of positions bearing on the European Union and Europe, including as Director General for Political Affairs, permanent representative to the EU from 1997 to 2002, and Chief of Staff to Foreign Minister LaTerm. Most recently, he has been Chief of Staff to His Majesty the King of the Belgians. Secondly, serving in the broader European Union framework, Mr. Vandal has been Chief of Staff to the first President of the European Council. That institution has set up under the Lisbon Treaty, Herman van Rompuy, from late 2009, I think, until 2012. This is a position, obviously, at the heart of the EU's internal workings, but also a post with a significant international profile, not least in the Sherpa role conferred on the Chief of Staff for broader international meetings, not least the G7 and the G8. And finally, outside the strictly EU domain, Baron van Vandal has served as Belgian Ambassador to the United States from 2002 to 2006, Belgian Ambassador to NATO from 2007 to 2009. And I know that he has lectured at and retains links with Stanford, with Johns Hopkins, and in Europe with the College of Law. So drawing on these multiple vantage points, we certainly look forward to your address at a time when, as a former Irish permanent representative to the EU, which is here today, Bob McDonough, as he wrote in yesterday's newspaper, has said the EU is seen by many as a bulwark in the defense of the infrastructure of decency and rational debate, which generations of us have striven to build up. The floor is yours. Thank you very much for your introductory remarks. In the first part, I will be slightly more diplomatic than in the second part, but I was used to this kind of convention when I came to the first time to the Institute five years ago. I would like to share with you some thoughts about the way the world is moving full speed ahead toward the new world disorder. And then I would like to share with you a couple of my thoughts on the place of the European Union in there. My bottom line is very simple. The world is in disorder, so more than ever, we need a strong European Union, but you don't need me to know that. First of all, the world disorder. Like some of you, I remember how the first wave of globalization, which I call the first wave of globalization between 1960 and 1990, just overwhelmed us in the 60s. Remember in the 60s, when I was in high school, we had five hours of Greek, five hours of Latin, five hours of French, four hours of Dutch, and only in the three last years of high school, every week, one hour of German and one hour of English. So the Anglo-Saxon world was not on the screen yet. Then came Dr. No, and West Side Story, and Ledefi American. And so we were living in this first wave of globalization, just mentioning two particularities of this first wave of globalization. It was partial in the sense that it only extended to the countries which were allies of the United States or were living under the American umbrella. It was a partial. And secondly, it was an organized globalization. We had structures which had been built under American leadership. Since the Second World War, we had the WTO, we had the Bretton Woods Institutions, and so on, we had NATO, and we had leadership. American leadership. So this first wave of globalization worked actually quite well. It was structured, and it was led. Then happens the fall of the Berlin Wall. And then we see that we won the Cold War, like President Busch said, we discovered that the United States, having won the Cold War, started the slow inexorable process of withdrawal from global responsibilities. This withdrawal during the second wave of globalization after 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the second wave of globalization. In the second wave of globalization, we had this American withdrawal on the one hand. It took different forms with Democratic presidents and Republican presidents. On the Democratic side, there was an increasing reticence against military intervention. On the Republican side, withdrawal took the form of trying to withdraw from the multilateral system. And so instead of being in a world was strongly structured and which was led, like we were in the first wave of globalization, in the second wave, we have the absence, the withdrawal of the American disengagement. What was filling the void? Basically, the void was being filled with Asia, China in more in particular. And even today, it's so obvious that during the second wave of globalization, there was a gigantic shift of power from west to east. Look at it ideologically. I mean, the Chinese will always tell you that it's perfectly possible to have prosperity without liberty. They are quite vocal about what they think about, or democratic, et cetera, values. So there was a hydrological shift. There was, of course, a military shift. If you see the military buildup in Asia, it is quite impressive. And there was, of course, a shift of economic power. So in the second wave, you have this withdrawal from its traditional responsibilities by the United States. And you had the void being filled, not by the European Union, but in Asia. So where does that lead us? We are now reverting to a disorderly world. We have known that in our past in Europe. You have a world of shifting alliances. You have a world with arms race. You have a world without much of a rulebook. So this has become something much more unpredictable than we knew in the past. Some people say, well, what is going to define the times we are living in? It's going to be the rivalry between an emerging power, China, and a declining power, the United States. This book of Graham Allison about Tukedidus' strap is worth reading. He tries to prove that, where generally speaking, a declining power meets an emerging power that ends in war, safe in one case, he describes, which is between the United States and the United Kingdom. And he tries now to define. He tries now to define the conditions under which between China and the United States, a rivalry should remain under control. Now, Graham's book was written, I think, before the presidential election in the United States. Because what we are seeing is not necessarily conducive to a more stable situation, it's clear that China has been put on the defensive. The rule which the Chinese leadership has been following is we just have to bide our time. And I put this nearly under quotation marks, because I think it has been used several times, even in official statements. And I think the arrival of President Trump was a surprise to them, as it may have been a surprise to many others. And so the timing we have the time to bide our time is not necessarily there anymore. And so there are, I think, on the defensive. On the American side, President Trump, in a way, is representative of both the Republican strain of withdrawal and the democratic strain of withdrawal, like I defined them. But he has become aware that you cannot just withdraw from responsibility. And he has been compensating that phenomenon, of which, in certain ways he's an expression, he has been compensating that by expounding and practicing this America first theory. It hides, in a way, the ongoing withdrawal, I think, of the United States from a number of its responsibilities. So yes, there is a void. Yes, there is disorder. Yes, the president of the United States is aware of that. He tries, in a way, to fill it in his own fashion. And so when you follow American politics, we all know there is much more to it than just the antics. Now, where is Europe in all that? We have been doing rather well economically, even externally, the climate agreement, the deal with Iran, trade norms and standards. So a number of things we have been doing well, which are part of filling the void. Enlargement was a success as well. So people should know that, yes, we have been exporting stability. Yes, we have been contributing to filling the void. But we show, as well, every day a lot of weaknesses. I think we suffer from a number of divisions internally between North and South, the whole story about solidarity. Between East and West, the whole story about balance between national sovereignty and commonality. Externally, well, we have diplomatically too many players on the book. Militarily speaking, there are a couple of building blocks around, but nobody is dealing with us. I mean, no external factor is dealing with us with the idea at the back of its head that, oh, these guys, they can be quite dangerous. So our weaknesses are glaring. We have a number of merits, but our weaknesses are glaring. And so what can we do about it? Are the political conditions there to do something about it? Will the conditions be there, let's say, after Brexit? Because Britain, rightly and wrongly, or wrongly, has been scapegoated for having made a number of things impossible. Sometimes they did make things impossible, but not always. But when you move over and beyond Brexit, what are we then going to do? Who is going to be in the driving seat? Well, I think the traditional driver, the Franco-German couple, doesn't seem to me, at the time of speaking, politically strong. I hope they are, because they are indispensable to a common interest. But the political, the domestic difficulties, both in France and in Germany, are not in themselves very promising on a very active Franco-German couple. Again, I hope I'm wrong. But it's not helping for the time being, I think. Then around public opinions, populism and make it even more difficult. Still, what should we try and do, nevertheless? First of all, in the short term, we should try and complete and finish the two main questions of deepening we put on the table after the fall of the Berlin Wall, is the common currency and the common border. I think we are rather far as the common currency is concerned. I hope that in December, the last nuts will be tied on issues like the European Monetary Fund, the transformation of the European stability mechanism into a European Monetary Fund. I hope that we will make progress in respect to the deposit protection. But on the common currency, a lot has been done as a consequence and during the euro prices. Then the common border, a number of measures to strengthen the border have been taken. I think negotiations with the Turks and with whomever is in power in Libya made a huge difference as well in the number of people coming across the Mediterranean. But still, I think on that second one, there is more to be done than on the common currency because the crisis of the common border has come so much later than the crisis of the common currency. And just building strong borders is only part of the answers. We have to look at something which is genuinely difficult. It's a common asylum policy, common immigration policy. We have tried that a couple of times in the past. It didn't work out because for the simple reason is that, of course, your immigration policy is very much a matter of national competence, national power, and national politics. And what is possible in one country is not possible in the other country. I remember being in the chair of the Committee of Permanent Representatives and trying to do something on common immigration policy. At that time, the differences between the sensitivities in Germany and the sensitivities in France were extreme. So you couldn't build out of that kind of a common position. And I think mainly we are still there. But just having a tight border is important, is part of the solution. But there are a number of corollaries which are difficult to make. But well, these are the kinds of subjects for which the Brussels machine is well equipped. That kind of negotiation, it's complex and complicated. And as long as things are complex and complicated, we tend to be good at it, look at the Brexit. Just to conclude there in the longer term, I think we have a problem of methodology. You can approach further integration either through the road of objectives and aims, or you can approach it to the road of means and instruments. As far as our aims are concerned, we have been rather successful in explaining in the past to a public opinion that the European Union had a value added in terms of security and prosperity. And people accepted that. They could see it. The next step which some people like my former Prime Minister Giverofstad is trying to make is to ask the question about our common institutions. And then he has written about it extensively in his book, The United States of Europe, to which I contributed my own little part. It's obvious that member states, even if the pressure heaped upon them were to be much higher, it is obvious that for most member states, going further in terms of political integration, going further in terms of transferring additional powers to Brussels, and given the state of public opinion is something which is not obvious for them to do. But we should try, nevertheless, to continue developing a narrative about why are we making Europe. We lose a lot of credit with public opinion because we do not explain sufficiently because we disagree on it over and beyond I mean prosperity and security. What is this game all about? And well, there are a couple of discussions which have taken place already in the European Council, the discussions to come, discussions you have here. But how can you define a common objective in the European integration process? A common objective, which is credible and credible in the sense that people say, well, this is a smart thing to do. And moreover, yes, this could be politically acceptable. And I don't think we have already found and defined that. But we shouldn't stop thinking about it. The other way to approach European integration is the old Schumann method, step by step, and organic growth. And if you have an internal market that leads inexorably to a common currency union. And I think that in daily life that remains to my view the only practical way in advancing Europe. But by using that way of doing business, at the same time, you do it at the price of not explaining what you are really, really doing well. You say, well, I do this. And then after a year, people will discover you have to do this. But you have not explained why we are doing this. So this remains for us all quite a daunting challenge to which I don't have a precise answer. One thing which, and I will leave it there, given the state of disorder of the world, we will come again and again to the question of common foreign policy and common defense. I think that as far as common defense is concerned, the one country which has most to offer in that respect is France, given the simple fact that they have the strongest military and the hugest military investments. But are the conditions there for them to play that card? They have already been instrumental in two things. That was the cooperation structurée permanente and the intervention initiative. Those are important steps. We have a nucleus of headquarters in Brussels. That's an important step. So we have been doing bits and pieces. But when will the conditions be ripe for these bits and pieces to come together so that then, and only then, Europe will become a real factor of power in the world and be part of filling the void? I'm not sure that, let me leave it at that, that soft power without hard power is real power. Thank you.