Artwork © Arnaud Dechiron

There’s been a lively debate in Germany recently on the future of the transatlantic relationship. Is the postwar alliance destined for the dustbin of history?
SERGEY LAGODINSKY: I really don’t think it’s possible to replace the transatlantic relationship, its vision and values. And another point that is important to me: you cannot have it all! If Europe does not have a special, close, westward-looking relationship with the United States, then the continent will be drawn toward the East. We Europeans are not strong enough to develop and sustain our own sense of mission. Rather, we will come under pressure from the East.
One thing is new, though, and German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel touched on this recently: For the first time since World War II, we need a foreign policy strategy for the US. The question is, what kind of strategy?

Gabriel also spoke of a vacuum that exists as a consequence of US President Donald Trump’s policies. What if the other player in this relationship no longer shares the same values and goals in foreign and security policy?
LAGODINSKY: You have to keep trying, you have to be inventive, and you have to be interesting to the other party. And the other party is not just President Trump. There are a variety of other players in the US we can work with – on climate change, on refugee policies, and so on. This is something we are doing at the Heinrich Böll Foundation. The underlying idea is that, yes, we have to have a strategy vis-à-vis the present US government, but also one that addresses US society in its complexity and in its diversity, including on the level of the federal states. We should not write the US off as a country just because Donald Trump is making calls we cannot identify with.

Constanze, you are currently visiting from Washington. How does the debate look from your perspective?
CONSTANZE STELZENMÜLLER: Managing the fact that now, there are two completely different conversations going on in Washington and in the rest of the country is incredibly challenging for us Europeans. But Sergey is right to say that we Europeans should do better at reaching out to those Americans—in Washington and elsewhere—who continue to believe their country should engage with the world.
We do also need to see that the hardliners in the current US administration believe that globalization and alliances are bad for America. They want America to make its international relationships transactional and based much more on interests than on shared values. This thinking is by no means limited to the president. It exists not just in Washington but in other parts of the US too—and in some quarters in Europe as well, of course.
For those of us who want to defend the model of a non-transactional alliance, of a relationship that is based on an embrace of globalization and a liberal international order, we have to realize that this dark view is more widespread than we like to believe. So we also have to find ways of countering this dark narrative. There are two ways of doing this: by taking on a greater share of the burden ourselves; and by striving to correct the disadvantages globalization has brought to some groups in our societies.

How does this argument look from a Central and Eastern European perspective? When we are talking about the forces on the rise in the US―is that something that we also see in Eastern Europe?
MILAN NIč: Superficially, yes―there’s a less critical view of the Trump administration. But you have to realize that Central and Eastern Europe is no monolith; it doesn’t have a unified view. So there are the Polish and Hungarian governments voicing general agreement with Trump’s approach, and then you have critical voices – from within Poland and Hungary and elsewhere, like Slovakia where we see a more balanced view.
Overall, people do distinguish between Donald Trump on the one hand and the rest of the administration and Congress on the other. Arguments you hear often include: the US presence at NATO’s eastern flank is as strong as ever; the US effort to counter-balance the Russian threat is not lessening; there’s no decrease in the support for Ukraine, although that might be coming. You may call it delusion or denial, but the fact is that there’s a more optimistic view in parts of Central and Eastern Europe regarding the Trump administration. Some State Department appointments have certainly contributed to this – Kurt Volker, who is a very active Special US Representative for Ukraine, and Wess Mitchell, the new Assistant Secretary for Europe. Both are considered “friends of Central Europe,” and not so critical, if you will, toward the current governments in Poland and Hungary.
STELZENMÜLLER: Does it help the Poles or Polish society if the US government refuses to criticize the fact that the PiS government is rewriting the Polish constitution to undermine political pluralism and the independence of parliament and the judiciary?
NIč: It doesn’t help them, but the fact that the US keeps quiet helps the PiS government. It was no coincidence that Jaroslaw Kaczyński, the PiS leader, decided to proceed with the controversial judiciary reform a few days after Trump’s Warsaw speech last July.
At the same time, people in the Polish government were very nervous before Trump’s speech. They realized that they didn’t have any control over its messages, and they worried that Poland could be used as a platform to divide Europeans. They didn’t want that and still don’t. Unlike in Hungary, Poles are predominantly focused on the Russian threat, and they are concerned that if we are divided as Europeans, and Poland splits from Germany and France, it’s not good for Poland.
Hungary is different. Budapest has a different strategy of working at the margins of the EU and NATO and has its own independent relations with Russia and China. That said, there is still some criticism coming from some quarters of the US administration, especially the State Department, concerning illiberal tendencies in Hungary and Poland.
STELZENMÜLLER: That’s true. The State Department rebuked the Orbán government for the anti-Semitic campaign against George Soros and his organization, as well as for the crackdown on NGOs.
NIč: I think Orbán was caught by surprise, he expected a much smoother ride with the Trump administration. That hasn’t been the case so far. None of these illiberal leaders from Central Europe has been welcomed to the White House yet. In contrast, Romanian President Klaus Iohannis met Trump in the Rose Garden.
STELZENMÜLLER: Yes—but let’s get back to Trump’s Warsaw speech for a moment. He stopped just short of comparing the EU to the Soviet Union. He suggested that the West was under threat—not the West of open, liberal, representative, democratic society, but a Christian West of hyper-conservative values. There was a lot of dog whistling in that speech, and not just against the EU, but also against Germany. Trump repeated similar criticism of Europe very recently, in a speech in Pensacola, Florida.
NIč: Nevertheless, for many Europeans, the calculation runs like this: There is Vladimir Putin, and in the short term he is our biggest threat. Thus we need to keep the Americans engaged in NATO and slow down their disengagement for as long as we can. If Trump tells Europe, “Buy more arms and comply with the NATO goal of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense,” Central and Eastern Europeans are more understanding. But some of them are like many Germans who know that they will not get there that fast.
Poland is among the few NATO members that spend more than 2 percent, but Trump’s transactional approach has not really paid off for them lately. Warsaw wanted to purchase Patriot missiles, but now it seems that the sale will not go through. When Trump was in Warsaw, he promised the US would deliver more liquified natural gas to Poland – but again, there are no contracts yet. In other words, the Trump world view isn’t always based on realities.
LAGODINSKY: The question is: by focusing so much on the US president, don’t we invite our publics to start believing that the US is fundamentally different from us, that the election of Donald Trump heralds an irreversible change?
STELZENMÜLLER: I’m not saying that. But there are other people who are using this turbulent and confusing phase to claim that America is abandoning Europe, and that Atlanticism is over. Including in this country.
LAGODINSKY: That’s why when other German Atlanticists and I published the Transatlantic Manifesto back in October 2017, we stressed that Trump is not necessarily representative of the US at large. We called him a president sui generis.
STELZENMÜLLER: I think all three of us are in agreement that America has not changed fundamentally, and that we Europeans still have allies in America, including in Washington. Take the mayors or governors who want to stay in the Paris climate agreement. But there is another school of thinking that genuinely wants to disengage. And I’m saying that we need to work harder to convince that part of America that this is a really bad idea—bad for us and bad for them.

What will remain after Trump, though? The US engagement in the world has changed dramatically since Obama. Do you really think that the US will come back and play its former role again?
LAGODINSKY: No, history doesn’t repeat itself. But there is a good chance that after Trump the US will again be a more active, more internationalist, although maybe not more interventionist. We should not rule it out.

… and as focused on Europe?
LAGODINSKY: I think that despite the demographic change within the US and a changing global landscape, US elites still are interested in Europe, and they are frustrated about Europeans turning away. Obama called for the pivot to Asia, but was still interested in Europe. I have a feeling that in a sense the hasty turn-away from the US by many Germans is not caused by their emancipatory self-understanding, but by their betrayed wish to be loved and taken care of by America. This longing for fatherly love turns into complete rejection of “post-Atlanticist” as soon as reality falls short of their expectations. We need to grow up.

But Europe has lost its “father,” right?
LAGODINSKY: We’ll see – but even if that’s correct, we are still part of the same family. We should not start getting rid of our Western roots and our orientation toward the US just because we aren’t getting the attention we think we deserve. We should not underestimate the risk that our non-Western roots will lead to authoritarianism and populism.

The post “We Are Still Part of the Same Family” appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

Artwork © Arnaud Dechiron

We’d like to kick off with a recent speech by EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in which he outlined a vision for a European Union of the future. Was there anything in this speech that spoke to you?
Louisa Slavkova: There were quite a few interesting points. However, there was also some wishful thinking when it comes to the role of the non-governmental sector in Europe. The Commission would like to be in a more intense conversation with the NGOs, but this is something we’ve heard before – just like the commission says it would love to be closer to the citizens, which on a structural level isn’t really happening.
You could argue that national politicians are the ones who have to start a dialogue with citizens about the future of Europe, or members of the European parliament should be having these conversations when they go back home. But while these conversations do happen, they happen in a very small circle, so that basically the nature and substance of the EU still remain quite far away from citizens, at least in Bulgaria.

How should Europe engage with its population and implement reforms? Is this top-down, or bottom-up? How can we have a process that is more transparent and more democratic?
Daniel Kruse: Well, with our Open State collective we are holding what we call “innovation camps,” which offer one model for engagement. These are rather long-term events where we try to dig deep into issues and find new ideas. We just held one on politics, which we called the Open State of Politics. It was five days in a wild former botanical theme park in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, a, and we invited 20 political innovators from across the EU. We tried to make them break with their daily routine a little bit and encourage introspection.

This is slightly different than what Mr. Juncker outlined yesterday. From what you’re saying, your approach sounds more like a disruption than what is usually being done. Could you give an example of what was being discussed there?
Kruse: This camp invited “democracy innovators” who act outside of the parliamentary system and offer new approaches to politics. There were people from Liquid Democracy, people who have just founded a new party in Germany – Demokratie in Bewegung (“Democracy in Motion”) – people from the ZEIT Online project “#D17” who traveled around the country to meet and connect with people in rural areas. It was a highly diverse group, and we looked for something that they all shared, that all these different people cherished. We’re just having our first evaluation meeting today, so it’s very fresh.
But the question is how these innovators have an impact, or how these innovations become policies, at least in the mid- to long-term.

Did you come up with any ideas about to how to bring the EU closer to its citizens?
Kruse: There’s a couple of things. For example, we heard the story of a very active online hate commentator. When a journalist finally met him and interviewed him, he found out that this guy had kids, two cars, was voting for the Greens – he was a very settled employee in an IT company, and yet he felt completely left out by what happens in the EU. He can vote every four years for his own national government, but he has no influence at all on the EU level and doesn’t know what’s happening.

What’s it like in Bulgaria, Louisa? Is there also this feeling of being completely detached from what the EU does?
Slavkova: Well, you have to keep in mind that our country is still considered one of the new member states, so the whole narrative about why we are part of the EU is kind of in its first generation. The older generation, the one that was part of the conversation in the nineties about which direction we wanted to take – not East, but rather West – and that we wanted to become part of NATO and the EU, they know why they’re part of the Union, more or less. And when you travel around the country, you see these big signs all over the place that tell you “This project is supported by the cohesion fund” or “That project is supported by the structural fund,” so on that level the EU is visually present.
On top of that, a lot of people realize that the region in which we live is quite challenging, and one of the main sources of investment actually comes from various EU funds. So there is a very strong positive attitude.
On the other hand, we just had a democracy camp for young people in the South. When they speak about their future vision for democracy in this country, the EU does not come up. That is quite interesting, because this is the generation that was born way after 1989, and for them the EU is a given. For them, free travel and all the other added values of membership are a given. I was a student in Germany and had to renew my visa every three months, but for them that’s ancient history.
Engaging them in a conversation about the European Union when they actually don’t feel that they need to is quite a challenge.

Kruse: A main issue is that the EU was defined in its beginnings as an economic partnership, and was then elaborated by politicians and in contracts and in structures. There was less talk about soft issues, like the cultures of the EU and exchanges among people – real-world meetings of people so you really get to know your fellow Europeans. So we’re left with just this national identity, and really don’t know what the others are like.
People are only now starting to work on that. Threats like populism and the refugee crisis demand that we stick together, and unfortunately people are pointing fingers instead. Martin Schulz, the SPD’s candidate in the recent German elections, emphasized this, saying that we need to distribute this pressure on the shoulders of the many in the EU, rather than allow some countries to say we cannot take any more refugees. Only now is the EU defining itself, in response to pressure from the outside.
I think one of the main reasons that voters in rural areas voted for right-wing parties is because they lack the positive experiences of Europe – of traveling, of studying abroad, of meeting people. Maybe they’ve occasionally spent holidays in Italy, but that’s not really getting to know what it means to be European. Personally, I only really figured out how much I loved being European when I did a trip through Latin America; I felt it was very different, and I realized I actually like being European. It’s really only in opposition to other things that you get to know your identity.

You’ve both looked at civic participation with the government and the EU, albeit on different levels. Daniel, you co-founded reCampaign, which started as a side event to re:publica and now is one of Europe’s most important meetings on digitalized society; Louisa, you co-founded the Sofia Platform. Is there a way that governments can connect with these new ways in which citizens are using the internet?
Kruse: I’m always in favor of sectors talking to each other and learning from each other instead of seeing themselves as completely separate. If you look at the last re:publica conference, there was a big booth and a big publication from the German Ministry of Labor on “Work 4.0.” They had a huge brochure, and presented an alternative idea to basic income. The impetus to do that came from the digital side, where everyone was talking about basic income; the ministry’s initiative was a reaction to that.
Obviously there are bridges between the two camps, and politics can benefit from working with the digital community, including the world of start-ups, agile working, and non-hierarchical participation. Sometimes in the internet bubble people are really ahead of the curve. They’re thinking about building up alternative everyday lives where they circumvent failed state policies, where they have their own decision models, where it’s mostly about solidarity and not paying taxes to anywhere. That’s two steps ahead of where politics is.
I think that the people who visited our camp, who all have great potential, intentionally avoid the classic political system because they aim to be more radical and bolder, or work on their own smaller communities. They don’t really want to operate on a national or EU level anymore because it’s so far away and so hard to change.

Speaking of European identity, you said that you felt the most European when you were traveling abroad. How can the internet be something that promotes European identity – or do we need to do that offline?
Kruse: Tough question! It really depends on what is digital and what is the internet, that’s really a huge space. Even all these digital people eventually do conferences and offline meetings.

Juncker touched on the idea of transnational MEPs, meaning you’d be able to vote not just for a Bulgarian or a German MEP, but for someone from another member state. Is this something that has an appeal?
Slavkova: Sure. This all has to do with the basic question: how close is the EU to the European citizenry, and how much do they understand the impact that the EU has on their daily life? So it all boils down to education.
I know this sounds like a cliché, but if people do not know how the EU impacts their life, there is very little incentive to go and vote for members of parliament from your own national context, let alone for someone from a different country. It’s like Daniel said: there is a notion of travel and the so-called Easyjet or ERASMUS generation, those who have the experience of having been real EU citizens. They were born here, studied there, then had a job maybe somewhere else. Maybe they would be the target group of a transnational list, or even a new party. I know that there is currently a new party in the making called Vox which is kind of based on that idea.
However, while I admire the great optimism of Juncker, I don’t think we’re done with the reflection phase. A lot of politicians think that because we didn’t choose a far-right government in the Netherlands, or a far-right president in Austria, or Le Pen in France, that we’re basically done with that. But the underlying dynamics of what we now call “populism” and citizens’ disenchantment with politics have been there for a while. People were protesting before they voted for populists.
It’s too early to immediately think of solutions. I would rather we had time to reflect and include the citizens in this conversation to see if they are really tired of hearing the same things from both left and right and not getting any of the results they wanted. And they should feel empowered to become part of the discussion. I think it’s too early to talk about pan-European lists for the EUP.

Couldn’t it be that the EU doesn’t take this chance to really get moving, maybe next time round populists will win in other countries?
Slavkova: Basically, democracies really fail when they want too little of their citizens. That’s both a subjective and an objective observation from my work. I really think that it’s the right time to engage in a conversation with citizens. And I know that this is not easy because I’m doing it! But it has to be done.

Who would organize or spur these processes?
Slavkova: In terms of the EU funds for the non-governmental sector, there is hardly any support for democracy programs within its borders. As an organization that does democracy support and works for the sake of democracy consolidation, there is no way for me to get support from the EU unless I twist the organization to fit the criteria.
This is a problem. For way too long we’ve thought that democracy is consolidated in the EU member states, both old and new. That’s always been the narrative – once you gain access to the club, you’re a democracy. But as we’ve seen over the past few years, this is not the case. And if there’s no support for this type of work, especially in the non-governmental sector, what are we supposed to do? I know there are trendy topics, different digital tools and instruments and ways to enrich democracy through that, but we can’t all do the same thing; if refugees are now the topic of the day, we can’t all start doing this. There is a need to get in touch with people, to talk to them on a very basic, local level.

You’re talking about the role the EU can play in local education – what responsibility do national governments have to contribute to that?
Slavkova: I think as big a responsibility, if not bigger. If you make a division of labor, maybe the EU should focus on engaging people in a conversation about the EU itself, whereas national capitals can engage with their citizens both on that topic and the role of the member states in the EU, and also why democracy is best.

Is democracy so safely anchored in Germany and maybe other western European nations that we don’t have that problem?
Slavkova: Oh, I think that we have problems everywhere. If we did not, we wouldn’t have parties like the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), for instance, or Le Pen, or others. As I was saying, the fact that Macron won in France does not mean that the underlying dynamics that made people vote for Le Pen are gone.
And it’s also wrong to think about these things in the old schemes of rural vs. urban, or well-educated vs. uneducated, or blue-collar vs. white-collar. You see this among the voters of the AfD; they’re not only in Eastern Germany, as we had originally thought, but they’re also in Western Germany, in rather wealthy regions. That’s what I was saying; I admire the job of Juncker, but when you listen to him saying, “It’s been enough reflection, it’s time for action,” I don’t think there’s been enough reflection at all. I can’t advocate enough for conversations with the citizens.

Kruse: I’m still thinking about the question three questions before, about transnational voting. On a structural level I would say “Of course,” because it seems that the EU decisions impact every citizen, on the national level as well. So on the one hand, sure, people should be able to vote more directly on transnational MEPs.
But the underlying problem is that politics is about distributing your power to people you barely know. I always find it a bit weird that when an election is coming up and local candidates pop up on the streets, and I hardly known any of them, and I wonder why I’m not in touch with these people the rest of the year. Why don’t they do marketing? Why do I know everything about Merkel, who I never reach and can never influence, and hardly anything about these local guys?
So on the one hand it’s important that we see these international talking heads and have the chance to vote for them, but I think a lot of opportunity lies in more local politics and being proactive about that, giving people back a sense of influence. Influencing their neighborhood, their small towns, or their districts in larger cities like Berlin, where I’m living. That’s under the radar I think.

So I take it you agree with Louisa, basically – this is a time for more reflection, not actually the time for rushing ahead.
Kruse: Yeah; that fits the process of our camp. There are lots of new pro-European “democracy startups,” meetings, round tables, and such, so everyone’s talking about it. The threat has made many more people talk about the EU and its future. But it’s maybe not the best thing to immediately leap into action, anxiety, stress, and panic. Now that we have this “democratic buffer” with Macron in France, instead of Le Pen, we might take some time to deepen the dialogue and really figure out how to get better at this participation process, and what politics really means to us.
Slavkova: Yes! Nothing better than consensus.

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© Artwork: Arnaud Dechiron

Welcome! The EU-Turkey agreement reached last year helped stem the flow of refugees arriving in Europe through Greece. Now, however, attention is shifting to Italy, where people – both refugees and economic migrants – are still arriving in unsustainable numbers, straining local and European capacities. What should be done to address this new crisis?
Gerald Knaus: It’s a great pleasure to be here to talk about the issue with people from think tanks, as well as members of parliament. I know Italy has a lot of experience in dealing with the issue, and it’s very good at implementing what politicians decide when it comes to reception permissions and implementing new ideas of asylum. The key problem in a lot of debates of practical policy issues is that they become overly ideological rather than practical. Of course, ideology and laws matter – but we run into problems if we can’t implement what we discuss.
A few numbers regarding this EU-Turkey agreement might be helpful. For the five months this year up to May, fewer than fifty people per day came from Turkey to Greece. If this trend continues, this year will see the fewest people going from Turkey to Greece in the past ten years. And it will also mean that this year will have the lowest number of people drowning. There are many things to criticize, but it’s still a big accomplishment. The outlying year of 2015 had more than 880,000 people arriving from Turkey; this year it dropped to 18,000.
Italy also has strong fluctuations, but there’s been a steady rise from high levels in 2014. This year will be a record year. Last year it had 181,000, and the first months of this year have already seen more people than the two previous years. So we have now a completely reversed situation: a sharp decline in the Aegean and big rise in the central Mediterranean.
Every day, twelve people drown in the central Mediterranean, and this trend is continuing. In contrast, the 434 deaths in 2016 in the Aegean were almost all within the first three months before the Turkey deal. People have to be saved from drowning at sea and be brought to Italy.
There also different groups coming to Greece and Italy. In Italy there are almost no Syrians, but rather Africans, the vast majority West Africans. This is interesting, because the recognition rates for Africans are very low. Most of them are not refugees. There are some refugees from Nigeria and Congo, but they are not the ones who come to Italy. The vast majority of them do not get protection – the recognition rate is between 1 to 3 percent.
The problem is that even when they’re rejected, they never return. Once they’re in Europe, they will stay for years regardless of what happens in their application procedure. This is not a problem for Italy only, but also for many other European countries including France and Germany, the Baltic countries, and Sweden. Sweden had 180,000 people arrive in 2015.
In order to return people quickly we need two things: we need fast and accurate asylum recognition and application procedures, and we need the countries’ willingness to take people back. This leads to what we call Day X for return. And this was the secret of the Turkey agreement. The Turkish parties came to Chancellor Merkel and promised to take care of everyone who arrived in Greece after March 18, 2016. Those who arrived before, Germany would take. That’s the key point. We should not underestimate the fact that the financial crisis, poverty, and the extreme challenge of taking in so many refugees created uncertainty and fear. Of course, some politicians take advantage of these feelings and if we try to explain this passion, I’m not sure it is passion for Brexit or for these politics themselves – I think it is a more instinctive reaction to the fear they feel, to the easy promises they’re hearing. It is a movement against a system that does not seem to function as it once did; it cannot fulfill the promises it has made. And we should also talk about why the existing system – at least in the Western world – does not function for people anymore.
Andreas Nick: I agree, the EU-Turkey deal has been successful. It rests on three pillars: better border protection, financial support for Turkey, and legal assistance for Syrians upon reception. A lot of these mechanisms also translate to other situations. Going to countries of origin to forge agreements is very important.
There are three key elements: The first is to differentiate between asylum seekers, refugees, and migrants who come in search of better economic opportunities. The fact that so many asylum seekers remain in Europe is an enormous pull factor for many others who come despite the horrible dangers of such a undertaking. That should be ended, for humanitarian reasons. The second element is good decision making for migrants that have arrived. The third element is incentive structures for all relevant countries, on a national as well as regional basis. A strong message should be sent that if you’re returned after applying for asylum, you’re not eligible to apply as an “economic migrant” to any other EU country.
There are many differences between Turkey and Italy. Refugees from the Syrian civil war just want to get away from the war and usually intend to return. Therefore, we have to deal with a temporary phenomenon. When it comes to migrants from Africa via the Mediterranean we have to deal with a long-term issue that cannot be solved within a short period of time.
The long-term rescue missions in the Mediterranean need to be combined with quick decision-making once people arrive, along with working with governments of their countries of origin. If the message is that once you make it to Sicily or Malta you are safe to stay, the problem will never be solved.

Nadan, you’ve had quite a lot of experience with how Italy deals with this issue. Can a distinction be made between refugees and migrants?
Nadan Petrovic: Theoretically there are refugees as defined in the Geneva Convention. And there are economic migrants. But now the situation is more complicated as we have encountered unforeseen situations. For example, we’ve had unaccompanied minors from Somalia being sent by the government, which is a very unique phenomenon. The government knows that they will not be rejected, so these young boys and girls go on an often month-long journey across the desert until often after encountering horrible violence they finally arrive in Europe. What are we to do with a group like that?
As different as the nationalities of the migrants are, these states share common characteristics: They are all inherently unstable. Some of them are failed states, like Libya; some of them are precarious states; and some of them are very authoritarian states like Egypt. And most of them have very weak or opaque government structures. In terms of speaking with countries of origin for example, Libya – who do you talk to? The question is how to strengthen the structures of those states to make sure people can be sent back to them. With the Turkey deal, nothing changed in Syria – the causes have not been addressed. But Turkey can take back people. Can we see this in Africa?
Knaus: I think it’s very important to recognize that the number of people who arrived over the past four or five years is exceptionally high. This is because the route has been developed, and there are hundreds of millions of euros being earned. And if you look at Nigeria, most migrants come from southern Nigeria, from peaceful cities – and most of them are women who are trafficked to Italy as prostitutes with huge profits for the traffickers.
We can thus recognize 1 percent of these migrants. If people are arriving in an orderly way and know where they are, the situation will be better. But now, people are dying on the way in the desert, at sea, and they arrive without any status. Then they stay for years, exploitable underground. In Italy there’s a campaign now to regularize the 500,000 people that are already in the country who will not leave but have no status. Politically, regularizing them is the only rational thing to do.

Andreas, even with some kind of Marshall Plan to develop the countries of origin, people will come anyway. Don’t we have to communicate to their countries of origin – as well into some of Europe’s more conservative parties, including your own – that we need to have a proper immigration law? That we need to take people in, in an orderly way, in order to get irregular migration under control?
Nick: I do think these things are interrelated. Both to communicate to a broader electorate and also to make it vertically possible to negotiate. Creating a very strong disincentive for people to come to Europe, for example, is a consensus among both the center left and center right.
Knaus: Just one more point on the importance of having a controled process: If you want to be politically successful, looking at Sweden and Germany, you need to really help refugees. There are massive networks of NGOs, civil society organizations, and help organizations, and you need to mobilize them. What people will not accept is a sense of loss of control. And loss of control means you do not know who is coming in. If one in a million commits an act of terror, people suddenly think the others could do it too.
Another point is that it’s not really fair. So Italy will need to reduce crime and also educate people about the need to accept migrants. Europe will have to stand up for resettlement. I’ve had three years of debate all around Europe about this. If we want to create an open Europe that accepts refugees as well as economic migrants, we must have control of our borders. And the only way to do so, and amazingly it’s lacking today, is to take countries we need to cooperate with seriously, and think in terms of their interests. In the case of Turkey, it sees that it can benefit from the deal: It can get financial support, and will need fewer border controls because the flow of people will decrease.
This discussion is never public. We talk about financial aid and legal access, but never in specifics. We need to work on a single-page statement with the same format with Senegal and other African countries, which has four commitments: First, that we [the African countries] take back our citizens and help take back our citizens from day X. Second, the EU commits for the next five years to take 10,000 or 15,000 refugees from Nigeria and 10,000 people from Senegal every year. Third, we provide support in those countries to help refugees, and fourth, we do receptions through UNHCR. Everybody can see if each side has done its part and lived up to its commitments.
If we keep having incomprehensible conferences and compacts and summits, this situation will continue and people will keep drowning.

You’re talking about a pretty dramatic shift in attitudes here: no more summits, no more thousand-page-agreements, etc. In a situation like this where we want to keep migration, how likely is it that the EU can consolidate in a straightforward way – or is it more likely that we will see a coalition of the willing? 
Nick: Looking at the debate over the past few years, we see there are many differences among countries. But we have also seen cooperation, for example, in the development fund. If the crisis in Italy continues, it will reach a different dimension. This is not only German policy and Merkel’s migration policy. Right now is the time for countries to cooperate to strengthen the single market and jointly manage the common border. This is a crisis that can affect our common economic success and welfare. If we get that message across, hopefully we can better solve the problem.

Nadan, do you want to comment on this? What should be done to help those countries that need to change?
Petrovic: My impression, at least from my experiences in Italy, is that political elites are not very clear who is who. But I want to explain very clearly that refugees also have full rights. There’s a need to separate different kinds of migrants. When states have the capacity to decide whether or not they need migrants, most of them decide that they do need them. But the reality is that they don’t want to say it clearly, and now people are coming in without invitation. I want to insist that a well-functioning migration policy is better than a refugee policy. In the Italian example, there is a temporary permission status for migrants from Bosnia, Kosovo, or Moldova. They have temporary permission to stay, and then have the opportunity to turn that into work permission or asylum status. Very few of them apply for asylum because they’re okay with temporary permission and labor status. For a long while, we’ve underestimated the problem.

As did the rest of Europe.
Petrovic: Yes, for sure. But compared with other countries on the southern border such as Malta and Greece, Italy is a strange case.
I’ll tell you a personal story. When I was an adviser to the department of migration ten years ago, there was a possibility of reallocation proceedings within the European Refugee Fund. I asked them ten years ago, why shouldn’t we propose sending people from Italy elsewhere? They said that we’re Italy, a small country, sixty million people, how can we let the EU take some of our refugees? And now we’re asking for this.
The EU has given numerous rules on this issue, but its policy cannot be improved because one rule is more important than the others – the Dublin rule. All the other successes that have been achieved, the steps toward standardization, have not benefited us that much because the Dublin rule is more important than any other.

But how do you propose we skip Dublin and alleviate the situation for countries such as Italy?
Knaus: It all seems very complicated, but it’s actually very simple. In theory, everyone should apply for asylum when they cross the border. But in practice, for more than twenty years, it has never worked. Just last year, Germany requested tens of thousands of people be sent to other countries because it’s not a border country, so of course they entered from elsewhere, and Germany ended up sending 4,000 people over 2016 to other EU member states. Tens of thousands of asylum seekers, in comparison, have remained in Germany with their status unknown. It makes no sense. Germany only sent 4,000 people to other countries, but it received 20,000 from Sweden and other countries. So Germany didn’t benefit at all. But Italy didn’t benefit or pay a cost either. Italy received 2,000 people over the last year, and it also sent 2,000 people to other countries. So the net is zero.
But these are real people waiting. Civil servants are creating files. We have this bureaucratic monster which serves no purpose at all. So here is the problem. The governments cannot get up and say to the public that our system never worked, we could not afford it, we do nothing. We need to do something.
This is why I think the only way to get a system to work is to be honest. We do not know how to move around such large numbers of people between Italy and Switzerland, Sweden and Hungary, and between Europe and Nigeria. We need to minimize the movement of people as much as possible. The asylum application should be Europeanized. What Italy needs to do is to be able to present a proposal. What Italians need to say to the Germans, essentially, is that we want to have an asylum processing procedure in Italy as fast as the Dutch do. The Dutch resolved and closed cases in six weeks. And those cases have a high degree of quality because they have high quality legal aid, high quality translators, and decent country reports. Of course, Italians shouldn’t do this alone. So the ministers in Italy want this project in Sicily, agreements with Nigeria to take people back, European support for reception and asylum – and the vision is to replace Southern country borders with European borders. Relocation from there and return from there. It requires a lot of work, but it’s the only option – we need more Amsterdam in Sicily.
Today there is a debate about governance reform in Brussels. For the past two years it has been a complete disaster because nothing has been solved. And in the autumn, people will say the reform isn’t working and we are helpless.

Do you see a few countries taking the lead, or is it more of an EU cooperation?
Knaus: One thing is clear: The Turkey deal would never have come through if it had waited for the EU 28. It was essentially a coalition of the willing that consisted of two countries: the Netherlands and Germany. Now we need a few more countries: Italy, Germany, Sweden, and perhaps France – this crew, if they can negotiate together with Nigeria, if they can present this plan together of replacing Dublin. Germany make take the lead – but Italy still has to propose it.

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Artwork: Arnaud Dechiron

Welcome to you both. When we look back at the Brexit campaign, it seems that the “leave” camp in the United Kingdom didn’t necessarily have the more rational arguments, but they had passion on their side. Do you think this applies to the whole of Europe, and if so, how do you get people more passionate about Europe?
Stelios Voulgaris: It’s a very complex phenomenon. We should not underestimate the fact that the financial crisis, poverty, and the extreme challenge of taking in so many refugees created uncertainty and fear. Of course, some politicians take advantage of these feelings and if we try to explain this passion, I’m not sure it is the passion for Brexit or for these politics itself – I think it is a more instinctive reaction to the fear they feel, to the easy promises they’re hearing. It is a movement against a system that does not seem to function as it once did; it cannot fulfill the promises it has given. And we should also talk about why the existing system – at least in the Western world – does not function anymore for people.

Could it also simply be that the fearmongers are louder, their voices drown out the others?
Sébastien Vannier: I think it depends on how you look at the question. I do not completely agree with you when you say there is no passion on the pro-European side. There is passion, as we see in Germany with the new candidate from the Social Democrats, Martin Schulz. He is Mr. Europe, he is pro-Europe, and we saw a lot of passion now when he announced his candidacy. It is the same with Emmanuel Macron in France; there is also a movement behind him and I think we can use the term passion when it comes to his pro-European message. Last example: the recent “Pulse of Europe” demonstrations show that those willing to defend European values are now turning to the streets to show their engagement. But it is true that in a political campaign, it is much easier to score with anti-Europe arguments. Europe is very complex; the EU has positive and negative aspects, and it is always very difficult to generate passion for it. The real problem is that there is little dialogue between the two sides. Both are living in what we call filter bubbles. Pro-European people work, discuss, and live among themselves, and the anti-European side does the same.

Isn’t it also the fact that the anti-Europeans, the populists, are so much better in using new forms of communication? And would you copy their strategies in a way, would that help get around the problem of all of us living in filter bubbles, as you called them? How do you overcome this Catch-22?
Vannier: I think it is too easy to say anti-European populists – it is far more complex. There are valid criticisms of Europe. Many people on both sides are critical of Europe. I am critical of Europe too, but I don’t think I’m a populist because of it.

But you don’t want to leave the EU, do you?
Vannier: No. And it is important to be allowed to say: No, I don’t want to leave the EU, but yes, there are some aspects that have to be changed.

To be clear, we don’t mean to say that the EU should never be criticized. When we talk about populists, maybe it’s better to say those who would rather like to see the EU fall apart, or at least a strong re-nationalization. These people are very sophisticated in creating filter bubbles. How can you break through them? How can you communicate into these bubbles?
Voulgaris: Studying or trying to understand the populist methods is very important and, as Sébastien said, the bubbles on both sides have not allowed themselves to really understand one another yet. In Greece the anti-European movement has been politically expressed through extreme parties. I had the chance to live for a few years in a refugee neighborhood in Athens where the far-right Golden Dawn was actually very active. So I had the chance to witness up close and personal what they are doing, to learn their methodologies. I think some of the things they are doing are remarkable: Golden Dawn organizes in a very local, very decentralized way, with local offices everywhere. They understand local needs. They have an excellent mapping system of who needs what and how they can offer it in order to network on a very small-scale base. There are aspects of their methodology that I admire and I wish the existing political system could also employ such tactics. I understand why people, at least in my neighborhood, felt that this party was closer to their needs and was present when they needed help. Secondly, though I obviously don’t agree at all with the content of their propaganda, the way they speak is clear. People understand their message, even though you might not agree with it. Still, their official policies are not very clear: Populists usually talk about destroying something but often do not offer a real alternative for policy-making or what the system should be the next day.
Vannier: I think that last point is very interesting – it is always easier to say, “Everything is bad and what the government before me did was bad and all of what Europe is doing is bad,” but they have no realistic program to replace it. That is how the populists work, and of course it is easier to be destructive than constructive. You asked the question: Should we adopt the populists’ methods? It’s a very hard time for journalists to defend their position, and what we are trying to do is guarantee quality of information. It’s the first answer that we can deliver as journalists.

But returning to the million-dollar question: How do you burst the filter bubble? How do you get beyond your usual readers? How do you leave your own comfort zone and get into territory where you really have to argue and make your point?
Vannier: My answer is still: quality of information and to go out and report firsthand. I hope that people are attracted to and excited by quality of information. And what we are trying to do at cafebabel.com is, we try to understand and explain the lives of young Europeans in every country from Belarus to Spain, from Serbia to Ireland. I think, I hope, it is interesting for everyone, even beyond our own filter bubbles. Over the last few years there has been a gap between institutions and the daily lives of Europeans, and we hope we can reach everyone again by focusing on the latter.

Mr. Voulgaris, you have experience dealing with very different groups in Greece, so how do you reach out to them?
Voulgaris: In Greece, as you all know well, the existing social, financial, and public systems have collapsed completely, and that has created a huge gap that spurred people to participate in different ways. The people who go for the populist messages are still people who leave their houses to be active, hoping to somehow have a social impact, even if I don’t agree with their orientation. At the same time there is also a vibrant civic society in Athens. People are very much motivated to do something; they have the need to participate in things. I think we should try to create more spaces and platforms for people’s participation and collaboration. There should be a way that people can bring their input into policy-making. They want to feel that they have an impact in social life and if the official mechanisms could offer more possibilities for people actually to collaborate, create new solutions, and come up with new methodologies, people would feel they are actually participating in shaping society. If people feel they are heard by their community, their government, the EU, they don’t need to seek more extreme solutions to take their fate, the fate of their family, their city, and their country into their own hands.

And what needs to be done to engage young Europeans better?
Vannier: Young people are getting engaged, but not in the political system – they are not voting for the traditional political parties anymore, as we see in France. I think it’s a question of trust in both sides. I spoke with a lot of friends in France and Germany who don’t trust the political system anymore. In Germany, you could say that there is no point in voting anymore as you will end up with the same grand coalition [of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats]. The issue of democratic engagement is an interesting question, and just to blame them for not voting is not the right answer. In France it’s the same, even if Emmanuel Macron styles himself as a newcomer and outsider. We have a lot of young people who won’t have voted. Maybe we have to rethink how we go about political engagement.
Voulgaris: My observation is that younger people have the need to participate more actively. Older people are used to voting as a means to participate in the system, but younger people need to be involved in the everyday implementing of policy, shaping policy. And media and technology allow us to create a more energetic and active participation. Young people are ready to participate – it is not enough for them to go vote every four or five years.

But “older people” have also been very politically engaged, gone out onto the streets, demonstrated against nuclear re-armament. And we don’t see too many young people doing that these days…
Vannier: Well, there were some demonstrations in France last year called Nuit debout to protest labor reforms, and there were a lot of young people out there, trying to find new solutions for the system. I think we see in France why people don’t trust traditional politics anymore – take what happened with the scandal around presidential candidate François Fillon. There were many people who decided not to vote or, even more problematically, to vote for Front National. Some of the political elites in France still do not understand that things have to change now. The question of course is how do we change it.

Which role does social media have in this? How can it influence political communication in our societies and how can it be influenced from the outside? Or do we need to venture out more and get in direct contact with the people?
Voulgaris: I was just thinking of those reality TV shows where people get to choose which singer they want, and you have a very clear question and a very easy way for people to just grab their phones and vote, and they feel they have an impact on what is happening. The example is very simple but in Greece, there is a lot of will to participate. People want to be involved, even in something that simple. And technology and media actually give us fantastic solutions. Younger people are very much used to using this. If we think about it, the methods of participation in our countries have essentially not changed over the last fifty, even hundred years – technology is still not really part of helping and supporting people’s participation.

Referenda are often equated with direct participation, but people then often cast their votes with other motives in mind than addressing the questions. Should we still have more referenda – on smaller questions that make a difference in people’s daily lives?
Voulgaris: I’m from a country that has a lot of experience with referenda. It’s not a very complete form of participation. The way the question is phrased and the reasons behind it are always decided at the top. A real referendum for me is a vote where you get people to participate to create the question and then to decide on an answer. Formulating questions in a very specific way, especially in crucial and tense moments, isn’t a way to get people to participate in policy-making. I believe it is a way to manipulate people.
Vannier: Social media offers tools, but in itself is not the solution. It’s a tool that we can use very well, and we can abuse it, too. But it’s just a tool. I think it’s very important to get back out on the ground and see politics as something from the bottom up and not from Paris or from Berlin. I completely agree with Stelios on the matter of referenda, too, because you can also abuse a referendum. I don’t want a choice between “Yes” and “Yes.” I want an open question, but, very importantly too, I want an open democratic process.

Read more in the Berlin Policy Journal App – May/June 2017 issue.

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Let’s start with the central question: What does European solidarity mean to you, Mr.  Taverne?
JOOST TAVERNE: The word brings to mind first and foremost helping each other, banding together in extraordinary circumstances. Luckily we don’t witness natural disasters or failed harvests here in Europe very often; we tend instead to see the basic, common occurrences that call for helping one another.

Mr. Guerrieri, do you have the same understanding of European solidarity?
PAOLO GUERRIERI: Yes, I think it’s a concept that is very much related to what we call a European public good or European collective action. Solidarity means nothing more than trying to recognize the existence of a kind of public good or collective action, and then figuring out how to coordinate joint action. Solidarity is very important, but it should be very much related to responsibility. Those two concepts should be combined when we refer to things like common defense, the problem of security, and climate change.

But doesn’t solidarity mean different things to different people? If you look at the refugee crisis, at first it was a problem of southern nations like Italy and Greece, but then refugees started coming to Germany. And all of a sudden Berlin discovered solidarity might mean something else. Isn’t it a difficult concept to define?
GUERRIERI: Solidarity is a word that has a very strong feel-good factor. The moment you use it, it’s hard to be against it. I think solidarity is not a continuous phenomenon. It arises in particularly difficult situations. And yes, solidarity means something different to different people at different points, that’s completely true. I also feel that it’s sometimes misused as a way to either get something done or to convince people that what is being done is correct.

Do you mean that we should be careful with using it?
GUERRIERI: Yes, we should be careful, especially because EU and European integration is such a sensitive and important initiative. I never believed that integration should take place solely at the European level. My idea, and the idea of many others, was one of multilevel governance. In other words, you have some things you should deal with on the European level, other issues should be dealt with on the national level, and others still at the local level.
It’s really important to be very selective with what should be done on the European level. If you take immigration, for example, I think it’s really clear that when we created the Schengen space, we established the importance of having free movement of goods and people. Unfortunately, we stopped halfway – we created border-free movement, but we forgot the instruments to manage and govern a free common space. From my point of view, the common border should have some kind of shared management, in terms of common coast guards that should help national guards deal with borders. Immigration is a classic case where you have multilevel, national, and even local responsibilities.

Are you satisfied with the amount of solidarity Italy has received during the refugee crisis?
GUERRIERI: No, I don’t think we did it right. As a European country and even a Schengen member country, we somehow looked at immigration as a classic national or local issue. We created this very important common good – the Schengen common space – but we forgot to build the rest of the infrastructure. There was a recent decision to create a common border guard that could help very much to enforce national control, but the Dublin asylum principle is completely obsolete in terms of what is needed. We can’t say that it’s up to the country where people first land. That is essentially denying that it is a shared problem.
TAVERNE: Paolo, this is really well put. However, in my view solidarity is in some ways the complement to responsibility. There is so much more to say on immigration, but I see solidarity as almost like insurance: You have your own responsibility as an individual or as a country to do whatever is expected of you or what you agreed to. There can be circumstances that aren’t manageable for that individual or organization or country, and that’s the moment when others step in, where solidarity may help. But solidarity shouldn’t take away that basic responsibility.
If we look at the current situation, sometimes I see the sentiment that “now it’s our turn, we have a right to solidarity.” Solidarity is given; there is no right to it. The moment that the ones who need solidarity behave in a way that makes it difficult for those who have to show solidarity, the balance tips. That leads to a lack of solidarity in the end, and that doesn’t help anyone.

Would you subscribe to the notion that stronger nations, in particular a big, strong, and economically healthy country like Germany, should be particularly generous with Europe?
GUERRIERI: No, I try to look at it from a more abstract point of view. If Germany decides to act generously, it’s Germany’s choice. You can win the lottery and people, your friends and family, may expect that you pay the next round at the bar, but you don’t have to. Of course, Germany might feel obligated to do something extra, but the country in need shouldn’t behave in a way that keeps Germany from being generous. Those in need should behave in such way that allows others to show solidarity.

What about the Netherlands – the Dutch are contributing a sizeable amount to the EU, especially in relation to the country’s size.
TAVERNE: Yes, definitely. We are net contributors to the EU and in effect also to the euro. In 2006 when the eurocrisis started, people in the Netherlands saw images of Greek people on the evening news burning the ministry of whatever to the ground because they were protesting raising the retirement age from 55 to 57, whereas we just raised it to 67. Dutch people were always told that we give a lot to the European Union and the euro but it’s all worth it. But we were watching TV thinking: “What the heck. We work our backsides off and now they’re acting in a way that makes it difficult for us to show solidarity.”
That happens within the Netherlands, too. We have a very strong welfare system and social benefits, but at the moment it’s obvious that too many people abuse it. People who contribute to maintain the system will automatically lose motivation to continue doing so. And again, the basis for solidarity will be eroded and the system as a whole will suffer.
GUERRIERI: If I could add something on the problems of euro area governance: Solidarity could be considered a sort of collective insurance. It’s a guarantee that if something serious happens, there’s some kind of common insurance. An insurance guarantee is a public good that is very useful for anybody, but the risk is that people behave like free riders. In other words, because there is this guarantee, because there are these collective insurances, they act irresponsibly. That means that others are going to pay for their irresponsible behavior.
You end up in a cul-de-sac. Countries on one side say we are ready to subscribe to this insurance plan but we don’t trust the other members because they could exploit it. First they have to show responsibility and only afterwards we will provide insurance. On the other side, the countries that need that insurance, they claim that they need the guarantee to prove responsibility.
Take the banking union in Europe, which was a very important agreement. There is no monetary union without a banking union based upon individual member responsibility – otherwise it doesn’t work. But we created an incomplete banking union, without a common deposit guarantee. Why? Because countries like Germany don’t want to subscribe. They insist that everyone has to show responsibility in terms of the banking system first – that’s what they ask of Italy, Greece, and others. So, we have no banking union. And if some serious financial crisis happens again, member countries are going to be left alone once again.
I think Italy should do more in terms of reducing risks in its banking system. On the other hand, Germany should recognize that without a common guaranteed deposit, there is no banking union. We have to find a compromise; this is very important. Germany thinks that it’s safe, but I think that’s an illusion. Because if something happens, the lack of insurance in the banking union is going to affect even a strong country like Germany.
TAVERNE: I agree with most of what Paolo said. He called it a cul-de-sac, but it is perhaps more like a Catch-22. His analysis and insurance metaphor with free rider behavior is completely true, but I’d like to add that if you have travel insurance and you claim it a few times too many, you run the risk of losing your policy. Every insurance company has terms and conditions allowing them to kick you out at any point, and that’s not what you want. If you have insurance with the goal of not having to use it, only if everything goes wrong and only if you experience misfortune, that is when the policy kicks in.
But at this point, solidarity has morphed into a sort of right. I agree with Paolo: You never know when you need solidarity. You might be up and running, thinking you are strong as a country, but you don’t know what the future holds. Ultimately, everyone has to be careful with solidarity, because one day you might need it yourself, and you want to make sure other countries show solidarity at that point as well.

Do you both believe there is a way out of this Catch-22?
TAVERNE: I am very pessimistic. I think at some point events will take over. We have already seen this with Brexit. We have general elections in March of this year in the Netherlands, too. Some of the major political events that we have witnessed recently have everything to do with the fact that we as politicians are not able to come to measures that can break the mold, and other forces will take over. Ultimately, something will be done about it, but it will not be in a guided, measured way.
GUERRIERI: I was also pessimistic. I thought that the usual response on the European level was to postpone, to find an easy non-solution. But I think something happened in terms of our security – not only the election of Trump, not only the “America first” phenomenon, but also China first and India first. I think this is going to change the landscape for European countries. This could be a threat, but it could also be an opportunity. It could push European countries to take a stance. In my view, we are increasingly going to face very different external governmental contexts, strong nationalistic movements, and I think this could be also an opportunity. We shouldn’t forget that every time there was a major crisis of late, the EU exhibited a very unexpected response. So, I think it’s an open-ended scenario.

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