00:00...
00:08Europe is in an existential crisis,
00:10with war on the continent, an unpredictable US
00:13and potential trade tariffs along the way.
00:15For the Europe conversation, I catch up with former head of the WTO, Pascal Lamy.
00:20He says the EU should negotiate rather than retaliate,
00:24but with a gun in its pocket.
00:26Pascal Lamy, thank you very much for joining us on the Europe conversation.
00:30I'm going to start with you to ask you about your impression of the world we're in now.
00:36Now that Donald Trump is back in the White House,
00:38that there seems to be a backlash against globalization,
00:42against free trade, against basic policies in relation to civil rights and so on.
00:49How do you feel the world is right now?
00:53It's in bad shape and in a much worse shape than the world I've been living with
01:02and working with for many years of my life.
01:06So I'm getting old and I'm worried that, let's say for the last five to ten years,
01:17the system we had, which was far from perfect,
01:22but still had a number of benefits in harnessing globalization
01:30and regulating a number of possible problems,
01:37a lot of that is disappearing.
01:40Starting, of course, with the invasion of Ukraine,
01:44which is just sitting on any principle of international law.
01:49And now the U.S. wants to overhaul the system.
01:54To do what?
01:56Unclear, but they both say this system is not good for us
02:04and we need to use the power we have to change it.
02:07And this, of course, puts the EU,
02:10which is the epitome of a regulated, disciplined,
02:17ordo-liberalist system, in a bind.
02:21And I'm worried about the world.
02:25I'm very much worried about whether the EU,
02:29as the future of my children and grandchildren,
02:33will be able to overcome this challenge,
02:37which, in my view, is existential.
02:41And how would you think that the EU needs to respond now?
02:43Does it need to just wait and see what Trump does?
02:47And if there are tafts, should the EU respond accordingly?
02:51Now, the first thing the EU should do, and has done, is get prepared.
02:58They've been thinking about that for months.
03:01The notion that Trump would be president of the U.S.
03:05appeared, unfortunately, in my view, quite some time ago.
03:09So then the big question is, retaliate or negotiate?
03:17There are things the U.S. wants from us
03:20and there are things we want from the U.S.
03:22Such as?
03:23Other than being shot at.
03:28So there is a range of issues where we probably could open
03:35an interesting transatlantic negotiation.
03:39So that's the case for wait and see.
03:42And say, which EU authorities have been saying,
03:47we're ready to look at a deal.
03:48So what kind of deals?
03:49What are you talking about specifically that we would negotiate with,
03:52that we have, you know, in our armament?
03:55I mean, for instance, take the example of cars.
04:00He's got a crappy argument and he's got a reasonable argument.
04:07The crappy argument is, Angela, there are plenty of Mercedes in New York,
04:13zero Chevron in Berlin.
04:15This is a problem.
04:17As long as there won't be an equal number of Chevrons in Berlin,
04:21this is a problem.
04:23Stupid thing.
04:25Where he's right is that the EU has an import tariff of 10%
04:30and the EU and the U.S. have an import tariff for cars at 3%.
04:35Now, is it the reason why there is no Chevron in Berlin?
04:38No way, but it exists.
04:44So maybe we could accept a 5 or 6 or 7 or 8% tariff in the U.S.
04:53if they accept to lower their tariff on things which we would like to export more in the U.S.
05:00and which are not in his mind as a big problem.
05:05Or maybe we could negotiate that against something to be done in NATO
05:11that the U.S. don't want to do but that we want to do.
05:14So there are plenty of things.
05:16Now, of course, and that's my experience of negotiating with the U.S.
05:22and China and other big shots when I was in this business,
05:28you should do that with a gun in your pocket.
05:33If you negotiate with the mafia, you may have to, but you need a gun in your pocket.
05:41You need to show your strength and say, ready to deal.
05:46But if the deal does not work,
05:49if you believe you will debalance a deal just because you are threatening us,
05:54we have the means to retaliate, which is true because we have a large market
05:58and U.S. exporters of a number of products will have problems if we retaliate.
06:05Where did it all go wrong?
06:06I mean, do you understand the backlash against globalization?
06:10I've always said, and you and others always heard me saying,
06:17that a globalization is here to stay, not least because three quarters,
06:25at least, of the people of this planet like globalization
06:30because they see it as a better future for them because they are poor.
06:37And second, it's here to stay, but in a different shape.
06:45But the world will not de-globalize.
06:47Now, what I've always said is globalization is efficient and painful.
06:55And it is efficient because it is painful and it is painful because it is efficient.
06:59If I do something better than you do and you do something better than I do, it's a win-win.
07:06And speaking of shocks from outside, you have Elon Musk,
07:10who's basically in the White House now,
07:13saying that he's interfering in U.K. politics, but also German politics.
07:18Do you think European politics can stay the course to protect itself?
07:22I mean, we have to.
07:25At the end of the day, we've mentioned the environment, we've mentioned trade.
07:31At the end of the day, what matters is values.
07:35And are those values being diminished?
07:37They are European values.
07:39But are they being diminished by the rise to the rise?
07:42Of course they have been diminished.
07:43I mean, democracy has receded by, let's say, 15 or 20 percent for the last 20 years.
07:52The biggest danger, when I discuss with my American friends who don't like Trump,
07:59and I have more of that in my sample, understandably,
08:04European Social Democrats are flabbergasted at Trump,
08:08although we try to understand.
08:11What they tell me is that the real danger is if the roots of American democracy are rotten.
08:21Corruption, I've been working with Transparency International,
08:25who is the main international organization fighting corruption for 35 years now.
08:34Corruption is a terrible destruction of democracy.
08:41Just before I let you go, the Mercosur trade deal,
08:44which has been sort of on the table for decades, pretty much.
08:47Your own country, France, is really dead against it.
08:50So are other countries, but France is really leading the charge.
08:53What do you think France should do in relation to Mercosur?
08:56Can you understand the French farmers and agricultural industry?
09:01I can understand part of why French farmers are unhappy.
09:08And I do understand why they are unhappy.
09:12What I know is that the reasons they have to be unhappy
09:16have nothing to do with Europe or Mercosur.
09:18They have to do with the way the French have handled the common agricultural policy within France.
09:25So for the French farmers who are angry, and I can understand why some of them are angry, not all.
09:33Some of them are doing pretty well, but the smaller farmers are angry.
09:36Smaller farmers have good reason to be angry, but it's not because of Europe.
09:41Europe has always had them.
09:42It's not because of Mercosur.
09:45It's because of the way the French have interpreted, translated, implemented a number of, for instance,
09:54precautionary regulations coming from Brussels.
09:57So Mercosur plays the role of a scapegoat.
10:03But I mean, it's not just the French farmers.
10:05Farmers across Europe would say that they are producing to a particularly high standard,
10:11but then what they'll have to endure is beef and agricultural products coming into their market
10:18that is produced at a much lower standard, therefore cheaper.
10:21OK.
10:21This is wrong.
10:23There is no chicken that enters the EU market
10:31if this chicken does not follow the same regulatory phytosanitary standards
10:36as the one which are implemented in Europe.
10:39So this notion that importing food is displacing nationally produced food
10:47because it's lower quality, sanitary and phytosanitary,
10:52I'm not talking about the quality of the food itself.
10:54Yeah, of course, you're talking about the production standards.
10:57This argument that we are the victims of low standard imports is wrong.
11:05Simply wrong.
11:05It's just not the fact.
11:09That's the way they paint it.
11:11That's the way some of them feel it.
11:13They also feel that the checks aren't there.
11:16So even if they have to apply the standards in Mercosur countries,
11:20they won't be applied properly and therefore there will be a loophole.
11:23But that's another story.
11:26The checks are for everybody and we do import quite a lot from Mercosur today.
11:31So if we have a check problem, let's solve the check problem.
11:34But it's not in importing a bit more from Mercosur
11:38in order to export quite more to Mercosur that the check problem will be changed.
11:44I do agree that we may have a check problem.
11:47But if we have it, let's solve it.
11:49Nothing to do with Mercosur.
11:51OK, Pascal Lamy, thank you very much for joining us on the conversation.
11:53My pleasure.
Commentaires