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LearningTranscript
00:00:11hello everybody here is uh michael from new left and today i'm looking forward to this discussion
00:00:17because we will be talking about our big home which is european union and lucky me i found
00:00:24someone who's well versed in this whole well what is it a moloch of a of an institution uh stephanie
00:00:33can you please introduce yourself who you are what you do how you came to be interested in european
00:00:39union and and so on yes thanks for the invitation michael uh yes i'm stephanie wool um i'm a
00:00:48political scientist i'm a professor at the university for economics management and finance
00:00:52here in vienna and uh yeah i teach uh courses on the european union i've been studying the
00:00:59european union for a long time now ever since i wrote my phd 2003 to 2006 i started to engage
00:01:06more
00:01:06directly with the european union in the european integration process and so i work on the political
00:01:12economy within the european union also from a gender and intersectional perspective and i try to
00:01:18look at the processes uh as well as the institutional ones and the political economy which is going on
00:01:27and of course all that is interlinked as the name already says the political economy uh is political
00:01:34and yes and of course just at the moment we have a lot of topics within the european union and
00:01:39we will
00:01:39discuss about that today right now so let's jump into the deep water i would say that this is a
00:01:45pretty
00:01:46neoliberal project uh maybe in the beginning it wasn't the intention but that's how it developed in
00:01:54last 20 30 40 years so what is your take on this claim am i totally off or is there
00:02:02a you know grain of
00:02:04truth in that statement well yes yes and no because like you said originally it was meant to be
00:02:11the aeg or european community as it was formerly called in 1956 when it was founded by france and
00:02:17germany um on the um on the idea of you know having peace after the second world war that's always
00:02:24the
00:02:25narrative of how the european union was originally uh founded and of course we have like the founding
00:02:32so-called fathers like jean monnet who had this intention i myself had this jean monnet professorship for
00:02:39some time now and yes but we can of course see that the european union has always been uh not
00:02:46only a
00:02:47political project but an economic project it was about economic integration post-war economies to
00:02:53elevate uh the economies of france and germany and then taking on different countries and different
00:02:59member states during the course of the years and what we can see actually is a little bit around the
00:03:071980s uh where we still had great britain as part of the european union right um that we saw that
00:03:14of
00:03:15course these neoliberal ideas came into the european union quite starkly by margaret thatcher who has
00:03:22this famous saying of there is no alternative tina it's called and there is no such thing as society
00:03:30when i have nightmares yes there yeah and of course a lot of social fights uh and conflicts especially
00:03:40in the uk happened in the 1980s or already 1970s the decline of workers right in the uk for example
00:03:47coal mining strikes etc and so and we can also see this development happening slowly in other countries
00:03:56uh with the start of the maastricht treaty in 1992 because with this uh we have these criteria the
00:04:04so-called maastricht criteria which are very dominant i would say uh in the european union of the state
00:04:11deficit not to exceed uh 60 percent of gdp or three percent uh of budget deficit also and so that's
00:04:21one of the
00:04:22the main problems also i would say nowadays uh for example austria now is under this uh deficit procedure
00:04:30just now because it exceeds the 60 percent deficit and uh yes so why can we call this also sort
00:04:38of like
00:04:38a neoliberal project because as i would argue um neoliberal ideas uh on competitiveness for example
00:04:47or focusing more on the individual have taken claim ever since the 1992 treaty of maastricht in a
00:04:56certain way because in the 1980s we still had jack delor who was the commission president at the time
00:05:01he still wanted a social dialogue actually uh and he installed this and also more social cohesion
00:05:08and he was much very much in favor of social policies but uh the social policies as we know
00:05:15uh don't fall under the european regulation in that sense that there's regulation on it
00:05:20you know that there's like no directives which are binding for member states uh to be implemented
00:05:27within two years if the commission and the trilog uh decision making process of the council and the
00:05:34parliament agree on a commission proposal on a directive so what has happened is because of the
00:05:40subsidiarity principle in the realm of social policy social policy never had the same stance i would say
00:05:47as for example economic uh integration so here we have quite an imbalance between social integration
00:05:54on the one side and economic integration on the other side and always the i would say normative
00:06:00assumption of competitiveness being quite strongly um adhered to within uh member states because of the what
00:06:08the commission has set as priorities also and of course the commission is not the only one in this uh
00:06:15process of supranational institutions so of course also the council and in the council there's the prime
00:06:22ministers or presidents or representatives of the member states governments right or the ministers of
00:06:28specific uh sections uh like the finance ministers in the ecofine council etc so they have in the past ever
00:06:37since uh especially i would say uh especially i would say uh during the last financial and economic crisis of
00:06:422008 fostered even more competitors for example uh wolfgang schäuble the former prime uh the former
00:06:51financial minister of germany never wanted bailouts for other member states such as greece spain
00:06:58portugal or ireland because it was like he said it was their own fault that the state has
00:07:05such a high deficit well of course one can argue yes maybe greece had some problems in their administration
00:07:13about taxes etc but on the other hand uh the international monetary fund which was also part of
00:07:20this process of giving loans uh to member states or to have this agreement in so-called memorandum of
00:07:29understandings which was set up between the european commission the european central bank and the
00:07:34international monetary fund and the member state which had a very high state deficit for example greece
00:07:42um they could have talked about other means of supporting these member states but because you
00:07:48know wolfgang schäuble and other uh protagonists uh had this very clear vision of not bailing out
00:07:55other member states even though this would have been possible and we have seen that this is possible
00:07:59after the the covet 19 pandemic now because there we actually had this process of supporting member
00:08:05states by uh the recovery and resilience facility which it which was set up like a uh which is like
00:08:13a
00:08:13loan and grant giving uh facility like the structural funds are also like that right so you know it's always
00:08:20about politics so the way the european union is structured it always of course depends on which party is in
00:08:28power or in the member states themselves or how the commission sets its agenda and coming back to this
00:08:35question if the european union is more neoliberal yes i would say it has had this agenda up until 2018
00:08:45uh 19 even then with the pandemic in 2020 uh it sort of like changed a bit for a short
00:08:53period of time
00:08:54because ursula von der leyen as new commission president really tried to you know uh support
00:09:00member states during the pandemic because we have seen you know all these problems of lockdowns of supply chains
00:09:07being interrupted etc the economy going down small and middle-sized companies uh not able to succeed
00:09:14etc so there was this will to support the economy of course in that sense and uh yeah what we
00:09:22are witnessing now
00:09:24we still have to see where the road goes to actually i would say uh nowadays but uh as we
00:09:30have so many
00:09:30other conflict settings at the moment the full-scale war in ukraine now the middle east conflict with
00:09:37the united states uh in a full-fledged war against iran um of course the european union sort of like
00:09:45has
00:09:45to resituate itself within this and i think we will see where the journey goes uh not only concerning economic
00:09:52policies but also concerning you know um how the european union will persist position itself in this
00:09:59geopolitical conflict in the world which has already so many dramatic consequences as we see just now in
00:10:05april 2026 uh with oil prices rising etc gasoline rising prices rising um that we will see where
00:10:14this journey actually goes so i think it is interesting that because we can argue yes
00:10:18it has been this neoliberal framing until until actually until the pandemic and we will see where
00:10:25the journey goes from here a question to the maastricht treaty and the 60 percent uh threshold
00:10:34for the that uh where did that number come from and who was actually the front runner for the number
00:10:40because obviously it didn't come from moses or god or whatever someone had to come with that idea that
00:10:45hey 60 is the magical number not 80 not 75 not whatever and actually that's a question i can't
00:10:52answer i don't know the person okay it doesn't have to be person but this whole train of thought that
00:10:58leads to that decision i mean i'm not asking about the person person i'm asking more i mean the
00:11:05assumption that i have is that there is there might have been i don't know that's the question
00:11:10some german obsession with the debt as the reasoning that this happened and that the number whatever
00:11:1860 suddenly emerged because as far as i can tell only germany is so mega obsessed with that so you
00:11:27were talking about joy blood the other countries not so much yeah not to mention that uh well big
00:11:33chunk of the european union countries don't actually even follow this guidance and italy's at hundreds
00:11:38states exactly yeah exactly and also germany i mean that's the interesting part about it even in
00:11:452004 around that time germany exceeded this depth threshold right so not even germany adhered to it but
00:11:52of course since germany and france at the time were so powerful also within the european union nobody
00:11:57bothered right so it was only in the financial crisis of post 2008 then that it became a problem of
00:12:04course um because of the the banking actually it was a banking crisis right and bank debt and bank
00:12:11failure was at the forefront uh so that's the thing that people wanted to avoid of course because
00:12:17they were saying the banks were system relevant i mean i cannot really judge since i'm not an economist
00:12:23if they are if a lot of these banks were really system relevant but of course i mean what i'm
00:12:29blaming them
00:12:29from isn't that they saved the banks is that the way how they saved them that they
00:12:34fucked it up and they gave them all the money that they needed and just you know throw the money
00:12:40at
00:12:40them and and and restart again and no no one of those people end up in prison because when you
00:12:46destroy your
00:12:47own economy maybe yeah the thing was that for example just yeah just to give you an example in ireland
00:12:54they socialize the biggest national bank yeah and of course the state had to account for that so what
00:13:00does that mean so it's if they if they make it but it's more like an exception this uh nationalization
00:13:06most most cases as far as i know actually they just save them and and the state can of course
00:13:15only can
00:13:16put taxpayers money in it that's the problem so actually we all paid for the banking failure actually
00:13:21we paid for those mismanagement decisions of the banks actually right we as taxpayers of european
00:13:28union taxpayers so that's one of the main problems and uh at the same time they told us a story
00:13:34okay we
00:13:34need to know uh tighten our uh how do you call that belts uh because you know we don't have
00:13:40enough
00:13:40money times are tough you know we have we had to save these bankers you know all this money that
00:13:46was
00:13:46banned on that yeah and at the same time the problem was of course for example in greece or in
00:13:53other
00:13:53countries such as ireland they cut they use this i mean this is this is just a the the way
00:14:00that the
00:14:01international monetary fund normally does it yeah the structure the so-called structural adjustment
00:14:06programs the uh international monetary fund has been doing since ever since 1970s giving loans or money to
00:14:13countries and then you know uh on a certain conditionality and the conditionality is mostly
00:14:20to privatize most of the yeah for example in new liberal projects go this is it yeah exactly yeah so
00:14:29so that is part of this neoliberal idea of course of complete privatization or maybe not complete but
00:14:35for example in greece the the um uh the port of pereros was privatized it was bought by the chinese
00:14:42etc you
00:14:43know the whole um healthcare system had a lot of problems and people were actually uh very very uh
00:14:51you know didn't have enough money anymore to pay for their medication etc you know stuff like this
00:14:56happened because of these austerity measures we had such a high rate of unemployment of young people
00:15:02but also of older people uh in greece in spain in even france uh in ireland etc so and also
00:15:10of course
00:15:11in some of the eastern european countries right uh which at the time were already part of uh the
00:15:16european union um so it took a longer time to recover for them especially spain and greece took a
00:15:23long time sorry to jump in that's the question why this obsession with that and why did they did we
00:15:30actually not they but did we inflict this straitjacket upon us because in keynesian economics when times are
00:15:38tough government should invest in neoliberal economics government should straighten the jacket
00:15:44even more right and and i think that's exactly go no it looks like it's not working so why this
00:15:51obsession i mean why why to keep well there's certain interest groups of course behind that right so yeah
00:16:00you're completely right i mean it's not keynesian or post keynesian politics they they did they did
00:16:04neoliberal politics in that sense and uh so and of course there's also a big lobby groups behind that
00:16:11the industrial lobby groups in the european union the european roundtable of industrialists
00:16:16always had a lot of influence also uh on the commission but also the national industrial lobbyists
00:16:24for example we can say that for germany at least um because we have some evidence of it you can
00:16:28even find
00:16:29in the government why this why this debt because when you look at americans they don't give a
00:16:34fuck yeah they have 100 plus the japanese have 200 plus like like we europeans cannot we go outside of
00:16:42the
00:16:42herd and i mean everywhere it's neoliberalism more or less but the 60 percentage obsession it's our self-inflicted
00:16:50it's like a belief system if you believe in something if you believe in this ideology um of having this
00:16:57threshold
00:16:57threshold it's more or less uh a common belief i would say it's not very rational maybe yeah yeah
00:17:03but that's that's the juxtaposition with americans or the japanese like you know you don't have to be
00:17:07a well-versed economist to see that okay so why why for us 60 and they can have 200 or
00:17:13they can 130 or
00:17:14whatever yeah like i mean it's a good question you'd have to ask like something is odd here yeah if
00:17:21everyone
00:17:21would following the same rules then then even though it's a stupidity okay i can understand it but
00:17:26we inflicted on us this this this trade jacket and i don't understand why and i'm trying to find out
00:17:34i think uh uh yeah it depends on the political stance you have probably right i mean if you believe
00:17:40uh in uh
00:17:41uh privatization if you believe that the private sector can always be better than the public sector
00:17:48then you get to the point of saying oh we have to support more businesses of course and we do
00:17:55have
00:17:55to support startups we have to support young people and starting a business etc right but at the same
00:18:01time of course you have to see that the public sector is the sector where you get taxes right so
00:18:06we have to uphold the public sector because it's so vital because what we have seen after 30 years or
00:18:12more of neoliberal policies is also where we are now at we have a lot of far-right parties actually
00:18:18now
00:18:19and this is also in my point of view uh uh a follow-up of these neoliberal policies because people
00:18:27know it's one part of the the question actually because people for example in eastern germany who
00:18:33don't find work who are very low paid etc they have several contracts or maybe they even run on subsistence
00:18:39economies right i mean they don't believe in the state anymore so what happens is that they go for
00:18:44the far right or extreme right parties and vote for them yeah so that's one of the main problems and
00:18:49on
00:18:49the other side of course you have a you have very strong lobby groups i tried to explain this with
00:18:54the
00:18:54european roundtable of industries who have very uh high corporate interests in this and of course they
00:19:01lobby also politicians on the national level but also on the on the eu level right so i mean they
00:19:07have been
00:19:07very uh let's say uh successful in doing this so um that's the whole point of the story i would
00:19:15say
00:19:16and of course there are a lot of books on this and um why this obsession with this threshold i
00:19:21think it's
00:19:22a it's a very hard ideology that's what that will be my explanation the the thing with debt as i
00:19:27see this
00:19:28that there are two kinds of debts and two kinds of spending your money you can spend your money on
00:19:33stupidity and then i totally understand that yeah that's stupid but then you can invest in something
00:19:39with huge growth potential and then you actually out of this debt also this is not rocket science
00:19:45everyone who's not who's a little bit worse in economics should know this so that's why i'm so
00:19:51surprised by these rules we imposed on us because there are debts and debts but somehow in in the in
00:19:59the
00:19:59project that we are running under for the last 20 30 years we didn't differentiate or they didn't
00:20:06differentiate between the bad debts and the good debts you know as investment go i mean you are from
00:20:11germany so you know how deutsche ban is functioning and the under investment of germany is one trillion
00:20:18euros supposedly so you know like this is not helping even the industrialists so i don't i don't understand
00:20:26the logic like yes that's bad but when we invest in some strategic growth potential markets and
00:20:34industries then at the end of the day everyone benefits but we didn't do that and i just i mean
00:20:40you mentioned which i think is a good example i mean it's the same procedure what happened in uk right
00:20:46they privatized all the train and railway state uh in the uk what happened was uh huge uh problems in
00:20:54the uk
00:20:54railway system i mean now it's a bit better but still and uh yeah and the main problem in the
00:21:01deutsche ban as i would see it is also that uh of course i mean it's a long story with
00:21:06deutsche ban and
00:21:07the failure of investment by the state uh into that more or less uh i don't know the details about
00:21:13it
00:21:13but yeah i mean investing in social infrastructure would be the thing to do actually right i mean that's
00:21:19the thing i mean gender scholars like me have been saying for years right we need to invest in schools
00:21:25we need to invest in the public sector right we need to invest in all those uh really important uh
00:21:34labor or laboring people like in this in the in the care sector in the hospital sector as we have
00:21:40seen
00:21:40in the pandemic we had huge problems in the sector right uh people not wanting to work there anymore not
00:21:46enough people not enough nurses etc uh during the pandemic and uh yeah so this is the sector
00:21:54actually the pub and some of this is of course still public but there we also have the same problem
00:21:59right i mean a lot of hospitals the buildings themselves are bought up by huge investment firms
00:22:04um and that's another point right and so and of course investment firms want to make a profit so
00:22:10they're not really interested in uh how many people get cured there but how much turnover and profit
00:22:16the hospital makes so that's another thing that i think we should think about really really uh
00:22:22quickly now because as we have also seen in the pandemic that was one of the main problems in
00:22:27spain for example where all those privatized hospitals the some of the workers there they didn't
00:22:33even go to work anymore because they were afraid of you know getting sick etc and they were not paid
00:22:38very well so people were just left in the hospitals to die actually i mean this happened in spain a
00:22:44country in the western part of the european union can you imagine right i mean uh so yeah i think
00:22:51all of
00:22:52these talks about assets investing in uh in buildings like that which are actually public sector uh
00:23:01buildings or should should be i think we should you know look for different ways of investment
00:23:08strategies and not in the way it is going just now because in this way the way it is organized
00:23:13just now
00:23:14for everybody being able to buy anything invest in any let's say public building or previous public
00:23:21building or buying up uh you have the same problem for example in uh in germany with the housing sector
00:23:27right a large investment firms built uh buying up public prop public property by the state and now we have
00:23:34the problem in germany as well as in other european countries and abroad uh that people don't find
00:23:39affordable housing anymore yeah because of these investment firms wanting to make turnover yeah investing
00:23:45in these um public buildings where people live and people rent yeah and the people and the investment
00:23:51firms you know they're not interested in um how the people live there and renovating the building if
00:23:58it's an old building um they just want to make a short profit maybe out of it and then leave
00:24:02again
00:24:02right but that's one of the major problems nowadays in a lot of countries in spain and austria also it's
00:24:08starting it's not that bad yet but it's also starting in germany especially and that's why they have social
00:24:13movements in berlin for example um where they try to to resist this actually right so yeah so we see
00:24:21the
00:24:22link between all of these processes of investment firms or asset managers trying to find new ways for
00:24:29profit uh which in their logic is of course understandable but i mean if you have like a
00:24:34human rights perspective uh you should ask yourself the question is this really feasible for long-term
00:24:41uh strategies and especially nowadays uh where there's a the risk for example i mean look at the the
00:24:49port of pereos for example other the port of hamburg for example was to be sold to the chinese
00:24:54and ah now they thought maybe it's not such a good idea to sell the majority of the
00:24:59hamburg port hamburg is the north of germany big port um to sell all of that to the chinese because
00:25:05if
00:25:05the chinese invest in this uh important uh infrastructure then they might have a say over
00:25:11it then they might control supply chains etc and what happens when supply chains are controlled
00:25:17we can see very well just now in the street of homos right i mean where the supply chains are
00:25:22not working at
00:25:23all anymore so yeah so you have to be careful who invests in your company who invests in your
00:25:29port or in your public infrastructure and i think this has become clearer now unfortunately but one
00:25:35must say through the wars that are going on just now and through the new geopolitical situation but
00:25:40that's one of the points i think we're the european union or we as europeans as we might want to
00:25:45call
00:25:46ourselves uh should rethink obviously and of course we need to rethink our strategies also vis-a-vis uh
00:25:53all the other global players because actually we're not part of them uh the european union uh cannot
00:26:00compete with china cannot compete with the us in that way no we can but we we are failing no
00:26:07that's
00:26:08we are failing in a very bad way at the moment concerning the war economy i mean if we look
00:26:12at
00:26:12that uh we have to invest more we have to we are failing also because we have all the uh
00:26:19silicon valley uh
00:26:21infrastructure in the united states or abroad and not for example in europe that's one of the major problems
00:26:27also we have that's exactly where i'm going with all this question about the debt and about the lack of
00:26:33investment that
00:26:34it's from my point of view it's self-inflicted pain yeah it's not like this had to be this this
00:26:41decision by people not to invest because that is more important some magical number 60 is more important
00:26:49than the future and i would argue even the industrialists are not profiting from it because
00:26:55no at the end of the day why are they going into hospitals and everything because there is nothing else
00:27:00where they can invest no well when when the infrastructure is crumbling and germans don't
00:27:06have proper internet you know like exactly how how can you start uh it companies in germany without
00:27:13internet you know when you when you have this funglocher these places where just nothing is going on like
00:27:18germany yeah and this is this is this this this kind of bites us in the ass but we were
00:27:24following this
00:27:26path for 20 30 years it's in my eyes it's crazy i can understand when someone makes a mistake it's
00:27:33fine but when when you make a mistake and then you cover it with another mistake of same kind and
00:27:39another and another and another then it's like fanaticism it's not yeah it's falling on our head
00:27:44all the developments and this is this is kind of what we are living through the day for example another
00:27:51example yeah another example if for example also staying with germany if we had invested in uh solar
00:27:58energy more in wind energy 20 we wouldn't have the problems now we wouldn't have those problems we
00:28:04have now right i mean with yeah so anyway okay nobody knew that i mean russia would be you know
00:28:10in the
00:28:11state of war against uh i i i can't believe that this is the excuse you know like like even
00:28:18if all these
00:28:18things wouldn't happen it's still rational to invest into green energy because well we we don't even
00:28:24produce the oil people have interests i mean as a political scientist you know that uh you have to
00:28:30say that certain actors have certain interests of course they proceed with and so people don't act
00:28:36rational in that way they act rational for themselves maybe right um but i mean of course the economy is
00:28:42yeah but that's the question who really benefits from european union as it is right now i i would
00:28:48argue no one yeah the industrialists they suddenly i mean the auto industry in germany is scrambling
00:28:54because the gas isn't flowing from russia so like if i'm just looking at everything that's going on
00:29:01in european union i'm totally flabbergasted like this is so fucking stupid
00:29:07the problem is that they didn't really you know at at a certain point of time i mean they trusted
00:29:14the
00:29:14investments in russia or the with the other countries uh more and they thought probably also
00:29:22that uh yeah putin you know this appeasement policies they did with putin of you know having
00:29:28trade agreements with him etc would appease him also and but it didn't work out as we have seen uh
00:29:34so
00:29:35yeah so the thing is for example take uh solar energy or windcraft i mean we still have to
00:29:43discuss in germany really nowadays you know it doesn't look so good it disturbs this or that uh
00:29:49you know neighborhood etc i mean what are we talking about we have really big problems in the world and
00:29:54people are discussing that they don't like the look of wind crafts i mean this is absurd even
00:29:59wind craft i can understand but solo panel who can be blaming solo power on your roof like who
00:30:05cares exactly it's there i mean something has to be there anyway so i just i i really i don't
00:30:11understand
00:30:12the logic behind everything that happened in 20 30 years in the last 20 30 years because i don't see
00:30:18anyone who benefits really i mean in my eyes and that's the question maybe yeah but not in the long
00:30:25run yeah
00:30:25that's this that's what the probably the logic of the short-sightedness that in the long run i mean
00:30:31i don't i don't see anyone who's kind of singing songs nowadays i mean chinese are beating us americans
00:30:38are beating us and just wherever you look the industries in europe are crumbling i i don't see much future
00:30:44for us exactly because of the underinvestment and of all the lost opportunities that we just
00:30:50gave away well maybe i'm not that pessimistic i try to be i'm not a pessimist i try to be
00:30:56realist i mean just look at the future technologies of next 50 years i mean it's definitely not car
00:31:03industry well the problem that we have that we're very much behind in europe or in the european union
00:31:08on all these ie technology of course just now that's one of the major problems i would say of course
00:31:14we're
00:31:14behind in uh also defense strategies right green energy exactly we're also behind in uh yeah with
00:31:23volkswagen we have the problem we can't compete with china anymore right i mean we have a lot of
00:31:28problems at the moment so yeah we really have to change our economic strategies also i would say
00:31:34because i mean this geopolitical rift we're just living through just now with china and the us and russia
00:31:41in india let's not forget india also uh as one as part of those global players and of the brics
00:31:48states so also if we think of south africa uh in brazil right i mean of course for example if
00:31:55we think
00:31:56of brazil we have like somebody now lula again being in government uh who is more rational i would say
00:32:04but the same thing is okay how are we going to first of all now solve all those geopolitical conflicts
00:32:10we
00:32:10have because there is no strategy at the moment as i as far as i see it against russia yeah
00:32:17i mean
00:32:18the problem is that we really have to think about what do we do at the eastern border to support
00:32:25ukraine to support also the baltic countries right um because of course uh this will not end at the
00:32:32ukrainian border this whole conflict i mean this so that is clear right so what do we do for in
00:32:38that
00:32:39concern the other thing is that at the moment in the united states we have a president who we cannot
00:32:46rely on so that is one of the major problems i would say also it's a it's a big big
00:32:51chance now and
00:32:52finally we can we can be on our own and and don't kind of hand it over to the americans
00:32:58no exactly
00:32:59maybe we should see it as a chance to reorientate uh also within nato for example and uh really go
00:33:06more
00:33:06our own way as european union and and and take the lead in certain industries which are competitive
00:33:13which are of course uh high level industries or it technology etc right i mean we have the competences
00:33:20for that uh but we have to like follow up uh on it also we have to invest in these
00:33:26sectors actually i
00:33:27would say yes and then of course we also have to still that would i would always say also support
00:33:34the
00:33:35public sector in those cases where it needs support for example not to privatize water and all those
00:33:41necessary social infrastructures like hospitals uh railways for example so that we really have you know
00:33:48a reliable social infrastructure for the future and a reliable infrastructure also in other concerns on
00:33:54green technologies and a green energy etc right or also on ie for example artificial intelligence so i think
00:34:02that that would be a good strategy to do yes so let's see how how the interests also on the
00:34:08level
00:34:08of the european union will be constructed in this on this concern because of course now we have to be
00:34:14go back to the member states because the member states like italy where we have meloni in government
00:34:21so a far-right government really we have in france a very unstable situation at the moment with macron
00:34:27uh ending his term and not knowing you know who will proceed after the elections in government
00:34:34um then we have spain which is more or less stable just now actually as i see it uh with
00:34:42the socialists
00:34:43in government and coalition and then what else uh we have poland which is now stable but we never know
00:34:51you know
00:34:51um uh how uh conflicts at the border might you know change the polish government again also
00:34:59so actually and then we have all those member states hungary slovakia czech republic uh
00:35:08the naughty boys yeah yeah all those uh not very reliable i would say uh representative democracies at the moment
00:35:17um so we will see where the journey goes also because i think this this is a major conflict and
00:35:23i mean people have been talking about this unitary decision making you know of everybody having to
00:35:30to act accordingly and not having voting out procedures like we have now on the level of the
00:35:37european union where hungary can block everything hungary can even block uh the military support for ukraine
00:35:42you know so this procedure needs some rethinking i would say um yeah and we should think about other
00:35:50majority procedures for example about that because this has a very much big influence on how the economy
00:35:56in the european union will function how you know money is divided among member states et cetera you know so
00:36:03this is a very major theme at the moment also for political scientists how the whole um trilog
00:36:12trilog so trilog procedure is called in english so how this will be adjusted in the future actually
00:36:18right so because we have of course luring on the horizon all these uh also in germany at the moment
00:36:25uh the extreme right or the far right coming into government probably in some of the federal lands of
00:36:32germany in the near future probably as all forecasts say at the moment in sachsen anhalt for example
00:36:38uh yeah and so and we know from austria also uh we have the far right exceeding all polls being
00:36:46around 36
00:36:47percent so the number one in all polls at the moment uh so what does this mean for the future
00:36:52we know
00:36:52already from the past that this meant you know no um uh balance of power anymore within liberal democracies
00:37:01you know buying up all the media and suppressing the free media and all the follow-up problems going
00:37:09along with it you know and the i mean in the in austria we have the problem of the former
00:37:14minister of
00:37:15the interior of the fpu saying uh law has to follow politics i mean no law does not follow politics
00:37:23you know
00:37:24we had that once in germany and that was under adolf hitler with law full of politics so no we
00:37:30have to
00:37:31clearly speak out on this and say no we need the balance of power we need separate institutions
00:37:37democratic institutions we need a public sphere we need to recreate and rethink the public sphere
00:37:42because that's one of the other major problems at the moment that we have so many sub public spheres
00:37:47through the internet through social media that people do not communicate with each other anymore only in
00:37:53their you know subgroups um so that's one of the major problems also we have you know that you know
00:38:00all these radicalization processes of radicalization within the population also takes place of course on
00:38:05social media platforms not only but also so that's one of the major problems i see for democracy at the
00:38:12moment also um that we have to be very very much aware of that and not to drift off into
00:38:18these you know
00:38:18extreme positions as we are doing it at the moment actually now let's take a backup step uh a question
00:38:26that i always ask myself and ask many of our guests uh is the failings of the left in european
00:38:35union uh in
00:38:36the last 20 30 40 years because i i i always okay always usually argue that uh it's not that
00:38:44the neoliberal
00:38:45project is such a great idea i mean we were just you know dissecting all the stupidity inside it that
00:38:51it didn't really benefit almost no one i mean maybe short uh but the term uh benefits but long-term
00:38:59benefits are really questionable but i i i say that uh well we we left this failed you know like
00:39:07we we
00:39:08didn't do our job properly that the push to the right that is happening in western hemisphere is
00:39:14not because of the right wingers splendid ideas we we see how terrible they are i mean just look at
00:39:20the
00:39:21average fella in america it's not exactly fairytale land and in european union is not that much better
00:39:28okay it's still a little bit better but compared with what was normal 50 years ago i mean people are
00:39:34struggling definitely even though we are richer so something very broken is there so let's let's
00:39:40let's bitch a little bit about the about the leftists in european union so what do you think
00:39:46where did they drop the ball and allow these far-right narratives to dominate the the media landscape
00:39:54because you know as stupidity goes to to hate the windmills and the solar panels isn't exactly the best
00:40:04way how to save your kids from uh disaster so it's just it's not rocket science to explain it to
00:40:12people but we left is kind of can't i mean yeah i think one of the positive exceptions like podemos
00:40:18maybe or whatever occasionally some left is the wind but in the grand scheme of things the whole
00:40:24european union is moving to the right yes exactly i mean i think the problem like i said before already
00:40:32started in 1990s the problem already started when you know we had still the big uh catch-all parties
00:40:39like the social democrats and the conservatives i mean which were already declining in the 1990s i
00:40:45can remember when i still went to school we already had a discussion about the decline of the catch-all
00:40:49parties like the social democrats or the conservatives at the time and at the time they were really
00:40:54winning a lot of elections still you know now we have some of the social democrats in the european union
00:41:00being around 16 percent some even at nine percent i mean it's really a bad state to be in and
00:41:07also the
00:41:08conservatives i mean they are declining also and the far right is rising and a lot of member states
00:41:14so yes what has what what was the problem i think i think it's a there are several problems the
00:41:20one is
00:41:20the thing 30 years of neoliberal policies leave their mark you know i mean they leave their mark in the
00:41:28people who who think still maybe maybe some of them profited from the the way the economy functioned maybe some
00:41:35of them were able to buy their house and have a garden have children and all of this but as
00:41:41we see
00:41:42from uh social science data just now uh young people are not even able to afford buying a house anymore
00:41:49for example they don't even get a credit because they don't have a job etc right so this is happening
00:41:55of course it is segregated among you know who has a very high paid job who has a lower paid
00:42:00job but um
00:42:01yeah and maybe buying a house or apartment is not always the best option either but anyway that's
00:42:06another discussion but the thing is actually i think that these far right developments are part of this
00:42:13failure of modern democracies to to give to realize the promises of modern democracies you know of
00:42:21freedom and liberty actually which are the main concerns and the freedom to vote to the freedom to
00:42:29participate in society a lot of people actually cannot participate in society anymore so this
00:42:35leads them or leaves them relatively open of course for some maybe uh populist who promises who makes a
00:42:44lot of promises uh yeah that he will make everything better and mostly it's a he i mean there's also
00:42:50some she's but mostly it's a man as we have seen with orban and i mean orban let's take hungary
00:42:56for
00:42:56example because they lectured in hungary next sunday now um orban had sort of like yeah achieved sort
00:43:06of like through a very systematic way also of you know buying up certain companies of uh getting the
00:43:15media on uh you know buying up the media also etc uh and at the same time during the financial
00:43:22crisis of
00:43:222008 supporting people and families always in his doctrine of you know the nuclear family being the
00:43:29only way of living etc so but he was until now i mean this will we will see on sunday
00:43:35if he still
00:43:36succeeds succeeds or not but in the scenario and maybe take the contrast of spain right spain after 2008
00:43:46then still had a conservative government but then people voted for podemos and the socialists
00:43:51afterwards and there was a lot of elections again around 2016 17 uh the stain was spain had a lot
00:43:58of
00:43:58elections within national elections within two years or three years even until now where it's a bit more
00:44:04stable i would say but still there of course in countries like in spain after the financial crisis
00:44:11the left was successful because it did go into the neighborhoods it did support people who got
00:44:17exposed from their homes because they couldn't pay the credit for their homes or apartments anymore
00:44:22so that there was a lot of support from the left so the left did everything right i think in
00:44:28that sense
00:44:28in spain for the time being but still more broadly speaking um i think the social democrats and
00:44:36those conservatives both failed in really addressing the problems of the people the people i mean
00:44:43it's it's and you have to be very country specific on this because there's very much differences between
00:44:48countries for example take austria austria i mean is which until now always had a very stable economy
00:44:59more or less right um it got well very well through the last financial crisis uh it just you know
00:45:06it always
00:45:07did a very social partnership agreement style like uh uh economy in a certain way but of course here
00:45:14we also have some problems now but still i mean why why does it explain that the far right is
00:45:21so
00:45:21successful also in austria and of course this also has and this would be my second point especially for
00:45:27austria you have to look at the cultural aspects yeah of course topics like immigration or asylum
00:45:33seekers all these kinds of events which happened in the last couple of years and i would say the
00:45:39discourses around that of you know people taking away our jobs or too many foreigners coming or asylum
00:45:46seekers coming to our countries from libya or from syria in the last couple of years uh or from afghanistan
00:45:54all these world conflicts also feed into of course the european union and i mean we know that the
00:46:00dublin principle of you know stepping where you first set your foot on in the european union that
00:46:05country has to do your asylum if you seek for asylum has to do this procedure with you so of
00:46:11course all
00:46:12of the southern member states had these problems like well and the mediterranean sea like italy spain
00:46:18greece etc so yeah um i think that's the other point that these discourses and the far right was very
00:46:25successful in propagating these discourses of you know people you know flooding our economy etc which
00:46:34of course is not true um but these discourses prevail and the far right was very successful in that and
00:46:41i would say it's partially true now the amount of now in germany you you took into one million people
00:46:48so
00:46:48it's like it's not nothing that's percentage wise exactly and here in austria as well i mean 700 000
00:46:55people from abroad is 700 000 it was eight or nine percent of no that's just yeah you need the
00:47:02means
00:47:02to integrate those people and you need uh language courses they need to learn the the countries language
00:47:08of course i would always say that i myself i used to live in the united states of course i
00:47:13learned english
00:47:13to live in the united states and to be able to speak english so yeah so that that's one of
00:47:19the
00:47:19things and at the same time though i think um yeah germany did quite well in integrating these people i
00:47:26mean and we are in need actually in these people because some some of these people are highly specialized
00:47:30or used to be highly specialized in their countries we need doctors from syria uh yeah people like this
00:47:37we need people well i would i would argue it's not exactly the nicest thing to do to kind of
00:47:42steal them
00:47:43from the poor countries uh towards no that's not what i'm saying but i said yeah but what i'm saying
00:47:48is you know when there was a civil war in syria the people had to leave because there's a war
00:47:53and they
00:47:53got you know they were followed by isis and they got killed a lot by terrorists like isis so of
00:48:01course
00:48:01they needed to flee from those countries right i mean that's a human right to get asylum someplace else
00:48:06right you have the right to have rights as hannah arend once said yeah so that's very important
00:48:12and uh i don't want to you know not at all and i'm not very much i'm not about not
00:48:19in favor at all of
00:48:20discussing human rights you know i think this is a standpoint we should have especially as europeans
00:48:24we know what disrespecting human rights means in european history that's not what i was implying i was
00:48:30implying that we are dying that we are dying out more or less everywhere in europe i mean the population
00:48:36is in decline so the saviors i mean that's not the point the point is actually and that's one of
00:48:43the problems okay let's have a discussion about this no i think the point is for example in austria
00:48:48right you have the problem here also in the people you know i have prejudice against foreigners uh
00:48:54all sorts of foreigners even though country a country like austria actually has a lot of immigration
00:48:59and even me as a german i'm working in austria i mean that's normal for the european union but some
00:49:05of the austrians might not like that because they could always say you know germans are taking our
00:49:09workplaces you know yes of course we are but of course austrians could also go to germany so i mean
00:49:15we have to have a reset of our mindset actually that we are really europeans that we you know of
00:49:22course
00:49:22we have our country sorry to jump in but this is not what i was saying i was saying no
00:49:26no i'm not
00:49:26saying you're saying that but i think it's an important point you know that uh we have to be
00:49:31more open-minded about this and of course we also have the problems which occur with that of course we
00:49:35also have terrorists coming into our countries through that so we have to have more controls in
00:49:40a way yeah that's true also because we have that problem but we also have russia now you know uh
00:49:46getting
00:49:46people to uh do uh how do you say this word in english i can't remember you know to to
00:49:54do bombings
00:49:55or whatever uh uh or to kill people before the german elections so yes we have a problem of course
00:50:01also with terrorism we have to be aware of that yeah but at the same time there were so many
00:50:06people
00:50:06who needed to flee their countries to come here and be able to work here and of course we need
00:50:10to
00:50:10integrate them and of course there has to be a certain number and that has to be uh divided between
00:50:15all
00:50:15of the member states that's that's sure true right i mean we can't take up everyone that's that's sure
00:50:20too but of course we have to make it possible that uh the human rights that we stand on are
00:50:26also you
00:50:27know uh fully accepted and that we live them because if we don't live them who else will nobody else
00:50:32in
00:50:32the world seems to be doing that i didn't want to go into this discussion about human rights it wasn't
00:50:38the point the point was that europe more or less as far as i know all european countries are dying
00:50:43out
00:50:43and the but what does that mean dying out no yeah it's 2.1 to kind of break even to
00:50:52to well not die
00:50:54out yeah so if why is that important i mean it doesn't matter does it does it matter i would
00:51:00i would
00:51:00argue it does because then the social structure cannot disintegrates and so well there will be so
00:51:06many old people and and you know like this is what you mean by dying out i thought you meant
00:51:11something
00:51:12else no no no no just the the okay i mean the pyramid normally it should be a pyramid now
00:51:19the
00:51:19older you are the the higher is the probability that you will die and because of complex reasons i
00:51:25don't want to go into the reasons it's just that it it's happening that uh europe is dying out yeah
00:51:31and i i mean there's too many old people and i'm not young i mean i'm not i'm not i'm
00:51:36blaming the
00:51:36old people that are alive that's not the point the point is that people don't make it kill kids yeah
00:51:41it's just more or less in every country uh we are dying out i mean in slovakia for for example
00:51:47literally
00:51:47i don't know i don't have numbers on that last last last last few years were the worst years in
00:51:52the
00:51:52history since second world war so you know 89 90 whatever years it is uh it wasn't as bad as
00:52:02it is
00:52:02today so something isn't working in our societies when people don't want to have children yeah yeah
00:52:09but that's what i would say that's also a problem because you know we don't have the opportunities to
00:52:14have children this is this is exactly where i wanted wanted to go when you said that we need the
00:52:20doctors
00:52:20when we need the doctors from syria is that this is this is the short-sightedness of neoliberalism that
00:52:27instead of give people good jobs and do good opportunities so that they don't they are not
00:52:32scared to have kids we rather import workers from abroad because it's kind of easier to that's not
00:52:40what i'm saying that's not what i'm saying you don't have to pinpoint one to the other the thing is
00:52:46of
00:52:46course we need uh good educated people here right in the country where we live in already and uh support
00:52:53them to have good jobs right and good enough pay or loan actually uh to make a living from the
00:53:01wage
00:53:02you have right that's the point and if we look at germany for the last 20 years loans have been
00:53:08going
00:53:09down actually right so we need different strategies of firms to invest in people again and not just on
00:53:15the on the international financial markets because it's more lucrative right so that's one of the major
00:53:20problems i would say also that uh we need to invest in people right and uh but i mean the
00:53:27doctor from
00:53:28syria is not our problem actually i mean that it's just you know an example but that's another story
00:53:33you don't you don't have to you know play out one against the other i would say you know we
00:53:38need both
00:53:39you know we as as as long as we don't have enough nurses as we as long as we don't
00:53:44have enough
00:53:44well-paid kindergarten uh teachers for example also of course people don't get kids because of
00:53:51course they don't make enough money to support their kids until they have made their own education
00:53:56having kids is expensive and you have to have the time uh to raise kids right and i mean take
00:54:02austria
00:54:03as an example austria has the highest rate of female uh employment of part-time employment right
00:54:09uh 49 of female employment or even more now is part-time so why is that so because we don't
00:54:15have
00:54:15enough public infrastructure to take care of the kids when the women could be working you know so
00:54:20that's one of the major problems actually and that's also the same problem in in in germany for
00:54:25example right and in other countries uh france has a better system there because you have more uh
00:54:30date day long schools for example you know where kids are at but still we need more support for the
00:54:37under three-year-old children for example so it starts there actually so that also is part of the
00:54:43story of investing in social infrastructure right but that that was one of the questions i wanted to
00:54:49ask you whether the european union project was more about economy than about this social
00:54:56cohesion infrastructure everything because i would argue that yeah definitely like people are second
00:55:01second grade citizens animals whatever money money money yeah but this this is this is kind of biting
00:55:08as in our asses right now because well when when we treat people like this then yeah surprise they
00:55:13don't have kids and now everything crumbles so more or less yeah well i don't know if everything
00:55:20would crumble i would say like that but it depends depends i mean people don't have we will see what
00:55:25happen in five years no who knows yeah people don't have enough support to have kids to take care of
00:55:32the kids there's not enough support to to take care of the elderly for example also especially also in
00:55:38austria but we have the same problem in germany also so you know um i mean those are the countries
00:55:43i
00:55:43can talk best about because i work on those two countries at the moment um yeah but you have these
00:55:48problems not only in those members days uh a lot of people pay privately of course uh for nannies etc
00:55:55to take care of the elderly um and that's one of the problems of the system and yeah and in
00:56:01european
00:56:02integration research we have uh research on especially that those social policies of course need more
00:56:10support in that sense that we need more not only the social pillars that we have since 2017
00:56:17uh we need things which are like now in place uh the um so now we have a directive on
00:56:24minimal salary
00:56:26uh at least for the whole of the european union and that was a long time discussed and people were
00:56:33i didn't some member states didn't want it because they didn't want to have a decline in their minimal
00:56:38loan strategy or wage strategy but i think now i think probably they found a better solution because now
00:56:44there is this directive for it um so maybe countries who have lower wages can upgrade and others don't
00:56:52need to downgrade right um so yeah so of course there has to be coherence and i know that also
00:56:58parts of
00:56:59the unions were not in favor of it etc so yeah this is also where we but we also need
00:57:06other social
00:57:07infrastructure not only in the employment sector we also need that in the like i was saying for for the
00:57:13elderly right that the care sector especially and we're far from it actually that's one of the major
00:57:19major problems still i think one of the last kind of forms i want to open with you is the
00:57:26situation in
00:57:27post-communistic countries where uh the extraction of profits from western companies is supposedly around 400
00:57:37uh billion uh billion euros yearly so as money goes this is a big big chunk of money uh for
00:57:45slovakia the
00:57:46number runs around 20 billions i mean obviously uh poland is the biggest economy in post-communistic
00:57:53countries so there is around 200 or whatever the number is and the question is about the way how european
00:58:00union was structured in the last 20 or 30 years because i i'm curious whether people talk about this
00:58:08setup about the setup that the as the iron curtain fell the western companies uh went into the east uh
00:58:18bought whatever was there to to be bought and then they are extracting the rents and keeping the salary
00:58:25low so the uh caesar is open between the productivity and the real wages in post-communistic countries in a
00:58:35manner that is nowhere else in european union so it's just as a strategy goes i can understand this
00:58:43for a couple of years but not for quarter of a century because where it leads is that the under
00:58:50investment is
00:58:51in post-communistic countries because of all this extraction of 400 billion is a lot of money uh leads
00:58:58to this well how to put it resentment in uh in the in the population in post-communistic countries and
00:59:07when
00:59:07you look at the data from european parliament who's actually voting for the far right and right politicians
00:59:15it's primarily post-communistic countries so when you take all of european union as a one body and
00:59:22divide it into the west and the post-communistic countries then the post-communistic countries are
00:59:28responsible for roughly 200 percent of the of the right wing uh members of the european parliament so even
00:59:37though your post-communistic countries are smaller roughly 100 million people the push to the right
00:59:44uh from the east uh from the east is much bigger than in the west so as as sad consequence
00:59:50of this
00:59:51strategy goes the boomerang of turmoil is kind of biting everyone in the ass because the european parliament
00:59:59at the end of the day is the body that makes makes most of the decisions and well when the
01:00:04political
01:00:05situation is as it is then uh even the westerners are not happy yeah not to mention that the inequality
01:00:12problem that it uh kind of that emerged in uh in western european countries because of all this
01:00:19extraction it it wasn't the average uh german or the french well you're giving your own answer already
01:00:25yeah no no the question is whether whether the western countries are aware of what's going on and
01:00:34whether there is a strategy to kind of change it because this is something that is running for
01:00:3925 years and i've i rarely hear anyone in the west openly talk about it because well i don't i
01:00:47don't
01:00:47i can't say it broadly like if anybody in the west is doing that i mean what i the way
01:00:52that you heard in
01:00:53european union in all the circles that you are running that people are aware that well
01:00:58the thing is for example if you look at poland for example i mean people in poland for example of
01:01:05course after communism uh had very high expectations of the west of western capitalism all the people i
01:01:12talked to who i knew at the time also like in 1997 98 already they were very expectful of what
01:01:20was
01:01:20going to happen and they thought that would be a boost for them right in the economy which it was
01:01:24for
01:01:24certain industries of course right like you were saying uh yeah but the revenues went uh to others
01:01:29and uh the problem is still for example a teacher in poland still uh only gets around 700 euro maximum
01:01:37per month i mean it still has in warsaw a very high cost of living like almost the same as
01:01:42in vienna
01:01:43so how can this happen right and the thing is of course people were skeptical of the communist parties
01:01:49and didn't want them anymore and voted for other parties who did more of these privatization
01:01:54processes which happened in romania and poland and other countries right so yeah that's part of the
01:01:59problem i think and uh ideologically um that's why they also maybe voted for far-right parties um because
01:02:07they were deceived actually maybe and they thought even their own governments deceived them probably
01:02:12and uh yeah so the promise of the west you know that gives them freedom and economic success etc
01:02:21didn't really happen for a lot of people in the eastern european countries if we look at the the data
01:02:27also so yes one of the reasons is that of course they are disappointed and here we get back to
01:02:33the
01:02:33parties the parties in government the parties letting free run of privatization for example and not
01:02:41you know uh doing maybe also some deals with specific companies uh etc so that's one of the major
01:02:50problems i would say if there is like a consciousness for it in western europe i can't say that that
01:02:55broadly
01:02:55uh i think it's part of that problem of neoliberalization we were talking about before
01:03:02that neoliberalism is such a strong ideology that people still believe that you know you just have to turn
01:03:10this point or that you know point and everything will get better yes but it won't and as we have
01:03:17seen investment firms still are looking for the best strategies to invest uh they don't look at the
01:03:23people they don't care for the public sector so we have this clash of politics and democracy at the
01:03:29one side and of the economy on the other and this is what we're living through just now i think
01:03:33this is
01:03:34also part of the other question about the left the left the left really maybe was never in a lot
01:03:40of
01:03:40countries well except for the social democrats who are in decline and they are being uh you know they're
01:03:46in decline for good reasons also probably because people don't believe them anymore because they were
01:03:51part of that problem in in germany for example yeah exactly for example right so yeah so that's one of
01:04:01the the things um
01:04:02um and yes so part of the left or let's say of some left of the social democrats i would
01:04:09say is that
01:04:10problem that they were they were not receptive for the problems of of the people who were actually their
01:04:16voters so the voters turned to the right because they were disappointed uh that's one part of the story
01:04:21and in eastern europe i mean it's it's a bit of the same phenomena you have the populists who come
01:04:27into
01:04:28place like orban and like others right um also the piss party in uh in poland was uh you know
01:04:36because of
01:04:36the of the big catholic belief in poland still they were able to you know yeah to gain to gain
01:04:46votes by
01:04:46the people because the people believed but it's more like a belief system it's not a it's not a political
01:04:52ideology understanding of politics also right uh and that's one of the major problems that politics
01:04:58is of course about ideology also and about competing ideologies and uh i think uh yeah we we really have
01:05:06to look at these problems and also apart from party politics you know i think we have to come away
01:05:11a bit
01:05:12also from this left right dichotomy you know doesn't lead us anywhere we have to make politics for the
01:05:17people i would say and i say this as a political scientist and not as a politician um if uh
01:05:24you
01:05:25know the middle to support actually more the middle classes because if the middle classes also derive uh and
01:05:35lose or lose their faith in democracy it turns really bad and we don't we can't want that we don't
01:05:42want authoritarian regimes in the future so i think we really have to look into what is going wrong very
01:05:49much in detail and i talked about some of these details like investing in care infrastructures or
01:05:54social infrastructures um and yeah and giving also people the sense of having a future and not having fear of
01:06:02war of international conflicts of supply chain uh problems etc of raising rising energy prices raising rents
01:06:12you know stuff like that so these are the big social problems of our time and we have to look
01:06:18hopefully for democracy to solve them right last question because you were alluding to it a little
01:06:25bit that the there there is a change to be felt in european union in the last couple of years
01:06:32because of the
01:06:33pandemic and certain taboos were broken so you see that uh all the optimistic thing that you said right now
01:06:41that they can be implemented because you know we too can dream about the better world as long as we
01:06:47want but uh whether the politicians will listen and whether the populace will listen to hey changes had
01:06:54to be or have to be implemented so how how do you see it from the inside is the willingness
01:06:59there to
01:07:00kind of acknowledge that the neoliberal project wasn't as successful as they hoped
01:07:08well i can't really look into detail because i'm not looking into parliamentary decisions at the
01:07:13moment i have some colleagues who are doing that but as i know of reading their texts and books uh
01:07:19well this also of course depends on which party family you belong to right so if you belong to more
01:07:25to the left or green party family you have more this sense of you need to do something for the
01:07:31people
01:07:32but i think also in the conservative party family members on the european level there is a sense of
01:07:38okay uh the pandemic showed us that we do need to do something uh for the people not to drift
01:07:45off to the
01:07:46extreme right kings wasn't completely off yeah and at the same time we also have the problem that some of
01:07:52the
01:07:53conservatives as was just happened last week also aligned with the power right on certain decisions you know to get
01:07:59their decisions through
01:08:00that's also part of the problem uh i know i mean the the argument is always you know we we
01:08:08have to talk
01:08:08to them because there are so many voters behind the far right just now yes that's true but does that
01:08:15make
01:08:16the decision better if you do the decision with the far right i don't think so i don't think in
01:08:20the
01:08:21end it will lead to good politics um and of course i'm saying that of course people even if you
01:08:27look at what
01:08:28is happening in germany in eastern germany with the rfd of course some little rfd group maybe in some
01:08:34very small town of course they're right they're right when they say oh we have to invest in the
01:08:39school because you know our children don't even have toilets to go to anymore because the toilet is all
01:08:43rotting and you know that we need to invest into this building of course they are right so i'm not
01:08:48saying that they don't have the right topics at some point yeah but i'm saying that the overall topics
01:08:54and we have to have this clearly in mind is that they they have a completely different agenda for
01:08:59europe and they want to diminish actually the european union and that we have this to have this broad
01:09:04picture in mind and to build alliances also between between parties but not necessarily with the far right
01:09:12that was my pledge actually so yes i i have the hope i don't know if politicians uh have the
01:09:20sense uh
01:09:21beyond party politics to think a bit broader i hope they do in all parties um and i think there
01:09:29are a lot of good people out there who do that already as politicians um yeah but we have to
01:09:34keep
01:09:35that in mind i think yeah okay well steffi thank you very much for all your answers and uh for
01:09:42your time
01:09:42and hopefully in a couple of months uh we can discuss some other interesting topics about european union
01:09:49because that's a never-ending story that's true thanks a lot at the end of the day it's our home
01:09:54so you
01:09:55know we have to kind of clean it up yeah exactly like bye bye thank you bye
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