DATE: 18:00 – 19:00, MONDAY 26th MARCH 2018
VENUE: COMMITTEE ROOM 2, HOUSE OF LORDS, PALACE OF WESTMINSTER, LONDON, SW1A 0PW
SPEAKER: ALI ASLAN
EVENT CHAIR: LORD RICHARD BALFE
LORD RICHARD BALFE:
It is a great pleasure to introduce this talk. I am Richard Balfe, member of the House of Lords, been for twenty-five years member of the European Parliament. I was just chatting to our speaker, my first visit to Berlin was in 1973 and I visited many times before the Wall came down. I am now, I have been since I got in here, a member of the old party group Friends of Germany so I visited the country, all parts of it, on many occasions and indeed I have a family connection because when my wife was born her father was a member of the Control Commission in Hamburg. So he knew Hamburg from more or less the end of the war and often spoke about how Germany had changed over the years of his life-time and the diplomatic service.
So it’s a great pleasure to introduce Ali Aslan, he is, been the host of a talk show for DWTv, the Deutsche Welle Tv, called Quadriga, it says on my prompt-sheet that he regularly moderates major conferences and has shared the stage with Angela Merkel, Emmanuelle Macron, Bill Clinton. I can’t claim to… I did once share a stage with Bill Clinton, I can’t claim any of the others, though I have met Angela Merkel and, well I won’t bore you with my analysis of Germany because that’s why we have Ali here, but it might come in during the question time. He’s going to speak for no more than twenty minutes, then we are going to have questions and short contributions. The whole of tonight’s proceedings are under what is called the Chatham House Rule. There is only one rule, people often talk about the Chatham House Rules but there is only one of them. And this very simple rule says you can use any facts that come out of this meeting but on a non-attributable basis. So that doesn’t just mean that you say, that I speak when you talk about… ah but they… also about each other, if someone says something you don’t say ‘oh and someone from the University College said this’, you say ‘and during the course of the meeting the opinion was put forward that’. So the Chatham House Rule is fairly easy to understand and it is there to protect the identity of the individual whilst insuring the free flow of the information. I can say that because I was a member of Chatham House for several years. So let me hand over to you and ask you to comment on Merkel’s fourth term: end of an era.
ALI ASLAN:
Thank you Lord Balfe, thanks for having me to the Henry Jackson Society as well. This was put together in a very short time, a record time perhaps, we talked about this event I think only a couple of weeks ago and here I am now, have the distinguished… distinct pleasure of addressing you all. As you know, we Germans took our time, this time around in forming a government. As a matter of fact, it took us a 172 days. Now this the longest it has ever taken to form a German government. This of course is due to the fact that the first coalition talks, the so called Jamaica talks, failed, much to the surprise and dismay of not just Chancellor Merkel but, I think, most of Germany, and then it took the Social Democrats a long time to come on board and persuade their own party base that it might be a good idea or rather it might be a civic and national duty to wants more engage and continue the grand coalition, as we call it in Germany. Now we have a 177-page coalition agreement, not a moment too soon considering all the challenges that Europe is facing these days. Now, I’m just going to talk shortly, I will be more than happy to take your questions because I think that’s what makes these debates much more lively and in fact I very much assume that most of what I’m telling you about Germany is already common knowledge and you know.
Now the previous election, the one we had in September, was a bit different than normal, and I would say the 2015 refugee situation that we had in Germany pretty much overshadowed and dominated the debate. Now you might think that Europe was a big item on the agenda. You might be surprised to hear that Europe hardly ever came up. That’s particularly surprising if you consider that the former president of the EU Parliament was running against Chancellor Merkel, that’s a trump card he never played, interestingly enough. He never once mentioned Europe. I assume he wanted to be perceived as a man of the people and not… if you say a posh man from Brussels come into Germany and… but he shied away from the topic of Europe quite a bit, Chancellor Merkel for obvious reasons never dived into it so Europe was hardly ever discussed. What was discussed of course, also thanks to the Alternative for Germany, the AfD, was the refugee crisis. I don’t have to tell you, in 2015, of course the boarders… Chancellor Merkel made the decision to open the boarders, let in about 8 hundred thousand to a million refugees, mostly from Syria but also Afghanistan. And the debate that we had vis-à-vis the refugees on how to integrate them and whether Chancellor Merkel made a mistake or not, that pretty much dominated the headlines also because the AfD, the right-… some call it right-wing, some call it a populist movement, xenophobic, whatever you want to call them, certainly a new element in German politics. Germany for obvious reasons and for good reasons, post 45, unlike many of its European partners didn’t have a far right party in the parliament. They never were able to cross the 5 percent threshold, this time, of course, as you know, a very different story, 13 percent went to the Alternative for Germany.
Now, Europe was not much discussed in the election, however, ironically, the coalition agreement bares the title ‘A new departure for Europe’. This is, if you like, what was lacking in the election campaign, now they try to make it up by… by catching up, if you will, to Emmanuelle Macron’s proposals that he put forth and patiently waited in the wings for Germany to finally form a government and meet him half way. Now, the… if you look closely at the coalition agreement it is a clear nod to Emmanuelle Macron’s call for Eurozone reforms. And I think everybody in, Chancellor Merkel but everybody in Germany understands that for Europe to survive, for Europe to flourish, there needs to be more integration, particularly on the Eurozone front, but it’s going to be a very tough sell because already you see a lot of disagreement in how far the Eurozone integration should go, whether we should have a dedicated budget for a single currency, the creation of a Eurozone finance minister or even the establishment of a European Monetary Fund. As you know these are all things that are put forth by Emmanuelle Macron. The Dutch have already signalled their protest against such reforms. Chancellor Merkel, the way she usually is, she hasn’t really made it very clear on how she positions herself. This is her style that we have come to known in Germany for 12 years, this is a woman who is very hard to read. Even after 12 years, you’d think by now we know where she stands on particular issues, we don’t. After 12 years we still do not know in particular because she has a very distinct style which is- let everyone else chime in, let everyone else comment and wait until the very last minute until she knows which way, if you will, the wind blows. It’s a very distinct leadership style, if you want to call it that, that we Germans have grown accustomed to but also I think the light of the many challenges that we are facing vis-à-vis the refugee crisis, war in Syria but also Europe, many have come to… have grown a bit tired of. And you can tell it, if she had not been able to form the grand coalition, many people, including myself, predict that would have been the end of Chancellor Merkel. She would not have gotten another chance of forming a coalition. And I would even say it looked pretty risky for her after the Jamaica talks failed because it was clear that the Liberals but also the Social Democrats saw grand opportunity to get rid of her. This was the very first time that I can recall in 12 years where she looked vulnerable, where she actually looked beatable without even having a credible and strong opponent. But it looked as if Germany was ready for putting the Merkel era to an end and look forward.
That was very much the mood in Germany, that was very much the mood certainly in Berlin and the political and journalistic circles were eye engaging. She is a master tactician and she managed yet to save herself another day, another term, but I can tell you for sure and she would agree with me in a heartbeat if she sat here, this is the last one. This is pretty much where people say, ‘ok you are going to get one more term because we clearly lack alternatives’. And she herself of course has contributed to the lack of alternatives by not promoting anyone during her 12-year reign. I’m not sure I can blame her for that, I’m not sure I would… I would say to look around the world, every time a politician is in power for too long, I think that comes with the territory that you don’t really look behind you and start to groom people, and promote people. You can tell that she thinks this is her last term because that’s what she’s doing now. Now she is promoting people, particularly women within the ranks of the CDU, women who are as, I would say in the context of the conservative party, as open-minded and liberal as she is. And there I already go to the heart of what the problem is for herself, many people think the Liberals wanted to get rid of her and the Social Democrats wanted to get rid of her, but the truth is that the more conservative fraction of the Christian Democratic Union, they wanted to get rid of her more than the rivalling parties. I can tell you that because they’ve been holding their fist in their pockets ever since, but certainly since 2015. And the refugee crisis and the refugee situation had emboldened many conservative voices within the Christian Democratic Union to come up and do something unthinkable, what was unthinkable 12 years ago, namely criticize her openly. She is now the master tactician that she is, she has tried to, I think very surely and in a very smart way, many of her critics she has now given cabinet posts. So instead of leaving them outside of the sphere attacking her caused someday she said, ‘you know what, you don’t like my style? Why don’t you sit with me at the cabinet table, see how it feels. See how easy it is to govern Germany’. And that’s what she has done, for instance Jens Spahn is an up and coming conservative voice in Germany, she has made him Minister of Health and given posts to other individuals as well.
The challenges for her last term are really vast and they are vast by integrating the refugees into everyday life in Germany in light of growing xenophobia. You have Europe, I don’t have to tell you, being in London today, I don’t have to tell you that you have Europe that is falling apart. Brexit of course being one, it hurts, it hurts us Germans, it hurts the European Union both financially but perhaps more importantly politically. But it’s not just Brexit, it’s not just the UK that we are worried about. We are worried about Poland, we are worried about Hungary, we are worried by the lack of solidarity that has been displayed in the face of the refugee crisis and yes we are worried about the Eurozone, we are worried about the single currency, where people and Macron in particular seems to have the idea that we should have more and not less transfers of economic and political sovereignty to Brussels. Now, this is something that, for a good reason I understand, is completely rejected in this part of the world but even in Germany to transfer more political and particularly more economic sovereignty to Brussels, that will be a very very tough sell for Chancellor Merkel because you could already see during the two and three aid packages for Greece, you could see that it had poisoned the mood in Germany and we had seen some really nasty headlines in German tabloid newspapers about the lazy Greeks, and you know about the incompetent southern Europeans and Mediterraneans and all those clichés that we thought we had overcome, they were very quick to emerge. And so for Chancellor Merkel to persuade the Germans that we need to tie our fate, not just our political fate but our economic fate also to countries like Greece, Portugal, Spain and so on and so forth. That will be a very very tough sell. Now you can argue she has nothing to lose anymore, this is her last term, she knows it and we’re quite curious how the German-Franco relationship will play out.
Because you see many people whenever I give talks outside of Germany and in particular in North America, people are very quick to say ‘leadership’, ‘German leadership’, ‘the leader of Europe’ and so on and so forth. Now I can tell you that the concept of German leadership is something that is very hotly debated outside of the world but is not debated one ounce in Germany at all. I think the mentality, that the German mentality being the leader of Europe, being the leader of the Western world even in light of the current occupant of the White House and so on and so forth… that is something I can tell you, that is a discussion we are not having in Germany. And for obvious reasons. For one, you have, if you want to call the term leader, if Germany is a leader it has become the leader by default, not by its own grand design and strategic thinking. Why? France for, I would say, two three consecutive times made terrible choices when it comes to their leaders. Great Britain has taken themselves out of the leadership game fairly quickly. The United States is in the condition that it is these days. Well and then many people look around and the… ‘who’s still sane? Where is the sane one?’. And then of course the very stable, the very monotonous, the very ruling with a calm hand Chancellor Merkel emerges. But I can tell that it’s a leadership by default, not because Germany has embraced that notion, quite on the contrary. There was a recent poll by the very prestigious German Kerber Foundation, and it asked the German people ‘do you want Germany to assume a greater role in world affairs?’. And 37 percent only answered with ‘yes’. And it didn’t surprise me one bit because you cannot practice check book diplomacy for decades and be accustomed to sort of follow Washington’s lead and be a team player and that all of a sudden just because your usual partners for internal and domestic reasons fall apart now you’re in the line and you are supposed to lead. Doesn’t work that way. But it is a notion that keeps constantly come up, that people expect Germany to step up and assume that leadership role. I always tell my audience, always tell the people… ‘I have bad news for you, I have bad news for you. If you think that Germany is going to be that one leader that’s going to rescue and save Europe and if not even the entire Western hemisphere, I got bad news for you because not only do we not have the will, we do not have the capacity as well’. I mean, if you look at the major crises around the world these days, in Syria, in Saudi Arabia, Iran issue, if you look at Russia’s role which I don’t have to tell you in this part of the world, Germany is largely absent from the debate, let alone the solution and this is what I am saying. Leadership has to genuinely grow, it’s not something that just because others tell you to do that it’s a role that you can take on.
Germany, economically speaking, particularly compared to the rest of its European partners is doing well. But even there I always want to issue a few words of caution because Germany is the old economy, you know we still practice hardware not software. Germany is still a leader in the automotive industry but if you look at the developments that we are seeing right now about the manipulation scandal by Volkswagen and the reluctance on the part of the German government and the German established company firm names to step up and innovate. I think we are in for some trouble if the mentality change doesn’t happen and I can tell you if there is one thing that does not happen quickly in Germany that’s change. This is not a country… we are not people to embrace change. Now I always say having lived in the United States for a very long time, you win elections in the US with the word ‘change’, you would lose elections with the word ‘change’ in Germany. That’s a huge difference. And in Germany you are the keeper, preserver of the status quo. We don’t want grand visions, we don’t want grand designs for the future, we want to be assured by our leader that tomorrow is going to be good and by tomorrow I don’t mean 2050, or 2080, I mean literally tomorrow. My job is going to be still safe. And this is unfortunately if you look at the automotive crisis that we are having in Germany, about the exposure of the manipulation scandals, the way our politicians have conducted themselves is that, if you will, of a wing-man to the automotive industry rather than saying ‘yes we have a huge problem here and for us to adjust to the twenty-first century we need to make the proper changes’. And you can even see it in the case of digitalization. For those who know Germany well, Germany is embarrassingly behind, for a country like Germany, is embarrassingly behind digitalization. In this coalition agreement I couldn’t notice but chuckle that they now put in that … introduce the right to high speed internet by the year 2025. This is the pledge this grand coalition is making, in the year 2018, they’re pledging for high speed internet in the year 2025. I moderated the conference in Kigali, Rwanda last year, where every bus station had high speed internet. If I’m in public transportation in Berlin I’m lost. I know that’s the end of it. Until I get out again.
So it’s… Germany, and this is what I want you to take away, is a very contradictory case in a sense, people look towards Germany, it has acquired some soft power as of late which it didn’t have I would say ten years ago. Berlin as a hub, Berlin as a city plays a role in that, but at the end of the day Germany has its work cut out for itself and Chancellor Merkel as well. This is not going to be a… She doesn’t have the luxury to be lame duck for the next four years because the challenges, that… the domestic and the international challenges that she has and by international I mean mostly Europe. You know nobody is looking towards Germany to solve the Syria crisis or the Ukraine crisis or what not. But Europe… Germany’s hand and voice is very much needed. There’s no opting out or hiding behind Macron. And this is a very interesting situation where unlike Holland or Sarkozy, or even Chirac, that’s how long Merkel has governed that I have to go back all the way to Chirac, this is a very confident and energetic French president that she is having now. And this is a man who is not waiting for Germany in this sense. This is a man who is saying ‘ok I’m putting forth proposals, I want to save Europe, you want to save Europe, what have you got for me’.
And with that I will close and then we’ll take some questions. I think this is… many people ask me always about Merkel’s legacy and I would say up until 2015, for a woman who at that point had ruled for a decade, it would have been surprisingly little other than well… this is a woman who, you know, who doesn’t waiver, a woman who is pretty calm and stability was what it was all about. Her nickname is not an accident, her nickname is ‘Mutti’, you know is ‘mummy’, you know mummy tucks you in at night, makes sure you are alright. That’s pretty much how Germany felt up until 2015. Mummy is going to take care of things. While there was a rude awakening for a lot of people she surprised a lot of people including myself by opening the boarders. She surprised me because that was completely contradictory to her previous ten years. The Merkel that we have come to know would have waivered a very long time, would have measured the cons the pros, talked to her European partners, listened to what the opposition had to say, literally would have waited until everybody else would have thrown out an opinion, waited for an opinion poll and then made the decision. This is… she even did this against or much to the surprise of her own party base. And to this day a lot of people including myself we speculate how this woman that we had thought we had come to know in ten years had completely took us by surprise with such a drastic decision for both Germany and Europe. But she did and now everybody including myself we are sort of waiting where the next four years will take us. She is not, by her own upbringing, by her own tradition and her own biography, she is not a born and bred European. She’s not like our finance minister, or former finance minister Schäuble for instance, or Helmut Kohl back then, who due to Germany history and World War II saw the European Union not just as a convenient construct but essential for the survival of the Federal Republic of Germany. For them Germany could not exist without Europe. For them, if you will, Germany had overdosed twice on nationalism and the EU was its rehab centre. This… they needed the EU and you can see now with the younger generation of course where that urgency is completely lost.
Now I would still argue, I would still argue especially being in Britain today, I would still argue if we did a referendum the way you did, I might be wrong but I would say we’d still come out resoundingly pro-European because I think our history is very different and the gratefulness for letting us back in to the European family that we have, that’s not going to waiver. Having said that, when it comes… you know, sympathy and gratefulness stops when it reaches your own pocket. And this is the dilemma that we are having in Germany right now, where I think on a political level if you walk around Berlin these days you will not find a many people who would say ‘let’s leave’, even during the Greece crisis, even when the aid packages were just paid. Nobody in Germany said ‘oh screw it, let’s leave. Let’s leave Greece, Portugal, Spain, whoever it is to their own device, we are better off without them, let’s leave’. Nobody ever entertained that notion. And nobody would ever today. But the Eurozone reforms that Macron put forth and that I believe, well, perhaps become unavoidable if you really want to maintain what you call a common currency, that the jury is out on that. I wouldn’t put my… you know, this is a very tough call and this is what’s going to keep her up at night for the next four years. About keeping this very fragile Union together, especially, and with that I end, of course, especially with Great Britain leaving, leaving a huge political and financial hole for Germany to fill, whereas many Germans already felt that they were already contributing substantially to the survival of the EU, now they are going to step it up a bit more. So that’s where I see the next four years… the challenges for this government and Chancellor Merkel in particular.
LORD RICHARD BALFE
Right, well… that’s a pretty refreshing if somewhat depressing view.
ALI ASLAN
I did not mean to depress anyone here.
LORD RICHARD BALFE
No, what we want… what we need is realism. And I think that’s probably realistic. I will say that Clement Attlee left many good things in this world, one of the best things he left was the clause in the German constitution which refuses referendums. It is not possible under the German constitution to have a referendum.
ALI ASLAN
For a good reason.
LORD RICHARD BALFE
British Foreign Office drew up the constitution of the Federal Republic and that question was actually put to Clement Attlee, as to whether there should be a provision for a referendum and he said ‘referenda are the tools of dictators and tyrants’. David Cameron please note those words. So there was actually a provision in the constitution which prevents referenda. [inaudible] actually prevent it.
ALI ASLAN
Absolutely.
LORD RICHARD BALFE
So maybe that’s as well. Right, well I won’t give you another speech, I will intersperse things as we go along. So who would like to say something. Or give us a question? Yes. Tell us who you are, not for my benefit but for everybody else’s.
QUESTION 1
My name is John inaudible. You talked about… this is certainly going to be her last term. Would you like to speculate about who might be the next Chancellor?
ALI ASLAN
There is a battle going on right now within the CDU to determine exactly that question. And she is realizing now this is her fourth and last term. She is now promoting all sorts of people into leadership positions and into very responsible positions like Kramp-Karrenbauer for instance who was the prime minister of Saarland, which is the smallest federal state that we have in Germany. But she is definitely now in the midst, she is losing no time of promoting, mostly women as I said before. Julia Klöckner is one, from Rhineland-Pfalz, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, a name even for myself hard to pronounce, Ursula von der Leyen, our minister of defence, is always being mentioned as one of them.
LORD RICHARD BALFE
Do you think Peter Altmaier is a candidate?
ALI ASLAN
Peter Altmaier is… no, I think Peter Altmaier is the most loyal, most loyal advisor minister she will ever find. She is her closest advisor but… And I admire him, he is very respected in Berlin circles but he doesn’t have… you can interpret that as an advantage, he is not ruthless enough, he doesn’t have what it takes to say ‘I’m going to be the one, I’m going to shoot myself to the very top’ and… physically he could but he doesn’t have the will for power. But there are, and that’s why your question is of course pertinent. Jens Spahn I’ve mentioned before. You have conservative voices for whom Chancellor… who do not appreciate what Chancellor Merkel has done to the CDU, namely move the party to the centre. And in their opinion too much to the centre. So much so that people are saying ‘where is the difference to the Social Democrats? Where is the difference to the Greens?’. Even in the party platform in the sense that, you know, embracing gay marriage, letting in a million refugees and…you know you have this, in my opinion, completely ridiculous debate right now, but to give you a taste, the debate we have about Islam. Now I talk that the greatest challenge that awaits her and Germany is Europe, and I stand by that. But what do we do, what have we done ever since this new German government formed? We are debating whether Islam is part of Germany or not. And it couldn’t be more ridiculous. Our new interior minister Horst Seehofer who of course was a long-time leader of the CSU in Bavaria, he lost no time and the first order of action gave a big interview to a tabloid newspaper Bild where he said ‘Islam is not part of Germany’. First of all, who was asking? Second, is that really what keeps us up at night these days? But he achieved his goal because now Chancellor Merkel was forced to say ‘no, of course Islam is part of Germany, we have 4.5 million Muslims living in Germany now and making up roughly 5 percent of our society’. And then you have completely… and for those who are from Germany or know Germany, you have debates which you can only have in Germany, where politicians are saying ‘yeah yeah, Muslims are part of Germany but Islam is not’. And my point is- I really don’t care. We have so much on our plate right now but the reason… and that’s why your question of course is right on is not about whether Islam is a part of Germany or not. This is Horst Seehofer, Jens Spahn and all the other people testing Merkel. Testing… testing German society, saying ‘listen, we are no longer willing to shut our mouth, we are no longer willing to leave the agenda to Chancellor Merkel, we are taking conservatism back’. And I cannot of course at this point in 2018 sit here and tell you ‘ah there is a clear front-runner’. That is a battle though. That is a battle that will be fought hard and intense within the next four years and this debate that we are having, this nonsensical debate about whether Islam is part of Germany or not, that’s the first throw, if you will, against Merkel and saying ‘ok shooting season is open’.
LORD RICHARD BALFE
Right at the back
QUESTION 2
Thank you, Tony Samuels, vice chairman of Surrey County Council. With Britain leaving the EU, the military option raises its head. Can you comment on whether Germany is possibly opportunistic and will look back and try to [inaudible] their position on armed forces?
ALI ASLAN
On the armed forces?
LORD RICHARD BALFE
On the armed forces. Is Germany going to play a stronger role in the defence of Europe, is the basic question.
ALI ASLAN
That’s also what Donald Trump would like to know. And he has been asking us ever since he took office. About meeting the 2 percent commitment to NATO and so on and so forth.
LORD RICHARD BALFE
It’s much more than 2 percent. It’s about whether… who is going to take the lead.
ALI ASLAN
I understand.
LORD RICHARD BALFE
In saying ‘we have an agenda for the defence of Europe and it is not an agenda written in Washington, it is an agenda written somewhere in Europe and it is about us as Europeans, taking responsibility for our own defence. What part will Germany potentially play in evolving that.
ALI ASLAN
And I was trying to get diplomatically to an unpopular answer but I will make it sweet and short then. I am afraid if…. And that’s what I was alluding to vis-à-vis German leadership and… no I don’t think you are going to see huge changes from Germany. I think that is just a realistic assessment I am giving you here today, knowing everything that I know about not just German politicians but the German people. Now, it would need a complete different mind-set on the part of 80 million Germans and the mind-set, you are talking to the nation and I just want you to appreciate that, who after 45 for all the good reasons have been told ‘sit down, stay on the side-lines, no more military toys for you. You are going to watch and if we need you, we will tell you and then you write some cheques and that’s about it’. Now, that’s been the truth, that’s been the reality of Germany post World War II. Now the situation has changed, rightfully so. But what you are asking, or what other people ask is… inaudible… the mind-set has not changed, the mentality on the part…because the generational politicians that we are having and they grew up with that mantra, namely, German soldiers on foreign soil- never, German arms- never. We are having… of course we are a bit hypocritical because we have no trouble selling arms, we have no trouble being the third largest exporter of arms to Iraq, to Syria, and so on and so forth, to Turkey. But ourselves boots on the ground- no, only if it’s really a part of a peace mission like in Afghanistan where by the Germany does after the US provide the second largest contingents but… Germany will only be able… the Germany that I know and the Germany that I live in, to answer your question, will only go along those kind of missions. You know the mission in Libya, in Afghanistan where the clear-cut mandate by the NATO, or by the UN, where it says ‘ok, your mission is to preserve peace, your mission is to create a liveable society here’. And you saw during the Ukraine crisis, right? I mean, all Chancellor Merkel was willing to offer was diplomacy, political diplomacy. And, by the way, by German standards that was quite exertive, political diplomacy. She was one of the leading forces, without much luck but she tried to engage Putin vis-à-vis the Ukraine, but never… if Chancellor Merkel would have said ‘ok, we are defending Europe, not just with words against Russian aggression but also… by putting where our mouth is, but with arms inaudible…’ never. Should would never say it, the German public would have not expected it, and the German public would have never condoned it if she said it. And our military, to finish this off, is in terrible shape. We’re happy to sell top notch equipment to other countries. Our military is making constant headlines for being a laughing stock, our equipment is a laughing stock and there is a reason why nothing changes. Not because we don’t know any better, not because we wouldn’t have the financial means to spruce up the German military but that’s something you will not get past, the German public. Mandatory military service has been abandoned a long time ago and… no, I understand all the major concerns and conflicts that are taking place right now, but that’s why I was adamant about the lack of German leadership when it comes to, you know, the real hard issue, Germany… the military might that… you need to exhort real power, it’s not enough to build the greatest cars in the world. That’s not enough. If you really have your voice… and that is why the irony is even though France is struggling economically, certainly compared to Germany, it’s voice to this day, in international affairs yields much more influence than that of Germany.
LORD RICHARD BALFE
Right, we’ve got about 15 minutes left. Let me see who has got a question. One, two, three, let’s take the three.
ALI ASLAN
And I’ll try to be briefer in my answers.
LORD RICHARD BALFE
It is your turn this time.
QUESTION 3
Thank you. Could you speculate whether you think the AfD is a bit of a spasm response to the refugees or whether it has some potential to be a sustainable and coherent force on the right because it seems that that is probably going to affect further CDU [inaudible] perhaps to the right or whether it stays more in the centre.
ALI ASLAN
Shall we collect-?
LORD RICHARD BALFE
Yeah, let’s collect the three.
QUESTION 4
Elizabeth [inaudible] forum.
ALI ASLAN
It’s good to see you here Elizabeth.
QUESTION 4
It’s good to see you too and thank you for this very interesting conversation today so… five ten years down the line, how do you see Germany and of course with Britain not in Europe anymore what do you see as a role of Germany be like inaudible
LORD RICHARD BALFE
And…yes.
QUESTION 5
[inaudible] First of all let me reiterate the comments just to make about your talk, it’s been extremely engaging, one of the best I’ve heard and I’ve attended many talks here and the subsequent questions… and I am also intrigued by your use of the word ‘rehab’ because it seems to me that certainly by now I would have thought it would be out of rehab but Merkel’s refugee actions seem to be an act of rehab and the attitude you just expressed to having a proper military is still… a sense that we are still within it. But my question is, its to do with Brexit, because Merkel was quoted recently commenting on Brexit. She didn’t use the word ‘unfortunate’, she didn’t use the word ‘regrettable’, she used the word ‘deplorable’, which is an extreme criticism… why?
LORD RICHARD BALFE
And there was one more so we’ll just take you.
QUESTION 5
Thank you, my name is Jordan Breath from MBA Systems and I was wondering on the topic of German defence exports, has attitude changed with the new coalition, is there an increase, a decrease, how do they see supplying arms to countries like, or conflicts like Syria, Iraq, et cetera.
LORD RICHARD BALFE
I’m going to throw one in.
ALI ASLAN
Please.
LORD RICHARD BALFE
I obviously have my job here, but I am still the Chair of the European Parliament Pension Fund. I mention that because once a year we have a meeting with, or a dinner with one of the directors of the ECB and last year we had our dinner and the subject turned to refugees and this person who shall, it was a Chatham House dinner, shall be nameless, said ‘yes it costs Germany about half of 1 percent of GDP and it will do for the next 5 years but after 10 years they will be contributing at least 1 percent to our GDP. If we hadn’t taken in those refugees, we would have faced a demographic crisis which would have made something similar inevitable’, that’s my first point. And the second point is, you can see they are talking about national security and Russia. Unless we come to a point of détente with Russia we are in trouble. It’s no good carrying on bleating about the illegal annexation of Ukraine anymore then it was when the Ukraine was transferred… sorry, when Crimea was transferred to the Ukraine. There is no record of us objecting when it went one way and unless we settle there a European polity and try to sort out things with Russia, a country roughly the same GDP as Britain, not much more in military expenditure but getting many many more bangs for its buck because I would argue that Europe’s main challenge is going to comes from China. And the one block that is benefiting from the disunion of Europe is China, where they are extremely clever and they are very gradually moving round us with builds and roads and investments. They don’t care about human rights…but they do care about human rights, but not our human rights, so they’re not going to do that…and we are letting the tide wash up on all of our shores because we are unable to do anything…but Germany…I used to say when I was in the European Parliament you can have Europe without Britain…I am very sorry we have, but you can’t have Europe without Germany.
ALI ASLAN
And you can’t have Germany… I would say many Germans would complete that sentence ‘without Europe’.
LORD RICHARD BALFE
Yeah. So there you are. You got 8 minutes.
ALI ASLAN
There you go. I will be very quick. I will start with Brexit. Yes, she has taken a very tough line on… and tough rhetoric indeed and you ask why and the answer is actually quite simple. She has to in order to deter other countries from following Great Britain’s path. It may seem implausible for you right now but if you look at Italy-
SPEAKER
That is a bad motive-
LORD RICHARD BALFE
Doesn’t matter about motives, it’s the result.
ALI ASLAN
That’s it. It’s not my position to say whether it’s a bad… I just tell you why. I tell you why the rhetoric from Germany vis-à-vis Brexit is so un-relentless and unforgiven. And why these negotiations that are ongoing… they will not yield one inch because she cannot afford to, because she knows that other countries at least on the fringes that are tinkering and toying with the idea ‘you know what, we might be better off too without the EU’. Even a country like Poland who, if you will, has been dying to become part of Europe in order to escape from the Russian threat is now in a position where they’re openly thinking, ‘you know what, they’re coming down hard on us vis-à-vis refugees, do we really need them? Aren’t we doing well enough to survive on our own?’. So to answer your question, we can argue whether it’s good taste, it’s bad taste, it’s good diplomacy, bad diplomacy, but I can tell you that Germany and Chancellor Merkel has deliberately made the decision, along with Juncker… to be completely unyielding and not meet the Brits half way.
LORD RICHARD BALFE
I can endorse that having been in Berlin several times since the referendum.
ALI ASLAN
Yeah. So they’re going to make it as difficult for Theresa May, they’re going to make it as difficult for your country as they can be. To the point where they feel you regret it now. This is the point where they are driving it to. I am just giving it to you straight because the disappointment and the disillusionment is quite vast. Nobody expected this to happen, I know a lot of people didn’t expect this to happen here but they know another country leaving is the end of the EU. And if you look at the last Italian election where anti-EU sentiments were quite vast both from the left and the right by the way and… and the AfD rising up in Germany as well… so just to give you an idea why it’s going to be very tough negotiations ahead.
And very little if no compromise from the German side which ties me into the AfD question, is a very good question of course, one we are asking ourselves, namely- is the AfD a phenomenon of the moment, capitalizing on the refugee crisis and everything that went wrong with it or is this movement here to stay. Now, personally I would like to tell you that it’s former but I’m afraid it’s more the latter. The sentiments that exist did not… and this is… I have to be very honest also when I talk to my German friends or outside when they act as if those sentiments, sort of, magically appeared after the refugee crisis. Xenophobic and Islamophobic tendencies, they existed before. Germany just had a better way of dealing with them, had a better way of… due to its social structure and its history, had a better way of, if you will, putting a lid on it. That has now gone out of the window and I think what they have unleashed also with the help of social media is of course a lot of people now feel emboldened. I get asked that question a lot, in the sense- what has changed for you? Now, for me personally, as somebody who was of Turkish decent, not very hard to recognize by my name, it’s not so much what is happening to me personally but what people now get away with by saying things that would have destroyed careers 5 to 10 years ago. By saying the Holocaust Memorial Berlin is a disgrace to the nation’s capital, by saying all Turks should saddle up on their camels and leave, never mind that there are no camels in Turkey, they wouldn’t know… so these kinds of things you can now say. And I’m not saying just some anonymous losers on the internet, AfD politicians, and they are very shrewd, I’d give them that. What they’re doing is, they’re sort of dipping the toe in the water and see how far they can go. Then the outcry starts and then they are ‘ok, ok maybe we went a bit too far, for instance when Beatrix von Storch, one of the more prominent politicians on the… AfD politicians said ‘you know what? I think it’s perfectly legitimate to secure our borders by shooting at refugees’. This is something she said last year. And this is what I’m telling you, these things would have destroyed careers in a heartbeat 5 years ago in Germany, 10 years ago, she would have been shunned by media, by politicians… no. She’s perfectly happy in the parliament and keeps raising that voice. So they are pushing the boundaries and I am afraid that the way back it’s going to be a bit tough. [inaudible] and with that I want to be crystal clear, those sentiments where there before. I don’t agree with the sentiment ‘oh Germany… you know portions, 13 percent, 14 percent, 15 percent of Germans turned xenophobic because we opened the boarders to 8 hundred thousand Syrians, no. No, that was a catalyst, that spurred the AfD moment, that gave them life, that gave them momentum. And that emboldened a lot of citizens, mainly in eastern Germany I’m afraid as well, who felt ‘yes finally, that the era of [inaudible] is over. I don’t have to tip-toe around certain subjects anymore’. So I expect them, unfortunately I expect them to be around for a while… Comment… German defence exports, increase, decrease… I don’t expect any changes and to be honest, those decisions are made during very late night sessions, you know where the media is not paying attention, and the public is not paying attention and these decisions are not publically debated in parliament which is ridiculous, it’s almost like a National Security Council if you will, the German equivalent of a National Security Council, behind closed doors, approves or disapproves of these arms sales. So I don’t expect much changes to that. Now [inaudible] have I left out-
LORD RICHARD BALFE
I think you’ve got everyone.
ALI ASLAN
I got everyone. Now coming to… yes, there is a notion that the refugees are going to solve Germany’s demographic problems. It’s a very provocative idea, as you can imagine, certainly on the part of AfD sympathisers. The truth is, Germany is a very old society, we have, out of 80 million citizens, 18 million currently are senior citizens. It’s a very old society and you can feel it. The birth rate is quite low so we have… as we do here as well I would assume, you have a society that lives longer, that grows old until 80, 90, but you don’t have the next workforce come in and provide for their pensions. And yes, so a lot of people are saying ‘now we have the refugees’. Now, it’s not that easy, I’m afraid, it’s not that easy because for one, it’s going to be a massive effort, it’s going to take a lot of massive effort on the part of society and education system and so on and so forth to integrate many of them into our work force. During a process where the established conventional German workforce is changing, so it’s no longer about educating and training the next generation of trainees to build the next Porsche and Mercedes. I think everybody in Germany, the smart ones at least, understand that combustion engine cars and all that, that’s going out of the window and if I tell you that 8 hundred thousand people are employed by the automotive industry you see that the future of work, that will affect Germany as well, we’re going to have some homework to do, for sure. So yes it’s a notion that has been raised vis-à-vis refugees and demographic challenges, whether it’s going to play out in the end I’m not sure because for one, and I have to criticize that unfortunately, it’s not just about refugees, it’s also generally. We in Germany, we have very low social mobility, unfortunately, we have very low social transparency. Don’t take my word for it. The OECD and United Nations constantly criticize and point out Germany as a negative example, as a country where your ethnic and socio-economic background pretty much determines your future. And that I think, for a country that is so open… we need to do better. So equal opportunity is something that we’d like to throw out and certainly to many countries in the world Germany is a country that provides equal opportunity but on a Western European level. Equal opportunity, if you look at the numbers about who does well in school, who does well in universities, who does well later on in life, it’s usually the people from academic backgrounds. If your parents don’t come from an academic background, if your parents are illiterate or what not, the likelihood that you will succeed is fairly low.
LORD RICHARD BALFE
So it’s good to end on a note that there is something that Britain does better… I’m just looking at the time-
ALI ASLAN
Yes, we are looking at the time and we’ve run out of it so I’m not going to address Russia but you have your work cut out yourself here with Russia, I think …
LORD RICHARD BALFE
Right well, I thank you for the most innovating and entertaining talk but I think we’ve all learnt a new perspective and we’re probably only here because we are interested in Germany but it’s been a very fascinating insight and I thank you very much for coming all the way from Berlin to talk to us for just an hour. I’m sorry we can’t extend it but the rules of the house are fairly clear and I’ve always believed that if you keep rules you keep friends so I’m not going to push the house – and I’m going to thank you for coming.
ALI ASLAN
As a German you don’t have to convince me of the importance of rules. We have that in our DNA as well. The pleasure was all mine. Thank you.