In this edition, we examine the decision to kick off EU membership talks with Bosnia and ask if the bloc can fix itself first.
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00:00 [Music]
00:10 Hello there and welcome to Brussels My Love, Euronews' weekly talk show
00:15 about the news coming out of Brussels and beyond. I'm Maeve McMahon, thanks for tuning in.
00:20 Coming up this week, EU enlargement was on the menu at a recent summit in Brussels
00:26 and the bloc had a special message for Sarajevo. Membership talks can start but only after
00:32 reforms do. As EU elections approach, we're asking how much do EU citizens want to see the bloc
00:38 expand to new countries? And with all this talk of a larger, more populous European Union, what will
00:45 that mean for the actual day-to-day functioning? Will more members mean more benefits or more
00:50 squabbles? Is it the more the merrier or too many cooks spoiling the broth? Maybe it's not Bosnia,
00:56 but actually the European Union itself that needs to reform by ripping open its treaties. A warm
01:01 welcome to our panellists this week. Ambassador Peter Markovic, the head of mission to Montenegro
01:07 for the European Union. Calypso Nikolaidis, Franco-Greek professor of international relations
01:12 from the European University Institute of Florence. Antiona Lavrish-Rilashvili,
01:17 research fellow at KU Leuven and also a member of Les EngagƩs, the Belgian party and also running
01:22 for the elections this year. So good to have you all with us. It was a relatively quiet week this
01:28 week in Brussels due to the Easter, except for the farmers that were protesting here on Monday. But
01:33 what we want to focus on here is EU enlargement and the outcome of that summit. So here's just a recap.
01:38 Eight years after Bosnia and Herzegovina applied to join, the EU has agreed to start membership talks.
01:49 Good news for Sarajevo, still reeling from a troubled past.
01:52 And a strong message to Moscow that EU enlargement is back on track.
01:56 But joining the EU is daunting. Laws and reforms must be adapted to EU standards.
02:03 It can be painful and bumpy. Also, EU elections are around the corner and there's a real fear
02:11 that enlargement discourse could be blown up. Could they bring further delays and will
02:18 enlargement be a matter on voters' minds?
02:20 Gilles, so we start with you. I mean, because we're focused as well big time here on the EU
02:27 elections. Do you think enlargement will play a role or could a lot of decisions on enlargement
02:31 be kicked into the future, into autumn when we have a new commission and a new parliament in place?
02:35 Mev, your question is appropriate because we know that European citizens don't really
02:45 care about enlargement right now. And moreover, European elites, European candidates,
02:51 and Teona will say more, are not that keen on speaking about enlargement. Although for Sarajevo,
02:56 for Bosnia and Herzegovina, this is quite an important milestone. They've been waiting for
03:00 20 years for this moment with lots of little bits of small progress on the road, but the road may
03:07 accelerate and suddenly there is a reality check. The reality check is they hear citizens worried,
03:12 will we lose jobs, will we lose subsidies? But I think we need to keep our eyes on the prize.
03:19 The eyes on the prize is enlargement, as you just alluded to, will mean a Europe that's more stable
03:24 and with less Russia and China inside our borders. And of course, it was Croatia that was the last
03:31 member to join over a decade ago. And you're hoping your country, Montenegro, will be the next
03:35 member to join. You're hoping by 2029, I think? 2028, maybe. 2028. Are you ready?
03:42 We are all but ready. We have accelerated our reforms to an unprecedented level. Our
03:49 administration is working around the clock, and I'm not saying it as a metaphor, the working groups
03:54 for transposing huge chapters of the EU AQIS, or the body of law, work on weekends, Saturdays and
04:03 Sundays. We don't have the luxury of time. And our ambition is to convince the European Commission
04:10 by June to end the member states, to let us close further chapters. I will remind you that Montenegro
04:18 is the front runner in the accession contest with other candidate countries. We opened all 33
04:24 negotiated chapters of the AQIS. We closed three, and now we want to speed up and by 2028 become
04:32 the 28th member state of the EU, fill in the empty seat that the UK left behind with Brexit,
04:38 and show that the EU can enlarge. What's specific about Montenegro, a country of 600,000 people?
04:44 We'll come back to that in a minute, but just you mentioned Brexit, which is quite interesting,
04:48 because we reported for years about Brexit and about the UK leaving the EU, but when it comes
04:53 to enlargement, there's not so much reporting about it. And your country, your home country,
04:57 Georgia, is also an aspiring EU member. Indeed. But what's your assessment of the situation there?
05:03 Because it doesn't seem very clear of what the path of the actual government there is.
05:07 Well, my country, Georgia, is in the despairing to become a member of the EU, and this has been
05:14 actually part of our constitution as well. And Georgian population is very much in favour. More
05:18 than 80% of Georgians are in favour of integrating. And it's our narrative is that we want to back
05:24 to the European family. Regarding the level of preparedness, yes, it's a difficult question.
05:29 Of course, Georgia made certain steps in its negotiation and accession. We have not yet
05:36 started, of course, the accession talks. We are now at the process of trying to go through that
05:42 process, of course. But the problem is the rule of law, the EU fundamental that is always part of
05:48 the EU accession process. And I believe that this is right approach. The EU needs to take care of
05:52 its rule of law inside and outside, because look at the situation right now within the EU.
05:57 We'll come back to that in a minute, because I want to go back to what Calypso said there about
06:01 EU citizens. So people watching us here today, they're thinking the EU is already big enough.
06:05 We're not so comfortable with other members joining, especially as we look at how the EU
06:09 functions. Sometimes it's quite slow. So to come back to Montenegro, what would be your pitch? Why
06:14 do we need a more enlarged EU? Enlarging the EU to Montenegro first by 2028
06:21 would be the best trick that you can do, because it would be a net zero enlargement. A country
06:28 of such relatively small size in terms of population, economy, would disrupt nothing in
06:34 the way the EU is functioning. It wouldn't disrupt the decision making, because we proved already
06:40 with the UK that you can be a 28 member state formation. It wouldn't disrupt anything in terms
06:45 of values, because Montenegro has a 100 percent alignment with all EU sanctions against Russia.
06:51 And is furthest along all rule of law reforms. So basically you make enlargement doable to all
07:00 citizens who are supposed to vote in this and next EP elections without any disruptions to the way
07:06 things work. And according to polls, I was reading eight in 10 people from Montenegro,
07:10 Montenegrins are in favour of joining the European Union. But Calypso, how has the European Union
07:15 treated this? Like from a Brussels perspective, I mean, it's been such a long process, countries
07:20 waiting in the back room and many countries from the Western Balkans that want to join the EU feel
07:24 as well that Ukraine as well might be skipping the queue. Well, that's exactly the point, Mev. Why,
07:30 in spite of everything Petar just said, which is true, after all, the whole Western Balkans,
07:36 about 3 percent of European population, we need to be there as Europeans or else China invests
07:44 there. Russia sends misinformation from there. Not a good idea not to have them in the EU.
07:51 But, you know, we've known this for many, many, many years since the last enlargement, more than,
07:58 I mean, 20 years ago, exactly. You said, OK, now the next one. That was the large wave.
08:02 That was a large wave. Now the new card on the block is that Ukraine, all of this is in the
08:10 shadow of the fact that there is no way to not bring Ukraine in. But can you really tell these
08:17 countries, oh, yeah, we're bringing Ukraine and Moldova in, but you still wait? No, it's not
08:23 possible. So suddenly Ukraine war happens and Bosnia and Herzegovina gets candidate status.
08:30 It gets engaged. It's because now it's a geopolitical issue. It's an issue of Europe's
08:33 security and Europe wants to feel safety in numbers, perhaps. But of course, in Bosnia and
08:38 Herzegovina, they were delighted with that message. We saw the chairman of the presidency over there
08:44 taking to Twitter and taking to the media there Zeljko Kumbnis saying that the news was excellent
08:50 and there would be no more hiding behind this geopolitical situation on the continent. But,
08:54 of course, there'll be a feeling of a bit of a hangover then the next day with the realisation
08:58 of the amount of work that they have to implement. Yes, absolutely. I think that what we should also
09:03 observe is a certain clash when it comes to the merit-based approach and geopolitical or
09:09 political approach, because, yes, Bosnia and Herzegovina has made certain progress when it
09:13 comes to the law against the conflict of interest, for instance, but when it comes to the law on
09:18 electoral law, for instance, or law on courts, there is no progress. And therefore, if we judge
09:23 this decision of the European Council to open the accession talks, it's not fully merit-based. So
09:30 what is the case? The case, yes, political, but then we should also be asking ourselves, I think,
09:35 are we going towards more politicised enlargement process? And are we thinking about how to make
09:41 sure that the countries that will be part of the European Union in the future will be ready and
09:47 will be able to abide to the EU's rules? If I can just quickly come in here, we need to also get
09:52 the EU population ready for enlargement. And that means investing and planning much more into
09:58 strategic communication about benefits of enlarging the EU to its citizens, because, as you said,
10:04 it's not the problem with Eurosceptics against enlargement, but it's not a salient topic for an
10:10 everyday citizen. But one way for doing that is, of course, the Eurovision, no, the annual song
10:14 contest, but countries like Bosnia and Herzegovina, they're not participating anymore because the
10:18 broadcaster can't even afford it. So that's a bit of a missed opportunity, perhaps, for PR.
10:24 Now that they know that they are a part of the enlargement game and that there is a negotiation,
10:28 I'm sure that the broadcaster will find interest to be more European. It's a mutually reinforcing
10:34 game, I think. But on that note, and in fact, going back to what you said there, Fiona, about
10:38 the Commission investigating what exactly is up in these countries, they have these so-called
10:42 reports, progress reports that come out every year. And when it comes to the report on Bosnia
10:47 and Herzegovina, they did, in fact, as you say, had very little progress in areas like resources
10:51 and agriculture, a lot of concerns over the freedom of media, and still a lot of work they
10:57 need to do to depoliticise the public administration. I mean, these are huge tasks, Calypso.
11:02 It's a huge task, which has to do with something called the rule of law, which, if you said,
11:07 bored, you know, what is this thing, the rule of law? And the rule of law, as Fiona was alluding
11:13 to, is probably the most beautiful human invention of all time. It's all about empowering you and me,
11:20 citizens on the ground, civil society organisations, to fight against arbitrary power, to
11:27 fight against the fact that there's capture. They're rich people, corrupt people who take over
11:32 their states. And we as Europeans, as Brussels, but as all Europeans, as Petar says, we need to
11:38 help these actors, these progressive, courageous actors on the ground in Bosnia and Herzegovina,
11:44 but all around the Western Balkans to fight back in the same way as we do in Western Europe.
11:50 Not an easy task, because I mean, many would look at a country like Bosnia and Herzegovina and feel
11:53 it's very politically divided as well and very complicated. But that's an argument that Sabina
11:58 Kudic would fight against. She's the vice president of the Bosnian social liberal political group,
12:02 Nasa Stranka. And I had a chat with her the other day. She was actually in Brussels for that
12:07 historic decision after the summit. But she's back home now and said she's going to crack on
12:11 with that to to. Let's take a listen. We are not afraid of work. And I think there are
12:16 institutional capacities. The question of political capacities is, however, the most difficult one for
12:22 Bosnia and Herzegovina. And having in mind that we've had the same ethno nationalist leaders
12:27 leading the same parties for decades, one can remember, of course, what comes to mind is the
12:34 saying of old dogs and new tricks. So in a sense, it's a question of whether we can force the old
12:40 elites to practice new ways. We are not afraid to open, I would say, Pandora's box of constitutional
12:48 issues of Bosnia and Herzegovina, namely implementation of European Court of Human
12:51 Rights decisions. But this is also an example to citizens that there is a possibility of moving
12:58 forward despite the constraints of the constitution and that there is hope. Sabina Kudic saying there
13:04 is hope and she told me as well that seven in 10 people are welcoming this news in Bosnia.
13:09 And but just back to the rule of law and judiciary, I think their chapter 23 and 24 on justice,
13:15 freedom and security, complicated. You can probably relate to what you're what you're saying.
13:18 Absolutely. I mean, for Montenegro, this translates into the daunting task of by June
13:24 fulfilling 82, something very bureaucratic from Brussels interim benchmarks. But I wanted to give
13:30 to your to the citizens looking at this more plastic picture in the history of Europe and
13:39 House of European history a few blocks away on the sixth floor, there is the massive treaty. So
13:44 the EU law physically there, it takes up a whole floor. This was in 1992. By now, it must have
13:52 tripled or quadrupled in size. So this is what you need to transpose and then implement. It's
13:57 a daunting task for any. Where do you even get the staff for that? The technical staff that are
14:01 expert enough? People just learn on the go. You lifelong learning becomes, you know, food you eat.
14:10 We get expertise help from member states, from the commission, and then you do it. Because
14:16 there is no alternative to fully membership of all Western Balkan states. Can we add that there
14:23 are two sides to this coin? Everything Petar says, you know, absorbing, we're all talking
14:28 about absorption capacity, I don't think it's a nice term. It's more integration capacity that
14:31 we're in now called very politely integration. But who is absorbing? And this is why this case
14:37 of Bosnia and Herzegovina is fascinating, because we all remember the greatest tragedy
14:42 that happened there 20 years ago. Sarajevo, Mostar, the war. And they remember, if we don't,
14:52 and they remember that there was a kind of arrangement. That's what Sabina is talking about,
14:56 a constitution that gives, creates a really complicated system of voting of three republics.
15:03 And with citizens feeling excluded in Bosnia and Herzegovina in various ways, which we don't have
15:10 time to enter into. And this is what the European Court of Justice spoke about recently last fall,
15:16 that we need to kind of adapt this whole electoral system, constitutional system. So here you have
15:22 a Bosnia and Herzegovina in huge upheaval about changing its constitutional makeup from the Dayton
15:28 Accords with external foreign people telling them what to do, and at the same time absorbing all of
15:36 these EU laws. So this is a daunting task. It's a Herculean task for them to. And I think that
15:43 perhaps, and I'm happy that this is happening more or less, and this is what also I've been
15:47 advocating, that's to implement this daunting task, as Calypso was referring to, we also need
15:53 learning and exchanging experiences between the regions, Western Balkans and so-called EU
16:00 associated trio. I think that collaboration and rapprochement in terms of exchanging experiences.
16:04 But that's tricky, because if you look even at the countries themselves, some of the politicians
16:09 don't even speak to each other. So yes, it is. Yes. But we need to learn collaboration and
16:14 cooperation also to not to create the sentiment there is a competition. There is no competition.
16:20 Yes. At the beginning, Ukraine's, let's say, fast-traffic negotiations.
16:24 You do hear a bit of a competitive edge when, for example, the Albanian head of state is in town.
16:28 He's very clear. I have nothing against healthy competition. It's been stimulating. Montenegro
16:35 was the first candidate country to welcome the newly candidates that was for the Eastern trio,
16:40 because when we see others progress, it shows us that we can do it too. But I wanted to introduce
16:46 another thing. We need to learn from each other, but we need to also gradually integrate, find ways
16:54 of having benefits of EU accession before membership, because if it's all or nothing game
17:03 for you know, with this kind of task, it becomes too difficult because the EU is a moving target.
17:09 It constantly changes. And then you're supposed to trying to catch up.
17:12 And then you have to catch up. Yeah. Especially when it comes to climate,
17:16 the green transition. Well, and then if you give these candidate countries like Montenegro,
17:21 who are in the final stage of accession just before becoming members, the opportunity to be
17:25 observers in new bodies, to participate in new programs, you're preparing the citizenry for what
17:31 it means to be a citizen of a new member state. And the day you enter, nothing changes. You're
17:36 already ready. This is what we should aim for. And of course, from a commission perspective,
17:39 they need a good news story, no from the Western Balkans.
17:42 Absolutely. They do. Because if we look at the economic figures as well, the level of
17:45 convergence of the Western Balkans, economic convergence is very low. We need a deeper
17:49 convergence economically, politically. And I agree. And I think this is something that
17:53 commission has also realized that we need to gradual integration. But this doesn't mean that
17:58 the European Commission or European Union is going to say no to a final enlargement of membership
18:05 per se. But gradual access to the single market. And one of the example is the gross pact
18:10 that the European Commission. Yes. Gross plan.
18:12 Gross plan. Yes. But then the question. But again, I think that we need to be careful to
18:18 judge in a strategic way and proper way to understand whether the financial incentives
18:24 will be enough for the political reforms. We need better and more dynamism in the Western
18:29 Balkans and especially in the Western Balkans. And seeing the countries in queue for many years
18:35 also negatively affects, I believe, on the mood and on the dynamics of the Western Balkans.
18:39 And the final decision, then, Calypso will be in the hands of the member states. As it
18:43 stands, I think around 50 percent of people, according to a recent Eurobarometer, are in
18:47 favor of this enlargement. Indeed. And we need to carry European
18:52 citizens, European member states, all of them, because it has to be a unanimity decision.
18:58 So it will be bumpy again. Many of them are worried, especially about competition
19:05 from Ukraine. And all of these enlargements are linked.
19:08 All of these enlargements are linked. And we'll have to wait and see if this plays a role at all
19:13 on people's minds as they go to vote. Those European elections taking place in a couple
19:18 of months, on the 6th to the 9th of June, we'll be covering them extensively here on Euronews.
19:23 But I'd like to close this discussion to take a very short break. But stay with us here on
19:29 Euronews, because in a minute, we'll be taking a look at how the European Union perhaps needs to
19:33 look at itself in the mirror and ask if, as a bloc, they'll be able to reform themselves internally
19:39 before enlarging externally. See you soon here on Euronews.
19:43 [Music]
19:54 Welcome back to Brussels My Love, Euronews' weekend talk show. Now, EU enlargement is back
20:00 on the agenda here. It was a major topic at the recent EU summit in Brussels. And Bosnia got the
20:06 nod to start membership talks. But what we want to ask now is how will the EU actually function?
20:12 When it becomes bigger and more populous? Daniela Schweitzer from the Bertelmans Stiftung
20:17 told me that the European Union will only be ready to enlarge if it reforms itself first.
20:22 Looking at the situation where 35 members or even more could be part of the EU,
20:28 it's obvious that decision making could be blocked too easily by national vetoes, that,
20:33 you know, there's too much complexity. And the risk is that the EU is actually weakened by growing,
20:39 which is really not what we need in geopolitical contentious times. Now, one way is to look at
20:45 decision making mechanisms to reform them, bring in more qualified majority voting. Another is to
20:52 review the functioning of the European Commission, which currently, with 27 commissioners, already
21:00 has too many different topics and is in a way split into too many single parts. We are suggesting
21:07 in the report, which we wrote, commissioned by the French and German government to actually pool
21:12 competencies, create small teams, have some kind of hierarchy between commissioners, but not asking
21:19 member states to give up their commissioner. So Daniela Schweitzer there making the point that
21:23 the EU's complexity could actually trip it up. And she had some practical solutions. What's
21:28 your reaction to those solutions, Fiona? I think that there are two schools, let's say. One is,
21:34 are we going to make it happen that the treaties are being changed? Or the second one,
21:38 are we going to perhaps to look into the current possibilities and opportunities, for instance,
21:43 enhanced collaboration, pass the health clauses, that means to exploit the possibilities within
21:49 the current treaties and to make sure that carry out the policy reviews that will allow a new
21:56 member, future member states to come. My view on that, and this is what also Les EngagƩs,
22:01 the centrist political party here in Belgium, and on their list I'm running as a candidate for the
22:06 federal elections. We believe that it is important that the Union deepens itself first and then
22:12 opens the doors to future member states. But it doesn't mean more federalism. We are calling for
22:18 more consolidation of the internal rules itself, that consolidation of the more internal rules
22:23 itself before enlarging. Okay, let's however, one point is that one point is important to mention
22:29 is that it doesn't mean that the smaller future member states, for instance, Montenegro,
22:34 does not advance and other member states. Well, let's hear what the ambassador of Montenegro
22:38 feels about that. I'm very happy that you said this in the end of your statement, because
22:43 Montenegro, as the 28th member state by 28, can enter without any change of your rules. But as
22:50 other countries enter, some adoptions will be necessary. However, I think it's a false dilemma
22:58 between deepening and widening those two need to go in parallel. And there is a lot of resources
23:03 for changes to happen to if the decision makers here in this town would actually apply the rules
23:09 which are already in the Lisbon Treaty. Indeed, because if you had to wait for treaty change and
23:12 for decision making to be happened, you could be waiting another decade. What's your take on all
23:16 of this? Well, Merv, Daniela and Teona told us a bit about what happens in the Brussels bubble
23:23 up there. These worries that officials have that one country can hold hostage the whole damn thing
23:31 through a veto, and it will be even worse with more countries. Okay, we understand that. But
23:37 you know what? Small countries might be a bit reluctant to give up their vetoes, because in a
23:42 way, that's their only power. Whatever happens there, I would like to suggest that, you know,
23:48 your average viewer here, the person who's listening, maybe they don't really care what
23:53 happens around the table in here in Brussels. What they really care about, I would say, is that,
23:59 okay, this EU is taking on more competences, doing more things. It did it before enlargement with
24:04 COVID and the green transition and all of that. So more stuff up means that it should be more
24:10 accountable down, if I can use this image, up and down, up and down. And so that means that
24:17 at this moment of enlargement, citizens need to be able, citizens organise in groups and unions,
24:23 etc, have more control and visibility for the EU budget, organise themselves, be heard between
24:30 elections. So it's the whole agenda of democratic empowerment in the EU. I think that's what people
24:35 care about. Well, there was an attempt to radically change that with the conference on the future of
24:40 Europe, that big attempt in Strasbourg to gather a citizens assembly, but there was no major outcome
24:44 of that. But just to go back to the proposals that we heard there about the commissioners,
24:49 I mean, 27 commissioners is a lot. There could be many more, of course, as we enlarge in the future.
24:54 Would this be better not to shrink them? The Lisbon Treaty, so the, you know, the Constitution
25:00 of the EU already has an article which receives 15 commissioners, but our leaders are not ready
25:08 to implement it. At some point, the number will become too large and then you have to group them,
25:13 I have to agree with Daniela. Indeed, in the treaty, there is possibility of two thirds of
25:17 the commissioners of the member states. Nowadays, in the current geopolitical context, where also
25:25 the European Commission has become much more politicised and more and more powers are being
25:29 accrued to the European Commission, the national member states also are being more attached to
25:33 their own commissioner. So this will be very difficult to ask them not to have. And here,
25:37 and then the second point is about the qualified majority voting. Here, I think that it will be
25:42 rather complicated because again, smaller member states, but not only smaller, medium-sized member
25:46 states as well, they believe that veto is their own tool and possibility to influence and we will
25:54 need, I agree with Kallip, so we will need much more legitimacy to this process. And finally,
25:59 it's about the legitimacy of the decisions as well. How do you imagine having decisions by the
26:04 EU leaders that are not supported by absolute majority? This will be rather difficult to accept
26:10 also for the citizens. But here in Brussels, there's an obsession now about the future commission
26:16 and the future commissioners and what portfolio they should have. We're hearing all sorts of ideas
26:20 about a commissioner for SMEs, a commissioner for defence. Everyone's trying to have their say. But
26:26 as you say, Kallip, so this is not really what people back home care about. And in fact, many
26:30 member states, they send perhaps their worst representative to Brussels, people who've perhaps
26:35 been engaged in political scandal back home. So the perception as well often of people,
26:40 of the representative in Brussels is often a negative one. Well, you know, the ombudsman
26:46 in Brussels is the least well-known bit of the institutions. And yet it's so important,
26:52 because we had Qatargate, we had some corruption scandals. And of course, let's not think that
26:59 most commissioners are corrupt or people working in all of the European institutions. That's not
27:03 true. They're very, very passionate, well-intentioned people. But at the end of the day,
27:09 to me, the only thing that can really bring citizens back and their trust back is what I
27:16 would call, and we called this in a CEP's report, the radicality of sunlight.
27:21 Okay, and I'm going to just leave you there on that note. If anyone wants to read it,
27:24 they can check it out online. And also for more in-depth analysis on all those topics,
27:29 you can check out euronews.com. But for now, thank you so much to our panellists for being with us.
27:33 And thank you so much for watching.
27:35 Welcome back to Brussels, my love. I'm Maeve McMahon and along with Ambassador Peter Markovic,
27:53 Kalypso Nicolaidis and Tiona Lavrilashvili, we're talking through some of the stories
27:58 in the news this week. And one that caught our eye was this. Greenpeace activists gatecrashing
28:03 the recent nuclear energy summit in Brussels from blocking the main access routes, playing dead and
28:09 handcuffing themselves to steering wheels to spraying pink powder. Activists even climbed
28:14 up on the top of the building to make sure their message was heard, that they do not agree with
28:18 the global decision to triple atomic capacity that was decided in Dubai last year. Police escorted
28:24 the peaceful demonstrators away, but Greenpeace say that is their only way, really. They have to
28:29 get very creative with their campaigning. We can take a listen now to their senior campaign manager,
28:33 Lorelei Limousin. We are in a climate emergency, so time is precious and the governments here today
28:40 are wasting it with nuclear energy fairy tales. All the evidence shows that nuclear energy is too
28:45 slow to build, it's too expensive and it remains dangerous and polluting. We don't need nuclear
28:51 energy. Governments must invest in the solutions that work for people like air insulation, public
28:58 transport, renewable energy, not in nuclear energy fairy tales. So Peter, how do you feel about this
29:04 kind of activism blocking the entrance to this conference? Is that the only way to get press
29:09 attention? Well, as ambassador of a country which first put ecological country in its constitution
29:16 in the world, I am empathic to the cause, but I think we need to become, in addition to individual
29:23 protest actions, we need to become disruptively creative all the time as citizens and we need
29:29 to institutionalise this at the EU level, which is something that Calypso has been working on.
29:34 Fiona, what's your take on this? Have you ever been at a conference here in Brussels that was
29:38 gate crashed by activists? I've been and I think that this is part of the communication strategy,
29:43 which indeed attracts attention. But I think that in this case,
29:47 it will not really affect on the government policies, I believe, because it is increasing
29:54 realisation that the nuclear energy is a part of the solution, together with the renewable energy.
29:59 And it's also what has engaged its Belgian political party proposes. What is your take on
30:05 this kind of? Let's leave aside the merits of nuclear, I would say. But I would say that climate
30:11 activists, like my own daughter, I have to admit here, they don't want you to love them.
30:17 They want you to hear them. They want you to know them. And they say, well, yeah, we're in a
30:24 democracy, you could go to court, you could vote. But that's not enough. Time is not on our side.
30:30 And they ask, why are governments becoming more and more coercive when actually what we need is a
30:38 collective decision, a collective disruption, exactly as Petar said, because non violence,
30:45 civil disobedience, these days, is the expression of a huge angst, especially among Generation Z.
30:54 And we need to honour this angst, we as good ancestors. But if you look at the UK press,
31:00 for example, politicians, the press, and a lot of public opinion as well, are really anti
31:07 these kind of activists, because they're happening so often. They're happening as well at sporting
31:12 events. And many people, many CEOs, and those who are frequently in boardrooms feel that if they
31:18 want to have a conversation by ruining where they gather with their colleagues, it's not the right
31:23 way to go about it. Different countries and societies have different political cultures
31:28 of protest. I'm not surprised that in the UK, they would find this a bit too radical or offensive.
31:34 But it's important to get the message across. And then a former activist, when they change the
31:41 forum, when they step from the street to the decision making room, then they also need to
31:47 behave like decision makers. So you know, you need to adapt your goal to the environment in
31:54 the forum that you're active in. And I guess the feeling is that people are not feeling heard,
31:58 they're not in the room enough. So maybe it's a call to politicians to include them perhaps a
32:03 little bit more going back to what we talked about earlier as well about more participative democracy.
32:06 But we are out of time now for this discussion. But thank you so much to our panel for being with
32:12 us. Ambassador Peter Makovic, Calypso Nicolaidis and Fiona Laverle-Ashfilly. As usual, if you have
32:18 any comments for us here, please reach out. Our email address is brusselsmylove@euronews.com.
32:23 We're also on Instagram, on X and on LinkedIn. See you soon on Euronews.