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so
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[Applause]
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hello i'm terry martin and it is my
great pleasure to be with you today
for this session on the future of the eu
from the perspective of central europe
we have four foreign ministers with us
here today and i'm going to introduce
them very briefly you can read all you
want about them
in the program because they do have
illustrious uh careers
and very interesting credentials i'll
start um
just with what i have here uh well
actually i'll start right here with
peter sayarto
the foreign minister of hungary just
next to him i'm a face that you've
already seen here
at the forum a couple of times ivan
korchok of the slovak republic
uh next to him we have uh we have
jacob i hope i'm getting this
right of the the czech republic and
speaking you rao
at the end from the republic of poland
so another warm round of applause for
all four of them
it's it's great to see all of the the
four
foreign ministers of the visigrad group
gathered here today at the
globe sack uh 21. what could be better
uh than that really and congratulations
by the way on the 30th anniversary
of the v4 um by the way i know the group
has had its ups and downs
uh over the years both before and after
your eu accession in 2004 but uh today
we want
to talk not about too much about the
past but more about where we are today
and how you see the future now before we
get started i just want to remind the
audience that
we are very interested in hearing your
questions to the foreign ministers we're
going to try to
integrate them into this discussion
towards the end
so you look at your app if you're also
joining us virtually you can also submit
questions using your app
and we'll try to bring those in towards
the end
of the discussion so do be thinking
about that along
the way now
to set a baseline for talking about the
future
i would first like to quickly ask each
all each of you
how you see the eu right now
is the union that we have here today
in the european union uh what your
country imagined
it would be 17 years ago when you
uh joined the eu and if it's not
the way you thought it would be is that
because the eu
has changed or is it because you have
changed
let's start right here with minister
ciarato
good afternoon to all of you thank you
very much for invitation ivan
thank you for uh giving us the chance
again for visagrat foreign ministers to
express our
views here i think that the whole world
has uh
changed it has changed a lot especially
during the recent uh one and a half
years
and i think it's absolutely not an
exaggeration to say that
we are entering a newer new age a new
world order
both when it comes to global politics
and global economy and what we
understand from the current situation is
that this
new age or this new world order starts
with a very tough competition
a tough competition uh regarding uh
who's gonna be
strong stronger or the strongest and
who's going to be the winner of the
competition for the redistribution of
the capacities of the global economy in
the new era
if we look at the share of gdp
we eu do have now it's
unfortunately much less compared to what
we used to have 10 years ago
if we look at the political strength of
ours well
about this we can debate but regarding
gdp is definitely about
figures gdp relative to other countries
they're
too global okay i mean the share of uh
european union's gdp to the global gdp
has shrinked a lot unfortunately
it has many aspects of course because
others have grown much
more quickly but what i think would be
the most important now
is to make sure that the european union
is going to be among the winners
of this new age both when it comes to
political strength and when it comes to
uh
economic power and the way how we can
make eu
strong i would say again is that we make
the member states
themselves strong so you you know we
never believed
in the concept called united states of
europe but we always believed in the
concept of strong eu
based on strong member states and we
really still do believe that if the
member states are themselves strong
you add them together it will end up in
a strong european union this is our
position okay so competitiveness very
much at the
at the forefront of your perspective on
the eu
uh minister kocha well thank you and
good afternoon and well welcome to my
colleagues from
uh vishgrad first when entering the room
that that was a very
exceptional feeling because rarely when
v4 show wapsweep are clapping and
i hope people will be clapping also at
the end of this panel
but you asked about our view 17 years
ago when when we joined european union
in a retrospective and all in all will
with with all the problems i think it's
a success story for my country if you
look around
how the country looks like certainly
it's because we've been working hard
in order to change our country but i
dare say that without being member of
european union
the outcome would not be that positive
because it opened
the country it has brought new
responsibility to us which is changing
positively
the country and it has opened uh
opportunities and economic development
we joined
eurozone as the only country of of
vishegrad
but certainly one has to see in order to
make the picture
complete that we have not expected when
we joined that
a decade more than a decade of a crisis
would be ahead of us and that was
difficult and that's the legacy we have
to deal with
also when when talking about the future
because it's fine to talk about
uh what we want to achieve in in the
future but unless we address the issues
which are on the table and that are the
outcome of unresolved crisis
which we have experienced over the last
10 12 years
we can barely talk about challenges uh
in the future but the overall
overall overall outcome of our
integration i hope i speak on behalf of
slovak citizens
is a is a very positive one mr kalanick
you of course have watched the eu evolve
too
you see me younger man than myself so
you have a younger man's perspective
on this what's your feeling about how
the eu
has evolved and what the czech
republic's position is
in it relative to what you imagined 17
years ago
well first of all thank you for having
me
um that's a really um welcome
uh uh um a change uh to be sitting here
you know among uh my v4 colleagues but
more importantly
the fact this is uh um uh taking place
and um and the physical form
uh it's uh quite uh refreshing and
um that's a that's a joyful feeling uh
indeed
but um you know it's a tricky question
and um uh you know i always say i mean
you know obviously the obvious answer
would be yes i mean the eu has evolved
uh
for sure uh but uh and so has your
country yeah well
true yeah but the most important uh
thing here is that um you know sometimes
uh i cannot help but think that uh we uh
tend to
forget uh maybe uh uh what we were uh
getting uh ourselves uh uh into
that is uh uh you know uh a lot of hard
work and and responsibility
uh you know just the the fact that now
we can sit at the table
in brussels and uh you know this is you
know i mean
it we have this this ownership this is
shared ownership
and uh uh you know it's it's up to us i
mean
uh you know sometimes i feel it hasn't
quite
sinked in yet uh uh fully but uh you
know with that
with time uh you know i'm very hopeful
uh um
but uh the the most important thing here
is that um uh you know in the years to
come
uh you know i believe uh that uh we will
um be able to uh sort of uh uh
not not think of you know um you know is
it is it different
is it the you know different eu than we
were hoping for
but rather i mean it's the the you uh
you know we can
uh you know it's it the eu will be as we
we we make make it i mean it's our um uh
it's it's our doing so so so i think um
you know this once we can uh we can
accept
uh uh it will make the whole of uh the
eu
a much better place mr al you've watched
the eu evolve as well poland has also
evolved i was actually there
um where the borders come together
uh among some of the visigrad states
together with germany
uh in 2004 and and witnessed this the
succession from that perspective which
was it was a fascinating and moving
moment
uh poland being a large neighbor of
germany where i live uh this was
a very significant and moving uh
situation there how
how have you ex how do you have you seen
the eu evolve relative to what your
country's
aspirations were your expectations there
because i know it was quite
controversial in poland the idea of even
joining the eu
yes thank you very much let me begin
in the most traditional way of thinking
with globsec and
evan korchok personally for inviting us
and offering this opportunity to discuss
this issue well let me say that i'm
not in a position to agree with you
because
the issue of joining the eu was not so
controversial in poland the overwhelming
majority
was for joining and still today the
overwhelming majority
uh one of the highest actually in the eu
is for our for our uh presence
in in the uu structure so i don't know
from where you are taking this person
i'd be happy to provide you with an
article that i wrote at the time about
it um where the polling number was okay
anyway
i appreciate your your knowledge based
on the articles but uh it's my country
and i know of course
of course uh
17 years ago there was an overwhelming
feeling
in in poland that european union
united europe integrating europe is the
most natural place for us
and this feeling still prevails there is
no
there is no uh question about that
what we expected from the european union
at that time i would say
actually two things two things first
that we are joining a political european
structure
with strong european institutions
which are helping to pursue
the interest of member states at a
strong member states so
it was a community of a cooperation
of mutual understanding based on the
principle of
equality subsidiarity
and proportionality and i suppose that
is exactly
what most of us in poland expect from
the european union
in the future in order to be satisfied
as much as we were 30 17 years ago i
suppose what is absolutely necessary
is is a clear cut distinction between
the competences
of the european institutions and the
member states
if we manage to do that it's the union
is not going to be
perfect institutionally but something
it's going to be very satisfactory for
every member of state
this is one thing this is now i have
briefly if you don't mind because i'd
like to move on
i would think that we attach an enormous
value to a single market a single market
with
its four freedoms because it makes
our economies competitive within the
european union
and the european union competitive envy
in the world which is going to be more
and more complicated
also economically now indeed the region
that you represent here has one of the
most
dynamic in the european union it must be
said
so that's setting the stage that's kind
of the baseline
for where we are now and i want to now
start looking towards the future
uh you mentioned minister kochak
that the that the eu has suffered a
number of um
of crises and that you maybe had not
anticipated these crisis that's the
nature of crises right that whether it's
economic or whatever something
happens and very recently uh or just now
indeed we are experiencing a crisis
that is uh shaking the eu to its
foundations
uh not just the eu but the entire world
it must be said
we're talking of course about the the
pandemic right the pandemic
is has hit us in a way that we
never could have imagined has hit the
global economy with a lot of talk about
the economy here
it's hit the global economy but also our
entire
the fabrics of our societies how we live
together fundamental freedoms that we
cherish have been compromised and we are
slowly coming out of this lockdown which
we can hope will
continue but talking about the forces uh
shaping the eu's evolution right now the
austrian foreign minister this morning
alexander schultenbach
he um schallenbach he this morning he
suggested that the pandemic though
terrible as terrible as it is it has
also provided
a positive impetus for the eu
that it is bringing the eu together
perhaps and
changing it in a way that might be
positive do you see it that way do you
see
this pandemic that we are in right now
this crisis as it's shaping the eu
the decisions that have been made at
european level on how to deal with it do
you think this is going to make the eu
stronger
moving forward or not
who would like to begin peter
you guys get together all the time you
you've done this before i know but
i need three more minutes okay look we
always knew that the slovaks were
fantastic and very polite hosts so
you don't you don't disappoint us that's
great
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look i think that the eu made some
very good decisions and some very bad
decisions
when it comes to tackling the crisis
let's start with the good one okay
to be equally polite to uh even
that was europe come on
it was absolutely a good decision to
allow the states
the governments to give financial
incentive to investments
of private companies during the crisis
under much more flexible circumstances
than during peaceful times
we have taken the advantage of this
flexibility put forward by the european
commission
and we decided not to distribute money
on a social basis
but to give investment incentive to
companies
who have agreed to make investments into
their capacity and or
technology parallely to making a
commitment
not to not to fire anybody and this was
a good decision by european commission
to allow this we have broken investment
record last year in hungary regardless
of the pandemic because we use that
scheme
what was a bad decision was that um
regarding the procurement of the
vaccines
i think eu proved to be very slow
because um big entities outside of the
european union including the united
kingdom the united states israel
could start the vaccination campaigns of
them much
more quickly than the european union
could and on the other hand what i think
was
was really a big mistake that the issue
of vaccines
was considered as of ideological
or geopolitical nature okay i'm sorry
i'm just going to interrupt you if you
don't mind
i'm just going to interrupt you very
very briefly and put my apologies but um
what i
would like is for you to to think not
just about like what has gone wrong in
handling the pandemic but rather
has the pandemic going to lead to any
changes like okay
this was slow this you know the way that
your the eu handled the
procurement of vaccines it was almost
universally criticized the point is
have we will the eu learn from that is
this going to create an
opportunity for reform within the eu
that will shape its future development
in a way that you find
encouraging yeah we definitely do have
to because
i mean eu does have to change you're
totally right because i think what
uh has become very uh clear that
institutions can lead
the integration very well under peaceful
circumstances
but when it comes to crisis and when
it's time to act then we need leaders
and then simply institutions uh cannot
replace
leaders and that's why i think that the
um that the decisions
made on uh on national basis on member
states basis
were extremely important and
i think under um under uh serious uh
emergency situations
uh the room for or the space for
national decisions uh
should be kept free and should not be
let's say taken into consideration as if
they were
means to violate the european unity okay
so i think a healthy
a healthy balance between um between
answers
coordinated by brussels and the answers
based on national
level uh must be kept and i think this
is something that we have to learn from
this crisis definitely
okay there's a lot more that we could
talk about there uh
vis-a-vis hungary and the eu and uh and
some of the some of the aspects but uh
perhaps we'll get in into that a little
later uh minister
chuck you've had a little a few moments
to think about that um
perhaps you're are you ready i i'm never
ready to answer
this question because i'm sick and tired
of uh
you know receiving all the time the
question whether crisis air
a or b pandemic now will be the the
point that will change finally
european union for the better and i
don't think any people are
and i don't think it's and i don't think
it's completely appropriate
uh to ask whether the eu or what went
wrong
what was fine with the european union
tell me and show me identify
one state that was prepared for this
pandemic
not that the european union was not able
to deliver masks at the beginning
uh but the states were not ready and
in spite in spite of all the
deficiencies and
and you know shortages and problems i
dare say that had we not
entitled european union to procure and
acquire the vaccines collectively for us
individually i don't think slovakia
would be better prepared to
acquire registered vaccines because the
truth is
that there was access but not to
registered vaccines
and hungary has decided we follow then
to
go for other vaccines outside of those
were
outside of the european market uh if you
all that but that's reality
two i don't think it's it's so
appropriate to say that eu
was slow because the other day i i in
france i received the question
that european union acted as if it was
a state you know when it comes to
uh procuring uh vaccines but it took us
60 days and that was a big difference
between united states and united kingdom
because there was a state
decision which we have not back then
so those are realities with which we are
facing
and the the change that it may uh
trigger for the future
yes maybe there will be acceptance
amongst member states among
our citizens to uh to give more
competence for the european union when
it comes to health but there we do have
to
identify what kind of competence we
transfer
on european union when it comes to
health health protection that could be a
lesson but
once again i don't think that this
pandemic with
will be a major a watershed change
uh for us to resolve the problems we've
been facing
over the last 10 or 20 12 years i mean
can we
resolve all obstacles and probably
remove obstacles within
internal market which is not properly
functioning irrespective of pandemia
can we complete steal the eurozone which
is a difficult legacy
from from previous uh previous crisis
and you can continue can we improve our
foreign policy because of pandemia i
don't think so
okay what is needed is a determination
and readiness to act in order to improve
things which do not function
and this is my expectations from the
upcoming debate
uh within the conference on the future
of european union okay
well still i think it might be
appropriate to to ask this question
about whether this crisis has provided
some
impetus for for change uh positive or
negative um
so i'll i'll continue if uh in unless
you're
you know our other guests here have have
uh think otherwise uh
uh would you like to scare the comment
um minister
perhaps briefly because i very much
subscribe to what's been said before
uh you know look you know when it comes
to the pandemic
you know one has to realize that it was
it was a wake-up call you know i uh
and and here i would slightly disagree
with yvonne uh here
very much like uh uh to see this um as a
watershed moment
it won't be probably but uh uh you know
i think uh
it was this you know painful realization
that uh the eu um is ill-equipped
uh uh to uh um
address the uh health crisis of this
magnitude
but look you know we didn't
uh you know nobody planned for that and
i you know here i agree with you
the uh the the notion that
um you know this was uh you know some
kind of a nation state
uh that that failed it is well uh uh you
know um
i mean that's silly uh you know i i
think um uh
well i mean what what you know i mean
obviously and mistakes were made
uh but but also i i think uh there's
been a lot of
uh you know good and a lot lot of
positive that that's been
that's been accomplished and you know we
should not lose sight of
of of this and as we as as we move
forward
you know i think you know we should look
at this
as you know lessons learned and make
sure
that when the next pandemic hits us
we are prepared but you know as as the
as the eu the eu institutions but also
member states so
so i think um as the saying goes um
you know no no no good crisis should go
to waste and we should look at it
that way okay um mr
rao perhaps we want to move on or would
you like to say something about that
because uh
again minister schallenberg from austria
was adamant that um there were good
things that were going to come out of
this for the eu
for the future of the eu i'm just
wondering if you if you show that or not
very briefly
kind of a yes or no well i wouldn't like
to
overstate the importance of this
experience it was
it has been a traumatic experience and
from each
such a multi-dimensional experience
smart
leaders and concerned citizens in a
democratic system
can draw their own lessons and as far as
the european union is concerned
i suppose that it this
experience indicates some strengths and
some weaknesses of the european union
for example i'm i'm i'm a supporter of
the subsidiarity
principle and i suppose that the
validity of this principle has been
confirmed
in this in this crisis because if you
if you take for example the
medical infrastructure that had to be
had to be created
at this spot in order to accommodate the
coveted 19 patients
nobody can replace the local authorities
and
in in in doing that it's so what is
absolutely necessary is to create a
space for a reasonable
activities so if in in poland we
we have a boost now of of uh
e e medical in medical system
right uh there is there are so many
digital uh arrangements considering
medical services and so on
so it can be done well at the bottom
certainly okay when you
think about other things like access to
access
to drugs very often or access to medical
data
of course of course the european union
could be very helpful here okay
it's a matter what i said it's a matter
of a division of competences
and also what is extremely important
it's a human and political attitude here
do you recall the beginning the
beginning of a pandemic in our part of
of europe borders got close
yes this was very unfortunate and what's
the end of that
i'm very proud that the medical staff
from poland
came over here to slovakia to assist the
slovak colleagues in the action of the
vaccinations of many many
many people exactly so this is exactly
the indication that we can
learn in a small way from this kind of
experience
like any other experience very good
because there is a lot of talk about
the health union now within at the
european union level and whether
if changes can be made that would allow
this to really
evolve better because you really insist
on calling this a
health union i mean
anyway i do send some skepticism on the
panel about the uh
about the impact of of the pandemic in
terms of the eu
evolving i want to get on to some other
questions particularly about the
conference on the future of europe but
uh perhaps minister kulan uh
minister koch and i'll just make a quick
interview what came to my mind when i
was listening to my colleagues who were
right on everything what they said but
jakub i wish it was right would you say
that it's a it was a wake-up call
my experience says that with each and
every crisis in the european union the
outcome is a wake-up call and then we
fall asleep
this is the problem because you know
eurozone
what is it migration more or less we're
awakened from time to time
and so on and so on so i i wish that
this time it was a wake up call and
second the more provocative question
i i entirely understand with my friends
bigness who
says you know subsidiarity and
competence and flexibility but
can we identify as we sit here something
where the eu has prevented us from doing
something
i believe the challenge and the failure
i could
yes we were under very heavy attack for
months because of buying vaccines from
the east but that's not the question of
competence that was a question of rules
i mean we agreed
we agreed with the european and i'm not
criticizing you
are you what vaccines from the east as
well sorry you bought vaccines from the
east as well
yes after you after the actually after
you
after after you now we helped and i had
and i personally i did yes i know
something about that yeah i'm proud of
that and
so we we bought after you decided to
a good decision but not to follow the
rules that we established within the
european union you opened the door and
this is perfectly
your right yeah gentlemen i'm sorry just
one second
you say that you say that we didn't
follow the rules but you know the
european regulation says
that there are two ways a vaccine can be
approved in the european union either by
ema
or under uh emergency circumstances by
the national regulators
so what we have done was it has been and
is enshrined in the european uh
regulations
and look we were not ready to look at
the vaccines as
ideological or geopolitical nature but
as tools for saving lives of the people
and the fact that we are at 65 percent
of vaccination rate and we
we were the first country in eu to open
up economy was was mostly thanks to our
quick steps
at the beginning and i don't feel that
we would have violated
any common rule or um any common
agreement because
it was not said that you are not allowed
to buy vaccines from anywhere else we
subscribe to the europeans
i'm afraid i'm going to have to
interrupt you thank you thank you both
yourself
against the regulations
i sense i sense that there's a need for
further discussion on this topic
between the two countries there and i'm
sure those those discussions will
continue but um
what you know we are talking about the
future of europe here there's been a lot
of discussion of course about the
vaccine procurement and you know who's
buying what from whom under what
conditions but
moving forward uh there's something that
we absolutely have to talk about here
today because it involves everyone in
the european union uh
ostensibly and that is the conference
on the future of europe this is um
this has been described as as the one of
the largest
public consultations one of the biggest
exercises in cons
in deliberative democracy uh on the
continent and i wanted to
get your opinions on that the conference
on the future of europe
the if you're everyone in the room is
probably aware of this
that there is supposed to be this rather
long detailed process that is going to
gather input from the citizens of the
european union
and these this input is supposed to
turn into the form of recommendations
which
at the end could be perhaps should be
written into european law now
the question is what what do the member
states think of this
how how do the states of central europe
how do the visigrad
group countries see that what do you
make of this cons
this conference on the future of the
europe is it going to going to be
valuable or not where should we begin i
think i'll start at the other end of the
panel
um first since we've uh had a little
finally more conversation here
okay thank you my strong
impression is that thinking about the
future of europe
we should look at the european union
from the perspective of citizens not
from the perspective of politicians
not from the perspective of those who
consider themselves
reformers but from the perspective of a
of the citizens
as it should be in any democratic
entity and that's what this conference
supposedly is exactly exactly
so i i i dare to believe
that for example the average for the
average
european citizens such issues how to
structure or restructure european
parliament
whether to have a head candidate spitzen
candidate
or they have to
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transnational lists it's now
as important as the clear-cut division
of competences
between between the member states and
the
and the european institutions whether
administrative or judicial
institutions this is this is the bottom
line because
we have to talk about things that people
understand
the other thing the other thing
is very i suppose what we have to work
upon
in the future is the true is the true
single market that doesn't
discriminate anyone for
in the in the european in the european
union so
everybody is treated is treated
fairly whether it's from a big country
or a small country
and if you launch a company in one
country
and you are from another one so you have
every
right to compete according to the to the
european rules and the other thing
extremely
important is the issue that has been
brought up by the notion of
so sovereign autonomy
it's a very questionable issue i
understand that it
has been brought up because people
expect it
because remember states won't want to
discuss it
but we have a to decide what kind of
dimension this
this kind of autonomy is going to be if
it has to
if it's going to be a have a
an economic dimension i welcome it very
very much so because i want europe and
every member state in europe be
competitive
but if it's going to has a military
dimension for example
with an intention to replace for example
some elements of the structure of the
of of nato realistically
i'm not in favor of it because our
military resources of the european union
this doesn't need much proof are more
than
more than limited okay so that's if the
if we do have conclusions coming out of
the consultation on this conference on
the future
of europe that uh in your opinion
would undermine your country's
sovereignty with respect to
defense on the one hand uh that would
not be good but if it were purely to
make it more competitive
on the economic side that might be okay
um minister kulanek
we do need to move along i would really
like to get your views on this because i
want to bring in some questions and we
only have about 12 minutes left
okay okay i'll try to be brief
i suppose i i take it uh we give is
quite eager to participate
and and the conference on the future of
europe um
which is good um but this this might be
a
a bit of a silly stunt but uh how
many of you in this room actually know
about uh uh
this uh uh conference this uh uh
uh endeavor by uh uh european
union and and perhaps more importantly
how
many people outside of this room
actually uh know
um about this um uh
quite worthwhile undertaking but uh
you know i i mean i i'd be uh you know
perhaps a bit
skeptical uh uh you know um uh
and uh you know hence it uh you know
my answer i mean i i think this is uh
this is great um
uh you know we we should have it but uh
you know i wish
we would try to uh
bring the eu closer
to its uh citizens and really i i i
believe that
you know putting european citizens at
the forefront
uh you know of this uh uh discussion
uh uh is uh what uh the eu uh
needs above all and maybe using it uh
to raise awareness about
what the eu means to
individual citizens that's that's the
way
forward so i you know i think and
it's you know i guess up on us also uh
you know to make sure that
uh um you know more and more people
actually know about this process
and and so you know encourage people to
to
uh take power you both see it as as good
in principle
as long as it kind of aligns with your
own country's interests it sounds like
to a degree although that's
not what i'm hearing from you is jolly
good but you know i
i i feel we should encourage people uh
you know to take people
to take part in um any any other
thoughts on this i mean i
just perhaps perhaps this is not really
on your radar screen the conference on
the future of your own
no of course it is on peter's right
mostly no no no no yes let's be serious
my sophisticated answer is we'll see
i don't know because we promised to our
citizens
uh right after we stood in a shock after
british referendum
uh in june 2016 and later on in
september 2016 that we would
come up fairly soon with an answer about
the future of european union and since
then
almost six years have elapsed already
and we're still
about to launch a conference of which we
expected people
in in jumbo in chrome i don't know
they'll be coming up with bright ideas
about the future are we not naive
i don't think it will work that way okay
no no
we no we will we will be engaged in that
i my intention is to travel across
slovakia
and speak to people but you know it will
be
barely possible and realistic to gather
that many people
somewhere in the in east of slovakia and
south of slovakia
and elsewhere to discuss europe and once
you gather those people unless you speak
like we do there is silence okay there
is silence
so it's a bit you know my expectations
are very limited for that at the end of
the day it
it is about political responsibility
what we need more
than yet another conference is action
okay within european union
because what has amassed on our table in
terms of problems that we are facing
it's clearly it has been clearly
identified we've been we
all the time we've been circumventing
those problems i'm a bit
controversial and more provocative but
where else if not here
at the at the conference should we speak
that way so we'll
we'll try our best but at the end of the
day it is about political responsibility
to do
things which for which maybe people will
not upload us but if politicians are
responsible they'll be doing those
things
you know i appreciate your candor uh
which is one of the great things about
this globe sag forum is that we get
we're hearing people of your stature uh
speaking your mind about things uh and i
know that's not always so easy for
diplomats right
uh and you are your country's top
diplomats um uh minister senator
just a few words before i put one
question from the audience i just have a
short remark here
uh the future of europe does not equal
the future of the european union
definitely so
if we say future of europe this means
that we have to include those who are in
europe but not in the european union
we i think sharing this stage share an
opinion about the importance of
enlargement
uh it would not be an exaggeration
either to say that now you see the most
pro-enlargement countries
of the european union uh on the stage
and i do believe that uh countries from
the western balkans who have been uh
candidates uh for a long time should
also be
uh included in north macedonia yeah we
don't think that
the um that the mission which is called
creating european union would be
complete without the western volcanoes
it's very let's say
unnatural that they are not part of
european union
and to be honest we are very very
disappointed with the fact that in the
recent years
just some very very minimal successes
were reached
on the territory of enlargement um you
have to count how many chapters were
open and close
basically very close to zero to next
week there's going to be the
igc's with serbia and montenegro of
course another
very limited success unfortunately so
what we hope for is
that our decision makers will include
the countries of the western balkans
into this series of conferences as well
okay we've also had a question coming in
i've just noticed in our app about
people are very interested in knowing
what your positions are on
uh the accession possibilities of
ukraine
and belarus um at this point if i mean
if any of you really
have a strong statement on that i would
welcome that otherwise i'd like to get
some questions coming
from the audience here uh do we have any
questions here
in in the audience and just before that
any statements okay
um we have uh i'd just like to bring in
let's see if we can oh right right here
let's let's uh if we could get
a microphone down here you don't have to
get up there should be a microphone
coming
your way is there or or not right so
sir microphone there we go yeah great
the mind and if you could just please
say
state your name your association and uh
where you're from literally
yes um hello my name is amanda coakley
i'm a melina jacinska fellow at the iwm
in vienna
um so this is a question to all four
ministers
it was said at the beginning of this
event today that the eu will be one of
the winners of the new age
do you think the eu can be a winner when
some member states do things like
undermine eu law or go against real core
principles of the european union such as
press freedom
thank you freedom
is that directed to anyone in interested
in the particular
minister of hungary okay i see all of
them but um okay
let's start with the um so pauline as
well
who would like to begin
um look why are you
why are you not brave enough to say what
you think
why don't you pose the question as you
really mean it do you think that
uh poland and hungary we do violate the
freedom of press and on what basis do
you mean that
why why you think we are violating
freedom of press what regulations
with with all due respect um minister
sierto the
the i would be grateful if you could
maybe just
answer the questions but i mean we have
to okay okay but we have to be brave in
the audience we have to be uh brave
enough to name things um
as they are uh i do believe that
european union
can be winner of this uh new age
but but there's one precondition for
that
many but one for sure that we stop
judging lecturing each other we stop
interfering into domestic issues of each
other
and we bring back the um policies of
european union
based on mutual respect and we don't
think
that we know things better of another
country
than the people there themselves respect
and we do have to respect the decisions
the democratically made decisions
of other countries and if we can stop
accusing
each other and we can stop attacking
each other on a political basis then i
think european union can be a winner and
i hope it will be a winner
of the new um uh global age
and we will we will work for that i
would just uh
bring a follow-up to that maybe uh with
respect with the word respect
um because there's you can respect a
country but there are
also principles that are enshrined in
in europe uh european principles and i'm
just wondering
to what how you balance those out uh
how you balance respect for countries
sovereignty with respect for the
principles that are enshrined in the eu
charter would anyone like to reflect on
that
myself yeah well uh if
you know that someone else is
volunteering we who have been part of
the european union
we share the same values and we have to
respect
the same regulations and i think that
all the countries who have been
represented on this stage
are respecting the regulations uh
on which the european union is based
upon the rule of
respect and we do respect the uh
sovereignty of ourselves and others
uh as well including rule of law
absolutely you know
we have been under communist occupation
31 years ago we had to fight for our
freedom
we did fight for our uh freedom we are
proud
to be a democratic country and we will
never accept we will never accept
anybody to challenge whether we have a
proper functioning democracy
or not if there are concrete issues if
there are concrete issues
which you would like to discuss we are
always ready always open and always
ready article 7 procedure has been going
on for how long has been
a year more than that you know all the
questions were raised we answered all of
them
why the procedure is not being closed
why regardless of the fact that all
questions were raised and all questions
were answered because it's political
and this is an interest of the liberal
mainstream to have
the article seven procedure and the
continuous attacks against two
conservative patriotic christian
democratic governments
to go on okay so there are different
views on this in the european union
he was just uh showing some interest
before we move on to you okay and we
only have a couple of minutes
unfortunately but this is such an
important part
that we need raising a very important
question and the
answer is very simple especially when it
comes from our part of europe
as peter has indicated
given our past we know what it's what it
is the
freedom of the media the freedom of
press because i was
people of my generation were busy
producing
newspapers into underground we were
ready to pay the highest price for vets
five seven years in jail and so on and
so on
and i don't recall that one one
newspaper
one news underground newspaper was
denouncing another one that it's not
free enough and so on and so on so we
only have about we have a value
sorry we only have about two minutes
okay we have the value of pluralism
in our dna and that's we believe
that the european union if it's going to
succeed
it has it has to respect the value of
pluralism
i disagree with you because you have
different views
than i am then i have have so
i can i can criticize your point of view
and i'm not going to condemn you
i'm not going to preach anything to you
and i'm
not going to assume that
your contribution to democracy is
smaller than mine
okay because your prime minister
your prime minister enjoys the same see
the same political support among his
voters
as mine in mind so start
start respecting that okay so respect is
obviously a very key principle i'm sorry
to interrupt you here but
we are absolutely out of time and i just
want to bring minister korchak in
because i know that he did
have a point he wanted to make there um
just once if one sentence if you like to
comment
i'm fine with press but
although it's tough in slovakia price is
very tough
but two i want to say on the record i
don't think that the eu is depriving us
of
our freedom i i think it's on the
contrary
sorry who said that the eu is depriving
world i'm okay
i can turn here okay it was no no no
wait it's big no no
it's a neutral statement because from
time to time
we hear voices from central europe as if
european union
would be a source of problem and i don't
think that's the case european union by
far is not a perfect project but
over the last years uh the the
once again the voices are loud and i
i've been confronted and i don't
like it with kind of you bashing
okay but that is going to be the final
point
and i'm sorry we're gonna have to leave
it there i'm hearing in my ear that we
absolutely have to get out of the room
it has started now and
and we we we pluralism and respect a
warm round of applause for both of those
principles
and all four of our foreign ministers
with us today
i really want to thank you for for
engaging with the topics we
really got going there towards the end
and i have a feeling we could have gone
on for at least
another hour or so and i hope to have
the opportunity to speak with each of
you individually um
as in the future but uh right now i do
need to introduce the the next