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hello
bonjour and ahoy on tuesday evening we
hosted the globesec awards ceremony at
the bratislava castle
where we awarded the annual czech and
slovak transatlantic award to both
general john allen
and vatsville havel in memoriam and here
are the highlights from day two
we kicked off the day on the main stage
hearing from the foreign affairs
minister of slovakia and
austria as well as the deputy foreign
affairs minister of italy on how to
strengthen europe's role on the
international stage
staying on the subject of european
diplomacy we heard from the foreign
affairs minister of croatia
north macedonia and slovenia on their
respective trajectories towards
achieving an ever greater european
integration
this was followed by a lively discussion
among foreign affairs ministers of the
visigrad
iv which included poland hungary czech
republic and slovakia
mayors from bratislava and budapest as
well as a voice from the czech republic
discuss the reactions of cities to the
pandemic and the need to improve
communications with government and
generate more capacity in times of
crisis
with the meaning between biden and putin
taking place experts from russia
the eu and north america speculated on
the potential outcomes and what to look
for
finally we ended the day by hearing from
renowned thinker francis fukiyama
about the need to rebuild the
foundations of democracy and trust
throughout societies
our list of international expert and
renowned thinkers is
far from over so stay tuned for more
video highlights and recaps
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[Applause]
[Music]
good morning everyone and welcome to the
third day
of the globsec bratislava forum
and welcome to this session about
strategic and
a strategic foresight for resilience uh
focusing on the eu and nato in a
post-pandemic world and
we have been discussing uh the question
of
resilience the question of lessons from
the pandemic
in many formats and in many aspects in
the last two days
but this is the time when we have
two leaders from the two decisive euro
euro-atlantic institutions
in the same debate one is right next to
me here mara shevchevich
the vice president of the european
commission
for inter-institutional questions and
foresight
and we have joining us uh virtually
online
mercedes the uh deputy secretary general
of nato so welcome to you gentlemen um
uh i i think we should start with uh
personalized questions to the two
speakers
possible follow-up questions our time is
rather limited
um we have about uh 30
uh two minutes from now and um
therefore we need to keep it brief in
the beginning um
we want to have as much as possible
interaction
with the audience and that includes the
online audience of course
so um that without further ado let me
just um
throw out a couple of uh a couple of
buzzwords
so we're talking about the the trends uh
threatening resilience that the pandemic
has reinforced
uh we talked about um thinking forward
about uh thinking and acting
um right now about the complementarity
of both nato and the european union
um also about uh addressing capacity
gaps
and of course most of all lessons for
the future of both organizations
so um since we just had the nato summit
um a couple of days ago let me first
turn to
miguel joanna from nato
and uh ask him the question
what role did democratic resilience
or resilience in a broader sense play at
the last nato summit
and uh what are the takeaways uh for our
debate that you would like to
relate with us floor is yours
thank you roland uh it's always a
pleasure to be on the same stage
uh albeit virtually with the with my
very good friend from
a long period of time uh vice president
uh
chef chavez marrow good to see you i i
wanted to be there in bratislava
physically but
you know the uh he's very very
complicated after our summit
uh we've been uh debating on a on a
physical stage just a few days ago
the topic of resilience when we visited
together bucharest
inaugurated a euro-atlantic resilience
center
hosted by romania let me tell you a few
things about
about where we stand in nato and where i
do believe
that nato and eu could should and will
do more together the first thing
nato summit and if you look through the
long final communique
and if you look from the inside on the
nato 2030 decisions
by the 30 allied leaders you'll see a
big chunk
dedicated to resilience nato has been
embarking on identifying
and sizzling
what you call baseline requirements on
resilience
basically resilience indicators this
started
at the warsaw nato summit in 2016
these indicators have been presented
to nato allies to nations and
every year at the national level allies
were measuring themselves against these
indicators
thus identifying the strong points and
also the weaker points
of course as you mentioned roland the
pandemic has brought
even more complex dimensions to the
issue of resilience
we are now speaking and acting and this
is what our leaders decided
at the nato summit to have in a renew
resilience commitment what does it mean
that we look even more attentively to
the
existing indicators of nato but also
will be looking even more
attentively to a broader definition of
resilience
supply chains issues related to
fdi and screening of fdi because it's
not
irrelevant to our resilience who is
investing in what and where
in our businesses in our infrastructures
telecommunications and so on and so
forth
so this is something that we have
decided something even more interesting
and important i think
politically is that our leaders agreed
to the proposition of secretary general
stoltenberg
that on an annual basis high level
representatives
in national governments across the
alliance
will be meeting and this will also be i
think the next stage
between the national prerogative because
in the end it's a national and
subnational prerogative resilience
but nato is a fantastic platform
to making sure that we look at these
things together
and of course uh nato eu i've been
working with maurice on this one
uh maresh i think we've been doing this
for the last one and a half years
already i think
when jen stottenberg was invited for the
first time
by president van der lion to meet the
college of commissioners
uh i think the first topic chosen by the
two organizations by the leadership of
our two organizations
for nato and the eu eu and nato to look
even more
intimately into the first one is
resilience
of course then it's new technologies
then we're looking into climate change
and to space there are lots of things
nato and eu should and will do more
together
of course you already do a lot so this
is where we are
uh a pivotal moment for the alliance as
a whole a very successful summit
i understand that it was a very
successful high-level meeting between
president biden and the eu leadership
again a very successful g7
meeting before and now we can also look
with all the democratic political west
uh
reunited in a very positive way that the
meeting between president biden and
president putin in geneva which was
you know something that was very well
prepared by the sequence
of high-level uh participations by the
u.s president
so i see a lot of potential in nato eu
cooperation on resilience i also know
that the toolbox of nato is not
identical and it shouldn't be to the one
of the eu eu has
a number of instruments and marish
probably will tell you more about that
and foresight because that's the topic
of our panel is also part of this
because anticipating change and
potential crisis
is important you mentioned democratic
resilience
i will go back to something that
fukuyama said in the in the clip you
presented before our panel
it's also about the trust of our
citizens of our public opinions
in the institutions of democracy in our
governments
in what we do in international
organizations like nato and eu
so i do believe that societal resilience
this is how we approach resilience as a
comprehensive concept
also has a very important democratic
resiliency if you want
some friends in the northern part of
nato in the northern
geographical part of nato are speaking
already about
citizens resilience at the even more
micro
level the very fundamental cell of our
democratic societies
and you also see here this information
and fake news and everything which is
now
uh you know uh all over the place
so in a nutshell that's where i believe
i believe that nato and eu on resilience
we are natural
strategic partners on this one and we
stand ready
uh and i think this will be discussed
again between our two organizations in
the next few weeks
and i think resilience will be probably
one of the first topics will move
further in the strategic partnership
between nato and eu
thank you so much um let me now turn to
uh uh uh mother chefchovitch um
with uh i just want to highlight this
this one point uh that indeed as mercier
said
nato is an intergovernmental
organization it brings governments
together
but we're talking about national
prerogatives when it comes to all these
questions
uh tied to uh resilience and strategic
foresight and so on
well uh the european union is a
different animal
and um so so so my my entry question to
you to which you should then tag on
uh your own points uh is uh
what precisely are these instruments
that the european union and its
institutions the european commission
have to put into this effort
i think that uh also based on that
experience of the
of the last year i think it was quite
clear that
i would say such a basic tenants of the
underlying commission for the
for the period was that of course we
should uh
accelerate between green and digital
transition
but the kovid 19 crisis and i would say
clear
indication how suddenly you can disrupt
the global value chains how you know
you can really stop the the
successful operation of the internal
market because of the
border closures clearly demonstrated
that
to these two very important elements we
have to add the third one and this is
resilient so now we will see in all our
documents in all our policies in all our
strategies which we are putting on the
table
very clear reference to the resilience
which you now call strategic compass for
our policies
and of course it comes hand-in-hand with
the new portfolio which uh i'm honored
that uh
from the line decided to entrust me with
and this is the
the fourth side because uh we see that
this world
will not be less complicated in the
future i think we'll see more disruption
we
we see more uh dynamic uh changes we see
how the world is
becoming less multilateral more
multiplayer we see the geopolitics
geoeconomics play much much more
significant role than
a couple of years ago and therefore we
are
just looking at the foresight
anticipatory governance
and a very important tool for modern
governing and what i'm always
kind of telling and underlying to the
foresight community
that for foresight to be strategic it
must be politically relevant it must be
practical
and it must lead to the concrete
political decisions and therefore i'm
glad speaking about i would say the
institutional setup that uh
we've been working very well with the
portuguese presidency and just couple of
weeks ago we set up
the group of the ministers for the
future of course uh there was a joke set
i mean in that room
that so far we've met only ministers of
the past so now we have ministers
for the future and i think it's very
important because in each government you
need
to have somebody who would coordinated
this anticipatory policy he would look
on this uh
scenario building and see what might be
over the horizon
around the corner so it would be better
to prepare for that and uh come back to
mirchas point i think that uh this is
clearly i would say the contribution of
central and eastern europe because if i
look at uh
at romania the fact that we have now eu
cyber center
located in bucharest that romania
decided to go
for creation of euro-atlantic resilience
uh
center and also the fact that we are
discussing these topics here in brazil
it just shows that uh maybe because we
are more exposed
uh you know to the to the to the east
and to the
big neighbor to the east we kind of you
know perceive uh
the need uh to be at the forefront of of
this discussion and
for not speaking too long i would just
uh
mention one very important tool which
now
you will see being i would say
officially introduced in all member
states across the eu
and this is the 750 billion euros
which our president will be
announcing uh um i think uh we started
with portugal
now she's traveling to spain uh very
soon she will also will
be welcomed here in slovakia where
exactly
uh the green digital and resilient
policies
would be those sectors where the 750
billion euros should be should be
invested and that's i think one of the
very important tools we have at our
disposal
because it comes with a combination of
the usual budget so we are talking about
1.85 trillion euros
uh and therefore i think this should be
indeed such a
european marshall plan moment when we
can prepare
our countries and our infrastructure for
the economic
economies and politics of the 21st
century and i'm sure that brazilians
will be a big part of it
thank you so much madras before i ask a
follow-up question let me remind the
audience
online and here in in the room
uh that you can ask questions via the uh
slido function of your globsec
app so um please go ahead
ask the first question and meanwhile
um let me let me um focus on this
uh on the foresight aspect
december 2019 uh i don't think
that the commission was planning for a
pandemic
or something uh now we have it
um what is the
you know and and this this was called
this is a so-called black swan
uh event a a disruptive
disruptive development which which is
not foreseen
what's the black swan uh event that you
would envisage uh right now i think that
this is always a bit of a it's a
misleading perception that
the good forsighters have a crystal ball
unfortunately we don't
but i think what is very important uh
to work with so-called scenarios so
currently we are monitoring uh
17 mega trends and see how they can
play into the future policies uh what
the the climate change will do with
migration waves
how the demography would impact the
economic performance
in europe what would be the the new
economic power centers
role in the future and where we want to
be
in 2030 in in 2050 and then
there is a technique which is called
back casting how from that
vision which we want to achieve uh
should come
to these days and really adopt
the policies which would bring us to
that preferred preferred scenario so i
think that
uh the the best black swans are those
which never materialized because we
anticipated them and therefore you never
heard of them
uh but the truth is that if we look in
the past be it financial meltdown
beat migratory crisis or be covered 19
i think there was writing on the wall
that something like this is happening
but the problem was that the foresight
community was kind of voicing that
this might have happened but it was kind
of inconvenient truth and there was not
political channel which could bring it
to the decision makers and
policy makers like please you leaders be
aware that something like this is coming
so this is what we are now
overcoming and making sure that this uh
horizon scanning or
you know the the the future uh possible
huge problems
uh will be communicated to the top
political level so we can
anticipate we can prevent it or we can
uh prepare decisions i think
of of course the obvious uh dangers in
the in the future
are cyber security climate change
migratory pressure and therefore we are
already uh
right now preparing adopting the
policies to to minimize the possible
negative negative fallout and that's uh
we do very closely with uh
with mirchia because we are working
together on critical infrastructure
on dual use of let's say transport uh
transport routes across the europe and
also on the future technologies on ai on
uh
screening of the foreign direct
investment we had just adopted a
new uh regulation in europe that every
foreign direct investment or 500
million euros will have to be screened
if it's not some kind of hidden agenda
behind it
and we invested a lot in uh strategic
autonomy my next
annual four-sided report would be
exactly about that the first one was in
resilience now we are going to focus on
open strategic
autonomy just simply to be better
prepared for this
harsh world of today excellent thank you
much thank you very much uh
can we do this slido poll now i would
like to give you
a multiple choice question
about who should take the lead in
strengthening
democratic resilience in europe and
please choose between four options
nato the european union national
governments
or civil society and
we're being very politically correct
here
so i'll give this a few more seconds
uh it's getting a little bit more even
yeah let's uh let's let's leave this
aside for a little bit and
come come back in a minute or so uh
but in the meantime um well turning to
miracea again
uh just very briefly uh with the more
classical heart security focused
question of
uh comparing the threats we face
from china and from russia what has been
the interplay between the two
recently um we all know that china has
never been mentioned as
often in a nato document as uh in the
last after the last summit
and uh so how how do you see
these two challenges uh evolving
for europe and for the west
listen the coming back just one second
to resilience
when we speak at nato the same thing the
eu
the same thing in national governments
sub-national governments or
civil society and our citizenry
when we speak about societal resilience
we speak about the
indispensable interconnection
on a permanent basis between government
public sector private sector and our
civil society and our citizens there's
no way
in the complex world we are living now
and this will become
an any foresight any potential futures
the plural are indicating that we are
the moment
of fantastic turmoil and global
realignment
this means that in nato the very
definition of security not only of
resilience
is broadening we have adopted that our
summit
an action plan on the security
implications of climate change maharaj
of course
in his foresight capacity for the
european commission
is actively looking into that we are
looking to the security implications of
climate change
and they are massive we are looking into
cyber
and again this is something which is
happening every day this was also a
dominant part of the
biden putin high level meeting yesterday
in geneva
and also our leaders at the nato summit
adopted
a new even more robust
nato cyber defense policy
we anticipate that global competition
and this is also relates to the rise of
china
and to the uh disruptive
way in which russia actions in many many
of this
multi-domain security conversation
is that outer space space is becoming a
place
of ever more intense global competition
this is why i was happy to sign with our
allies from luxembourg
a a new investment we have here in nato
headquarters in brussels where i'm
speaking you from on a strategic
oversight of space
activities that we are also working into
speaking of potential issues where also
china is
already playing a big role is not only
about global trade
and not only about supply chains and not
only about
fdi screening not only about 5g
and security but also to issues that we
are witnessing today and this will be
only even more intense competition in
the future
which is the competition for rare
materials
which is the competition of microchip
production
which is the issue of the european
commission and european union are doing
a fantastic pivot towards a different
kind of economic model
with green with more digital with more
resilient
this means that we'll also be witnessing
tremendous
transformations of our economic models
but also
we will be witnessing probably
additional
vulnerabilities for the new economic
model not only for the
old one or the current one that's why
the idea of the ministers of the future
i think is bright
living aside the the the self irony that
i see in maharashi's voice
on on on the definition of this so what
i'm just saying
that china's rise is one of the most
important moments
in in in in human history
it's not only the last decades i think
is the last five centuries
since the west has been dominating in
various incarnations
uh the world this is why for us in nato
keeping our technological edge investing
and adopting
technologies also when it comes to
defense and security
is something which is which is critical
for maintaining
uh our superiority and let me tell you
something which goes back to democracy
is this not only about economic
competition
or gdp uh or how much
defense spending you do they're all very
important they're part of
hard and soft power but in the end this
is a struggle
between democracies the need to improve
they need to be more
responsive to the criticism of our
citizens
on the way the state of affairs in our
societies in the political democratic
west
but nonetheless the competition between
democracy and authoritarian regimes
this is something that is the most
important and ethical fight
of our lifetimes for us in central and
eastern europe because we lived
at my age i lived half of my life in
communism half of my life
in freedom and democracy and for me
there is absolutely no
question about the vital interest
of us in the political west in europe in
north america with our democratic
friends all over the world
that we have to engage and fight and win
this fight
there is no way that somebody can
convince i think people from our part of
the world and i think from all over the
political west
that living in an authoritarian country
is better than living in a free open
society that having the right to choose
and get rid of your leaders through
democratic elections
is something that is less efficient uh
in in in the mid and long term than
authoritarian
never-ending you know personal uh
uh uh you know autocratic movements in
many other countries
so this is a very complex issue and if
you look
through this big big discussion we have
today you can also anticipate
uh in terms of foresight uh
not only the the eventual black swans
but also the grey
rhinos the things that are here and
after the lessons of the pandemic i
don't think we have the luxury
politically speaking
to ignore the signs of things that we
know are coming
and we have no absolutely really sorry
to interrupt at this point
but we're running short of time milsia
i'm so sorry
so the the the slido poll has evolved
democracies and i know i know i always
speak to too much
i so agree i mean it it hurts me more
than it hurts you
uh to interrupt at this point but uh so
this slider poll has evolved uh and the
the national governments have kind of
overtaken the rest
um but you know i think the most
important answer that i didn't
offer you of course is that all of the
above
obviously and that's what this session
is really about
it is about how we interact um
and the one of one of one of my uh
goals in this was also to emphasize
civil society
does play a role in democratic
resilience
and so can we can we just have short
short comments uh uh from uh from the
two speakers here on the
uh question of who does what yes i i
think that uh just to
uh kind of complement the the merchant's
response when yesterday we discussed
with uh
our president what was her main takeaway
from g7 from eu summit
she said that there was striking
consensus that uh
the leaders decided that it's even more
important than ever
to stand up for democracy so despite of
all the economic
uh defense future anti-talks
that was the main takeaway and i think
it just reflects
the the discussion we have here uh
today that the the feature and success
of our society
is based on democratic performance and
on democratic system
and let's be honest i mean democratizing
the democrats is under pressure i mean
if you looked
up through different statistics um
actually over the last five years the
number of democratic
countries in in in the world is not
growing but it's
it's uh it's uh uh coming uh
you know to the to the lower number so
it's a challenge which you have to
work with but nevertheless uh i would
say this clearly
stand up for democracy this i would say
very united
uh approach and why how this was
discussed it's
for me absolute sea change from uh
the discussions we had not so long ago
in munich when
ambassador richinger was talking about
restlessness so west is back
and it's good for democracy and it's
good for the people who are uh who are
living
in a democratic society and coming back
to your
questions who does what as you i think
as
as a people answered the questions i
mean that's a role for all of us
and i think uh here we never can uh
uh do uh enough because i think
that all of us have a role to play and
very often we are discussing the
question of
you know communication of the eu why
it's so difficult to understand our
policies why the people have a feeling
of
democratic deficit why very often the
perception of the
uh eu is not so glamorous as it should
be
and what i am saying is that it's very
difficult
to to talk over the heads of national
leaders
so what i want to say is that when we
are talking about democratic resilience
there must be the same messages coming
from the national level from the eu
level
i know that civic society will do their
part and of course
the nato as a hard power institutions
is offering the solutions how to protect
the democratic countries thank you so
much i take
one question from the audience uh to
mitchell joanna
how would you align the threat
assessments and the national resilience
commitments in the two
strategic documents of the eu and nato
the strategic compass
for the european union the strategic
concept for nato so can you
just and really two minutes floor is
yours
listen uh the nato summit reconfirmed 30
allies and many of the leaders are also
leaders of eu member states they
reconfirm nato as
the prime platform for transatlantic
dialogue and political convergence on
everything relating to security
including economic uh
issues including resilience including
many things that we have discussed
and let me come back to to what i
believe is the essence
of our conversation the resources
of the political west are finite by
definition
we are in an era of great power
competition and for the first time
we could god forbid not continue to be
number one
in terms of influence and and rules and
norms
we we propose to the world and the rise
of china is
a part of this conversation so when it
comes to
the political consequences
of this new global reality the political
consequences of the pandemic the
political consequences
of the realization here in the west
of the changes in the world there's no
other way
than for nato and eu to make sure
that the nato new next strategic concept
that will be ready
by the madrid summit in 2022 and the
strategic compass of the eu that will be
ready during the french presidency of eu
council
are converging and complementary not
identical but converging and
complementary
if we do this we are on the safe side of
history
thank you so much i think uh we could
continue this uh actually we should uh
in
uh talks in the corridors and then the
coffee break and and so on
but we have to wrap it up at this point
um
i think the the the decisive uh takeaway
here
is that it's it's a multi-pronged effort
nato and the european union will both
have to
will have to closely cooperate and they
will both have to play their respective
strengths
in a common effort to increase
strategic foresight for strengthening
resilience and the last thought that i
want to leave you with here
uh it is about democracy
versus authoritarianism this is the
overarching struggle
of the upcoming decade decades probably
pure plural that will
shape our era and the west
indeed stands a fighting chance in this
if we
stick together and we stay confident so
thank you so much for being here
for participating in the debate um
thanks to our two
speakers uh milchia joanna and mario
chefchovich
and with that i thank you very much and
wish you
fruitful further debates thank you thank
you
[Applause]
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you