The EU's Real Weakness Isn't Brussels — It's Member States

In this episode of Somewhere/Anywhere, Rasheed and Diego engage in a wide-ranging debate on the political economy of Europe, the structure of the European Union, and the persistent confusion about where authority, responsibility, and failure truly lie.

The conversation opens by distinguishing Europe as a historical and cultural space from the European Union as a legal-institutional project. From there, the hosts examine the EU’s long-standing attempt to construct a shared political identity and question whether identity can be engineered from above without eroding legitimacy. This sets the tone for a deeper institutional argument: whether the EU’s problems stem from technocratic overreach in Brussels or from weak, incoherent national politics exported upward into European institutions.

A major section of the episode focuses on regulation and growth. Rasheed and Diego debate the EU’s recent regulatory trajectory—particularly environmental and industrial policy—arguing that agenda-setting by the European Commission has anchored policy debates in ways that have harmed European manufacturing, especially in the automotive sector. The discussion touches on the Green Deal, shifting emissions targets, regulatory uncertainty, and the long-term consequences for German and Spanish industry.

The episode then turns to democratic legitimacy and governance. The hosts analyze the EU’s power-sharing model between center-right and social-democratic blocs, arguing that permanent consensus has diluted accountability, blurred political responsibility, and contributed to voter alienation. This dynamic is linked directly to the rise of euroskeptic and radical parties across the continent, as well as to the strategic stagnation of mainstream parties.

Southern Europe plays a central role in the analysis. Spain and Italy are presented as underutilized power centers within the EU—countries with sufficient population and voting weight to shape outcomes under qualified majority voting, yet consistently unwilling to use that leverage. Past leadership moments are contrasted with current passivity, and the failure of Spain in particular to project influence at the European level is treated as a self-inflicted wound rather than a Brussels conspiracy.

A substantial portion of the episode revisits the euro and the eurozone crisis. The hosts discuss the Maastricht rules, the breakdown of fiscal discipline, repeated violations without enforcement, and the political logic behind bailouts. Greece is examined as a case study in how rule-breaking, delayed adjustment, and institutional hesitation damaged the credibility of the integration project while deepening north-south tensions.

Attention then shifts to what Europe has not done: unfinished integration projects with high economic returns and low political cost. These include the failure to complete the single market in services, the absence of a true capital markets and banking union, the still-fragmented European airspace, underdeveloped defense coordination, weak external border management, and chronic underinvestment in Frontex. In contrast, the episode highlights programs like Erasmus as examples of low-cost initiatives with outsized long-term political and social impact.

The role of bureaucracy is addressed directly. The episode challenges the idea of a neutral, technocratic EU administration, emphasizing how national loyalties, party alignment, and political incentives shape decision-making within European institutions. Courts are treated as one of the few remaining stabilizing forces capable of enforcing treaty limits and institutional boundaries.

Rather than offering a manifesto or a clean resolution, this episode leaves listeners with a clearer map of Europe’s contradictions—and a sharper sense of where responsibility actually lies.  

Transcript

0:19

Diego, we are back again for another episode. We are back and we have quite a few episodes in the rear mirror right now for season two, but I'm excited not just about today's topic, but about everything we have lining up. Because we're expecting to have Tyler Cohen on the podcast soon. We're expecting to have the governor who transformed Madrid into a free market hub re we keep talking to opposition leaders in Venezuela. Some of them have been in jail, and they are ready to tell their story and they will be joining us very soon. So we're thankful for all the love for listening to the podcast and just always grateful to have conversations with you. And like I said, one of our recent episodes, it'd be nice to also have the making of the podcast recorded because we do spend some time bouncing off ideas off of each other. And yeah, happy to talk about Europe. We're going to be talking about Europe and European Union. Do you think it the same? You know, no, it's not the same. You know, I, I don't think so. I don't think so. And there are two problems I think because in conversation it's, it's just too complicated to be technical all the time. So you say Europe is doing this weird policy, but what it means the European Union Institution by the commission is doing policy? Yes. A they all but the European ai, no, it's not European ai. It's the EU AI Act. And it's not actually act, it's a regulation. Yeah. Everything gets mixed up whenever you're talking this first. But to bring down, at first, I think that the push for identity as part of the European project. Of the EU project is one of the reasons why there are so many feelings involved, because some people have accepted that the EU project involves identity and others will probably never see it like that. And quite frankly, because I don't think you can force people to feel as if they are part of a political, cultural, community, uh, social community of sorts, you can't just force that upon people. That is why many of what the authorities in Brussels have done over the past two decades has been essentially wrong. Because there is no such thing as European identity in the minds of many individuals. There is a sense of a European community. Of course, there's a historical connection amongst many of these countries, but many of them have been at war with each other through history many times. Others have absolutely no idea about each other's history. I don't think what really connects, say a Bulgarian to a Portuguese, for example, and just because those ties aren't that strong, the idea of pushing identity into the conversation and even having the flag in every single institutional building across the continent, I think is wrong. So I'm coming off very strong to begin, but I would not advocate for Spain to withdraw. I am not anti-EU per se, but boy, boy. Have so many criticism and, and the fact that we just begin the podcast talking about that like this, I get worked up because I can talk about the EU project, but it should be more limited in its scope, but a lot more effective in its scope. So we have bad governments across Europe, but I don't think the European project is going any better. Okay. So you start off for Ka hot here, Diego, but the European project, what exactly? Lawyers love it, by the way about it. And you are studying to be a lawyer, so Yeah. But put yourself in your pre-law studies, right? No, but I always liked the European Union. Did you? Yeah, from the Caribbean. The Caribbean always used the EU as a vision of how the Caribbean should be united as well. Mm-hmm. The thing called C called the Caribbean community in the, the area called the Caribbean and it's very loosely model offered eu. Actually the competition law of the carry comm is kind of based on Article 1 0 2 of the eu. So there are some things where we look towards the EU for a long time. So I grew up with that. I did coming here, I didn't feel it any worse. Now I live in the eu. You do? I still think the EU is a very great project. Mm-hmm. With excesses. There are many, many excesses of the eu. But, uh, you know, I feel oftentimes people put too much pressure on what the EU should do or should not do, where the EU isn't even capable. Legally of doing all these things. That is very correct. And I must say that very often we see criticism thrown at Brussels or doing this or doing that in areas in which it doesn't really have to anything to do. It's out of its reach, it's out of its competencies. But I will fight you back on this because Brussels does also get its nose on areas where its competencies are not there. So Brussels has regularly tried to enter the reals of other areas where it doesn't have any authority. Case in point, tax policy, it should not have revenue powers beyond some income generated by VAT. And the regulation of VAT should be common because products and services can be sold across borders. That was it. Yet we keep on getting new proposals for new tax revenues sources to fund the EU directly when I don't think it's underfunded to begin with. However, if you spend half of your budget in rural subsidies. Then we have a problem. So, but it is Brussels stepping out. Just people. But the rural subsidies are determined by the council, which are the ministers of the member states. Yes. That's why things were it tricky because I feel the EU is saying, Hey, we actually, let's say I am the EU commissioner, my that suppose I'm the comm, the president of the commission. Yes. You're bond underlying right bond. Underlying this case. Anything is better than I like you, but it's not hard to be better than wander underlying. But let's say I'm bond underlying and I'm saying, Hey, we actually want to do some priorities when it comes to spending, but we are constrained because we are forced to spend 40% of the budget just on agricultural sublease. Mm-hmm. And we can't change that rule. That is a council rule. It's a European council rule too. And Council of Europe rule as well. So we are constrained, but what if we kind of try to find some new avenues to get some money to do budget? Now, I don't particularly agree with that kind of activity, but the incentive is there to do it. Yeah. Because of the constraint by the politicians of the member states. Mm-hmm. Not to be generous, per se, of the eu. That's, I can't argue with that. That's true. However, that's not a artificial constraint. It is, uh, democratic governments from all across the EU that may or may not choose to. So in a way, what you're telling me is that branch of power wants to overrule what it has been told to manage by another branch of power. And it just so happens that the democratic legitimacy of national governments will always be higher than the indirect choosing of a leader or group of leaders of the commission, which comes off of the European Parliamentary election. That's not what I'm syn. And by the way, who has the cards here? No, I understand. To channel Trump, the resources are not from national governments, so if Europe wants to redirect those, it needs to get the national governments in alignment. No, I understand. There is the incentive, however, you still cannot have EU taxes without national government approval. Yes, but the fact that Brussels keeps presenting these proposals every single year, we get a new one. Like two years ago. Corporation tax this year is the excess taxes for 2026. Apparently there's a proposal about tobacco taxation, but it's old all the time. We get the similar ideas from Brussels. It may be tax A or B or C, but it's always the same thing. Them trying to raise more revenue through taxation, and I have a problem with that. I will fat them all the time whenever they come up with this. And the fact that they keep insisting doesn't make it any nicer to me. It makes it worse. However, I still think there is the link still is national because as you know, the commission College isn't simply a bureaucratic appointment. It is appointed by the council and the parliament, the national mm-hmm. National leaders Yes. That are voted there uhhuh. So it's not like if the people at the top are just randomly de to make new taxes. You're right. Yes. The national government themselves want the EU to have these kind of taxes. Mm-hmm. And they have to vote on them also. I agree. But when you are given a ball to run with, you may manage that ball as best as you can. I mean, super Bowl we, the Super Bowl is coming up or something. Right. You run with it as best as you can, but that's the ball you were given. If you want another ball, just convince me to give you another one. So far I don't see anyone advocating for agricultural policy reform, which is a mistake. Yeah. And that's a mistake by national governments. That's right. But I don't see the authorities in Brussels being able to pursue a better outcome. Of this agricultural policy at this point, because whenever they negotiate trade deals, these barriers remain in place internally, and then a discussion is had externally. Whereas I would advocate that we need to reduce these barriers internally and then also externally. We don't have free markets in agriculture, and that's a problem. And I think the New Zealand example shows that you don't need protectionism to boost your, well, again, especially coming from Spain by the way, which primarily an issue of the eu, the member at the EU institutions, the member states themselves can decide to free up their own markets a lot faster. Yeah, but can't you, because you two other EU states. Yes. For example, the harmonization problem in the eu mm-hmm. Is because national governments decide on how to regulate her things. Mm-hmm. Because they share different conflicts with the eu, the national government can decide to be a lot more liberal in their harmonization, and they choose not to be. That's why the commission then has to come into place if it works correctly. I say, Hey, Spain, that harmonization attempt is a bit too restrictive. Could we push it a bit further to our liberalization? Granted, the commission has done a lot less of this in the last two years, but it still is the member state that is the driver on the lack of liberalization. Many of the things that the Brussels has not done in the last few years have been the sort of reforms that have been put forward through the last two decades by like-minded people to us. So Brussels has been moving closer to this alignment, but the movement has been, I must say, so slow. Let me give you one clear example. The directives that were introduced to go along with the Green New Deal and the restrictions that were announced for industry and more specifically the car industry are crazy. C-R-A-Z-Y. Crazy. The fact that you argue that a industrial powerhouse, which is. By far the most green large economy in the world, the one that has deco the most, its output from its emissions, and that has reduced emissions on upper capita and even absolute terms through the last two decades. The most that it would just commit economic and jobs market suicide by prohibiting cars that are increasingly sustainable in terms of their emissions. It's crazy. There's no way to understand this, and the fact that these 2035 limit 'cause in principle, in nine years time, cars running on gas were no longer allowed to be produced, manufactured and unsold. However, since then that has been ruled back. We are still not very clear, but there's been an announcement that this is no longer the case. And I do take the authorities for their word. I, I wouldn't necessarily do that with the national government, so I do give them more credibility that they're not walking back on this, but the damage is done already as German Spanish manufacturers. It's been horrible and these ideas were not good whenever they were coming from national governments. But the green push by the Brussels policy makers has been horrible, went far beyond what the local authorities in many countries were willing to accept. And the consequences. Countries horrible, but not all countries, because I always make this point all the time. The EU Commission, you can say the more pure bureaucracy under the college, or they have to get appointed by the actual parliament. It's a more pure bureaucracy, but the commission cannot approve regulations. Only the Parliament with the Council of the European Union can approve regulations. Both of which are elected officials. But we're not talking about the commission. We're talking about the eu. But the, so I have a problem with the whole structure there, but I'm saying those regulations and things that you're talking about are approved by the people who are elected. Mm-hmm. Right. The commission, they cannot table a rule, but the parliament only commission can table a new regulation or directive. That's where I'm going. But they can approve it. Only the parliament and the council, which are both elected, can approve it. So my my point I'm saying is like as they're elected by the people, they are, no, I'm not this legitimacy. Yeah. Huh. It's not. But they get to table the first draft. They get to start the conversation. The commission is continuously opening up the debate, and then the whole process begins. The entire opening up is, has an anchoring effect. It's the first mover advantage. I'm going to have you talk about restricting car manufacturing because I'm concerned with this green obsession that Europeans had 10 years ago and still some do today. Well, you've just influenced the whole debate because you've told me that, A, we have to regulate this. B, you've given me a date, and C, you'll probably make it even more stringent as the negotiations go by. You can B Parliament and the council at all times can vote on. All types. But again, there is an institutional push. I agree. There is a possibility to say no, but, and they do like you, but there's other elements I don't like. For example, how do you validate other council a vote? Because some areas require unanimity, some areas require a qualified minority. Mm-hmm. Uh, but the population weight here must be considered very often because okay, you have a push by six states to get something done, and then the council is being lobbied by these six states about something they really care about. Well, others may not really care about. So there is a political process that goes in there. You need to, okay, these folks want this done. Uh, we want these other things done. They'll commit. We'll commit. Okay, that sounds good. But there's six states. Their size of their population could be smaller than Madrid. Right. Put them all combined. There's micro states in the EU can be influencing the policy that affects, you know, 300 million people. On the other hand, I also think that should one country want to opt out for a regulation. It should have a lot more leeway to do this or a lot more blocking power. So when the unanimity vote was reversed in the end, I think it was worse. Although the case was made of, okay, we need this leads to let deadlock, this leads to a very difficult negotiations and nothing gets done. Well. A lot has been done since the unanimity vote was no longer the norm for every single vote. And I don't think anyone is more pro-EU now than it was before. In fact, there's more euros skepticism these days a lot more. Okay. I would say on qualified majority voting, it's a double weight. If population plus numbers uhhuh, you still have to have a big chunk of country that have a hard, large population to approve in the vote. But you could still have say, a hundred million people being voted against by 200. So you need a roughly, you need 65% of population. Yeah, I'm has to be in the vote. Yeah. But I'm running up like say we have 300 million people living in the eu, roughly. Right? Sure. Uh, so that means that 200 million people can vote. For something that a hundred million people could vote against, roughly speaking, and this is representative. That's quite a lot, if you think about it. Yeah. I guess it depends. Policy also in the US you can have vote for one party and different rules by the entire party. Mm-hmm. Right. The entire government. That's similar kind of issue. Right. But I do kind of agree that unanimity probably is better actually. I think the constraint is good. I don't think that you should have the ability to just create rules easily. Mm-hmm. If you think, okay, yes, you might have a good reform or a bad reform, depends on who you are. But it should be harder to bind the entire union on rules. So I do think that unanimity is actually very, very, very strong. I get why people will say Yes, QMV accelerates progress on some areas, but it's too dangerous as you pointed out. And there's been this fascination with autocracies and lack of capacity in democracies of state capacity of and so on. But I don't think we should fall into that temptation. I think limits of power are part of our strength, not a weakness by any means. And I do want to say that for Spaniards, traditionally speaking, the EU has been a positive force in many areas. There is a very fun example. Google your Economic Freedom Index results right now. Just use the Heritage one or the Fraser Institute one, whichever you like the most. Which one do you, you have a preference? The Fraser one means more sound. Yeah, it's, well, it's more complete, right? It includes 80 indicators, but it does come out with two years of delay. So it's a bit for the academics, good for the journalists and the policy makers. Sure. Too late maybe. So that's the part I like about the heritage one. But both converge. There is a correlation. I applaud these ones, and it's like 80%. Okay. Concordance of results. So we're essentially talking, roughly speaking very similar results. When you look at Spain's result in all areas, in those areas where the economic powers are delegated to Brussels or are heavily influenced by Brussels, we score a lot better than in those areas where economic policy is set locally. Since I'm coming a very strong against many elements that I don't like, I must say that as a spanner, I have to admit that most of our local economic policy debates are even worse than the ones that we have in Europe. Most of the good things happening in Spain are actually less good than they would be if we were just following the EU standards. And just think of the way we've adopted the Euro. It's allowed us to leave a weaker currency. The way we've opened up our trade allowed us to leave behind centuries of protectionism that left Spain behind in the Industrial Revolution and in many other areas like this, there is examples that the EU has been a benefit for change. Then again, there is a push for more when I'm not sure, Diego. Hold on. Yes. This point to me is very important because this is why I think the Brussels view or the Brussels approach to regulation is so bad is because they're influenced by national priorities that are garbage. Mm-hmm. Right? So it's not simply the people in Brussels themselves are three generously have garbage policy ideas. No. They had to respond to their member states and they have garbage policies. I was reading a great book, I still am published by Reiner Settleman about, it's called The New Space Capitalism. So he discusses how NASA lost a lot of its technological edge by letting many of its decision making process be just water done by Congress and how each state wanted to have a NASA production facility. Each state wanted to manufacture a little part of the rocket that was going to be sent to space, blah, blah. Now what happens then? You get a company like SpaceX run by Elam Musk or Blue, large, large by, by Jeff Bezos or many others, and they're just more efficient because they run like a company. Well, in a way, the regulatory policy has been sub-contracted to, okay, let's put this proposal forward, but then let's states, uh, influence the process. That's a problem. And another problem we have is what we call the gold plating thing, which is, okay, Brussels will put forward some legislation. It will be approved by all European level organs, but then when it comes down to the local authorities, they'll just put all the pork barrel they can into the legislation. Yeah. This is my point again, right? The majority of the bad is because of the increased democratic process. It could be argued because the gold plating is the national governments in their pur reform nationally doing things without any Russell overview. But again, I'm not disputing that. But it's also true that if you have the idea that, okay, these are our leaders are joint leaders, will take us somewhere, this idea of bruss. Pushing the agenda forward and beyond what well, the domestic governments would do. It does create an incentive problem that ultimately brings us to the setting of priorities and the gray line in between setting priorities and just engaging in outright planning. And I think No, I agree with, with the car. I agree. I agree. Car manufacturer is a great example of that. You're setting a goal energy transition. Why? Why is that a goal? It apparently wasn't that big a goal because 10 years later we're abandoning it. But it's a goal because the member states want it to be a goal. Yes. But what I mean is okay, but they have created a monster that can walk on its own now. So if you tell the monster, if I was just watching the Frankenstein movie the other night, Del to you seen it? No, I did an adaptation on the whole story with Jacob, Lord, the creature random. Yeah, it, I didn't even know, but uh, but anyway, I'm going off topic, but, uh, we'll do one on cinema one day. You get the Frankenstein to walk, then it, it's got a life on its own. So, okay, you set that priority and just the whole conversation is going to be about that. Europe spent 10 years talking about a priority just because national governments were stupid enough to have one and not just focus on what they should be doing best, which is just growing and fixing their problems. No, setting these big goals opens the door to more ambitious planning, more ambitious goal setting, and that has lead to essentially a big mistake. And the green policy, suicide is the best example of that. But these are, again, at the end of day, I do not think you can claim that in this metaphor that Stein's monster is more powerful than Frankenstein, in this case, the European Union, because at any point in time, the European governments together can change any policy. In the EU institutions because of the power of the council. Well, once the Frankenstein is strong enough, no, no, no. Even those shackles don't work. I don't agree. That's, I say metaphor breaks down here because the treaties are not like the commission is not all in powerful. The Council of Europe is still the European Council. Too many words. Yes. The European Council, because we have two. Yes. The Council of Europe and then the European Council. We're talking about the European Council. There's the Council of Europe. There's the European Council and the Council of the European Union, correct? Yes. Three different ones. So the European Council is really powerful. Secondly, agenda. But the council needs to actually be in control and they are in control. The problem is, European citizens in each member state have bad views about policy. But I believe the law that you are pointing to, it's correct. That is how power is broken down. I'm not disputing that, but I think you are not fully grasping the effect, the very aggressive push by the EU team in the commission, most importantly, to get certain things done and get it their way, ultimately influences the whole process more than the spirit of the law would suggest. Case in point, Lisbon Treaty votes are done across the eu. Two countries vote against it. They reject the treaty for the European Union. One was Ireland, I believe this was eight years ago, so forgive me if I'm wrong. And I would say the other one was the Netherlands wavering on Denmark, but I think it was, it was Denmark, Hal, Denmark, or the Netherlands. And I think Ireland definitely was the other one. So they vote against it. What ends up happening, this proposal was rejected. End of the story, like the Chileans, this, this, a few years ago there was this big bush for constitutional reform. Then there's some votes were done, and they seemed to be advancing. They called a constitutional convention, put forward a document. People rejected it. There was a second goal with a different proposal. They was rejected. Again, no one is talking about constitutional reform. What happened here? The constitutional reform conversation kept happening. The treaty conversation kept happening. Ultimately, the voters were forced to accept this even though they had not voted, but it was a different, it changed a lot. The initial vote was supposed to be a full on European constitution. That was the one that got rejected a couple times. Then it treated discipline with a watered down version. Just kind of what you expect. The water down version of the original plan. Yeah, but that's like a, you remember the Chinese had this, how do you call this? This torture? Yeah. That it feels like that to me. Like we're going to keep on pushing to get these reforms done to get more power into our hands, and as this big plan, it's the political class though, right? If political class does not want these things to happen, it'll happen. One thing I would say is that one of the bigger problems here is that the European Popular Party has regularly insisted on power sharing. The European project with the European Socialist Party, the social Democrats. That is against all logic to me. And they have done that in the name of consensus, and I don't believe in majorities completely overriding minorities, but I surely do not believe either on a project lacking direction. So the project has not advanced economic freedom in the last 15, 20 years, even half as much as it was doing before it was even formally labeled as a European Union. When we have the European economic community, the conversation was a bit more practical. I have my view on that, but why do you think the economic liberalization has slowed now you actually have more. Ization in the eu. I believe that all priorities that are set out between a popular party and a social democratic party majorities just lead to these incoherent economic policies that seem to incorporate moderately liberalization programs you could expect from European conservatives. Not very radical to be honest, but Okay. Perhaps bid in the good direction. Let's give it a six out of 10. And then you have the social Democrats that probably are leaning on three out of 10 if you position zero as the social scale and 10 as the free market side. Okay. So what you end up getting there is a roundup of these two. You get a four, co five, four coma, five type of scenario. I'll push it harder. I would say that the slowdown has been a direct result of, we have no like literal proof of this, but the slowdown has been a direct result of the empowerment of the parliament. Well, yeah, my point here goes above the parliamentary agreements. The composition of the commission is also following this power sharing model. So to me it's not so much about enhancing, I never bought into this whole legitimacy scenario or where, okay, every single position needs to be voted careful with that because you end up having the Mexican judicial reform where even the judges are being voted, but the parliament has to approve the commission. That's, yeah, that's your point and And I agree with it. I never saw a democratic deficit right to begin with. I think that some of the changes that were done were positive and science were not. But my critique here is against the overarching element that pits EU policy as an alignment of PP and the popular party and the social democratic party. This permeates everything. It happens in the European Parliament. Whenever there is a big vote coming, they side together and they just shield off any other sorts of sensibilities they do. Don't vote together as much as they used to in the parliament, but still, but then commission. What you end up having is. Power sharing. Mm-hmm. For example, the commissioner for energy transition is a Spanish socialist who is responsible for not building the dams that would've prevented the floodings in Valencia for a much as she cares about the consequences of climate change. More than 200 people died because dams were not built under her watch that could have stopped this floodings. She's also the one that is shutting down nuclear plants, and now she's being sandwiched by commission bureaucrats that are better than her. Surely. So she has not been able to stop nuclear energy push across the eu. But still you have a socialist Correct. In Europe that is predominantly leading conservative and they don't get conservative policies because the conservatives themselves insist on enacting water down coalition type of deals. It's like the big coalition in Germany. Mm-hmm. Failed experiment reproduced for all 300 million of us Spaniards, and then they get surprised that alt-right parties are going up, that Euro skeptic parties are going up. Well, if you are voting in a European election. Why is the vote for this party bigger in the European election? Some people say it's because it's lower turnout. Okay. That could be a factor, I agree. But it's also because if you are send the right voter and you are considering PPP invo in the case of Spain, or similar parties across the EU spectrum, if you want to move the European projects to the right, you vote for the Albright party. You may not vote for the Albright party locally, but you vote for the Albright. And that power sharing agreement is never discussed, and it's at the heart of all of these problems. And lately, some of the few reasons why Europe has started changing track in many of these areas like Overregulation AI act, deforestation regulation, uh, GDPR, all of this nonsense that has been on the table, contested by corporations, by scholars, by intellectuals, by everyone except them. It has only started to move when the last parliamentary election for the European Parliament showed even a bigger swing. And now finally it seems as is the European popular parties starting to get into some agreements with the AltRight. But here's my double down national issue, though. The European Popular Party is not independent of the National Party. The national parties like example here in Spain, Peppe or CDU in Germany or so on, they set the tone for their European version, or sorry, their European people when it goes to the departments. And that enforced filters through every other European institution. But if the national governments themselves and national parties themselves actually don't care, actually do not want hardcore liberalization home, it doesn't happen in the EU either. Yeah, that's a, a closely take for sure. You need ideas to change first, and I would agree with that, but do not underestimate the fact that it is a. Chairman ruled project in many areas. So for example, the European Popular Party or the European Social Democrats, just by sheer size and No, no, no, no. Hold on size short. But they cannot approve anything. Anything without, for example, Spain if for that is, yeah, for example, Spain PP locally really cared about actual liberalization and have a flip where they must then also push it in the eu. The CDU has no influence at all on that. It's completely a choice of peppe to not be liberal, but there is a recurring topic internally and a growing frustration within the European popular party because of how the German position, which is always very, this comes from, I mean, why was the European project started to prevent another war between Germany and France? Why was every agreement done in order to tie their economies together to, I mean, baat, right? If goods don't come across borders, it will be soldiers doing so, right? So that's the theory and that mentality has remained ingrained in the policymaking, especially of the Germans and internally both groups. And this is also a case for the center left. Both groups also pinpoint to the same situation. We can't move without the Germans. They are in this Stockholm syndrome of having to always get the agreement from the Germans when the Germans should be considered, of course, as a key partner size and history and whatnot. But they shouldn't be the only defining factor, I must say. However, that to me, one of the bigger frustrations is the lost opportunity that the two large southern economies have right? Forgone in the last few years. And I think this is something that you and I have never spoken about, but that has been sub in some of our conversations about this. At the end of the day when the Euro Zone was designed, the inputs by Anar and Prodi and Berlusconi in Italy were very relevant because Spain was punching according to its weight and even above its weight under Anar and Italy, first Berlusconi, then Prodi, then against Berlusconi was relevant at the European level. For the last 20 years or so, Spain has been irrelevant in international policy by own choice. Mm-hmm. This is our doing. This has nothing to do with Brussels, so as I will spare any criticism to Brussels here, because it's not anything to be put into blame rather than Spain, we had Saba who decided to be a lobbyist for Venezuela. Now professionally, he's a lobbyist for Venezuelan government and companies. But before that, as a Prime minister, the first thing he did is not standing up to the American flag as it was doing parade. Just like many other countries were part of parade honoring Spain. Since then, everything went downhill. Spain's influence in Washington came crashing down. Spain's influence across Europe came crashing down. Okay. Some people thought, well, he's a socialist. George W. Bush is a conservative wrong, as now was, had a great working relationship with Tony Blair, labor leader in the UK and Bill Clinton in the us. So it's not about party lines, but okay. Then Obama came. What happened? Nothing. Same thing, same irrelevance. And Rahho came in. Quite honestly, he had to deal with such shit show from the socialist administration that he had to essentially focus on that. But again, foreign policy wasn't that ambitious. And now what we have is Pedro Sanchez, who's essentially the friend of Ola Maduro, yeah. Was regularly done everything in his power to just slow down the type of hard line that Trump has successfully launched against Venezuela. So it's our doing. It's our doing. 100%. Don't put this on Brus because it's our doing. The Italians can say a very similar story for all his faults. Barus Con is the only political leader that was able to structure working coalitions through the years in Italy. Since then. Now we have this very symbolic figure in Georgia Maloney. She seems to be able to get the free groups of the center right together. And she seems to be punching according to Italy's weight in the world and in Europe, even above. Right? And I like that. And I would hope and expect that sort of a southern cluster of countries that can push forward to, to be precise. And, and I close, I want a bit longwinded there. If Spain and Italy stand together on things, nothing gets done in Europe and we have completely forgotten that power. Just gonna say that. I just accepted what of the Germans and friends said, because Spain is Spain and least three in number three and number four, you heard of both sides and economy strengths. So literally yes. If Spain and Italy says, no, it isn't. Literally no. Yeah, no, but we don't have like that. We have the cards. We have the cards. Use the Trump language. And we have not used these cards for 20 years. And by the way, again, I insist not to blame EU here. By the way, scones last term, he was relevant at the EU level too. And that's why some European leaders were very uncomfortable with him because he knew we would fight back on things. And when Italy was going through a large fiscal crisis, which he inherited, they uh, made their movements to kind of have him all there was in their power to give him a nice way out and just have a new government in, in power. Yeah. And since then, where did Italy's influence go? Nowhere. Up until now. Exactly. And just to make the point clear so people are, in my mind, I call this the Mediterranean Union, it's like a union within the union. Yeah. And And Greece also. Yeah. Well, well, Greece has been the best reformer of the last few years. You asked me this once. Which government would you say is like, of course we think of Argentina and I know, but Greece has been doing very well and Portugal has been quite a reformist country for the last 15 years. So yeah, why not? Sure. I mean, we've taken so much from the northern states. True. Some of their advice was needed and positive and some was actually quite bad. But anyway, we have a stick, why not use it? Yeah. So just to make it explicit, so how we mentioned QMV qualified majority voting, it requires both population weight and numerical member state count. Mm-hmm. So if you have large populations. It did two things. One, it prevents these large countries from just missing everything. You need more than just a large population. You need also like a few need, um, uh, actually no numbers are off the top of my head right now for, I studied this 15 years ago, so you spare me there, but I believe it was 14 out of the 27 states, more or less. Yeah. It seems like some two, but it needs to weigh at least two thirds of the population. 5% population. Yes. Yeah. So you need those tools, it kind of walking majority. Exactly. Yeah. So if Spain, Italy, for very large country by population come together, it can block more things in QMV because you just need a few, those conjoins for numerically count and you can block everything. Yeah. So if you have ideological alignment with the Spanish president and the Italian president, tossing the Portuguese present for, for a good measure, nothing go forward without actually good thing. And that is a very powerful thing. But then the parties, these countries. Also don't really have any particularly strong vision of reform or liberalization domestically, so nothing can reflect each other. You mentioned Anar, but Anar in Spain was doing a lot of reform at the same time. Of course, at the European level, he's gonna push that kind of thing, and he used that stake. There is a great book, but it's not available in English called Premier Plano can translate that as saying Spain as a key player and Lonzo the author, and it recounts many of the negotiations that were ongoing in the eu. How Anar would routinely, you know, punch according to Spain's weight. Ultimately, many would argue he punch way above its weight. But what he was using was essentially just using this power to just, okay, you folks want to do this. We don't agree. And my Italian friends, whether or pro right, my Italian friends and I don't agree, so like, change my mind. And he would like, there's a famous picture of him just blocking Helmut Cole and Shaak. You can see the picture, how all the European leaders are like essentially surrounding him and trying to pressure him and the man wouldn't bulge. So I would hope for the better of not just Southern European economies, but also of the EU project in itself, that these coalitions would function better because you know, NA was a powerful figure. Ver Con had a lot of influence. Also, Mario Draghi, I think is a very respected figure these days, and he, of course, he's a former Italian Prime minister, not just a former president of the ECB and so is, uh, Rick Colletta, who was a very quick short-lived Prime minister, but beyond the Dragee report about Europe's decay and how to kickstart it again, there's another very relevant report as well called the Letta Report, which was also compiled under a former Italian Prime Minister and Reta. And this is not, by the way, a south versus north thing because I was routinely on the side of the Germans in the Euro crisis and I was, you know, I was even built, you know? Yeah, you're a miracles boy. One guy told me once I was younger, so I guess the boy comment did make sense. I was like 22. Your Merkel's boy just saying whatever the Germans want to happen here in the southern countries. I remember that public debate once and since then, many things have changed and German policy has certainly gone taking a turn for the worst. And we have just bought that and followed that. And it's a problem. And I guess that some of the issue here is that, okay, national politics are not good. Why should European politics be better? Why blame Europe? Well, not blame Europe, but restrict it. Because if national politics are not very good, if we have overarching structure that can reproduce many of these vice, then that's what worries me. But see, but that is the thing, I guess I am saying the European project post, you know, Lisbon in oh eight has become a slightly different project. And you need to realize that the national governments, our national population, national politics drives European politics. People can keep, oh, Brussels does. Brussels does not act. Be generous. It's more comforting to think it does. It makes the argument a bit more nice as sounding, but it doesn't act that way because everything stems from the European government themselves. If you had France with a good present, Germany is a good present. Italy and Spain, Europe be amazing. That's just factual. It's true. Mm. Because they will push everything else worth a particular direction. However, I believe have a more of a romantic view that I would recommend on the ability of the commission to just stay above these devices. No, no, no, no, no, no. Hold on. I am not saying the commission can stay above, I am saying the commission has its own incentive. Mm-hmm. The creature of the treaties. There it is. Creature. You said it. I went It's true. It's a creature of the treaties. I agree. And treaties are creatures of national governments. Let's, let's, uh, this, this is the main, main point I make. Let, but let's do this, let's take the commission and its own word. It agreed it would do a deregulation strategy. When did it do this? Six years ago, eight years ago. Uh, roughly right. Well, to be honest, junker, who was the president before he, he has this amazing quote from the years in which Europe was dealing with a huge debt crisis and governments were on the brink of going bankrupt across the entire eu. And he gave this amazing quote and he said, we all know what we need to do to get out of this. We just don't know how to get reelected if we do it. And I thought that was a very smart, from a public choice. Look, that's such a fantastic take on things. And it was very blunt. He said this and I liked Jer. He's good. I like Jonker. Yeah. He was a great prime minister of Luxembourg. Luxembourg. Yeah, and I think the many of the current problems are leadership problems because under Jer, some of the green agenda was slowed down. Again, we still put forward because of insisting on the coalition, I would've fancy myself a Jer with. So parliamentary support from the alt-right groups, which by the way, by then were a lot less fringe. Yeah. Than many of them are these. But if you let, if you don't listen to actual legitimate claims for change, then you get more radicalization. That's something that is to blame on the European authorities. But then when Wander Lion came on board, she said, okay, we'll do a deregulation strategy. Nothing happened, but pause for that. Pause that, uh, Luis Gar Kano had a good piece mm-hmm. Where he made this point explicitly that I thought was quite obvious, but very pro you and very interesting author. Yeah. Very pro you. But I think almost like he's, he's famous, I believe also very pro you. Yeah. He's a former MEP. Yes. And you can follow his Silicon continent, correct. Blog on Substack. Correct. I would recommend it. Yes. He wrote an article on that blog where he mentioned, well, the Wanderly is a result of power in sense that she was not the person that was supposed to become president of the commission because of the whole spike. Think that process that the EU invented. The European groups had their person put forward as Matt's favor? Yes. For the EPP or hearings in the Parliament where you need to get confirmed and voted in. No. Then they were running election uhhuh. They had, they had, it was known that favor was going to be the president. Yes, correct. We go to the votes here. Correct. We vote locally in each party, in each country. We choose one party or another, but all main parties signal who they would choose as their future leader, uh, of the commission. And he was the guy, but he was not recommended by the council to be the head of the commission because as Gary Connor had I correctly, the council was worried that favor would actually be too good. And have too much control and be too powerful at the commission. Mm-hmm. And that will actually attack their power base in their domestic politics. So that's why they refuse to nominate. And if the council that has to nominate the president for the commission and then the parliament has to confirm, it's very odd. So they refuse to nominate man favor. So what they did to nominate Wander the Lion, who was just non-threatening to them? Yes, that was correct. She has no ability to do anything, eh? She was, um, a failed minister. A failed minister under the failing Mekel Academy. Whereas, but, but it can. Yeah. But kind point. They knew the national governments knew. Yes, yes. That they didn't want to actually get the power. Yeah. It was both the national government and also the socialists were signaling that they were smelling the blood and they immediately said, no. If we want to keep this agreement going, we need someone that is more willing to compromise. And again, this circles back to the topic that I was racing of, this power sharing arrangement. Mm-hmm. Which it just boils down a lot of policy to nothing and it never gets called out. Right. Vox, in Spain, the alt-right party is doing so they very often leave PP facing its own inconsistencies. So you'll see PP, for example, saying that they oppose something here and they will then get criticized by box for being actually partially the originators of said policy because said policy perhaps. Began with an agreement between the European Popular Party and the Socialist Party, which when then was used by the local authorities in Spain who are socialists to probably gold plate and put some bunch of unnecessarily stuff into that regulation, which goes down to the problem that they say they want to get rid of, although they were originally involved in introducing that legislation. I don't know if our listeners are following me here, but what I, what I mean is that if you insist on sharing power with the socialists and you water down your own agenda just to keep the EU process nonpartisan, you end up creating a huge problem of disaffection with the institutions. You are essentially, the reason why I wouldn't even argue Brexit, a lot of Brexit dynamics are the result of that, because when it was a European economic community, as it was named, whenever Thatcher or her successors would call for. A rebate, some flexibility not being included in something, just not making it a one size fits all and a federal, quasi federal sort of push. They will get their way. All voices were heard, the project was advanced, they had its hurdles. And I, my European looks a lot like what Margaret Thatcher, uh, did. However, out of that same Tory party came the push for a Brexit boat that happened under a Prime Minister who he himself did not stand for Brexit, but many in the Tories did. Del leader at the European Parliament, Daniel Hannan, friend of mine was in that camp for sure. Incorrectly. Yes. Uh, we, I fought him, uh, respectfully whenever that topic arise. But then you come back to these days and the Brits are not in board, by the way, involved anymore. And that's also a problem for the eu. The Tory part is gone. Yeah. Yeah. Well, but just the, the Brits overall, the fact that there was a British MPS meant that those that sat right of the center were a lot more free market leaning mps and those that sat on the center to the left were traditionally less leftists than others in continental Europe. Sure. That's also true. Yeah. Yeah. Good point. So that hurt the project and it's never discussed 'cause it's always proceeded out. Well, they want it out. They're out. They're not doing well, so they're lost. Okay. It's also our loss. I think everyone, both the UK and the U lost as a result of that. Yeah. That comes out also in the court. A lot of the judges and the advocate generals and the law cases that were more liberalization focused were from the uk. Mm-hmm. That is a fact. And one point you mentioned though, what the power sharing dynamic, I wanted to make this point, I think is important, which is the socialist parties in the European parliament had to be voted to there. They don't just appear randomly. That means the higher number of them in the European Parliament shows that the local elections are being won more by socialist people. But uh, it means the liberals are losing. I'm like, why can't liberals actually fight harder locally to win more share of the European elections? As also a point that people could kind of gloss over. There's not some natural tendency that they're going to have so many more left wing people in the parliament. They have to win the seats. So when the local happen and liberals can't actually convince people, they should be more powerful. That is also failing of liberal politics. It's true that there is a relevant number of left wing meps, and that's a reflection of a political reality that is there. But if we factor in the different groups in the Parliament, that can be considered to be center right. Hardcore, right. AltRight. You get the European Popular Party, which is the largest. Mm-hmm. You get the European Conservatives and reformists, you get Patriots for Europe Group and there's a smaller one as well that runs up up to ESN. Yeah. That runs up to 52% on crunching the numbers as we speak. And then when, if you do the same thing with the social Democratic Greens on the left, you get 33 and in the center you get Renew Europe, which is a Macron platform that you can consider to be a centrist platform, but would probably lean right more than left. Mm-hmm. In most cases. And if you factor that in, you have a 50% share for the right wing parties, that's 30% share for the left wing parties and a 10% share for the liberals or the moderate liberals. And there's a 10% of non-line candidates that just stood for election for like not very political reasons, but other small I and d also, you have far like far, far, right? Yes. Far right. Yes. Let's call those LA more on the deplorable side, right, of things to use, the clinical terminology, but I'm saying here is that you get two meps from right wing or liberal parties for every one MEP you get on the socialist front. So I think Europe is more conservative than it is allowing itself to be, and I don't advocate for them to just overrule the socialist on everything, by the way, the popular party or their allies, that's not necessarily always my platform, especially on social issues. There could be some differences. The economic policy very often could also be lacking enough economic freedom. There's a lot of protection is right as well. We're seeing that with the Merkel sewer trade agreement and the opposition to it. But just overall, Europe has denied itself the type of policies that the European voters have advocated for and that is one of the reasons why the share of the vote for the center right groups has increased. But the traditional center right has lost support. The alternative rights have similar, but, but I think root of that loss is the priorities of the national parties themselves. The Pepe government is not starkly liberal. Reformists at home. They're not going that way. Also, in your opinion, but you could argue that the AltRight groups, everything that has popped up to the right of the traditional center. Right. Those are the answer to that. Uh, 100%. I agree. But that saying, the political priorities now on the national level, you know, the Fox and the Chaga and Portugal and the a FD in Germany and the 10th party called it, um, em as Right, yes. National resembling that, that's not a good translation. Who was the national front for national. Right. But just different word now. But same thing. Yes, they are. Why, and that's showing how policy works. And until you have just a rationalization of national priority to European priority, you can have this disjointed way of policy. But at the end of the day, if the national governments themselves do not have priorities towards liberalization, they're never going to have EU prior towards liberalization. Mm-hmm. Many people say, oh, Brussels does x, Brussels does, no, Brussels don't do anything. Yeah. It does permeate all the way up to, to my point is, yeah, the commission as a bureaucracy has its own incentive. And some are perverted, of course, but they can be controlled because they actually have no independent power. But let me also say, and I was bringing up Wander Lion's name before to have a deeper discussion about this, that when the druggie report was released. Yeah. And the letter report was also put out. There was a interesting conversation, sort of a donning moment. It felt like a donning moment because the numbers were just startling. Uh, it showed, these are two reports, but the fact that they were drafted by former Italian prime ministers and in the case of Mario Drag is someone who is very prestigious and who was also the head of the ECB and kind of a magician because just when he was signaling he would do whatever it takes. He shrunk the balance sheet of the ECB instead of doing the contrary. So some nice central bank alchemy there. Yeah. Playing with words and expectations. There was even a slightly deflationary period as this was going on, whereas you would've expected massive money printing and inflation. But not to go off topic once again, I'm just bringing this up because then when these reports came out, Europe suddenly realized that it was falling behind the US and that it was falling behind China and it was just slowly just, its economy and population are just dying. Right. So these reflection, which we seem obvious in think tank circles. Intellectual circles took ages to be accepted. This view that Europe was failing and not succeeding was challenging the group. Think of all the Brussels bureaucrats as well as the national leaders, and to be honest, then Brussels did react and published a competitiveness Compass garbage, which was the worst possible take on the druggie report. Not everything on the druggie report was good or perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but there was some good in it. The compass left out most of the good and took it most of the bad and amplified it. And that is on underlying, but even worse. Wait, wait, wait. Hold on, hold on. What are you telling me? It was national governments drafting the compass. Now hold on. We have some insight info. Hold on. Yes. The compost bull crap was delion. Sure. But the major issues of anti-competitive behavior in the member states are member state problems. Yeah. By 98% of the problems are member state. Yeah. Druggie knows. And when he, but druggie knows this, and when he created his report, he does not advocate for things that the EU can't do. He does suggestion things. It's for the eu. Yes. So when the EU decides, explicitly decides to leave out some of the good, keep on most of the bad, and then just amplify it and then present a compass, and then does not implement its own compass because the results are in, and in year one since the compass was released, compass was the document that was supposedly, essentially taken in whatever drug he had said and what they were thinking. And committing to a reduction. So one very, you know, like, I don't think we've shared this on the podcast, I guess it wasn't relevant, but I have a smaller thing. We, we bring up the Wanda Mariana Think tank in Spain, which is a leading voice for free market in the Hispanic world, not just in Spain. I have a smaller organization as well, forte, which focuses on deregulation. So I was laser focused on this because they, for instance, promised to cut 35% of existing regulation affecting small and medium sized companies, and 25% of the regulatory burden on large companies up to this point. After a year and a half, they have only enacted 15% of the changes they wanted done. So they are dragging their feet after, essentially just committing themselves to doing little and bad. They are dragging their feet because they have no external pressure. Yes. Okay. But they have an internal incentive, not do anything. Then there is a problem with that structure whatsoever, regardless of the external Yeah. No, no, no. I am not saying the commission is a good organization. I am saying commission is controlled by Yeah. The national powers. And I'm just my point, I mean, because many of these, and you can't, and you can't expect, you can't expect people who are literally not directly elected to respond to elections. And let me tell you one thing about Europe actually pursuing or not pursuing action, the, the lack of action is sometimes not bad for national policy. Mm-hmm. Like if you have a government that is not kind of less fair and just leave things be, that's why Spain recovered under Raho, wasn't that Raho did. Crazy liberalization. He did bit of a stabilization, should have done it better, some liberalization, but only focused on the labor market, which was hemorrhaging and then just left things free for six years. And guess what? The economy was doing quite well. 3% growth, half a million new jobs every year. Size of the government came down, 46 to 38% of GDP. If you ask me, like the results were actually pretty good. So the less effort attitude to government is not necessarily bad, but when you say you're committing to doing something and you don't do it, you lose credibility. I think the issue with this, however, uh, many of the things pointed out in the draft report that are more corrosive to competition are things that the EU does not control. Mm-hmm. For example, most of the trade barriers that the member states have are internally internal, are the biggest. Thing, perhaps to stop you there for a second, I think we should acknowledge that because sometimes it's assumed that we have the single market. We have a single market in name only, and there was a significant integration of regulations in as a way to simplify them and make them coherent so that you could trade goods and services and capital could flow, not just human, but also just financial capital as well, without restrictions. But to this date, many of those advances have remained there thankfully, but no further process has been done. I always recall this story of getting in, I was flying to the uk. I was 17 years old. I was going to boarding school to spend a month there trying to perfect my English and uh, magazine by Iberia, the airlines Spanish airline, featured an article about how the flight control was fragmented across all EU member states and how if you integrated that you could save time, save money, and save emissions. So I recall that. When I was 17 years ago, I was reading about that. It just made sense to me. I wasn't very political at this time. I'm 17. But it, the whole scheme that he was proposing made sense. Then he was given a name single European Sky. 20 years later, we're still away. Yeah, that is true. Banking union, capitals Union, but all of these things are not EU three generous problems. These are member states not wanting to move forward, and if the member state themselves don't want to move forward, nor nor motion forward, but somehow they still put other Brussels bubble thing. They're not saying they want to move forward. They, they probably are different, but the member states are the ones that control the vote. Mm-hmm. On those things. Yeah. No allowed mean that there's, but, but the banking union, the banking union for actual banking union requires a single banking regulator That is impossible in the current treaty. Who controls duty, the members still have to vote a new change in the duty. Same for the Captain Market Union. When ER commission in 2010 proposed the first real policy for doing the commission, the Captain Market Union, what's required, the members still have to give up a lot of regulatory power. They have to vote and change the treaty to confer this power to the EU institutions. None of the taxes not disputing that. But when the push that Brussels does is not for banking union, it's not for the capitals union because it it's for not for a single market. It's for energy transition. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because those are easy things to talk about. Remember, they still can, their bureaucracy internally still have to do something. To justify their assistance. Right? Yeah. Well, so if the member states don't actually allow the bureaucracy to actually work productively, they're gonna work counter productively. I, I think they react because they have no direct power over this. Yeah. But, but again, like they were going nowhere with many of the regulations they propose and they knew that, and they still went ahead and did it. Why is it not a priority to introduce more freedom in the markets? Well, I would argue that there's a split. The corp, the workers in the commission, they are apt and very prepared, very cosmopolitan and bureaucrats. Yeah. Compared to others, other public servants in other, but there is a prevailing socialist mentality there, and there is a lack of accountability for what they do because there is a federalist obsession in the way they view the European project. And whatever they can do to justify integration, they will do. Even though sometimes Europe is stronger, if it doesn't get federalized in what it is doing. Yeah. The, the things that, that there strength in the decentralized model of work, there's the things that would strengthen, let's say you are a pure hardcore EU federalist. Oh, okay. God knows. There's a few of those. These things that you want to happen. For example, the banking union, insurance Union, pension Union, Catholic Union, you would want those things to happen too, but they're not happening. But again, the push, because the power isn't in your department. Non-existent push from the commission though. Non-existent. I commission this. Agree this, this July commission. No, no. Absolute. But this commission has been in power for how long is been now it's six years. Right. But the bond July commission is trash. I mentioned that the president of the commission is trash. Right. Then you had junker. You have someone that has views, that has vision, that has policy which speaks, that has principles, which therefore speaks poorly of the bureaucracy because if everything swings depending on the political leadership. Mm. I think the bureaucracy in commission, all these two intents is too dare to all these bad words you can use. But at the end of the day, who appoints the college is not the bureaucracy. Mm-hmm. It is the national government and the parliament that appoints the college. Of the commission. Also, when we speak about the commission, it is true and, oh, sorry, because I'll say it's kind of a good sign to me that the bureaucracy is so dependent on the college to do things, but it actually shows they're not that independent. One thing I would also bring forth to the debate is that when you're talking about EU bureaucrats, there are sometimes positioned to be independent from their member states. Many of the lower and middle ranking bureaucrats, those that are not politically appointed are, and they share this group thing that is very technical, very federalist. I can appreciate the effectiveness that they may have or the attention to detail that these workers have. I also don't appreciate the lack of an overarching liberalization strategy in most of their proposals, but I mean, there's some good and bad there. However, most of the politically appointed higher ranking bureaucrats, not the commissioner, which is also another example, but especially those below. There are national government loyalties involved there for sure. And that is a problem as well because you may have a position where the bureaucracy has crafted something, for example, to free up some of the budget that is currently being spent on agricultural subsidies and use it in a definitely smarter way than just subsidizing the entire primary sector. Still, if the farmers in France oppose that, and if there is a French high ranking official in the EU commission, he will not be thinking of what his team is telling him or what the overarching goal set by the commission and under mandate is, but rather they will be voting among as my point, it comes back to the politics and the politicians. And I will share an anecdote though before you share that I, before we leave bureaucracy saying, in Spain you have these tanks of opposition. Yes. To enter the most prestigious parts of the public sector. Yes. The public service here is extremely well trained in terms of technical knowledge, crazy well trained because of these exams. Uh, yet we live in Spain. We know what happens in Spain. Not an effective public service at all.'cause the government still controls the rail power. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. No, I'm just saying this, I'm not saying it's different than national governments, but some people argue it is. They make this claim that, well the European bureaucracies, you know, more cosmopolitan or international, less dependent on national governments. It's like if they were aliens, right? I mean they make that false argument all the time. Uhhuh, yeah. I will share an anecdote now. There was a high profile case where the commission had to rule whether some payment by the Spanish government would be considered or not a form of state aid. Whether it would distort competition or it would be a reasonable payment that could be legally handed by the government to a company. My view in that case is that we were talking about compensation. So compensation for some regulatory changes should not be seen as state aid of any kind. I believe that's the doctrine of the commission, because otherwise, anytime a government pays compensation for any wrongdoing, you could argue that is state aid. If the recipient, as if it's a large company or whatever, and the whole conversation could become a lot more convoluted. So in this particular case, the Spanish government did not want this to be considered compensation, but wanted it to be seen as state aid, and the person in charge of the bureaucratic service of the commission in the legal services was a Spaniard. And the Spaniard essentially said, okay, we will label this state aid because these closed doors to my face, we will label this state aid because that's what Pedro Sanchez has told us to do. We will not oppose any sort of agreement between the Sanchez government and the companies should they decide to do it the other way. Taking the romance out of the equation. When you look at how these things work internally, you find there's a lot of very cynical situations like this that remind you. Okay. But we're still, I don't find that to be a cynical situation. I find that to be a direct point. Oh, if you just rule, if you rule it state aid, yeah. You can't just walk out and tell me, but here's, here's fine. It's state aid, but I won't call it state aid if you don't want me to. Here's my thing. My thing is this, my overarching, uh, view or argument is the European Union bureaucracy. It's dependent on the politicians of the European member states in 95% of policy. To me, it's obvious that if you have a Spanish person, high ranking in the European Commission and they have party loyalties, it's politics, they will respond to the party. Mm-hmm. The politicians that to me, when outside ordinary, but when these bureaucracies explain to you in class, in the media, when it explains itself, it, it is as if they came from Mars, you know, and they are completely objective and neutral. It's crazy. There is no thing as a neutral. Exactly. Exactly. Primarily, IES don't control themselves. That's why. Those on the pro EU side of the spectrum where I find myself, I would not be as idealistic whenever they present the capabilities of the project. That would be a big step forward. Among other things, because I was speaking about the identity thing, the push for identity, the intention to make this the United States of Europe, that doesn't fly with many voters. It doesn't with me, to be honest, although I am pro eu generally speaking, and the more the emphasis has been, I would argue that the European authorities, European government bodies, have put all the right emphasis in all the wrong places for the last 10 years, and that takes a toll on any project. But that happened when the top governing body, the European vessel, just let things fly her out. And also Eurozone, that's for long episode. But Euro zone, there are some criteria for joining the Euro zone, whatnot, but essentially it's like free rules of the game come in, low inflation, low deficit, low debt. And once you're in, you have to keep meeting this criteria. They don't just go away. It was resilient, known as the mass strict criteria. It was then revised, but the, the rules of the game never really changed. They were 3% government deficit tops, 60% government debt tops, and inflation should be significantly low below 2%. At least that's what some people consider low. I consider it low to be 0%. That's price stability. But that's for another topic. So Europe is dealing in between 2008 and 2013 with a significant debt crisis. Governments routinely break these commitments. Nothing ever happens. It is said that the European protocols will kick in and the authorities will make sure that these violations of the rules of the Euro will not be maintained through the years. Here is Spain still today breaking the rules of the Eurozone, which it started to break in 2008 and has not met a single year since. And nothing happens with the pandemic. The rules get even more relaxed, but then they don't get brought up as they were originally. They get even more water down. And when a program is placed for reform in Greece, it takes three different bailouts to actually get serious about what should be done. So the governance of that crisis took a huge toll on the image of the eu, which was seen as unable to meet its own rules, continuously bailing out failed economies, and creating this north, south divide that still permeates today some dynamics. What's the argument you're making? Argument I'm making is that the bigger tool for economic integration deployed by the European project was the Euro Zone, the single currency and the fact that all single currency rules were violated by member states and the governing body of the Euro Zone decided not to act, not to do anything. In fact, got together, got the commission together with the IMF and the ECB in itself to just bail out these countries and keep going as if nothing had happened. Took a big toll on the overall goal of connecting the European economy closer, and I think the governance could have been worse. Had national leaders like Merkel, I don't think that getting their hands, I don't think that reads true. I don't agree with policies they did or crisis, but to me some, some of them were good. Like ask Portuguese. Sure, sure, sure. Or my point though is that it doesn't, to me it has in some strengthen the credibility of the integration project because they're willing to sacrifice their own rules to allow to enable the sustainability of other member states. I think that should not have been the case. You should have allowed the defaults on Greece and so. Then that would have actually then caused more probably despite from these member states. I mean, I don't think Grexit was a No, no, no. There was never a situation where that, but no, no. It was just, you called the governance of this bailout, but they shouldn't have had bailout program to English allow the default. In fact, it was clearly stated on the EU project and its economic regulations on the Eurozone crafting and whatnot, that it was a monetary union, not a, a fiscal transfer union. Yeah. By the way, fiscal union, another typical. Obsession that I've left out now in some of this debate, but I did bring it up in the beginning, the obsession with creating its own revenue sources, the fiscal union and whatnot. Well, these are all the Euro bonds, by the way, pulling together resources to issue debt collectively, which sounds good if you want to lower your cost of borrowing. But at the same time, if you are, uh, ate government that is spending is doing deficit spending, why should another EU member that is being austere and managing its deficit properly, why should it be bailing you out by allowing you to get into the same pool of financial claims into a debt issuance? I think that makes no sense, and that's a common topic among European elites. They love that project, the Euro bonds and the Euro. But if the situation with Greece, Greece is, you know, instructive in the situation where they should have allowed a default, so Greece will be forced to do actual fiscal reform, right? That should have been the priority. So the free bailouts only at the third one, and after a default, technically there was a default on a payment, not proper default, be a property fault, because how it was phrased at that time was okay. If Greece did not use the Euro, they had the joma, still, they could do some kind of monetary refinancing, blah, blah, blah, bull crap. Because of course if you had Joma, you'd be worse off. But you can default with the Euro, but do a fiscal review. Not just monetary adjustment. And that's what they were so afraid of. Yeah. And by the way, as soon as Greece got serious about reform mm-hmm. It's doing very well. Yeah. It all, so has Portugal, so has Ireland. Yeah. So has Cyprus. But all the bail out countries have done well, but to get, but therefore, but, but the way in which the government, because most governments were acknowledged the problem and committed to reform Ireland, surely did as a beacon of free market policies. The Portuguese took it very seriously under Paso Coia. And then the socialists came in and Antonio Costan, they were very good, very rigorous, but the Greek were not. And the European governance could have not been worse. The handling of the crisis was horrible. And the political cost of dragging this thing out for ages through three different prime ministers. Yeah. Uh, Papa Andre, and there was another one. And then Greece at the time still, they didn't want to pull the trigger on their own reforms. Greece still, as you know, the other member states could not force Greece to do fiscal cuts, yet Greece could not force other countries to bail them out, and yet they seemingly were willing to. I agree. I thought the bailouts were a bad idea. That was, I think I, and I would never use this kind of arguments normally, but I think that if you had been in Europe during those years, and I know you followed this and read about this, but if you had been present, the level of animosity, frustration, just struggling of the entire European project at this point was, I cannot put it into word, the stress that the entire European project came under, just because many of these tensions have relaxed themselves over time. But the Greek saga was damaging to the project. 100%. No, by the way, there was a neo-Nazi on a communist party creeping up in an election in Greece. Yeah. So that's kind of telling you something. I remember this well. I wasn't in Greece, I wasn't, you know, in Spain. But I remember this very well. But that goes to the point though, is that because the European project cannot force a national government to do national things and because they want to seem so collegiate, you know, in their view, saving the union's more important. No. Yeah. They're gonna make these bad policies because Markel, at the time, she had bad views about how this should work. It goes back to her still too. Oh, Merkel. These people have to make their own choices and they made the wrong choice, but that's what their political idol ideology told them to do. Yeah. I was being, we were VYU or even more dismissive than I was about, uh, wander underlying. Mm-hmm. And here is the other elephant in the room. Angela Merkel, a national leader, not an EU leader. Right. But by all matters and purposes, the key politician in Europe for the previous decade. And she's also happens to be a CDU Yeah. European popular party group in Germany. So again, these two German ladies have certainly made no favors to the European project. Yeah. But I keep trying to trust this point for the episode is that no matter how you cut this cake, it comes back to the powerful country's powerful leaders as their political views. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. If Angela America wants to do a bailout, a bailout will. I mean, if Javier Mle was the president of Germany. Exactly. That's my point. Maybe things would be, look, yeah, for sure. Very different. However, one could argue that just because European policies these days are not very good, the fact that there is this other structure that replicates this, it's to be also seen as, as an as, but not as necessary. Evil. I also part of the same evil, it's what I keep saying evil. If you really want to change EU policy, what you should do is focus on your national legislature. On your national legislature. Ah, yeah. If your political party at home, especially if you're in a big, a big country, if your political party has better people in the party, then that reflects everything else changes. Nothing compensates for bad leadership at home, even in the eu. Mm-hmm. I guess the recent conflict, or I don't know how to put it, but just a spot over Greenland, has also been a relevant point to highlight how our defense capabilities, which are not an EU task in itself, have been delegated to NATO through the years. But when you look at the NATO membership, it's essentially Europe and the US throwing the Canadians, but, and at the Turkish, but it's essentially the EU and the US and the fact that the EU is not able to not just fulfill the promises of nato. They used to the, even the European member states. Yeah, the member states. The member states not just not following up on their commitments to nato, but not even getting along with their other partner in nato, which is the us. I think both sides should be thinking about this and not just the Americans. A lot has been made up of how Trump's ways have been very, I don't know even how to describe them, right, but have been very negative for the relationship between Washington and Brussels. And just all the member states as a result of this push to Ann Ex, uh, Greenland and the unilateral kind of bullying type of speech by Washington. Right. However, again, the EU needs to reflect on the fact that, sorry, Europe, not the eu, needs to reflect on the fact that it has done nothing to advance it's common European defense capabilities. There are some European defense programs within the eu and those should be significantly ramped up in order to create a more coordinated European strategy of defense. Member states don't want to. No, they don't want to. Exactly. And one of the things that this permeates into is that, for example, we are being asked to spend more on defense by the US government. And when you have 27 countries buying supplies, buying technology, buying aircraft, buying goods, and services needed for defense, you are missing out on all the economies of scale of bringing together 15% of the world, CDP, under a single contracting dynamic. I'm not saying we should have a European army. I'm just saying, it sounds like you're saying that Diego, I'm saying that the resource and the coordination that is done via NATO has not been upkept by the Europeans, and that the best way to upkeep it is to increase coordination on these programs. For example, if I'm buying an aircraft by myself as a spanner, but there is also Estonian government and then there's the Romanian government and they're all buying aircraft and we're doing this separately, the price we get is easy, 20% higher than if we were doing it. So I can give you more for less if we actually pull resources together. This is the kind of argument that a European Federation person would say because say, well, if the EU could do purchases, then the European member states would actually have cheaper. I agree with that. I agree with that. I, but that require member states, as I was saying, all the aggressive push by Brussels has been put in the wrong places. Yeah. But this would be quite, if this was a conversation, which, what Trump is doing at the end of the day, some analysts have taken this view that, okay, don't trust everything Trump says. He's asking for a hundred just to get to 50. So if the Europeans are doing nothing on defense and nothing on Greenland, well, if you ask for just. Gimme 5% of GDP on defense and give me Greenland, they will actually get serious about, okay, we do need to probably spend two 3% of GP instead of just one. Like is the case of Spain. And also we will need to like take care of, okay, how do we manage the situation in Greenland and what's to be done about that? And I would tend to agree that that's ultimately the outcome or I may not like the means to achieve to that outcome. But that's the deescalation of the Greenland conversation in Davos will certainly point out that, okay, the Europeans got the memo and now they're starting to work on this. But hey, some elements of the European integration project, the coordination project can be beneficial for all parties involved. And the defense capabilities are certainly one example of that. But if your all focus is on. Overregulating industry, overregulating, ai, overregulating, data protection, overregulating, but these are deforestation, remember, but rules that make no no sense. But Diego, sometimes defense is not an EU competence at all. No, it not. No, I'm saying, but the whole energy has been put in the wrong places. Because the member states have chosen where the energy goes. Yeah. And again, the American, the Americans telling us what we should be focusing on. And yes, you could say that's patronizing and embarrassing, but I don't think it's pa, I think it's showing the way in many areas, a clear sign. It's a clear sign that the EU member states themselves still to this day. Don't take it serious. Don't get it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree. But this is the thing. I'm not saying you are saying this, but one cannot say, okay, this shows why the EU is like, no, the EU has no power over this topic at all. At all. The membership will need to then come back to drawing board, say, Hey, well there is such thing as a European Defense Union as a body, this exists, but it's symbolic, even if it's completely based like context, external, external. Another example of this would be the absolute lack of just strategy. Effectiveness in immigration policy. Mm-hmm. This has been felt more directly by Spain and Italy as and to a lower extent, other smaller Mediterranean countries because they are the gateway, the entry point into the eu. So they get flooded with very big inflows of migrants coming predominantly from the Northern African region. And basic services are overwhelmed, budgets are strained. Economic integration doesn't prove very easy because we're speaking of predominantly non well-trained, not very highly educated culturally, not necessarily as integrated as other immigrants, to say the least. So when you consider all of this, the lack of proper EU management of this scenario from its border authorities and the lack of commitment from other EU member states to helping the recipient states has been a massive failure. And when you look at, well, Maloney. Has been the only EU leader that has spoken about immigration reform. This is, to me the issue. OMI has been the only one to really pick up about this, but she can't control the spin. The current Prime Minister Spain doesn't really care about ity to 800,000. The issue immigrants, if there was a better Prime Minister of Spain plus Maloney. Different conversation. Absolutely. And I think that there was a point in which the Brits and the Germans correct. Plus the Nordic Stakes Netherlands and so on, they were a force for a more advanced, more dynamic, more open markets and open society type of model. But since the Brits have left, fatigue has kicked in. The Germans have completely, the rail, French have other priorities like their own, their countries falling apart. I'm leaving the French, but Germans too, their countries falling apart. They have other priorities. Also, foreign cut is severely underfunded. There's no budget for it, as we mentioned earlier. Right. But who's going to give them money? Two Frontex. That's the whole thing itself. The way EU money is spent is ridiculous because as we said, like there's a big chunk of it that goes to agricultural subsidies. Mm-hmm. It makes no sense. This is, uh, I, I wouldn't dare to say it's 1%. It's probably less than three 4% of GDP and I'm think I'm probably. Overstating this, but like it can be so that a very small chunk of the output that is roughly 3% of G gets 50% of, but the budget of the EU isn't that big anyway. So one could be, but it could be for Frontex, for example. If you are able to, you could allocate some of that. No, not all of it. That would be, it could reallocate lot that cultural funding to Frontex and there is some expenditures there that go to culture. Mm-hmm. And that should not be done. Those should go immediately because culture is a member state, competence and I don't know. Shared competence. Yes. But, uh, that's why, that's why they can do it. Yes. But no one really claimed that this was like, they claim that they do this to promote European culture. Yeah. No, that should be left out of table. Maybe now it's not. I think at the beginning, maybe I can see why at the beginning Yes. Because it's a new thing. But generationally, like people grew up in Europe, that is not a thing. Also, I was in brussel recently. Yeah. But no one grew up in Europe, you know what I mean? No, no, no. You grew up in your member states that I think is underselling. I think so, because you and math here, you really grew up in Europe because the idea geographically speaking, no, no, no, no. But just the idea of us going other places. The idea of thinking coming to you, that is a very different mentality from your parents. I default. It is true that when you ask this question around across Europe, you get a mixed bag. Some countries, people feel almost as European as they feel nationals of their own country. The smaller ones. The smaller ones, yes. But then again, if your country's like a mid-sized town, right. In Spain, I get it, that your national identity only takes you so far because there's countries in the EU that are smaller than La Rosa or Wadi, like, uh, like sleep towns close to Madrid. So like that is something to be had in this conversation. So if I was from Lavia, maybe No, but even like I have my sense of national pride or culture or whatever, but not I I, but get why the European identity, I don't mean like pride and that kind of thing. Culture don't mean access. I mean just an awareness, like for example, a lawyer. Today in Spain, who is six years old. Mm-hmm. Never did a course in EU law when he was in school. No, he didn't. But now it is obvious that you do a lot of EU law because you just know by default so much about it, or when you're doing econ, but you knew, you know a lot about the European economy, that kind of unquote idea. But before you did not just a blatant awareness as a default perception of your life has changed substantially now that the culture are in the eu. So you might not like, not you, but one might not feel a cultural unity of someone in France or Germany. But you know way more about France and Germany. I would define this as proximity, but not as a shared identity or belonging. But I must admit, I'm talking of myself here. I think this more or less representative of the Spanish population, but the Spanish population, although they feel. Predominantly Spanish and also from the region. They do acknowledge a sense of European identity there. So I'm not saying it's non-existent, I'm just saying, but I know, even me, I'm not even trying to make an argument. Mm-hmm. About the existence or none of the European identity. I am saying something more different. I'm saying because you grew up having so much knowledge of the project and the union and the other country. Yes. We were schooled on this. Right. That completely changes the idea of how people perceive other places. That's, that's my point. Some of the more, as we were speaking about this, I'm thinking that the Erasmus program, which essentially it's an automatic exchange of students between universities across Europe. So you strike an agreement, big, big deal, you can, and that is a very big deal and it is so cheap. That should be expanded substantially. All the cultural stuff, just pump it into M That my deal. Yeah, no, absolutely. That just as a share, there was a study that was published recently and they sent to you. Where they did a estimation of the babies that came from Oh, yeah. Right. You know why? No, we had a different discussion on, but it's, it's connected to the same, same thing. And they did. It was like a million or so babies came from the Iraqis program, but important point every, not a million, but a big, big number. Someone raised this point to me before, the kind of people that do SMUs is structurally different from people who do not. Sense. If you're doing Erasmus, you're likely, you know, off, you in college already. You are a big difference from normal people. You're in college. Well, but remember, a lot of people go to university in Europe. Not saying that's good, but I'm just saying that. Fair enough. That's a kind of a American point of view there. Because if you focus on most, no, no, no, hold on. But youth go to the, but the youth now, the generational thing between like the before. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, generationally speaking. Yes, yes. You are already a different kind of person already. Mm-hmm. But then now the kind of people within that group, that truth that goes to Erasmus, are they only a bit more elite than Gen General Pueblo person? Generally speaking in Spain. Sure. But definitely in other countries. France. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Many are in for the party. That's fine too. Yeah, that's fine too. But still the kind of person that goes is the kind of person that's bit more politan. Absolutely. Better open as my question I was going there with and Oh and yeah. And importantly, the people that are going to be quote unquote the politician class, they are generally all who kind people that do harassment as well. Mm-hmm. Because of that, by default. And oftentimes they meet their partner on harassment. That's actually surprisingly common. I found out just by default, having the Erasmus program, having the people that will leave the country be an Erasmus program, you are generating a cause of politic political class by default. So actually telling someone, or used to be more called of politician to be a politician in Spain or in France, Germany. That caused a polism layer in politics. Mm-hmm. It's extremely important for a stability long term in the actual European project, and that's why IRA's program is so important. And I think to once again, go back to a point I've made a few times already, the way the priorities have been set forward, the way the budget is spent, the places in which the energy has been placed are all absolutely wrong for the last decade. Absolutely wrong. And the Erasmus program is one example of the type of initiative that. The Sheen agreement, which is not per se, a EU institution. It's a sister creation, but it's essentially the police and the judiciary structure that you need to have the free flow of people across borders. That is at the core of the eu, so it is a EU creation, even though it's not officially an EU entity. The Sheen Agreement, as we said, the Erasmus agreement, the idea of increasing resources for frontex. These policies yield huge results with very little investment. Less energy should be placed on overregulating. Stuff that should not be regulated in the first place, and a lot more attention should be placed to these high yield programs. I would say I agree with all that defense. For example, I was saying like, we're not doing defense at the EU level. Our a hundred things we shouldn't be at doing at the European level. Plus then the European Union is making sure it commits to things that it shouldn't be committing itself to. Let's use all, all that for the, I agree with everything you're saying, areas that, but I feel like maybe a point where we would disagree is the source of the European priorities that are, I think not really brussel sourced. Brussels is just dependent politically on member states and the member states themselves have bad governments and bad governance and therefore it reflects in also the priorities that the commission adopts. Mm-hmm. Point. That's, that's, that's my differentiation. And just to sort of round everything. Uh, in terms of the future of the eu, I think that this unfinished business that we have with little areas such as the air traffic control, why should it be split in sky traffic control regions that are different to the actual region where these flights are taking place, which is a single European airspace. If you advance that, you advance travel, you facilitate, you make it quicker, you make it cheaper, you have less emissions. I see nothing bad advantages coming from that. Same thing with the capital union, the banking union. All of these elements need to be, again, at the center of the conversation and Brussels needs to make sure it takes every ounce of margin that it has to maneuver, to reposition itself as an agent of this sort of change. Because if it keeps being the voice that wants to lead the green New Deal, well then it. Be my guest and be Joe Biden. Number two, this is our essential difference. Joe Biden Ju is our essential difference. I think Russells has no independent thought. If the member states do not want the capital market union, not want the bank, do not want common air traffic, do not want any of these things, they will happen. So until you have a president in Spain, in France, in Italy, in Germany, in Portugal, that want these, 'cause you have the push goes both ways too. Although you can argue that the stake ends at the national stake, you're really taking it to the limit. Most of the conversation begins at the commission. The push comes in and out, up and down. Commission to member state the other way forward. No massive priorities. Massive new priorities cannot be initiated from the commission because they don't have the actual competence to do it, nor do they have actual politics. You do. You do realize, however, that when there is this drip of. Constantly pushing that place. And when the EU project has this legitimacy in, in that it's seen as the higher body, it does, the people limit the national government. The at the top, the people at the top of the commission are put there by national government, put it to you like this. Hungarians and polish and polls that have been challenged by EU continuously, sometimes over policies I don't agree with. But you had it their way at the end of the day, you had it their way. So the ability to fight the entire machinery is not really, uh, that possible. At the end of the day. They withdraw funds from you. They start procedures against you, just essentially. But the procedure, the procedures that the commission has done against Hungary, uh, against Poland are all directly flowing from the rules of the game. Right. The commission, some, the commission can en enforce what they're doing. They're enforcing rules from the, the two teeth. Some interpretations of the treaties there have been proper, some have not. And that way it goes to court. Yes. And by the way, we have not spoken of the court, but I have a good opinion of the court. I think that is a very valid guarantee that the system has, because I do think it's interpretation of the treaties and it's interpretation of the basic tenants in the eu. And I would say, remember the when the commission for not all, when commission went after Poland for some of the what they claim to violation of rule of law. The lost in the court, by the way, the same European authorities that have allowed complete overreach of the rule of law in Spain. Yes. And have done nothing about it. Because being a powerful country in the eu, this is kind of thing, the commission does not have ultimate control. That's a big argument against it. Especially if you're a Spaniard. Yes. But anyway, moving forward, I think the one thing that Europe is missing the most is growth. Yes. Growth. Growth. Growth. That should be the only obsession right now. Everything else is secondary. So everything the commission can do to kickstart growth good. Can underlying lead. I, I don't think the, the conversation growth, I don't think agree here either, because I, I don't think I, she can, I I She's not a liberal. Right? Yeah. But the growth is not stemming from Russells, the growth. No, it's not. No, it's not everything Brussels can do to facilitate growth. I, I was given the air traffic control as one example. Sure. But this start picking the smaller fights because you actually win the big fight by winning all the smaller fights. Because, but again, I think the other, you're missing that point again, the commission can only be pro-growth. If the people put on the commission are pro-growth. Mm-hmm. And given that the member states put the people on the commission, were not pro-growth. They're not going to be pro growth. However, however, the commission officials have acknowledged their failure when they presented this compass and then adopted these recommendations from druggie and whatnot. They have admitted responsibility there. They have admitted a problem. They have acknowledged that they need to play a much better, more constructive role in fostering growth, whom in Europe, not saying this comes from Brussels, but if Brussels can constrain growth, Brussels does constrain some growth from a socialist commission no matter how much they admit their wrong doing. So therefore, although it could be nice if the world worked, as you have suggested today, because it works under a socialist No, the world. Yeah, the world. I think the world works how I suggested it, because it's, the politics does not want the same to happen. Yeah. The politics doesn't want to. So the thing that I therefore you, she's not being an element for positive change, unfortunately. No, no. I right now agree with this point. I agree. This is my, I fully agree with the point. My contention isn't that the EU is currently good for growth. My contention is the way to get the EU good for growth is for national governments to be good for growth. Absolutely. Yeah. And at any day, that's the European citizen's choice to vote for PPE or vote for a FD or vote for Chaga or whoever they wanna vote for to have that thing tick start. Oh, and by the way, a closing note on that, because you just brought Sega, the Al right party in Portugal, their candidate made it to the second round of the presidential election. Of course, he's a parliamentary system, so what really matters is having the Prime Minister's office, he himself is running for this position now. But it's a, uh, it's kind of a publicity stand of sorts because what he wants to is to be the prime minister of the hell, right, of government. But he made it inadvertently to the second round. No one expected this at first, and the poll started show leaning more and more his way. And now the PP has decided to support the social democratic, really for the presidential election, which just again, opens up this dialogue about how much they try to keep this big coalition going, this power sharing agreement. And this is not going to help their costs long term. Correct. Because long term, the Portuguese are probably going to be denied of having more, let's just say right wing policies, which is what the electorate is demanding. Because they're not going to be given this just because their politicians have decided to keep this power sharing agreement above the elections of the results. These will probably exacerbate the vote for the area skeptic party that is sheah. So again, then we can blame them and position them as probably don't blame them, but everybody Blame blame. Yeah. But the politicians. But, but they're, but they, but because they still should not be trying to push the idea of being anti Europe, they're also to blame. No, I blame blaming mean all of them. I blame all of them. It is them as well. We can certainly converge on that. Okay. Um, so Diego, uh, we're gonna have to end the podcast here. We're definitely gonna pick back up some of these European points, uh, later. We haven't discussed the court at all. We have, I have strong views on that. I'm sure you have some too. I think you do more.'cause now you're, you're a big shot lawyer. I'm just, uh, I'm just trying to do my best to do my economics and that's, that's more or less it, but a lot more conversations. And anyway, whenever we discuss European affairs, predominantly Hispanic Europe is an actor. So we'll be speaking about this some more. We'll be speaking of Georgia Malone in the future. That's right. We name drop this sometime in the previous episodes, this trip to Milano that we did. Mm-hmm. So we'll let you know how that went. But more specifically, we'll discuss Italy as a country that is undergone some significant, uh, interesting transformations right now. Keep following the podcast. Keep listening to the podcast, keep sharing the podcast. We are happy to come to you every week. Bye.