Navigating Europe’s Challenges: A Conversation With Josep Borrell

Josep Borrell shares his insights on the challenges facing the European Union, its role in supporting Ukraine against Russia, and transatlantic relations with the United States.

FROMAN: Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for being here. My name is Mike Froman, president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

It’s a great pleasure and honor to introduce our speaker today and then to moderate a discussion with him. He’s going to speak for a few minutes, we’ll do a conversation between himself and myself, and then we’ll open it up to questions from here and from our hundred and fifty or so people who are online as well.

Josep Borrell is, since December 2019, the high representative of the European Union for foreign affairs and security policy, and vice president of the European Commission. Effectively, he is the secretary of state of Europe, the leading diplomat, involved in the whole array of issues from the Middle East, to Ukraine, to transatlantic relations, to China, and the—and the like. He was a member—he was president of the European Parliament from 2004 to 2007. He was a member of the parliament for longer than that. And he was initially trained as an aeronautical engineer and, very importantly, an economist. So I’ll be asking him about economics. Served in several roles in the Spanish government, president of the European University Institute as well. So he is a scholar, he is a diplomat, he is a politician; he’s sort of the triple threat. And we’re delighted to have him here today.

Let me invite Josep Borrell up to make remarks and the we’ll continue with the conversation. Please. (Applause.)

BORRELL: Thank you for your nice words and thank you very much for inviting me here. It honors me. I know that the CFR is the place to be for an international diplomatic leader visiting New York at the—at the UNGA meeting.

I think this is my eighth UNGA meeting. And some days ago I was in my old university in Stanford, in California, delivering a lecture. And the dean, when he present—he introduced me, he said: Mr. Borrell is one of our scholars fifty years ago. (Laughter.) I was a little bit astonished by the fact that it was fifty years ago when it was—I had the great pleasure of being—studying at Stanford.

And now here am I in New York in difficult times—difficult times which are marked by the return of interstate wars that we thought it was over. Yes, there are wars, but there are not interstate wars. Seen from a European perspective, this is big news. And then there is a proliferation of civil wars and a multiplication of tensions in the Sahel, South China Sea, Sudan, Yemen, and many other spots devastated by misery, by strife, and by war.

I’ve been recently in the Red—the Red Sea, the Red Gulf—Sea in front of Yemen, in Sahel. Everywhere where you have a look, you found the same thing. You found wars. You have fights, misery, and people trying to escape—hundreds of thousands of people trying to escape.

And in the face of these situations, the capacity of external players, as we are, tends to decrease. I have to recognize it. Our capacity to influence these events decreases. And when people ask me, what are you going to do, in some cases I have to have the humility to say, well, what can I do in order to stop the civil war in Sudan? Very little.

This is a reality for us, for Europeans, but also for you, for the U.S. We play a crucial role in Ukraine, yes. Without us—without you and without us, Ukraine would had to surrender. They are still fighting. But we cannot determine the outcome. I was in Kyiv and I saw the Russian tanks destroyed at eight kilometers of the Ukrainian parliament—eight kilometers the first tank or the last tank arrive and was destroyed. Eight kilometers is about twenty minutes. So twenty minutes later, the tank would have been in the Ukrainian capital. But we cannot determine which is going to be the final solution for this war.

We have a significant leverage in the Middle East, but we have been unable to bring about a ceasefire in Gaza. Impossible. President Biden announced I don’t know how many weeks ago I have a plan, I have an Israeli plan, but still not agreement. We have been unable to prevent the extension of the Israeli-Iranian conflict to Lebanon, because what’s happening in Lebanon is exactly that, an Israeli-Iranian conflict keeping the Lebanese society kidnapped by this conflict.

Well, what we Europeans stand? Where do we stand in relation to these very warring realities? To start with, let me try to explain what Europe is. I know you know. Or maybe you don’t know.

Europe, what is Europe? Well, I’m talking about the European Union. And above all, I want to recall you our relationship with power, because often it is misunderstood or misinterpreted what the European project means historically. It was built against the idea of power. That’s a fundamental point, which makes the idea of power a very new idea for the Europeans today. It was an old idea for the former generations of Europeans who were fighting against other for centuries. We fought so much among us, but finally we decided to stop doing it and make peace. And the European project was founded on the idea of peace, exchange, cooperation, interdependency, vanishing borders, sharing the same currency. This was the idea of institution building that started with the Treaty of Rome ’57.

But this moment—Rome ’57—came after the Suez debacle, when France and Great Britain were forced to withdraw their forces from the channel and go back home under the pressure of the United States and Soviet Union, who tell us: Finish. Colonial wars are over. Stop it. Go back home. Then I think that the French and the Britons understood that they had to put aside the idea of war. Then it came to Russia crush in Budapest that made the Germans to understand that the Russian(s) were there to stay, and to try to build a union putting defense and security on the hands of NATO—it means United States.

But today, this situation has become untenable. And one way or another, Europe is again obliged to think about power. And my job is not just foreign policy; it’s foreign, security, and defense policy. When I came to Brussels, everything was about foreign policy and I was considered the top diplomat. Now more and more I am considered as a defense minister—well, not exactly a minister, but someone who takes care of the defense side of—(inaudible). At the beginning, it was just diplomacy. Now it’s building defense capacity, building alliances, increasing the capacity our defense industry, arming Ukraine. And more and more, I am talking about arms. I am talking about rockets, missiles, planes to supply Ukraine and also to increase our defense capacity.

Why is this? Because we have realized that economic interdependency in which our project was based is being captured by political and geostrategic rivalries. Interdependency, that’s good; you depend on me, I depend on you, so we don’t make war. And that’s why we start buying a lot of Russian gas; 40 percent of our supply was coming from Putin’s supplies until it became a threat. And now we are not buying Russian gas, at least not by pipeline. I have to confess that we still buy a lot transported by tanker, but no longer by pipes.

We used to believe that trade will be on itself a source of security, trade means security. French said le doux commerce, trading among people prevent them from making war. And that’s why we make a lot of relationship with China, investing and trading. But then every interdependency became a weapon, and it obliged us to think differently.

The second issue is because we Europeans, we realized that we have common interests to defend, common threats to face, and that we can defend much, much better and much more successfully collectively than individually. We discovered that European Union is a power multiplier for every member state. And finally, because also we know that while NATO remains fundamental for our security—and I want to stress it, NATO is still fundamental for our security—you may have also other priorities. In fact, you have other priorities, not defending Europe. So we can no longer ask ourselves every four years, will whether security will remain. Every four years, asking ourselves, will the Americans continue willing to defend and support our defense, or not?

In fact, there is a consensus on both sides of the Atlantic that Europe must do more on defense. That’s true. Fully true. We are, on average, about 2 percent of GNP on defense expenditure. But it varies a lot. Some member states are 4 percent, others are on a very small 1.5 percent. So a lot has to be done. My preaches—my preaching to my colleagues, my member states, are: Do it together. If we don’t do it together, we will waste a lot of money. But this is easy to say and difficult to do. And it will take time.

In order to do it quickly, we have to understand that there is something called the instinct. We are human beings. And we have reason, rationality, and we also have instinct. And we don’t have the instinct of power. The instinct of power comes from the sense of danger, by feeling threat, by fear. Until now, we didn’t have this feeling. Go to Israel and you will see how people are afraid. I was having a meeting with the families of the hostages. I understand they are afraid, and they feel fear.

As long as the danger is not effective and the threat is not materialized, power remains an abstract—something abstract. When the fear materializes, then power becomes a reality. (That ?) becomes a reality. And you start thinking in terms of power when you feel the heat of war, or the heat of the threat. And that’s why the war in Ukraine has transformed Europe, has made us to be in touch with power for the first time since the Second World War. Danger, threat, fear have materialized in an indisputable way.

I will always remember the day in which at 6:00 in the morning my phone rang and a voice on the other side told me, they are bombing Kyiv. Oh, they are bombing Kyiv. And Kyiv is not very far away from the Polish border. Yes, Russia invaded a European country. And what is important is that the brutality of the Russian invasion help us to uniform our perception of the threat. Whereas, until the Russian threat had not the same meaning in Riga than in Lisbon, certainly not. Geography matters, and matters a lot. If you go to Riga, the Russian threat is there, especially because many people in the Baltics has been deported to Siberia a couple of times on their generation, something that has never happened in Madrid.

This war has changed a lot of things. Which things? Three things. First, the war in Ukraine has forced us to tackle the issue of the use of force in Europe and the need to adjust to this challenge. As I said, we come from very far away from the idea of power. We were a benevolent soft power. Now we are a hard power in the making. This is going to take long. We will not be a superpower, as you are. But let’s try to be a power. Let’s try to have the capacity to mobilize our troops altogether.

We are a power in the making because we want to have a certain capacity to coerce our foes, directly or indirectly. And for the first time, we are granting military aid to Ukraine. And believe me, is not negligible. I was listening the other day one of the U.S. candidates saying, oh, the Europeans are not doing their part. Well, if I add up all we are doing for Ukraine—military, economically, financially, humanitarian—it’s more than you. It’s more than 130 billion euros. Yes, the military side it is smaller, but it is still 45 billion, which is not negligible.

Certainly, without the U.S., Ukraine would not be able to resist. But it’s not negligible, 45 billion on military support. And we have decided to make Ukraine a candidate to be a member of the European Union. This was unthinkable before the war. Now we are granting a colossal support to Ukraine, taking five million refugees. And we have reduced our energy dependency on Moscow, which was maybe, sure, too big. I will have to repeat that it is certainly not enough, but power can only be built gradually.

This war remains an asymmetric war. Before the war, Russia was the number four country in the world by the size of their military expenditure, four. And Ukraine was the thirty-seventh. The imbalance was quite clear. It’s still very much unbalanced. But I’ve been in Kyiv. I’ve been in a factory of drones in the underground of a building. And I see these people inventing and building 500 drones per day. Five hundred drones per day. They are like a small pizza, like this, no bigger than that. They can fly about fifty kilometers. They can transport three kilograms explosives capacity. They cost about 500 euros. With that, they can destroy a tank.

And thanks to this kind of new arms that they are developing, they have resisted. We don’t allow them to use our arms in order to hit Russia inside Russian territory. I don’t agree with this provision, but it is the fact. No, here is a rocket, here is a missile, but you cannot use inside the Russian territory. But the Russians are attacking them from inside the Russian territory. But they are able to produce missiles that can reach a target at 500 kilometers, even at 1,000 kilometers. And the other day, they were able to destroy ammunition depot at 700 kilometers from the border using their own missiles produced by themselves, provoking an incredible explosion, three degree on the Richer scale, and saving a lot of lives.

I think that we have to support Ukraine more and quicker. We have to establish a military balance because Putin will not go to the negotiation table unless he believes that he is losing. We have to give Ukraine an economic and a strategic power in front of Russia and let them to decide what it is or not acceptable. But we have to support them because, without us, without you and us, Ukraine will have to surrender in a couple of weeks. Despite of all, they are strongly dependent on our support.

The second challenge we had is the war in Gaza following the horrific massacres committed by Hamas on October 7. I know well the region. When I was young, I was volunteering in a kibbutz near Be’er Sheva. And there I found my first wife. (Laughter.) By the way, the same day that the Americans reached the Moon. (Laughter.) So I know the region. My son has studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. I am not Jewish, neither my wife was a Jew, was a volunteer, as me. But I know the reason. I’ve been traveling a lot about on this part of the world. I know there is a complex historical issue.

There are two people fighting for the same land. And this is a tragic reality that can only be solved by sharing the land. Two people fighting for the same land for almost a century. And we, Europeans, we have a strong responsibility because we have promised this land several times to different people. So the root of the conflict comes from our decisions, promising to the Arabs a kingdom of Arabia expanded onto the Mediterranean and promising a nationality for the Jewish people. There are two people in the same land. And that’s not going to change.

But today, we are still a long way from the prospect of two states, and perhaps further away than ever since we are still seeking a ceasefire in Gaza. And all the diplomatic power and all the leverage of the most powerful country in the world, the U.S., has been unable to make this ceasefire happen. The ceasefire is not coming, and as Prince Faisal told me the other day, maybe it will never come. So if you want to build the two-state solution, don’t wait for the ceasefire. Start working on it from now on because the utopical idea of first we stop the war and then we start building peace is completely contrary to the dark reality. We have to overlap the two processes.

Yes, the Palestinian state is far away. Maybe some of the belligerents are not interested in it, but maybe not. It’s clear the Netanyahu government doesn’t want it. He says that every day. And on the Palestinian side also there are extremists who doesn’t want the two state because they don’t want the Israeli state. But the one who want it, Rabin, was killed. And then it ended the hope to have a peaceful settlement of the conflict. And now the Palestinian civilian population has been taken hostages by Hamas in Gaza. And I think that some of the Israeli society also have this Masada complex. You know Masada, the fortress in the desert? The Masada complex. We are encircled by the enemy. We have to fight until the end. The end of what?

I think that however difficult it is, we don’t have to give up. Not only in finding a ceasefire. I know you are working hard on that. Qatar, Egypt. You have to imagine the day after. Clausewitz said, no military action has sense without a political purpose. Which is the political purpose? To eradicate Hamas? This is not possible. Hamas is an idea. It’s a terrorist organization, yes. But apart from that, is also an idea. And you don’t kill the ideas. The only way of winning an idea is to propose a better one. You propose a better idea, then the old one can die. But to kill an idea by using arms, this has never happened. Without a political solution, we will enter in a never-ending spiral. And Gaza will become a second Somalia, and the West Bank will become a second Gaza, and maybe south Lebanon is also becoming another Gaza—becoming the battlefield of the confrontation between Israel and Iran.

And it comes with two major risks. The first is to put at risk the normalization of the relationship between the Arabs and the Israelis. It was a great—a great advantage, a great jump over to make peace between the Arabs and Israel. Not all the Arabs. Saudi Arabia is still not there. But the Abraham Accord, the agreement within Egypt and Jordan, these are today in danger. Even the Arab-Israeli relations are in danger, notably with Egypt and Jordan. And it certainly is postponing the normalization with the Saudis, sure.

And the second risk is the intensification of war between Israel and Iran via Hezbollah and via the Houthis. The Houthis are no longer a tribe in the mountains of Yemen using old-fashioned rockets. They are much better trained, much better equipped. I was in the Red Sea on board of a warship of the European navies. And I can tell you that the risk of the Hezbollah—of the Houthis cutting the navigation in the Red Sea—cutting, not just threatening, but cutting—is a real one.

Well, I only scratched the surface of the complexity of these issues. Let me say last word about transatlantic relations. They are good. We share the same values and objective. We are democratic systems. We are working on a free economic system. We are aligned. No, we are allies, but not always aligned. Maybe we have different opinions. And that’s perfectly normal. Europe needs the U.S. and the U.S. needs Europe. And I think that you have an interest on having a strong and sovereign Europe on your side.

And that’s why I know, on the last month—and when I talk about the strategic autonomy, something that the Americans were listening with a certain reluctancy—oh, strategic autonomy? What do you mean by that? Now they look at that with a positive approach. Oh, yes. Develop it. Be strategically autonomous, because it means that you will have a stronger capacity by your own. And this makes sense when the United States takes on board the idea that our strengths—our strength will make NATO stronger, and we are reinforcing each other.

To summarize, we are living in a world with a Global South which is not against the West. But there is a new West—U.S., Europe, Canada, Japan, Korea, and Australia. There is a new East—China, Russia, and North Korea. And, yes, certainly, there is the Global South. And this is what we have been discussing this week at the United Nations General Assembly. This is the new landscape of the world. And in this new world, Europe will have to learn to navigate. And I thank you a lot for your attention. (Applause.)

FROMAN: Well, thank you for those remarks, and really quite remarkable statement of Europe being actually built against the idea of power, not having power as an instinct. And yet we’re in a world, as you—as you noted, where there’s a return of great-power competition. There are wars, including on the European continent. What is to prevent Europe from becoming irrelevant? You’re a defense minister without an army. How does Europe manage to catch up and what it needs to do—I agree with you, by the way, on strategic autonomy. It would great to have a strong Europe. Can Brussels drive a defense industrial complex that is rational and makes sense across the member states?

BORRELL: Brussels alone? Certainly not. It’s the member states who has to decide to do it because each member state is very much attached to their own capacities. We are willing to build a defense market, but we don’t have a Pentagon. And we don’t have the tools that you have to address a defense industry that is all over the country, and it doesn’t matter where it is. Nobody cares if your arms being produced in Florida, or in Alaska, or Minnesota, because there are U.S. Army.

And Europe is not the same thing. Its nation state wants to keep a certain degree of autonomy producing their arms. And that’s why we have twenty different types of tank when you have only two, and thirty different types of any kind of arms when you have two or three. And certainly, it’s much less expensive. But let’s not be utopical. This is not going to happen overnight. We have to incentivize to avoid fragmentation. And this will require a deeper political integration. We will not overcome the fragmentation of our military capacities without a stronger political integration.

FROMAN: As you look at the United States—let’s leave the upcoming presidential election to the side—you know there’s a strong trend or theme within U.S. history around isolationism. We see how difficult it was to get the last package for Ukraine approved, the five-month delay in that regard.

BORRELL: Oh, I know. It has cost a lot of lives, this delay.

FROMAN: And there’s a very active debate about what kind of support will be there going forward, whether President Trump or President Harris are in office. How quickly—can the EU step up, if the U.S. steps back? Or, if the U.S. steps back, will Europe say it’s over and throw up its hands?

BORRELL: Well, it depends a lot on many things. First, I hope that it will never happen that the U.S. says an abrupt stop, a sudden stop. I don’t expect the U.S. to say tomorrow, no more arms to Ukraine, because certainly you cannot substitute overnight your military support. I said, our military support is about 43-44 billions. Yours must be about, I don’t know the exact figure, but let’s suppose it’s 60 billion. We cannot pass from 43 to 103 (billion) overnight. Nobody can. So if it is a sudden stop, then certainly Europe cannot substitute the American support by increasing European support.

The question is not—the question is more political. Without a strong commitment from the U.S. to support Ukraine, will there still be a strong political commitment from Europe to support Ukraine? And I hope yes, but I have to recognize that we start seeing the same fault lines in the European unity. There are some member states, not many, maybe only one—and certainly not the most powerful—who start thinking in terms of capitulation, talking about peace, certainly. Nobody uses the word capitulation. But the way they approach is quite equivalent.

And to the time—for the first time I see a European member state participating today in the meeting called by China and Brazil to talk about peace in a different approach that Zelensky planned peace. But it is a singular point, a unique case, that I am sure by the time being that it will not create a pandemic among member states. So, yes, I think we will be—continue engaging and supporting Ukraine. But if the Americans—I summarize—if the Americans make a sudden stop and tomorrow, no more, certainly no one can substitute you.

FROMAN: You mentioned in your remarks, and you’ve written in an article, that the U.S. and Europe are allied, but not aligned when it comes to issues like China. And indeed—

BORRELL: When it comes to everything.

FROMAN: To everything. All right. (Laughter.) I’ll use China as an example. Indeed, we used to be quite, I think, different in our approach to China, but I sense there’s been more convergence over the years. Now that China is playing an active role in supporting Russia’s war effort, including the militarization of its economy, do you see a change in the European perspective on China, as China poses a security threat potentially to Europe?

BORRELL: Well, we don’t consider China a security threat, as we consider Russia. With Russia, it is a security threat. It’s an existential security threat. China is a different thing. I was having a meeting with Wang Yi, with whom I’ve been discussing for the last seven years, the Chinese minister and, more than minister, director of the Committee on Political Affairs—Foreign Affairs of the Communist Party, which is, as you know, more powerful than the ministry itself. But he has the two hats now. And was talking about that, their support—the Russia—support for Russia. And certainly, they are not providing arms. They are not sending tanks or planes.

But today, there is a lot of things that can be used, the dual-use goods, that can be used to produce arms. And it is something that concerns us because it’s a circumvention of sanction, you know? And we warned China that this is something that concerns us a lot, and asking China not to go this way. But if I had to be a self-criticism with myself, with Europe, there is a lot of circumvention of sanctions which comes directly from ourselves. You have a look at the number of exports from Europe to Central Asia, or to the Caucasus, or to Turkey, and you see how much they have increased since the beginning of the war.

And these countries are buying maybe three times more to Europe than before the war. You don’t need to be Aristotle to understand that this is not the last destination of this import, that there is a transshipment problem, which is a way of circumventing sanctions. So, OK, you have to look at what China does. And we have also to look what’s happening at home.

FROMAN: Do you see the EU clamping down on that, imposing sanctions on those transshipment countries?

BORRELL: Ourselves? (Laughs.)

FROMAN: Or on yourselves, on your own companies?

BORRELL: We have—we have other solutions, less expeditive. We have to call for a stronger surveillance of the trade route that goes to Russia. And we are sanctioning a lot of China firms—China firms which are maybe not exactly China; they are China on label but maybe owned by Russians. But we are sanctioning—I am in charge of sanctions. (Laughs.) So my table every month comes a list of China firms to whom we sanctions because we believe that they are supplying not exactly arms, but dual-use to Russia.

FROMAN: When Ukrainians and those in the West talk about the future of Ukraine, they talk about an independent, sovereign, democratic Ukraine embedded in Western institutions. And the chief among those institutions is the EU. As you mentioned, the EU has begun the process now—or, is beginning the process of talking about accession. When we look back at history, there have been accession processes that were quick, and accession processes, like Turkey, which have been going on for forty years. Not so quick. How serious is the EU about letting Ukraine join? And how ready do you think they would be to join, if hostilities were to cease?

BORRELL: Serious we are. It’s not—it’s not an empty word. It was imaginable to consider Ukraine a candidate country. Have you seen the size of Ukraine? If Ukraine was a member of the European Union today, it would be the only country receiving financial support. All others will become net contributors, and will be a single one being a net receiver. Certainly, an earthquake on the financial structure of European Union. But membership is not for tomorrow, but certainly will not take as long as the Balkans processes. I was yesterday having my last lunch with the prime ministers and presidents of the Balkan countries, saying goodbye to them because I will be leaving my job in a couple of months.

And they were complaining, rightly so, that they have been waiting for ten years. You are a candidate country. And then you wait for ten years before the next step. Well, this is not going to happen with Ukraine. We have gone with Ukraine at an incredibly big speed in order to jump over the processes, in order to make Ukraine not only a candidate, but opening negotiations—opening negotiations and providing the support in order for Ukraine to be able to overcome all the difficulties.

Yes, you know, the most important security guarantee that we can give to the Ukrainians is membership. Not membership of a military alliance. We are not a military alliance. But becoming member of the European Union is a stronger security guarantee that we can give to the Ukrainians. And don’t forget one thing, the modern history of Ukraine has been marked by this rift between Russia and Europe. Maidan was some decisive moment in which Ukraine decided to be on the side of Europe. And everything started there, because some days after this decision Russia invaded Ukraine, through Crimea.

FROMAN: We were discussing in the room before the session some meetings you’ve been going to with regard to the Middle East. What’s your perspective on how the EU could play a role in trying to bring a resolution of Gaza, southern Lebanon, a two-state solution?

BORRELL: We have been very united in front of Ukraine war. We are not as much united on the eastern conflict. Some member states has been recognized in the state of Palestine since the beginning of the war. Others don’t want to do it. They even consider that it is counterproductive. Some are decisively on the side of Israel saying, OK, whatever you do that’s OK, and we are unconditionally on the side of Israel. By the way, I don’t think we have to be unconditionally on the side of anyone because “unconditionally” is a strong word. And others considers that what’s happening in Gaza is an attempt of humanitarian law, international law. And the relationship between some of the member states with the Netanyahu government are very bad, and others are very good. So I cannot offer a united front. And since we are not united, we are less powerful and much less influential.

But yesterday, together with the Arabs, we call for the most important meeting that I remember about the Middle East issue. More than one hundred countries gathered yesterday. And almost all—not all, but almost all Europeans were there. And this was an European-Arab initiative in order to launch a coalition to try to build the Palestinian state. Because I am strongly convinced, and many Europeans are strongly convinced—well, in theory, all are convinced, but just in theory—that the only end—the final guarantee for peace and security for Israel is to let the Palestinians to have their part of the land, to build their space, and to make a deal that ensure common security. Otherwise, it will be a permanent war, generation after generation, funeral after funeral.

FROMAN: I’m going to ask one more question, then open it up. We’re going go a little bit longer, as we started a bit late. And here I’m going to draw upon your history as an economist, beyond your existing—

BORRELL: Well, actually, I’m an engineer. (Laughter.)

FROMAN: Mario Draghi, former prime minister of Italy, former president of the European Central Bank, just issued a report about European competitiveness and growth. And certainly Europe’s ability to play a global role depends, in part, like any country or any entity, on how strong it is at home, how strong it’s economy is.

BORRELL: Certainly.

FROMAN: How confident—he has a whole series of recommendations—regulatory reform, budgetary different issues, antitrust, mergers, et cetera. How confident are you that Europe will adopt his recommendations going forward to try and get back on a path towards higher growth?

BORRELL: Well, there are a lot of different types of recommendation. But, you know, I am old enough in order to have been reading many reports. In 2000, twenty-four years ago, in the Lisbon—when we wrote the Lisbon Strategy, we said, in the next ten years Europe will become the most developed and productive digital economy in the world. Well, when one looks at this sentence today, it says, something went wrong. And then there was another report saying—I think it was Monti report, saying we have to fight against red tape because there is too much bureaucracy, too much regulation, and we are killing our innovation capacity. It was in 2010. 2024, and we continue saying the same thing. And Mario Draghi says things are not improved, they have even become worse.

So when these kind of dynamics happen, it is because there is a strong engine producing this dynamic. It’s not going to be easy to change the way we, Europeans, faces the challenges of the digital economy and innovation. But the Draghi report has a big advantages, because he says a sentence which is fully true: We live in a much more challenging environment, and we are much less technologically developed that we should be in accordance with our wealth. In accordance with our GNP, our innovation capacity is too low. And then there is a long list of things that has to be done in order to overcome that. That can be summarized with a magic figure, you have to invest 800 billion euros on the next years in order to overcome these things that you don’t have. We’re having to start with defense, no?

The question is where these 800 billion will have to come. More taxes? More own resources for the European Union, because European Union has no taxes or very small taxes. It depends on the contribution of member states. But you can imagine to have federal taxes. More debt? And which kind of debt? National debt or common debt? And this comes with an idea that is not being described with these words on the Draghi report, but I can summarize. Say, are we living in a Hamiltonian moment in Europe? Hamiltonian, I mean Hamilton. Your secretary of treasury.

FROMAN: Yeah. I’ve seen the play. (Laughter.)

BORRELL: You know who he is, no? You know who is. What they didn’t know is that Hamilton was a migrant. He was born in an island in the—in the Caribbeans and came to New York, very poor, as a poor migrant. And then, he became friend of Washington. And he created the United States because he invented common debt. And not only common debt, he invented something more difficult. He invented common taxes. Because to invent common debt is quite easy. The important thing is how do you pay back debt? And in order to pay back a common debt, you have to have a common resource. And then you invented the federal taxes. And I think the federal idea of the U.S. came from this Hamiltonian moment.

Are we living in a Hamiltonian moment? Are we willing to put in common debt and reinvent common taxes? Or we only think about more common debt? Because more common debt, one day or another, will have to come with common taxes. Otherwise, you will never pay the debt. And I am not sure that we are in this Hamiltonian moment. We were when the pandemic, because when the pandemic came we decided to issue 700 billions of common debt. But are we going to do the same thing with our defense capacity? This is different thing, because, you know, the virus—the virus is an existential threat. People die beside you. It’s a reality that people are dying. It’s a silent enemy, and then you put money quickly because you want to fight against the silent enemy who is killing you. But this perception of risk is not the same thing when you face the danger of a third country willing to attack you. It’s too far away from your brain, no? But either the Europeans look for the Hamiltonian moment or we will not do what we have to do.

FROMAN: All right. Let’s open it up for questions. Yes, right here.

Q: Hi. Thank you. I’m Alexandra Starr with International Crisis Group. Can you hear me? Yeah. So—

BORRELL: Not very well, but you will—you will translate me.

FROMAN: If you could move a little closer to your—

Q: Oh, OK. (Laughs.) I’ll speak a little slower. I’m Alexandra. Starr with International Crisis Group.

You spoke about the Global South in your prepared remarks. And you have been a big proponent of the EU liaising and providing support to Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. Do you think that will continue under your successor? And do you have advice for the person coming after you?

BORRELL: The question is, is the idea of Global South continue expanding and having more people on board?

FROMAN: Will the EU—will your successor, continue your effort to engage with the Global South, including Latin America?

BORRELL: Well, she will have to. (Laughs.) She will have to, because this is the dynamics of the world. This is—the Global South—I don’t like the expression. You know, I don’t like “Global South,” because—but like it or not, these people call themselves Global South. And it exists. It exists because these are a heterogeneous group of people which has no common interests and not integrated, but they are being linked because they want to exist with respect to the West, and with respect to us. And they are being moved by the anti-colonial resentment in Africa and the anti-imperial resentment in U.S.—against the U.S., mainly in Latin America. And, well, the anti-colonial resentment is also in Southeast Asia. These people are representing something.

So we have to engage with them, because if they buy the Russia narrative—the worst thing for the Europeans would be the Global South buying the Russian narrative and being in a confrontational mode with us. And that’s why the foreign policy of the European Union is so important, in order to reach out with them and to have another narrative. Russia is very good at narrative. They are very good on selling their product. And for us, it’s something that you will never buy. But for them, it’s appealing. And we have to understand why it’s appealing, and to present the counternarrative to it.

You know, when I see the Sahel young African people with a billboard demonstrating in front of the former barracks of our forces that had to leave. And then the billboard were saying: Putin has saved the Donbas, and now he will save us. Can you imagine the narrative behind this sentence? Well, our challenge is an intellectual one. And, yes, we have to engage much more. I’ve been engaging a lot with South America and with Africa. And because I understood that, you know, South America, it’s incredible that we have been discussing for twenty years a trade agreement with South America and we are still not there. So, yes, we have to engage with the rest of the world because, you know, the Europeans, we are 5 percent of the world population. Together with you, we are, how much?

FROMAN: Ten?

BORRELL: Well, not much, just less than 10 percent the world population. And without migration, we would be—our societies will be completely unsustainable because we are becoming old and old. And this makes us to have a different approach to the people who are surrounding us. And we are surrounded by—you know, you have a look at the map, you will see from Gibraltar to the Caucasus, this is an arc of instability. We are surrounded not by a ring of friends, but by a ring of fire. (Laughs.) And it requires us to be much more proactive in our relations.

And this will put a lot of institutional problems. Who does what? Who is the actor of the foreign policy? It is at the commission level? It’s a member state level? Because we are not in state. A big difference between you and us. You are in state, a federal state, but you are a state. We are not. Just imagine if in order to take a decision on foreign policy you had to call a meeting of the fifty governors of the fifty member states of the union, and you had to take a decision by unanimity. (Laughter.)

FROMAN: Yes. Right here. This gentleman.

BORRELL: We are not a state, but we have an intellectual influence in the world. We should not dismiss what Europe means for a lot of people around the world. Our past history gives us also a capacity of influencing which is not material, but important.

FROMAN: Mmm hmm.

Q: Giancarlo Bruno from the Milken Institute.

So as an American and a European, I remember twenty years ago, with the introduction of the euro and the extension of the European Union to Poland and many other former Eastern European countries, there was a moment of enthusiasm, and of strength, and of looking forward to the future for the European Union. And it—we felt like this—a political union was going to happen. And we were going to become a really close, tight political entity. And it was just a matter of time. I remember the big disappointment when the European Constitution didn’t pass. And it felt like that was the end of that phase. What happened in the last twenty years? And do you—do you feel that this disintegration, in a way, not integration, phase is finished? We can look forward to a more integration-based next phase for the European Union? What is the future?

BORRELL: Well, I have don’t have a crystal ball. (Laughs.) It will depend a lot on the mood of the people. And the mood of the people will depend a lot on the events. I don’t remember who was the American politician who was asked, what is the most important thing you have been facing? And he answered: Events. (Laughter.) Events shapes the future. And these events are mostly unpredictable. So who knows what’s going to happen in the next ten years? And this will depend—will determine the future of the European Union.

You say that it was enthusiasm when the enlargement to the east? Yes. It was the idea that these people were Europeans that were kidnapped by the Soviet Union, and they have to come back to the common house. And I’m coming for that country, Spain, that for Spain the enlargement was a very bad business. And very bad business because we were getting so much cohesion funds because we were the poor guy of the family, and then suddenly more people came that were poorer than us. So logically, we should have said no, because we had to share with you the cake.

But we said, yes. Come. We are going to lose money, but this is normal. How can I say that Budapest is not European? How can I say the Warsaw is not European, you know? Well, they came, and it has been a success story. Economically, it has been a complete success story. Look at Poland, maybe the most successful story. It’s true, it has been the backyard of many German firms. But it has been a success story. Economically booming. But I’m not sure that this brings to more political integration.

Look at the voters. Look at the vote. The European Parliament, when they had the honor to chair, has been drifting—not as much as expected—but has been drifting to the right—to the far right. And among the far right, there is a strong feeling that the nation-state has to survive, and the European Union is a threat to the nation-state. The Hungarian has created a new party in the European Parliament called the European Patriots? Well, in fact, it’s not the European Patriots. There are nation patriots, because the nation-state is under threat because we are going to cancel the identity of their nation-states.

Will the European people believe that, or they will be clever enough in order to overcome this narrative—once again, narrative—and to understand that you may have different identities, that you may be European and at the same time be Hungarian, or Spaniards, or whatever. Do we understand that we are too small in order to survive in the world? That our unity is the only guarantee to be influential in the world? Or will we barricade each one in our small ecosystem, building walls because we are afraid of opening to the bigger—to the open world? Because, my God, the migrants will come.

So many—I don’t know. It will depend on how do we influence the will of the people? Because we live in a democratic system. The governments have been elected. And if the electorate becomes afraid of opening to the world, there will be closing. And if the voters believe that the European Union is threatening the national identity, then there will be closing. But I think that is a story to be told, and I wonder if my successors at the national governments will be able to do the same thing that we did in my generation.

It’s true that we fail with the European Constitution. I was one of the people who wrote the European Constitution. But in fact, it was not a constitution; it was a treaty. It was a treaty, a book like this. Nobody could read this book. It was impossible to read this book. You can read the American Constitution, but you cannot read a book like this full of acronyms and technocratic expressions that nobody could understand. So we believed that using the word “constitution” was going to create a kind of enthusiasm—oh yes, we have a constitution, we are going to have a constitution. And the contrary happened. People said: Hmm, constitution. Constitution means a state. We don’t want Europe to be a state. And we don’t understand this book. So we better say no.

You know what happened in France? The French people said, do you want me to vote—because it was voted by referenda. People said: Do you want me to vote something called the European Constitution? Let me read it. I want to read it. And at that time it was not internet or you cannot go to the network. And then the French government printed millions of this big book—(laughter)—and sent the book to everybody. And I can imagine the guy with the baguette—(laughter)—and opening this big book, says I—(laughs)—I don’t understand anything here; I better vote no. And the French voted no, and the European Constitution was killed. But maybe it was not the way, no?

FROMAN: The transatlantic relationship is so critical to getting things done on the international scene. We are fortunate that you’ve been in this role for five years—

BORRELL: Five years.

FROMAN: —helping to build that relationship with the U.S. and the rest of the world. Please join me in thanking the EU high commissioner for coming. (Applause.)

(END)

This is an uncorrected transcript.