Envisioning Europe's path forward with European Parliament President Roberta Metsola

Transcript

The European Union is at a crossroads. Big issues, like Russia’s Ukraine invasion, a migrant crisis, and an economic slowdown coming out of the Covid pandemic have been major tests of the bloc’s resilience and unity. There’s a lot at stake. Can the EU’s 27 member states hold it all together? On this week’s episode of the GZERO World Podcast, Ian Bremmer sits down with the woman at the heart of Europe’s government: European Parliament President Roberta Metsola. They discuss Europe’s path forward, its role on the world stage, and how a fragmented EU avoids being squeezed by the US and China. Metsola admits that, on China policy in particular, the bloc’s “biggest problem is we have not been coherent" and says a unified EU strategy toward China has (so far) been “absent” from policy discussions. So where does Europe go from here? In a wide-ranging discussion, Bremmer and Metsola dig into the EU’s push for strategic autonomy, rising far-right nationalism in recent EU elections, and whether Ukraine will be able to join the bloc anytime soon, even as Russia’s war rages on.

Transcript: Envisioning Europe's path forward with European Parliament President Roberta Metsola

Ian Bremmer:

Hello and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast. This is where you'll find extended versions of my interviews on public television. I'm Ian Bremmer, and today we are looking across the pond and to the future of Europe with the President of European Parliament, Roberta Metsola.

It is a critical time for the European Union. The bloc still reeling from Russia's invasion of Ukraine, while trying to manage a migrant crisis and an economic slowdown. Important to note, the European Union is the world's largest trading bloc and a regulatory superpower. So whatever path it takes has a big impact on the rest of the world.

In recent EU elections, Metsola's center-right European People's Party won the most seats, but far-right Eurosceptic parties also made gains, meaning it will be harder for her centrist alliance to make progress on key priorities like the Green Deal.

Today we'll talk about rising nationalism, the EU's push for strategic autonomy, how it plans to stand on its own in a world dominated by the U.S. and China, and avoid getting squeezed between the two, and whether Ukraine will join the EU anytime soon, even as Russia's war rages on. There is a lot to discuss with the president of Europe's largest legislative body. Let's get to it.

President Roberta Metsola, welcome to GZERO World.

Roberta Metsola:

Happy to be here. Thank you.

Ian Bremmer:

So many things to talk about with Europe this year. Maybe I want to start with the fact that we've come out of really big elections.

First thing, from an American perspective as well, they held elections, didn't seem to be very controversial, centers seemed to do pretty well. Why is an election across the world's largest economic bloc easier to run than the United States?

Roberta Metsola:

I'll take a little bit of credit for that. No, I think it was one where we were worried that the extremist rise, both on the right and the left, would have a bigger bearing. And we tried very hard to push back against that by arguing for the so-called center, not with big words, but going down to the very heart of what people had in terms of problems.

I went from one country to another. I was running in one of them. I had colleagues from all over other 26 member states. We somehow managed. But of course there's a difference between the result of an election and doing your mandate. So we have five years to deliver because otherwise the same won't happen in 2029 when people come back and we ask them to vote for us again.

Ian Bremmer:

But for now, when we talk about who's governing Europe, we're not really talking about the right or the left. We are actually talking about sort of a consensus group on the big regulatory issues. At least in terms of the European Union. Is that true? Is that fair?

Roberta Metsola:

It's fair. It's fair. It's more difficult to manage than it used to be. I form part of that center if you will. And I would also call it like a constructive majority that wants us to move. That we agree that looking back with some sort of misplaced nostalgia for Europe that we thought was is not the way to go, is not the way to convince the new voters, is not to convince our minorities, people who feel isolated, people who live in rural areas and say all of this is being done in Brussels, in cities across our countries.

And I think that was a result of our realization that if we did not tackle that, we would be taking our voters for granted. And as we've seen in some elections in some of these countries where we held the elections is that people just stop voting. And that is what we all worked for. You don't question how people vote or who they vote for. Your responsibility is to convince them to vote for you, but by actually walking to the polling booth and casting their vote. I would say that's an even bigger challenge than what the outcome of elections is because there is a sense of cynicism. People think all politicians are the same. People think no matter who's taking the decisions, you're not getting anything out of it. And we have to change that. And to a certain extent, I think we managed.

Ian Bremmer:

Are you managing it in part because the EU as an organization is getting stronger? I mean, you look at the fiscal outliers, for example, after the pandemic, or you look at the coordinated energy policy after the Russian invasion. I mean, does the EU matter more to the average European's lives than it did five years ago, 10 years ago? Is that true?

Roberta Metsola:

Yes, it's true. But-

Ian Bremmer:

How is that operationalized? How do people sense that?

Roberta Metsola:

When you ask your citizens, your people to say, "Who do you think can solve migration? Who can give you better access to health? More access to housing, cheaper electricity?" We realized that because we have been facing crisis after crisis, and I like to say that we work better when in crisis, when we're not-

Ian Bremmer:

Well, who doesn't?

Roberta Metsola:

... than when we're not, is that the answer was unequivocally Europe. People sometimes tend to lose trust in their national governments, but think that Europe can come in. That they say, "Look, we come from a country that is so small that alone we won't manage," or, "That is so big that our countries are no longer going to be able to rely on us, or our movement from one country to another is in jeopardy because of our national government. We need Europe to come in."

And that was unequivocally a message that we had, especially after the pandemic, when people suddenly realized that governments were shutting down national borders. Something that we've been working on for decades to give people, the right to move as though we thought a virus would stop at the national border physical border. We realized that the day after Russia invaded Ukraine, 90% dependence on Russian gas. How long had we been postponing?

Ian Bremmer:

Two years ago. Two years ago.

Roberta Metsola:

Two years ago.

Ian Bremmer:

And we're talking about the EU.

Roberta Metsola:

The European Union-

Ian Bremmer:

That's right.

Roberta Metsola:

... having postponed year after year, if not decade after decade. The realization that if we don't get our act together, we have countries, some of whom were 100% dependent on Russian gas, that they could be switched off from one day to another. But nobody wanted to tackle that. Why? Because it was cheaper, it was easier, infrastructure was there, even though old, Russian gas was cheaper. That's the reality that we've had to overcome.

And in fact, in 2024, for the first time ever, our energy sources from renewables has overcome our dependence on fossil fuel. First time ever. And that's, I would say, because we came out of a crisis stronger.

Ian Bremmer:

Another one that looks positive for the EU right now, when I look back on the financial crisis, I look at the Grexit debates.

Roberta Metsola:

10 years ago.

Ian Bremmer:

And, I mean, you were on the knife edge of the EU facing an existential threat to itself. There were exit movements that were nascent, but growing all over the EU. I don't see that happening anymore. We still have a lot of those parties, but they're not talking about we want to leave the European Union.

Is that just sort of a breather because we're in a much more dangerous environment right now because there's a crisis? Or do you think there's something that is more permanent that has actually happened?

Roberta Metsola:

If you asked me this question 10 years ago, I would've said we have nascent forces in each member state that we're quite successfully arguing better to be out than to be in. That stopped with Brexit. It did not stop after the financial crisis. The migration crisis put us right back there. Countries feeling that they were alone, they couldn't handle it. External borders, water internal borders, being an island, having a land border, all sorts of that. But the day after Brexit happened and the chaos that ensued-

Ian Bremmer:

For years. That was years. Yeah.

Roberta Metsola:

... and the realization that, are we better off without the UK? Ask anybody in the UK, are they better off? Those movements stopped and they stopped because they see what happened. The pain that ensued, the difficulties we have in terms of employability, campaigns run on what essentially were falsehoods. That, I think, significantly helped the decline of that populist, like I would say, movements that we had. I'm not saying there aren't anymore. There are quite a lot.

Ian Bremmer:

No, there're quite a lot. And they're growing.

Roberta Metsola:

But if you-

Ian Bremmer:

But they're not about this.

Roberta Metsola:

But they're not about this.

Ian Bremmer:

That's right.

Roberta Metsola:

And that is also helping everybody who's today, whether strongly or less strongly, leading a European country.

Ian Bremmer:

Now, of course, there are a lot of countries that are still very interested in joining Europe. And the one that is gaining the most international attention right now is Ukraine. It's a country of almost 50 million people. It's a reasonably... So significant in terms of land, but also immense in terms of economic need. And at least my understanding is under the current rule set, if Ukraine were to join, every other country of the EU would suddenly become a net contributor to the budget. How do you deal with that?

Roberta Metsola:

So broad stroke. I am unequivocally of the belief that enlargement is a win-win. We had the same concerns when Poland joined. I remember these kind of arguments being made when Romania and Bulgaria joined. Would we not agree today that the European Union and those countries are stronger and better because they joined?

Ian Bremmer:

Oh, Poland's had one of the best trajectories in the past decades of any country in the world.

Roberta Metsola:

Economic boom.

Ian Bremmer:

Boom.

Roberta Metsola:

But also the European Union has benefited from Poland being part. So I start with that. Now, is it easy? Of course not. Would Ukraine have been on the enlargement path if Russia had not invaded it? I don't think so.

Ian Bremmer:

No. No.

Roberta Metsola:

Would it have been much more difficult to find the unanimity, like every single prime minister of every country saying, "Yes, I want you to join.”

Ian Bremmer:

You had 27 votes.

Roberta Metsola:

27 votes.

Ian Bremmer:

You even had Viktor Orbán from Hungary.

Roberta Metsola:

Every vote.

Ian Bremmer:

I have no idea how you got him-

Roberta Metsola:

Every vote.

Ian Bremmer:

... but you got him. Fair enough.

Roberta Metsola:

Well, we like to say the European Parliament actually took a position immediately days after and said, "We would like Ukraine and Moldova to join the European Union." Many people at the time said, "Oh my goodness, that's too early. Why would you say that?" We're like, "If we want to send the clearest of messages that our neighborhood, what is happening there, that Ukrainians are fighting for us, if we don't do that, where are we going to go? We can't rely on NATO alone. We have a defense union that is far away from being completed. We have still a lot to do. We have corruption inside. We have backsliding inside the European Union. But ultimately, a larger, more structured European Union is better than one that is not."

Ian Bremmer:

Now, I want to make a similar argument. You talk about how we look at Poland. It's very clear that countries do better when they're integrated with rule of law and a common market, and that Europe does better. Turkey's been a candidate member for a long time. Doesn't appear that they're ever going to join. They're a NATO ally and certainly more valuable being a part of NATO than if they were working with the Russians in alliance, for example. And the Turkish economy, which had been horribly heterodox for a while now, is now being run in away that the IMF, the World Bank, the global leaders are saying, "Hey, this is the right way forward." Should we be making the same argument for Turkey that we're making for Ukraine?

Roberta Metsola:

There isn't the unanimity that there was-

Ian Bremmer:

Clearly.

Roberta Metsola:

... for Ukraine in Turkey.

Ian Bremmer:

But should we? But should we?

Roberta Metsola:

I would not exclude any debate, any discussion. Looking at, for example, the implementation of the agreements that we have with Turkey, looking at, yes, expression of concern, of course, when it comes to human rights and protection of minorities. Big concern when it comes to the occupation of Cyprus. Those are debates that have not gone anywhere since 1972

Ian Bremmer:

A lot of negotiations.

Roberta Metsola:

Lots of negotiations.

Ian Bremmer:

Got close. Got close. Yeah.

Roberta Metsola:

But I would never be one that would not talk or have debates as to where we are going today. This is a partner, political, economic, big concerns, of course, that I've just mentioned. I'm not saying we're there yet. I'm not saying we will be there soon. I'm not saying that there is a political will to do that. You have countries that have said never. So that's a reality.

Ian Bremmer:

But I'm asking you something different. I'm asking, do you believe that Turkey would be better off and that the Europeans would be better off if they became full members?

Roberta Metsola:

Ask me this in five years. I would be able to give you a better answer if I see how the political development happens there, what the role of the current leadership plays in the difficulties that we have in our neighborhoods.

As we celebrate 50 years of Greek independence, we also celebrate that amount of commemoration of invasion of Cyprus and occupation. These are things that are still on the table and they're not off yet. And that's what would need to be resolved before we go to the next question.

Ian Bremmer:

Let me put Europe in broader context. Conventional wisdom here in the States is that the Americans are the most powerful country in the world. They're just not sure how much they want to lead. The Chinese are becoming more powerful over time. The Indians are becoming more powerful over time. The Japanese are becoming less so and the EU is becoming less so. I suspect you don't agree with that conventional wisdom, and I'd like you to tell me how Americans should think about the EU going forward.

Roberta Metsola:

I don't disagree. We talk a lot about strategic autonomy. You've come to Europe and you ask, "What do you mean by strategic autonomy?" You'll get 27 different replies. We're not yet coherent.

We mentioned crisis before. We work well in crisis. When we're not in crisis, we get re-divided north, south, east, west. Who's in government, who's in election mode? Who has a strong coalition? Who doesn't? How do we deal with our neighborhood, immediate neighborhood? I come from the south of Europe. How do we talk to Africa? How have we talked to Africa over the past 10, 20 years? How are we dependent on everybody else around us for critical raw materials, for energy, for importation of products? We talk about our relationship with China.

When we talk about the US, we have a transatlantic relationship that is invariably good. This is our main partner, but are we strong enough? When the Inflation Reduction Act came into force, we were just staring at it. When we talk economically-

Ian Bremmer:

It was pretty big.

Roberta Metsola:

It was pretty big. It was sold as a climate piece of legislation. We know exactly what it was. We call others protectionists when sometimes we're more protectionists ourselves. We're far away and behind on innovation. We still export human resources. We don't invest enough. We celebrate the single market 30 years this year. Is it single? Where is our capital banking union, our capital markets union? It is so much easier to move money to start a company elsewhere than it is in Europe.

Now, does that mean that it's all doom and gloom? Absolutely not. We have plans as to how you have to basically inject capital into the economy in order to kickstart it. We still have some of the best minds in the world, some of the best ideas, patents in the world. But these next five years are going to be crucial in order for us not to be squeezed.

Ian Bremmer:

So given what you just said, I mean, I'm thinking back to Mario Draghi and the report that he came out with only a few weeks ago that basically said, "Look, if the Europeans don't take steps to make themselves more competitive, invest in industrial policy, invest in entrepreneurship, that this is going to be an existential crisis for the Europeans going forward." Is he right? Because there's not many people out there that would say that his recommendations look likely to be implemented by the Europeans.

Roberta Metsola:

I think what I liked most, and we had Mario Draghi in the parliament and presenting the report, is that many expected him to say, "It's too late." But if anything, he actually said, "Look, if we look at other continents, our dependence on other continents, but what we can still do well." If you look where we were 20 years ago, when our biggest industries were comparable to the United States, number of companies that we have in the European Union are comparable to the ones in the United States, is all hope lost? No. And because we're not, I would say living day after day from crisis to crisis, we can use our competitiveness in order to regain. How do we do that? We invest in our young people. We invest in innovation. Our universities need more help. Our researchers, our creative industries need more assistance.

And essentially, when we have debates, and debate is a big word or a small word, depending on how you're going to look at this, is that when we're going to look at China and we're going to look at India, how are our relations with them? When we talk to our African partners, do we only talk to them about migration. That they need to take migrants from their own nationals back?

We've had for so long debates where we look at our partners as though we need to talk at them and not talk with them. We wait until Spain holds the rotating presidency of the European Union to hold summits with Latin America. We talk about neighborhood policy and development as though they were completely isolated subjects from each other. That's what we've done for too long. And I think that inevitably, we've also weakened ourselves by being a cacophony of what we think we want, what Mario Draghi and people like him tell us we should do, and then waiting for an electoral cycle for it to be quickly forgotten.

Ian Bremmer:

Talk down to them in terms of this is the way the rules should be.

Roberta Metsola:

Yeah, because we're better. Yes.

Ian Bremmer:

Because you're the regulatory superpower as opposed to the innovation superpower as opposed to the industrial superpower.

Roberta Metsola:

And it's also political, that these are... We still have not as a European Union become better as a whole than individual countries. And here I miss the United Kingdom and the European Union.

You know, at the time, you'd have the United Kingdom leading this debates. We miss that. To be clear, I miss that. And I miss that because you have countries that have a responsibility and have shown us how you can be better, how you can create partnerships, but by bringing everybody up. And we have a lot of countries who tell us, "Listen, you're telling us what to do. Have a look in your own backyard, in your own countries."

We make it so difficult, we were talking about Ukraine before, for countries to join the European Union, but then we let the countries that are inside the European Union do whatever they like. We don't have rules to make sure that our basic tenets, fundaments of democracy work, that elections are proper, that judiciary is protected, that minorities are protected. We still don't do that, and that's a problem.

Ian Bremmer:

So when you talked before about strategic autonomy and that there are 27 different ideas about what that should mean, one of the biggest debates between the United States and Europe right now is how much of policy towards the rest of the world should be seen principally through a national security lens as opposed to principally through an economic and commercial lens. And traditionally, the United States has leaned more heavily on the former.

Now, of course, on Russia-Ukraine, Russians invade Ukraine, life is very different. Everyone's rowing in the same direction. On China, that's a very active debate. I see in the United States Democrats and Republicans agree on what they should do. You don't have 27 different arguments on this, or 50 different arguments. You have Americans saying, "We want to make sure that we're able to beat the Chinese everywhere it matters." And I see the Europeans having a harder time responding to what feels like really big industrial policy, the Americans telling you what to do. What should the European path towards China be in that debate?

Roberta Metsola:

Not look away. I think for far too long we were waiting for what the United States would do from a security point of view, from a technology point of view. If you think about how industry leads, I mean, we sort of forgot that China is a big importer, big exporter, that when we talk about China, it is not only, I would say, a dumping of cheaper products in an industry where the European Union has already lost out. Reasonably so, talking about, as we would say, de-risking and not-

Ian Bremmer:

Decoupling. Yep.

Roberta Metsola:

... decoupling. Do we know what that means? How will we do it if we don't talk to them? If China does not talk to us, then we're not talking about anything. And the only time we're discussing China is when we're investigating electric vehicles that are being placed on our markets at 20%, 25% lower than domestic rate production. When we have European industries who are telling us, "Listen, we rely on the Chinese market," when we have people who tell us, and countries who tell us, "Listen, expertise that comes out of China is something we need," of course, a country that is brought up with an extremely different value set, democratic concerns, things that should not be taken off the table, but they need to be on the table. And for far too long, I don't think the European Union looked at that.

And as a result, are we being squeezed? Do we just watch the United States and the Chinese sort of trade politically, diplomatically, economically, while we are doing what?

Ian Bremmer:

It's fair to say that European policy towards China has largely been reactive.

Roberta Metsola:

Or even absent. Or even absent. To a certain extent, because of course you have bilateral relations between national member states, biggest problem is we have not been coherent. People still ask, "What's the European position?" We produce swathes of documents with unintelligible language. I mean, I'm being self-critical here. I'm partly responsible for that.

But if the United States is looking at us, the current administration, the next administration, if we look at who's talking to the Chinese and what the Chinese think about what we're doing, are we a competitor? Are we innovating? Should we be legitimately concerned about TikTok, for example? If I see also the latest United States action to prevent technological components in technology here in vehicles here. These are things that we should reasonably and properly be talking about.

I mean, we were particularly concerned during the last European election about the influence of propaganda on TikTok and the way it's spread like wildfire around our young. And this is not even talking about artificial intelligence. But literally what are our new voters, young people, more vulnerable parts of the society, looking at when seeing social media has changed completely?

There is of course specific and sometimes disguised, sometimes not so disguised attempts of influence in electoral processes. This is, again, a regime that is very different to us. It is not a democratic one. But not talking about it and not talking to our counterparts would be the biggest problem.

Ian Bremmer:

So last question. I haven't brought up migration, which seems implausible for a conversation in Europe right now. It's been a dominant topic. It undermined Angela Merkel, I mean, in principle, the strongest leader we've seen in Europe for a long time. And yet, it seems to be an issue that is now bringing European governments more together than not, that they're aligning more on it. Is that a positive development in your view? Are you happy with the direction of travel that, if you don't mind me saying that, that migration policy is heading in Europe right now?

Roberta Metsola:

It has been an emotional topic for a very, very long time. And I say emotional because it depends on where you come from. In other words, if you're a country... I come from one. It's an island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. We had to learn the way of having to realize that sometimes you were left alone in coping with an influx of people that are desperate for protection and nobody else coming to your rescue. I mean, that is a reality that for far too long dominated extremist rhetoric. That if you were not on the side of everybody can come in or everybody stay out, then you would not be electable. I mean, and that was very hard to come to terms with, and it spread across all countries.

So you have political movements that were created and are still extremely strong based on very anti-migrant rhetoric. You have governments collapsing over disagreements. What do we do? Do we close our borders? Do we open our borders? You have countries, never thought I would see this, blaming their immediate neighbors for not being tough enough at the external border.

So it's multifaceted, and we were faced with a choice about one year ago. Do we legislate or do we not? We decided to go down the legislation route years after failure, but we realized we had no choice. If you don't legislate, our citizens will not think that the European Union, because no one thinks a country can solve it alone, would be able to address their real concerns. How do we reconcile that by we have a duty to protect. We have a duty to welcome those who desperately need a new life, who have no choice.

So I can go into details what is meant by a refugee, et cetera, but I would say that what we need to prevent is a national government, so directional travel, as you mentioned, see that they have no choice but to close their borders. The best part of the European Union is movement. You can go from one country to another to work, to travel, to find a better life. The minute we close up, we become inward-looking. That worries me. And I'm hoping that the legislation we actually adopted will alleviate the concerns that would span an electoral campaign.

Ian Bremmer:

So this is a critical issue where the European Union is getting stronger.

Roberta Metsola:

I would say so. But it requires a lot of work, commitment, and lack of, I would say, blaming of your immediate neighbor. That is not what Europe should be, and that is what we should avoid.

Ian Bremmer:

President Roberta Metsola, thanks so much for joining us today.

Roberta Metsola:

Thank you.

Ian Bremmer:

That's it for today's edition of the GZERO World Podcast. Do you like what you heard? Of course you do. Why not make it official? Why don't you rate and review GZERO World five stars, only five stars, otherwise, don't do it, on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Tell your friends.