Of kings and other Trump whisperers... | Inside Eruope

0:06 Hello and welcome to Inside Europe,

0:08 the weekly current affairs podcast and radio program from DW,

0:13 Germany's international broadcaster.

0:15 I'm Kate Lok in Bon.

0:17 This week on the show, Trump whispering and the push to save NATO,

0:22 Georgio Maloney's bid to reassert political dominance,

0:26 and a conversation with Mark Leonard,

0:29 author of the new book Surviving Chaos: Geopolitics: When the Rules Fail.

0:34 You know, a lot of Europeans thought we were at the end of history,

0:37 that we'd reached the end of our of our evolutionary journey, and that

0:40 and that Europe was it, right?

0:42 We were living it.

0:42 We were the ultimate goal at the end of the rainbow.

0:44 we were living it and that everyone else was going to become like us.

0:49 Those stories and more coming up on the program,

0:59 the alliance that our two nations have built over the centuries

1:04 and for which we are profoundly grateful to the American people.

1:07 The unmistakable voice of the UK's King Charles III there addressing the US

1:13 Congress as part of this week's 4-day state visit widely seen back

1:17 home in Britain as a damage limitation operation following the very public

1:22 souring of relations between President Trump

1:25 and the UK's belleaguered Prime Minister Kama.

1:29 Whilst the king mainly used his address to stress UK US relations,

1:33 Charles also made a direct appeal for NATO unity and the defense of Ukraine.

1:39 In the immediate aftermath of 911 when NATO invoked article

1:44 5 for the first time and the United Nations Security Council,

1:49 Charles's appeal to Congress comes at a time

1:51 when the future of NATO has been thrown

1:54 into doubt by President Trump's repeated suggestions that he

1:57 may withdraw the US from the transatlantic military alliance.

2:02 So far, NATO leaders have tried to pleate him with flattery and praise.

2:07 Secretary General Mark Hutter has led that effort with what some

2:12 believe has been excessive zeal while others praise him for it.

2:16 From Brussels, Terry Schultz takes a look at whether the Trump

2:20 whispering tactic is achieving its goal

2:23 of making the transatlantic relationship stronger.

2:26 It's called Trump whispering and there are several European leaders employing it

2:31 on a regular basis as they try to forge friendships with Donald Trump.

2:36 The chief practitioner, however, is NATO Secretary General Mark Route.

2:40 He's even created a subset of Trump whispering known as daddy diplomacy.

2:45 Last year at NATO summit in the HEG,

2:47 Route described Trump's involvement in the conflict between Iran

2:50 and Israel like a daddy needing to sort things out.

2:54 Route was heavily criticized, but asked about it earlier this month,

2:58 he's evidently come to embrace the fallout.

3:01 I own it and the president owns it because he brought up t-shirts.

3:04 He made a movie that he is home and he returned to the United States.

3:08 This was so funny and this is why I like him so much.

3:11 Trump also likes Rut personally and mentions that frequently

3:15 but it hasn't stopped him from continuing to trash NATO.

3:19 Despite all efforts, Trump says it's beyond reconsideration that he'll

3:22 pull the US out of the alliance after European nations declined to help

3:27 the US wage combat operations against Iran.

3:30 Very disappointed in NATO.

3:31 They didn't do the they weren't there for us.

3:34 We pay trillions of dollars for NATO and they weren't there for us.

3:38 Former NATO official Gerinda Nu says European leaders are taking

3:41 the wrong approach to such behavior from the US president.

3:45 History has told us and taught us that appeasement does not work.

3:51 So if you try to accommodate a bully,

3:53 whether that bully is President Trump or somebody like Putin or he,

3:58 I mean, the only thing you are doing is

4:00 you invite the bully to punch you harder next time.

4:04 Among Trump's fellow world leaders,

4:05 Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has come the closest to publicly taking him

4:10 to task in a speech he gave at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

4:14 It seems that every day we're reminded that we

4:18 live in an era of great power rivalry.

4:22 That the rules-based order is fading.

4:25 That the strong can do what they can and the weak must suffer what they must.

4:31 There is a strong tendency for countries to go along to get along,

4:37 to accommodate, to avoid trouble, to hope that compliance will buy safety.

4:44 Well, it won't.

4:46 Carney urges what he calls middle powers to stick together against big bullies.

4:51 Gerinda Neos agrees this should be Europe's path.

4:54 I think what Europeans really start to learn

4:56 now is that uh they they need to take

5:00 their destiny in their own hand and also what

5:03 I find extremely important get out of this reactive mode

5:06 where every second tweet coming out of the White

5:08 House sends us in all directions like a bunch

5:11 of headless chicken and um and so we need

5:15 to change gear and uh define our own priorities, define our own strategy,

5:20 um define our principles and uh and interests

5:23 and then pursue them and pursue them also with uh some degree of hard

5:28 ball because uh that's the language Trump understands

5:31 and she insists it should not be done quietly.

5:35 Terry Schultz DW Brussels.

5:38 This is Inside Europe and I'm Kate Leok in Germany.

5:42 A month ago, Italians voted

5:44 in a referendum on Giorgio Maloney's signature reform,

5:49 a constitutional overhaul of the judicial system.

5:53 Voters rejected it, and it was the heaviest defeat of her premiership.

5:59 Now, under pressure from the courts, the opposition,

6:01 and parts of her own right-wing base,

6:04 Melanie is trying to reassert control through migration and security.

6:11 Megan Williams reports from Rome.

6:17 Italy's latest decreto secreta or security decree became law April 24th passed

6:23 under a confidence vote to chance of be laacho from the opposition

6:28 and buried inside it was a surreal measure a state payment

6:32 for lawyers who help migrant clients return voluntarily to their countries.

6:37 Opposition MPs called it a wild west bounty,

6:41 €615 for a lawyer who guided

6:44 a foreign client through so-called voluntary repatriation.

6:48 Originally paid only once the migrant had actually returned home.

6:52 The Italian bar council said it had not been consulted.

6:56 The criminal lawyers union called the measure unconstitutional.

7:01 And Italy's top anti-mafia prosecutor,

7:03 Nicolola Grati, said, "You're basically telling lawyers,

7:08 you're not working for a client, but the state."

7:13 Even Italy's president, Sumatarella,

7:15 took the unusual step of sending the government a clear warning,

7:19 signaling that a payment tied to the outcome

7:22 of a legal case risked undermining the right to defense,

7:25 a constitutional red line.

7:28 So before the final text was locked in, the government

7:31 moved to soften the most explosive part of the measure.

7:34 It extended the€ 615 payment beyond lawyers

7:38 to associations and migrant mediators and removed

7:42 the strict link between the payment

7:44 and the foreign citizen actually returning home.

7:49 This offer of 600 plus euros to help

7:52 migrants return doesn't interest me in the slightest,

7:55 says immigration lawyer Maria Vizentini.

7:58 She spent two decades in Rome helping migrants with legal problems.

8:02 She says she's actually tried before to help undocumented migrants return home,

8:06 but there is often no money for flights,

8:09 no real support for integration, and many people still owe money to traffickers.

8:14 They feel they have no choice but to stay,

8:16 she says, calling the 600 euro idea madness.

8:22 Beyond the frustration of those who work with migrants,

8:25 the security law also points to something larger.

8:28 A government trying to reassert control after a major political defeat.

8:33 A month ago, voters rejected a referendum on a constitutional

8:37 overhaul that would have separated the careers of judges and prosecutors.

8:41 Ricardo, head of the opposition party.

8:48 For the first time in more than three years in office,

8:50 he says Maloney is in a serious political and identity crisis.

8:55 Her political rhetoric is built around the idea

8:57 that she embodies the will of the people.

9:00 But when she tries to push through a constitutional

9:03 rewrite in their name and voters reject it,

9:06 the whole premise begins to crack.

9:09 Maji says the security decree is part of the response.

9:13 A hard right signal to her base,

9:15 a way to shift attention back to migration, order, and the courts.

9:20 But the pressure on Maloney is not only domestic.

9:22 She's also been hit from abroad by the leader

9:25 she once treated as her closest ideological ally, Donald Trump.

9:30 After she defended Pope Leo from Trump's attacks and refused

9:33 to let Italy be dragged into the Iran war,

9:36 Trump turned on her publicly, saying he'd thought she was brave but was wrong.

9:41 And now she's being squeezed from her own right.

9:44 General Roberto Vanachi, a former army officer turned hard-right politician,

9:49 has been pulling part of the nationalist

9:51 electorate towards even more aggressive language on migration,

9:55 identity, and security.

9:57 Maji says the economic picture is also closing in.

10:03 The economy is going badly.

10:04 He says Italy has a huge deficit.

10:07 Purchasing power is at rock bottom and gas prices are rising.

10:12 Then from Luxembourg came one piece of news Maloney could present as a win.

10:16 The advocate general of the European Court of Justice

10:19 issued an opinion on Italy's offshore migrant centers in Albania.

10:24 centers that have stood largely empty because

10:26 Italian judges refuse to send people there.

10:29 He said the scheme is in principle compatible with EU

10:32 law as long as migrants rights are fully protected.

10:36 Maloney called it a vindication, saying two years had been lost

10:42 to forced and unfounded judicial readings and what

10:45 she called a new model for the EU in how to handle migrant arrivals.

10:52 Still, it doesn't change the wider picture here in Italy.

10:55 Maloney is now facing resistance and failures on multiple fronts

11:00 with international stakes the highest they've ever been since her election.

11:05 Meghan Williams, DW, Rome.

11:08 Let's accept for a minute the thesis that we have moved

11:11 into a new age of unorder and that the old rules no longer apply.

11:17 In that case, what we need is a guide

11:20 to help us navigate our new volatile reality.

11:23 Surviving Chaos: Geopolitics: When the Rules Fail is just one such book.

11:28 Its author is Mark Leonard,

11:30 co-founder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations,

11:34 the first panuropean think tank.

11:37 And at the heart of the book is a distinction

11:40 which I think I'm going to let Mark Leonard outline himself.

11:45 So my starting point is that the world's

11:48 going to be divided less between autocracies and democracies

11:52 or between east and west but more between

11:54 different ways that people are thinking about order.

11:57 And one way I think about order,

11:59 the the way that the architects think about order is you try

12:02 and design a perfect world with a set of rules and institutions and then

12:08 you work back from that and uh see how you can uh

12:12 mold the world that we're living in so that it meets that structure.

12:16 And the sort of classic example of that was came after

12:20 World War II where you get a bunch of very clever people.

12:24 John Maynard Kanes from the UK, Dean Herson from the US,

12:27 other people like that who set up the Breton Woods institutions,

12:31 the United Nations, the World Bank,

12:34 the IMF and then you carry on building lots of structures after that.

12:38 An alternative way of thinking about order is what I call the artisans approach.

12:44 So rather than building grand structures from scratch,

12:47 instead artisans improvise, they repair, they adapt,

12:52 they use old structures and institutions to do

12:55 new things rather than building new things from scratch.

12:59 So I kind of argue in the book

13:00 that for most of the last couple of hundred years,

13:04 it's been a great time for architects and architects

13:08 have have done very very well in the world.

13:10 But because we're entering a period where a lot

13:14 of really quite fundamental change is going to blow

13:18 through those structures and institutions and it's going

13:21 to be much less predictable than it was before.

13:23 This could be the hour of the artisan where artisans find that they're

13:29 in a a much better place than the architects and the architects get very

13:34 frustrated because their beautiful plans and grand

13:37 designs don't seem to have very much

13:40 purchase on a world that's going through

13:42 fundamental changes because of climate change because

13:45 of the creation of AI because

13:47 of big demographic changes because capitalism is becoming

13:51 much more crisisprone and and also just

13:54 because the the changes in power relations

13:57 is leading to new leaders like Donald Trump and and Vladimir Putin and Ci

14:01 Ping who just don't obey the rules and are doing things in different ways.

14:05 I learned so much, by the way, about Ti Jinping from this book.

14:08 Honestly, if ever there was a man in this book that comes out as, you know,

14:12 a man with a plan, it is him.

14:15 So, I I would have put him in the architect category.

14:18 So I was sort of wondering what qualifies him and his thinking as um

14:22 artisal and I think it it's sort of this thing that you unpick where

14:26 there is this taking from Confucious taking

14:30 from Markx this sort of theoretical almost

14:33 spiritual sort of mishmash that creates

14:36 a framework which enables his system to flourish.

14:39 Yeah.

14:40 So obviously Sigin Ping is not somebody who is well

14:44 known for for his less a fair approach to the world.

14:48 His rise to power has been associated with lots of attempts to crack down

14:53 on society and to introduce greater controls

14:57 on what people are doing on a day-to-day basis.

14:59 But where I do think he is open to the world is firstly that he has

15:07 a sense that the future isn't going to be

15:10 about preserving the existing structures and building an order.

15:13 It's more about surviving chaos.

15:16 And his favorite phrase which he uses all

15:18 the time is called great changes unseen in a century.

15:22 It sounds quite clunky to European ears,

15:25 but it's quite a resonant phrase to many Chinese people because it echoes

15:30 the language that people used in the lateqing era in the 19th century

15:35 when China had its first real encounter with Western modernity with uh British

15:42 and French people coming out who

15:44 overwhelmed China with their superior military technologies.

15:49 And this led to a massive crisis in China.

15:53 It was the beginning of what the the official

15:56 Communist Party calls the century of humiliation.

15:59 China found itself on the wrong side of what it saw as these great changes.

16:03 You know, the industrial revolution which led to these new

16:06 technologies which created a lot of of chaos and disruption.

16:10 And the Chinese thought that they had all

16:13 the answers that they knew how the world worked.

16:15 But none of the rules which they were relying on seemed to apply anymore.

16:19 So a lot of Chinese people went to Europe

16:22 to try and understand what was going on in the world.

16:25 And they came back and decided that they

16:29 actually not only didn't understand what was happening,

16:32 but they didn't even have the words to to explain it.

16:34 So they introduced a whole new vocabulary into the Chinese

16:37 language at the beginning of the 20th century.

16:40 words like science and democracy and the word

16:43 of progress which didn't exist before because

16:45 they had an idea that that history was

16:48 went in cycles that nothing really changed fundamentally.

16:51 So this idea that that history could have a direction and was was

16:54 moving forward was something which was quite alien to a lot of Chinese people.

16:58 So they had this kind of massive crisis and decided

17:01 that they needed to learn from from the west.

17:03 And since then they've been on the lookout for these big

17:07 great changes uh to make sure that they didn't miss

17:10 them and that they uh were on the right side

17:12 of future industrial or other kinds of revolutions that were going on.

17:17 This is Inside Europe and I'm Kate Leok in Germany.

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17:40 Too much noise.

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17:52 I was thinking of something that um I

17:54 heard I think it was probably David Harvey say

17:56 and that is that when a British business person

17:59 goes into a meeting with a Chinese business person.

18:02 The Chinese business person knows that Britain

18:06 fought a war literally for the right

18:08 to get China addicted to opium because they didn't like the trade deficit.

18:12 And you know this this was this was this was uh this is this is part

18:15 of the sort of the the cultural and historical

18:18 knowledge with which that Chinese person enters the meeting.

18:21 the British person probably has no idea that's

18:23 not a history that they have been taught.

18:25 And so I suppose my question is about the stories

18:29 that we tell each other about ourselves and about our collective

18:33 past and whether you think that this is a moment

18:35 of alp of you know of change of disruption in that respect.

18:39 I think that's absolutely right.

18:41 You know, I think we've had a pretty remarkable few decades where, you know,

18:47 a lot of Europeans thought we were at the end of history,

18:49 that we'd reached the end of our of our evolutionary journey, and that

18:53 and that Europe was it, right?

18:54 We were living it.

18:55 We were the ultimate goal at the end of the rainbow.

18:57 We were living it and that everyone else was going to become like us.

19:01 And I think we forgot as you as you

19:03 know your British businessman did both how much

19:08 of the the rest of the world looked at us

19:09 and our kind of history and our impact on them

19:12 which is one of the reasons I think why

19:14 these universal institutions have got less legitimacy than we

19:18 thought they did because a lot of other people

19:19 think they were spread through empire and through violence.

19:23 But also they they kind of you know the period that we thought

19:25 of as order and as as the end of history you know for many other

19:30 people around the world was a period where there was a lot of violence

19:33 and war and and they didn't really think the order was working for them.

19:37 I think what's changed now is is you know firstly that there are a lot

19:42 of people within western societies that have

19:44 the same response to where we're at.

19:46 So, you know, 40% of Americans who voted for Donald Trump

19:51 actually think that they were the biggest victims of the American order.

19:55 So, that is leading to to different sort

19:58 of conversations within our societies about um you know,

20:02 who we are, where we've come from, where we're going to go.

20:05 So anecdotally um I was having a a sort of an editorial discussion

20:11 um the other day and it it was about terminology because um far

20:15 right it it's a term that's applied across the board but you know

20:18 within that you have all these different sort of distinctions between um you

20:23 know populist right between nationalist right and we were also saying that you

20:27 know we need we also need to be a lot more choosy about

20:31 the way in which we describe the far left because far left is

20:35 a term applied to Jean McMillan who

20:38 would represent a sort of authoritarian left,

20:40 you know, but it also gets applied to someone

20:42 like Zack Palansky who's an ecosist, you know,

20:45 and and I was just thinking in the middle of this discussion,

20:47 oh my goodness, history is here,

20:48 you know, that the end of history was predicated on the idea

20:51 that uh the big sort of ideological arguments had been settled and no,

20:56 we're we're we're right in the middle of it.

20:58 Yeah.

20:58 Well, I think we are at the edge of history now rather than the end of history.

21:02 And we're kind of realizing that a lot of the things

21:05 that we're living through have no real historical precedent.

21:09 Whether it's the extent of of climate change,

21:14 whether it is the idea of AI and quantum computing and new technologies which

21:19 are going to turn our societies and our labor markets and even the idea

21:24 of what it is to be human on their head or whether it is

21:28 the the way that our global economy is just changed in such a fundamental way.

21:33 I mean we know from Markx onwards that capitalism is is prone

21:37 to crisis but Marx didn't envisage an economy as connected as networked

21:45 as complex as the one that we have at the moment

21:48 that creates a whole series of massive crises which we've been dealing with.

21:53 I mean just the last decade we had a financial crisis.

21:56 We've had the global pandemic.

21:58 We've had lots of evidence of of of man-made climate change.

22:03 We've had uh the wars in Ukraine and Gaza

22:08 and Iran uh all reverberating through the the global economy.

22:13 We had a migration crisis in 2015.

22:16 And these things are are really big issues which

22:20 seem to overwhelm the the the sort of centrist

22:23 politics that we had beforehand are leading people towards

22:28 much bigger divides and to try new things out.

22:31 So you are seeing the emergence of a new right as you

22:34 said before with a radicalism to a lot of these farright parties.

22:38 But as you say, there also lots of new parties

22:41 that have come to occupy the left with with completely different visions

22:47 from the sort of centrist mainstream third-wave politics which was um

22:52 in the ascendant in the '9s and in the in the naughties.

22:56 And um it does mean that there's a lot to play for.

23:00 So, you know, increasingly when general elections happen,

23:03 people don't think it's just a question

23:04 of who's going to be governing the country,

23:06 but there is a often a sense that democracy itself is on the ballot.

23:10 You know, this could be the last election that we have.

23:12 And people very much felt that in the in the US elections,

23:16 um, in the Hungarian elections, and I'm sure,

23:19 you know, in the French presidential elections next year,

23:22 there will be a sense that there really big things at stake there.

23:26 It's not just a an election which um will have an impact for political experts.

23:32 It's something which which which could potentially

23:34 really define the identity and history of France.

23:37 We will be coming back to my interview with surviving chaos author Mark

23:42 Leonard after the break when our focus will shift from diagnosis to solutions.

23:47 If you're listening to us via a partner station that leaves us here,

23:51 you will find the full show wherever you get your podcasts.

23:54 This is Inside Europe and I'm Kate Leok in Germany.

24:33 Hey.

24:45 Hey.

24:46 Hey.

24:59 Welcome back to Inside Europe,

25:01 the weekly current affairs podcast and radio

25:03 program from DW Germany's international broadcaster.

25:07 I'm Kate Leok in Bon.

25:10 Back to my interview with Mark Leonard,

25:12 author of the new book, Surviving Chaos: Geopolitics: When the Rules Fail.

25:18 So, go on Mark, get out your democracy toolkit for me.

25:21 How how would an artist artisal approach work?

25:25 Well, I think that the way to to respond to that is

25:30 not to be nostalgic and to try and prop up the old system,

25:34 but to really understand the extent of these changes and to think

25:38 about how we can position ourselves to deal with them.

25:42 You lean into the changes and you try and make them work for you.

25:46 thinking quite carefully about who you buy

25:49 your energy from, how you make your energy,

25:52 who you uh buy technology from, whether you

25:54 trust countries that might use it to blackmail you,

25:57 you know, what kind of trait.

25:58 So, there's a a way that you build security

26:01 into a lot of the your connections with other players.

26:04 And then you also need to think about how you uh make people

26:08 feel uh safe again because one of the big dangers that we have

26:12 is that many people in our societies feel that they were big victims

26:18 of globalization and liberalization um because

26:22 the elites benefited from them but they didn't

26:25 and that's leading to you know big debates about immigration about trade about

26:31 other uh policies and I think part of what you need to do uh

26:36 if you want democracies to work well is to take those concerns very

26:39 seriously and try and come up with solutions to make people feel safer again.

26:43 Surely that would be redistribution, would it not?

26:45 Or you know a change in tax laws.

26:48 Yeah, absolutely.

26:49 That's exactly the sorts of things you do.

26:50 So you know we're seeing new debates emerging about redistribution,

26:55 about reinventing our welfare models so that people can be kept safe.

26:59 We're seeing new debates about migration taking place

27:03 where people understand that our economies are going

27:06 to need migration because of aging populations and because

27:10 you know a lot of our welfare states depend

27:12 on on people coming in from other countries

27:15 but at the same time they want to make sure

27:16 that it doesn't drive down uh wages that it

27:20 doesn't uh lead to big inflation of house prices.

27:24 So you just having much more control of these sorts of things.

27:28 You look to Australia and Denmark there which raised all sorts

27:33 of questions for me because uh I mean you know the the performative

27:36 cruelty of the Australian offshoring system um and uh also of you

27:43 know Denmark which has had um you know the so-called ghetto laws.

27:46 It's had uh officials given the ability to uh confiscate personal items,

27:51 jewelry and so on from asylum seekers at the border as well

27:56 as this uh you know extremely restrictive approach to asylum itself.

28:01 Um I did wonder well I did wonder whether

28:04 that was perhaps an architectural rather than an artisal approach.

28:07 Um but I also I I also I also wondered um about

28:12 the about the price I suppose and about um lines in the sand

28:19 and about what we are prepared to sacrifice in terms of our values

28:24 and our humanity in order to shore up those very things.

28:29 So um you know I wasn't trying to endorse every single

28:33 it it it's about a paragraph in the book to be fair.

28:36 I mean this is this is not a massive thesis.

28:39 Yeah.

28:39 But I also wasn't trying to endorse

28:40 everything about the Danish or the Australian systems.

28:43 But what I think I was trying to say and I

28:47 I do believe is that there are winners and losers.

28:51 They're positive things that come out

28:53 of migration and they're also um negative things.

28:56 And ideally what we want to do is to have

28:58 a politics which allows you to have the positive things.

29:01 So, you know, gives uh our economies the workers that they need,

29:05 gives us the skills that we need for our health services and for for other

29:08 areas and keeps us open to the cultural

29:11 richness that we get from having diverse societies,

29:15 but at the same time tries to mitigate

29:19 against the the negative aspects of of migration,

29:22 whether these are kind of economic uh negatives,

29:25 so people undercutting salaries.

29:28 So you have to think about the social infrastructure whether

29:31 you have a minimum wage to find ways of protecting workers.

29:34 You know if large numbers of people are moving around the country you

29:37 want to make sure that they have housing and schooling and health care.

29:42 So you need to know where people are moving and and be

29:44 able to shift extra resources to places where people are going.

29:48 But you also do I think need to to give the public

29:51 a sense that this is something that you're on top of and you're controlling.

29:55 What I think's wonderful about the the Australian model is every

29:59 year the Australian government goes to parliament and says, you know,

30:04 this is what our economic needs are for migration

30:07 and we're going to say we need x number of people in different areas and they

30:12 almost have like a budget for migration and it

30:14 but doesn't that sort of put us back

30:15 in the sort of extractative approach to the rest

30:18 of the world that we kind of you know saw in our China Britain example.

30:22 I think there's a difference between the the sort of migration uh you

30:26 know legal migration which I think that's a solution to and then what

30:30 we do with our asylum policies and I think asylum is you know

30:34 is something which is very different and that is something where we have

30:39 a an obligation to help people who are who are escaping from from horrible

30:44 circumstances and there you know I think there's also a legitimate debate

30:48 to be had in the country about how many people you want to welcome

30:51 and and how long And I think those are debates that are worth having.

30:54 We shouldn't run away from them because

30:56 ideally we'll come up with solutions which

30:59 can get the consent of society for a kind of positive and humane policies.

31:04 And if you do that, you can actually turn migration into something that patriots

31:10 believe in and actually take that card away from the far right as well.

31:13 And I think that is a that's an important thing.

31:15 I I you know I think those are the things I wanted to celebrate

31:18 not like snatching jewelry from people at the borders and things like that.

31:23 I'd like to end on a celebration too.

31:24 Can I can I make a nomination?

31:27 So I was I would love to nominate Ukraine as the ultimate

31:31 modern artisans because I feel like they just fit this category so well.

31:36 you know, everything from everybody, you know,

31:38 suddenly getting around attacks on power infrastructure by, you know,

31:42 having small solar modules on their balconies to, you know,

31:46 obviously there's drone tech and um uh you know, it you know, in Ukraine,

31:51 all your dealings with the the administration have gone digital,

31:53 you know, during a war.

31:54 I'll accept your nomination.

31:56 No, I think it's I think it's absolutely right.

31:58 They tick so many of the boxes.

31:59 Well, I really do hope that ECFR

32:01 will consider inaugurating the first ever artisan awards.

32:06 We must get you to present it to the Mark Leonard.

32:12 It's been an absolute pleasure.

32:13 Thank you so much um for your generosity with your time in talking to me.

32:17 Thank you so much as well.

32:18 It was really fun talking to you again.

32:21 Surviving Chaos: Geopolitics When the Rules Fail is out now.

32:27 Our poll of the week has an artisal flare,

32:37 although perhaps not quite in the sense that Mark

32:39 Leonard envisaged think French bungee and Swiss clock makers.

32:44 As for last week's poll, the correct answer was B.

32:48 Groping Neptune's genitals.

32:50 And no, I am not giving any more context than that.

32:57 How do artisans learn their trade?

33:00 With apprenticeships, of course.

33:02 In Germany, that usually means the duala building,

33:06 a blend of classroom learning and paid on the job training.

33:10 It qualifies young people for hundreds of skilled professions

33:13 and has long been a pillar of the German economy.

33:17 But the system, well, it's under strain.

33:20 Despite low unemployment and record work hours,

33:22 Germany faces a growing shortage of skilled labor,

33:26 worsened by an aging workforce

33:28 and fewer young people opting for apprenticeships.

33:32 Valerie Hamilton reports on how businesses are

33:35 trying to keep this once reliable pathway alive.

33:40 On a recent morning in Munich,

33:42 a group of teenagers are taking turns hanging from a pull-up

33:45 bar while music blares and an LED timer ticks off the seconds.

33:49 Whoever hangs in there the longest wins a prize.

33:52 An apt metaphor for the three-year commitment most apprenticeships require.

33:57 It's a school day.

33:58 And indeed, for the dozens of school groups at Munich's Convention Center,

34:02 this is an educational class trip.

34:05 It's meant to introduce young people nearing the end of their school

34:08 time to the idea of vocational training as a next step.

34:12 In Munich state of Bavaria,

34:13 nearly a quarter of apprenticeships in skilled trades went unfilled this year.

34:18 Bad news for the future labor supply.

34:20 So, professional guilds from upholsterers to car mechanics are

34:24 putting on a kind of skilled labor funf fair.

34:26 Emphasis on the fun.

34:30 Kids take turns welding scraps of sheet

34:32 metal into gothl looking black metal flowers.

34:36 Whizzing shiny brown leather through a sewing machine to make a cell phone case.

34:41 There's a virtual reality butcher counter where you put on goggles

34:44 to score points by choosing the right cut of meat.

34:49 Hang out with the bakers guild to make and eat cinnamon rolls.

34:53 Daniel Flatzinger is a member of the roofers guild.

34:55 They're responsible for the pull-up bar contest.

34:58 I ask him what pull-ups have to do with roofing.

35:03 Nothing, he says.

35:04 But roofing is critically short of apprentices,

35:06 so they need to get young people to talk to them any way they can.

35:11 That's why we have the loud music to get

35:13 them to stand and have some fun with them.

35:15 Then we can get into a conversation and then I can

35:18 tell them what we do and that it's actually a wonderful job.

35:22 Behind the soft cell is a hard reality.

35:25 Kids these days have more options than ever,

35:28 and their career expectations are changing with the times.

35:31 Like 17-year-old Demir, he's sitting at a bench trying out some roofers tools,

35:36 chipping away at a slate tile.

35:38 It's fun, he says, but as a career, probably not for him.

35:42 Computer market.

35:43 He prefers computers, he says.

35:45 He wants to be a programmer.

35:47 He's not alone.

35:48 In the 2022 PISA global survey of teenagers,

35:52 programmer was the number one job aspiration among German boys.

35:55 Girls wanted to be teachers.

35:57 Except for car and tractor mechanics,

35:59 the jobs you prepare for with an apprenticeship didn't make the list.

36:03 Yens is a spokesperson for the Bavarian Hanukkah,

36:06 an umbrella organization for 136 skilled trades.

36:13 Skill trades still have the image of being physically demanding,

36:17 dirty work, getting up early, physical labor.

36:20 You know, not many young people want to do that.

36:26 Businesses say that image is an old story,

36:29 so they're telling a new one in places where kids might hear it.

36:32 The German Chamber of Commerce and Industry is on Tik Tok

36:36 with a campaign of influencer apprentices showing off their cool jobs.

36:41 A video where restaurant apprentice Paul taps

36:43 his first beer keg Badly has 1.2 million views.

36:50 Trade groups built a new app that turns skilled

36:52 workers into gaming characters with wizard robes and magic tools.

36:57 Players win points by checking out realworld apprenticeship listings.

37:00 In the video game Minecraft,

37:02 groups have built a trades village and invested in live stream events

37:06 to draw young gamers to what

37:07 amounts to a virtual apprenticeship recruitment fair.

37:11 These efforts are popular.

37:12 One Minecraft live stream drew 700,000 viewers,

37:16 but they're not going to solve the apprentice shortage by themselves.

37:20 Sophie Schlingman is responsible for apprenticeship

37:22 policy at the German Trade Union Confederation.

37:25 She says what needs work isn't apprenticeships image, but their substance.

37:31 You can present it as nicely as you want and try to recruit people.

37:35 But if the quality of the apprenticeship isn't right, then that's the problem.

37:39 Apprentices are often relegated to menial work that because

37:42 it's classed as education is paid below minimum wage.

37:46 These conditions can drive young workers toward unskilled jobs that pay better,

37:50 at least in the short term.

37:52 In a survey last year, the top reason young people cited against

37:55 apprenticeships wasn't an uncool image, but low pay.

37:59 Indeed, when the Bakers Guild raised apprentice pay by more than 25%,

38:04 more future bakers signed on.

38:06 For now, Germany has the lowest youth unemployment rate in the EU,

38:10 so young people can afford to be choosy.

38:12 But as AI changes the future of work, their calculations may change, too.

38:18 Some of the jobs seen as least threatened

38:20 by AI are the same ones most lacking in apprentices,

38:23 like health care, construction, hospitality.

38:26 Yens Olrich from the Bavarian Hanukkam says that's

38:29 a reason for young people to take another look.

38:34 Does this mean that all non-craft professions will become obsolete?

38:38 Absolutely not.

38:40 If young professionals can no longer find their way

38:43 into the job market, what will they do?

38:48 Amid all the worries about the future, there's a joke that roofers like to tell.

38:52 Hey AI, build me a house.

38:55 And joking aside, their efforts to appeal to young people seem to be paying off.

39:00 After the roofing guild went on Tik Tok, raised apprentice pay,

39:04 and sponsored a poll showing roofing as the most AI resilient of trades,

39:08 the number of young people signing up to be apprentice

39:10 roofers has ticked up this year by more than 10%.

39:14 For DW, Valerie Hamilton, Munich.

39:18 Hi, it's Laura, Inside Europe's producer.

39:21 I'm just popping in here to ask you what kind of work

39:24 rellated topics you would like to hear more about on the program.

39:28 Are you a young person who's getting ghosted

39:30 from companies after taking hours to finish their application forms?

39:34 Are you worried about AI taking over?

39:37 Please reach out via inside Europe atw.com.

39:42 Fittingly, Friday is Mayday, International Labor Day.

39:47 In the Czech Republic, the giant parades of the communist era are long gone,

39:52 but left-wing groups still gather each year in the center of Prague.

39:57 This time, though, they do so under a controversial new law,

40:02 explicitly placing communist propaganda and symbols under

40:05 the same anti-extremism legislation used against Nazism.

40:10 From Prague, Rob Cameron reports.

40:18 There was a time when the Mayday parade was attended on mass in these lands.

40:22 The workers holiday in Czechoslovakia was once a mass

40:26 show of loyalty to the ruling communist party.

40:34 Hundreds of thousands filled Prague's squares.

40:37 Workers marched past party leaders on grandstands.

40:41 Attendance wasn't mandatory, but it was strongly encouraged.

40:46 Flags were waved, smiles were forced, slogans were chanted.

40:55 It's a very different picture these days.

40:57 Communists, social democrats,

40:59 and anarchists now take turns on one small Prague island,

41:04 and there are rarely more than a few hundred in attendance.

41:07 But this year, even those who do attend will

41:10 have to think carefully about their flags and slogans.

41:13 I think the the law wasn't uh useful, for example, police and and judges.

41:19 Camel Ned Viaditzki,

41:21 deputy director of the Institute for the Study of totalitarian regimes.

41:26 He was one of those advocating for this legal amendment,

41:30 which explicitly states that waving a hammer and sickle

41:33 around is the same as waving a swastika.

41:37 They were talking about the only Nazi

41:39 crimes or crimes connected with the Nazi regime,

41:43 not also connected with the communist regime.

41:46 And there are similar they have so many victims

41:50 and so many problems because they were totalitarian regimes against democracy,

41:54 freedoms and human rights and so on.

41:57 And I think it's necessary to do

42:01 with this two totalitarian regimes on the same level.

42:05 In the words of the legal amendment,

42:07 anyone who establishes, supports, or promotes a Nazi, communist,

42:12 or other movement which demonstrably aims at suppressing

42:16 human rights and freedoms is breaking the law.

42:19 In theory, anyone holding a loft images of Stalin,

42:22 Lenin, the first communist president of Czechoslovakia,

42:26 Clement got the flag of the Soviet Union and so on can now be prosecuted.

42:32 A court must decide whether by doing so that person was truly

42:36 advocating for a system that denies

42:39 people their fundamental rights and freedoms.

42:48 The communists were outraged when the legal change was

42:51 pushed through parliament last year by the previous centerright government.

42:56 Here's party chairwoman Katina Konchna speaking to TV Prima shortly afterwards.

43:06 Do you know who were the last people

43:08 to eliminate the communists and they truly eliminated them?

43:12 The Nazis.

43:13 And it started exactly with this.

43:15 They were not allowed to use certain symbols.

43:17 They were not allowed.

43:18 They were monitored and so on.

43:21 So it was the Nazis.

43:22 I'm not comparing them to anything.

43:24 I'm only saying that history showed us that 80 85 years ago this was the case.

43:30 As for why the government has done this, you

43:32 should ask them because it is total stupidity.

43:35 It is a complete denial of all historical facts.

43:42 Camil Nvidki conceds there are gray areas.

43:46 Shikavara, for example,

43:47 was he a romantic revolutionary or a cold-blooded murderer who

43:52 said violence and hatred were acceptable tools in the struggle?

43:56 Will people really be prosecuted for flying

43:59 the Soviet flag and so on and so forth.

44:02 Extremism expert Mirislav Mares says the courts

44:06 will have their work cut out for them.

44:08 If I can express my personal opinion towards this issue,

44:12 I don't think that we need such amendment.

44:15 We can discuss about the scope of freedom of speech.

44:18 We can we should of course discuss about the crimes of communism etc.

44:22 But I think that this amendment was not prepared properly.

44:29 Yeah.

44:29 From my point of view for now however it is having an effect.

44:36 There are reports that the Communist Party

44:38 has withdrawn books on Lenin from the display

44:41 case of the party bookshop for fear of falling foul of the law.

44:46 Marks apparently has been allowed to stay.

44:49 So there will be lots of detractors and potentially lots of challenges in court.

44:54 Supporters say the country is finally correcting a historical double standard.

45:00 For DW, this is Rob Cameron in Prague.

45:17 A quick reminder of our feedback address here, Inside Europe at DW.com.

45:22 I'm Kate Leok.

45:24 You're listening to Inside Europe.

45:30 Heat.

45:47 Heat.

45:48 N.

45:53 Heat.

45:55 Heat.

46:27 Ask pretty much any white collar worker

46:30 these days what the biggest threat to their job

46:32 is and the chances are they'll say AI and as journalists we're no exception.

46:38 In the Arctic Norwegian city of Tomza, however, LJ Bavanga met up with a group

46:43 of journalists who are turning AI to their advantage.

46:49 I'm browsing a website called Via Sport.

46:52 It's dedicated to football reporting,

46:54 but absolutely everything on here is created by AI, including the videos.

46:59 Here's one.

47:00 Atletico Madrid secured a first half lead over Barcelona.

47:04 Now, the images look relatively real,

47:07 but with that AI shine we're getting used to, and the text is pretty stilted.

47:12 Yet, this is the future many real journalists

47:15 fear that our skills will be replaced by machines.

47:22 But some journalists have figured out how to make AI their friend,

47:27 like those working here at the newspaper.

47:31 Its is a local newspaper, 125 years old.

47:36 We're pretty small, 22 journalists,

47:39 and we have about 10,000 subscribers in a city with 80,000 people.

47:46 And we are competing against our big brother, Nles,

47:51 a newspaper which is twice as big as ours.

47:55 We started to use artificial intelligence

47:58 to compete and to improve our journalism.

48:03 Runberg is the head of the data journalism lab at Erumser.

48:08 His team has developed an AI tool they've called Jin,

48:12 short for data journalism interface for news gathering and notifications.

48:17 Bit of a mouthful, but here's how it works.

48:20 We gather opensource information every night and then we make

48:24 rules for what kind of information we think is newsworthy.

48:28 In that way we have automated parts of the workflow.

48:31 We have changed the way we do research

48:33 from only analog to making more of a research digital.

48:41 I'm outside the Trumpso city hall right

48:44 in the center of Trumpser home to the municipal administration.

48:48 Now they put out a lot of information every

48:50 day which is accessible to anyone via their web page.

48:54 But for a journalist to go through all

48:56 that in the hope of finding a juicy story, it would simply take too long.

49:02 So what we did was that we build our own scrapers.

49:06 So we scraped the municipality web page several times a day

49:10 for all kind of new political documents and then we make a summary.

49:15 We use genative AI to make a summary of the document and if the journalist

49:19 think that this summary has some newsworthy content they will put the thumb up.

49:26 In that way we have trained

49:27 the algorithm to understand what is newsworthy content.

49:34 Most of the journalists at rooms are using the gin tool.

49:37 Leariel is the newspaper front page editor and he shows me how it's done.

49:43 So every morning, one of the first things we do is to check Jin.

49:47 Jyn will give from 0 to 10 a rating on how newsworthy anything is.

49:55 And you know this because you've been given the thumbs up or thumbs down before.

49:58 Yeah, exactly.

49:58 That's that's it.

49:59 That's how we train it to know what we are what we're interested in.

50:04 And I see it now just right away that one

50:08 of the top cases here is like I don't really need this.

50:14 I'm probably going to just give it thumbs down because it's not newsworthy.

50:18 And that's key.

50:19 The journalists themselves decide what's worth

50:22 covering and they write the actual copy.

50:25 Jyn keeps getting better the more they use it.

50:28 In the beginning it missed some very important news.

50:31 Variel tells me I remember one of the first things we kind of missed big news.

50:37 I think it was McDonald's coming to Tumsa.

50:40 I was that was a big news for people here that had

50:43 a very very very low rating 1.5 or something like that.

50:48 Uh but that should have been probably 10.

50:52 And the AI has helped find some really newsworthy stuff.

50:56 The harbor here in Trump is always teeming.

50:59 And this is one of Norway's busiest fishing ports.

51:02 When something is a miss in this industry,

51:05 it's big news, explains head of data, Runa.

51:09 5 to 10% of all fish catches in Norway are black.

51:14 They are illegal.

51:15 This a big problem.

51:17 So, uh, we wanted to find out which of the fish catches are illegal.

51:23 And it's 250,000 catches every year.

51:26 And we have downloaded for 20 years.

51:28 That's 5 million catches.

51:30 Even if I had 15 journalists,

51:32 I would use half a year to look for red alerts in these documents.

51:36 So what we did was we built an algorithm that could look for red alerts in 5

51:40 million documents and then we were able to pinpoint

51:44 some of the companies that um had red flags.

51:47 Uh so we went to one of these um big

51:50 companies outside Rona made a interview and the day before we

51:55 were going to publish the story police together with the coast

51:58 guard raided this company and they've been charged for illegal fishing.

52:03 So in fact the algorithm was able to detect that red flag company.

52:08 The there's a lot of talk about AI being a threat to democracy.

52:13 This is the opposite, isn't it?

52:16 I would say so.

52:17 I would say that we use AI to improve local democracy.

52:22 And what about that competition with Nulus,

52:24 the big brother newspaper they wanted to beat by using AI?

52:28 When I started, we had 7,500 subscribers.

52:32 Now we have 10,000.

52:34 And it's no other newspaper in Norway that has that kind of growth.

52:38 So, it's going pretty good.

52:40 This way of using AI is being repeated across many other

52:44 newspapers in the Polaris publishing group that Erumsa is part of.

52:48 Rather than doing away with journalists,

52:50 it has the potential to increase income and allow editors to hire more.

52:55 L Pavanganger DW Trumps.

52:58 Definitely the real Lajanga and not a friendly neighborhood chatbot there.

53:02 Bringing us to the end of the show.

53:05 It's tough being German.

53:06 People think I'm punctual, but I'm off late.

53:11 Let's do a quick check of stereotypes.

53:14 When you think of Germany,

53:15 you think of extreme punctuality, perfect planning, high-tech, and efficiency.

53:21 Well, think again.

53:23 Welcome to Delay Land, a podcast about a country that needs your help.

53:29 Available wherever you get your podcasts.

53:34 This is Inside Europe.

53:36 Our producers were Lara Cabelka and me, Kate Leok, assisted by Emma Meer.

53:41 Our sound engineer was Jurgen Kun.

53:44 Inside Europe comes to you from DW in Bon.