Translator: Judith Matz Reviewer: Helene Batt
Thank you very much for this warm-hearted invitation.
My heart skips a beat when I start to wonder
if I can really do this in 18 minutes. We will see!
I don't have a technological innovation to offer,
but this is about imagining the change, the transformation,
it's about conveying to you that we need a new beginning
and that we can do this, too.
I'm talking about a practical change in the way we deal with each other.
When I was 12 years old,
I went to France for a longer stay for the first time,
together with my older brother --
it's wonderful to have an older brother with whom you can do such a thing --
and we went to stay with a French family for six weeks.
Our parents expected us to pick up some decent French.
We arrived in a small village close to Besançon, Saint-Vit.
It was an old house accessed via the yard, whereby we arrived in the kitchen.
It was early evening, a long table had been set
the parents were sat at this table,
so were the Italian grandmother
and the family's five children,
along with four lodgers somehow taken in there during the holiday,
and finally my brother and I were to join them.
That's 11 children and 3 adults.
We were all sat at the dinner table, and I still remember well --
I was rather tired from the journey -- that I was thinking,
"If only I could understand a single thing these guys are saying..."
I didn't understand a single word.
It was dreadful.
But I was there six weeks, and then I could understand.
It was an absolute pleasure to be able to learn this language in this way,
with all of these children -- admittedly I knew some French before.
This was a very early implantation of my fondness for Europe.
About 12 years later, I was traveling through Poland,
preparing my dissertation.
I was traveling through Silesia by train, the air was grey and sandy.
It was really quite depressing,
a beautiful day, but rather dull.
And longingly I thought, wouldn't it beautiful
if this Europe were united,
we could work on these things together.
Have clean air, take joy in the landscape
and what's possible there.
And just a year later, Prague was invaded
and again I thought, and so did our friends:
Wouldn't Europe be beautiful
if it weren't for these terrible borders
and these opposing systems.
How diverse an experience, to travel from Vienna to Budapest to Prague
and back to Paris -- how marvellous.
And there were a lot of things going on in Europe.
We, in Western Europe that is, liked things more and more.
Of course, we had to persevere through everyday difficulties.
But even then, we were enthusiastic. I recall one situation,
there was a big song festival in Aix-en-Provence,
the "Jeunesses Musicales".
Choirs from all over the world met up, and at some point we all were
hanging around in the old "amphithéâtre" in Vaison-la-Romaine --
I don't know for sure any more,
but we must have been 300-400 people at least, all in different choirs,
and we started to sing and sang songs to each other.
It was such an elevating feeling. Such an uplifting feeling.
All of this is Europe for me.
And Europe was increasingly taking form, coming together --
the Europe of nation states --
it went through crises, of course, and crisis became the norm.
But it kept on going, not least because
there were politicians, men and women,
who really cared about Europe, who really wanted to do something with it,
who really wanted to see progress.
1989 saw the giant opening -- It went on.
I will take a little break here to say:
Currently, we are in the biggest crisis, a giant crisis,
that might become so serious that we can't even imagine it.
My conviction is that the reason for this is that all these different nation states
that have come together
keep on legitimizing themselves in their own national frameworks,
and the politicians, men and women alike,
think they have to pander to those who elect them,
and only act as if it were all in their own particular national interest.
This is a tragic circumstance in the putting together of Europe.
And we are noticing this dilemma becoming more and more tangible.
This national legitimation is not limited to any particular state or states,
but Germany is charged with a particular responsibility right now.
And Germany, this contemporary Germany,
is nurturing the illusion of getting away with being the Isle of the Blessed,
without having to care about the others.
Without considering whether we are totally with them or not.
This is where we need to make a significant new start.
This won't be possible with the old design,
that much I can see already.
We will need a new design,
and this new design must realize
that we don't live in national opposition,
but realize that we have very different problems,
and that these problems must be solved across national borders.
So, the solution for the current crisis, which in first instance is economic,
that is national and has also become cultural,
must come from society,
as governments, legitimized through national elections,
are obviously not able to proceed without help from society.
They are not to be done away with.
I am not aware of an alternative to this political system,
but the way they run now,
head-on collisions are more likely than collaborative work effort.
And Germany is up against a particular responsibility here,
because we are still in an unusually strong economic situation,
and because we don't want to help,
because we don't want to help nationally, at national government level.
I'm really emphasizing this.
When the crisis started, we said --
and this was in concordance with the Maastricht Treaty --
that everybody has to solve their own problems:
"no bailing out".
But that's exactly what won't work.
We Germans will have to understand that the current crisis
has to be solved together, otherwise it won't work.
I have the feeling that we're making such a hard job of this
only because we're so well off.
One of the best-known political scientists
who, many years ago, taught at the Otto Suhr Institute in Berlin,
a Bohemian Jew who had to flee to America,
where he became a political scientist at Harvard,
said this around the middle of the last century:
"Power is the opportunity of not having to learn."
To phrase it rather more strongly:
"Power is the opportunity to remain stupid."
Right now, Germany -- and the German government --
considers itself powerful, and not in the need to learn.
But it will have to learn from those who have less power,
learn that we must stand together,
that we must work together on the problems.
Just as on the national level, where, when the financial problems started,
two government officials said,
"We guarantee that you'll be able to withdraw your money from your bank."
In truth, this statement had no substantial backing,
it was a sheer bluff.
But it was an effective and necessary bluff.
It was the only way to unwind the situation,
and this is just what we must do at European level.
And it will have to come from the people,
because the national governments can't do it on their own.
Everywhere, with all responsible parties that apply for election,
I'm observing that they clearly see what the situation is,
but they don't want to admit it, because they fear --
everybody knows that we are in a liability and transfer union,
everybody knows that --
but they are scared that if they actually say it,
they will be punished at the next election.
I personally believe they underestimate the population.
I believe that people are much too clever
to [not] notice what's going on, and that they are not so narrow-minded
and much more yielding, too,
if you explain to them what it's all about and what the possibilities are.
And this is what it's about now:
we have to organize this at society level.
This is what I mean by good governance,
the integration of Europe through good governance,
meaning, we'll have to complement the current governance,
the government system with its parliament and executive,
the government, the judiciary etc.
At society level, we have to gain a basic consensus
about how we proceed, transcending legislative terms of office,
transcending party rivalry, independent of
what an individual wants after an election.
This is our task and I believe we can do this.
There is a slew of potential projects,
and the best way to connect is through common projects.
We experience this in smaller and wider contexts.
Germany proclaimed a revolutionary energy initiative,
it's an enormous project and not at all easy to implement.
But it's impossible to do it without Europe.
In fact, it's impossible to do this without the world.
But we have every possibility because many looking at us who first say,
"They're crazy with this one",
but then they say,
"Well, maybe there might be something with those energy sources,
the sun and the wind, maybe they're a little expensive now,
but if we keep working at it,
then they might not be so expensive after all.
On the contrary, they'll be much cheaper", or so say the projections.
But right now, this is about reaching an agreement
between different protagonist groups, between different opposing positions,
between different interests.
Not enough of this is happening.
Partly, because in the one place
where this should be happening in our political system,
parliament, it is no longer debated.
Right now, we're really in luck;
the Federal Constitutional Court has declared
that it can't go on like that. Parliament has to be included.
Parliament is the place
where different positions are discussed,
and that makes a lot of sense.
This is not about fighting, it's not about creating a fuss,
it's not about any of this, it's about debate,
argumentative debate, giving us a chance
to get together and to find the best possible solution.
If we suppress public debate
about the route we should take,
we will end up with bad solutions.
This is past experience, which requires some expenditure of energy,
and the change that is necessary is not one
that can be introduced very quickly technologically,
but one that has to involve all of us.
So this energy revolution is, in a way,
a turn to a different resource for power, transport and warmth.
But also really a turn
to a new energy coming from society,
because energy is something -- and we've seen that in part --
is something emanating from all of us.
We will have to muster up a new energy with this energy revolution.
We must transcend borders and unite with others in Europe,
and beyond Europe, of course, and must consider this:
How can we all reach a point, using technological resources,
but also communication, generosity, and help,
where we can achieve this common project.
Myself, I've always been interested in Poland.
For Poland, it's very difficult right now to join this energy revolution,
for specific economic reasons.
We cannot use this to return to old prejudices,
something that's currently very fashionable
though almost unbearable to me, but we have to see
where interests lie, where the bottlenecks are
that must be overcome, and how we can help with that.
But it's also about communicating with our other neighbour, France,
for the French have an entirely different energy policy tradition.
Moving this common project further and showing
that the energy revolution is not just an isolated German phenomenon
but something that we can develop together with others
is a huge opportunity.
The same goes for all of our other challenges:
saving resources, stabilizing the climate,
but also the social security -- all of these are important points.
We cannot try and build a continent
with 50 % unemployment among young people in Spain, Italy and Greece.
That is not an option.
All of these are challenges.
Recently, somebody asked me
if Europe didn't maybe used to be a great thing,
but today it's become such a hassle,
that it might not be so popular any more.
I would say: Exactly the opposite is true.
Things that are fun and exciting
are just the ones that are also demanding.
I imagine a land of milk and honey a rather joyless, boring place.
What would there be to do?
Acquiring the effort necessary,
and overcoming the difficulties in our effort as a community,
is what will unite us, as will the arguments along the way.
This is why I plead for a change,
not just in energy policy, but also for a change in political culture,
a change to the political system that will make it more complete.
We should unite and say,
Stop this babble about some ever-so-unfair retirement provisions,
it's so much more complex than that.
This is not about opposing peoples.
It's about opposing lobbies.
Tax fraud happens in Germany, too,
not just in Greece,
though they're faced with an unhealthy extent of it,
but this is not just a Greek problem. It's our problem, too.
Keeping this in mind is very important for me.
Recalling the great values, the maxims, of Immanuel Kant,
that he defined for what he calls "common sense".
There are three of them, and they are so nice and short
that even I can remember them.
The first maxim is this: Think for yourself.
The second maxim: Always be in agreement with yourself;
don't go about saying that
that you don't care what you said yesterday.
You should remember what you said yesterday,
and while you don't have to always think and say the same, if you change your mind,
you must be able to explain it, and you must have a reason,
otherwise you'll be unreliable to others
and they won't understand your actions.
Reliability and trust are the most important glue in society.
And the third maxim: Think from everyone else's position,
put yourself in their place. This is the maxim of fairness.
And this one has been deficient in Europe for the past three or four years,
even prominent politicians have trodden on it in a way
that makes me ashamed.
Only if we take these three maxims seriously,
also the maxim of fairness, will we be able to progress.
Only if we place ourselves in the situation that exists
in Ireland, in Spain, in Italy, in Greece, and also in Poland,
will we be able to progress, and that might even be fun.
Yes, it will delight us.
For when we ask ourselves what delight actually means,
it's not delight if you just get anything you want.
It's delight if you get something from someone else,
motivated by a truly free, disinterested solidarity,
or if I give something to someone motivated by a truly free,
disinterested solidarity that is not self-serving.
Naturally, this doesn't mean we won't have to make calculations in politics,
of course we will have to.
I'm not a Utopian, I'm too old for that,
but bringing a little bit of this other element in is very, very important,
and I would like to plead for this. I think if we can do this,
if we can connect across the different political challenges,
will we be able to transform this old definition of power
that Karl Deutsch basically adopted, and not because he liked it,
but because he had observed it:
Power is the opportunity of not having to learn,
or power is, more strongly put, the opportunity to remain stupid.
We can change this into a new motto:
Power is the opportunity to advance something collectively.
This is Hannah Arendt's definition of power.
Even though she was never a feminist and even rejected the notion,
it might not be a feminine definition of power by accident:
advancing as a community, uniting instead of
working against others.
This is what it's about, and for this change
I would like to plead for an energy revolution from within.
(Applause)