Speech given by President Jean-Claude Juncker as part of the BDA (Confederation of German Employers' Associations) series ‘Social partners in dialogue'

President Kramer,

Mr Schmitz-Schwarzkopf — you're not the President, but you should be,

Steffen Kampeter,

Steffen, you've had to give so many eulogies to me that I'm delighted to be here, partly at your request. And I'm also pleased that you reminded us that I'm a Schwarzkopf Foundation Award winner. I greatly enjoyed hearing for a second time what you had to say. But that was a long time ago. I doubt that what you said then still holds true. The organisers have asked me to speak for no longer than 20 minutes. 20 minutes! That's the time it usually takes me to give the first part of the introduction of one of my speeches. But as you've quite deliberately disregarded my speaking habits, I can't give a speech on this occasion. I'll just have to say a few introductory words about European affairs instead.

And so I'll get straight to the point, without forgetting first to say that I'm pleased to be here this evening. People always say that. Usually it's not true. But this evening it is true, because Steffen is here and you are here. I'm happy to be here this evening and I'll say no more than I need to. Then afterwards we'll have a panel discussion.

People generally speak ill of Europe. Sometimes I do so myself. I know what's not going right in Europe. That's why I agreed to stand as the lead candidate for my party — the European People's Party — in the European elections. Because if I'd felt that everything was fine and rosy, then I'd have stayed at home in Luxembourg and not worried about European affairs. But because not everything was going right— not everything was going to plan — in Europe, I resolved to do something about it. And to take pleasure in doing so. I ran an election campaign — in March/April/May 2014 — in almost every country in Europe. And at some point, without wanting to get too dewy-eyed about it, I fell back in love with this European Union, with this continent.

There's something special about the European landscape. It changes every 150 kilometres. So you have to leave Luxembourg in order for the changes to become perceptible! But there's always something going on in Europe. The landscape has special characteristics. The people, who are shaped by their landscapes, have their own distinctive qualities. And actually I like this wealth of Europe. Because we're all Europeans, but we're very different and in fact don't know enough about one another. What do the Bavarians know about northern Lapland? Nothing. What do the Laplanders know about Saarland? Less than the Luxembourgers do. But sometimes we make out that we're not just similar, but almost identical, to one another. We're not, and that's what's so charming about this European Union and this continent. People speak ill of Europe, chancellors and prime ministers more than most. I was a prime minister for 19 years, so I know what I'm talking about. And in fact we don't know how to speak accurately and factually about the successes of Europe.

My father was a soldier in the Second World War — a German soldier at that. Because Hitler, in his continental wisdom, had decided that all male Luxembourgers born between 1920 and 1927 should be forcibly recruited to the Wehrmacht. I learnt at home, not by talking about it, but by listening to what my father told his brothers — there were four of them, brothers in arms. And the four brothers, all of whom came home wounded from the Second World War, said ‘Never again! Never again!'

It is one of the great successes of Europe that we — not the leaders of nations, but the nations themselves — have managed to build lasting peace in Europe. People are far too quick to forget that. And it is not the achievement of your generation or my generation. It is the achievement of the wartime generation. They were the ones who turned that longing for peace which follows every war into a political programme, the effects of which are being felt to this day. And, instead of getting bogged down in detail, we should be grateful for the legacy they have left us. The great achievement is theirs. We stand on the shoulders of giants. And we are very, very small when we compare ourselves to them.

Part of the European success story is also the fact that in the 1990s we managed to unite European history and geography. For the first time, there was unity, almost companionship, across the European continent, achieved without taking up arms. People, including in particular the people of Berlin, decided they would no longer endure history but would shape it. That is why, despite all the difficulties, I consider the expansion of the European Union into central and eastern Europe to be a success story. It is better to pay than fight each other! War costs more per day than the annual budget of the European Union. People therefore should not become fixated — as they sometimes do in Germany — on the idea of being net contributors to the European Union. We all enjoy the benefits of the European Union. There are no net contributors or net beneficiaries. Everyone is a net beneficiary in one way or another, something unheard of in the centuries before.

Along the way, we have managed to create a single currency for the European Union. Nobody thought we would succeed. Nor did we for that matter. German academics were not alone in their doubts. Doubts which they still have and which are in fact Germany's academic virtue. But the currency is working. Maybe not as I would have imagined. It isn't quite the integral, complete, all-encompassing currency that I thought would be needed for it to work. But it does work.

We have the largest internal market in the world, with 500 million people. Who else can say that? Do we even realise what we have? Do we realise what it is to have no more borders in Europe, neither for trade — although some do still exist — nor for travel? We move around Europe, thinking nothing of it, yet applaud those who call for national borders to be brought back. We should try closing all national borders for two days. Then people would understand what bringing back borders actually means. I remember what it was like — I'm giving away my age difference here! — When we travelled from Luxembourg to Trier - Germany's oldest city, for those who didn't know — we had to become smugglers. My mother used to stuff her bra half full with stockings to make the customs officers in Luxembourg and Germany think that she was better endowed than the average Luxembourgish woman. That's just a small detail. But no details are small. We were forced to spend one and a half hours waiting at the border. Look at Croatia and Slovenia. In Croatia, which is an external border as it is not yet part of the Schengen Area, the Croatians carry out border checks. Drivers have a five-hour wait at the border with Slovenia. I'm told the problem has been dealt with and the waiting time has been reduced to 15 minutes as this is what I wanted. Whether it is true or not, I cannot say. But we will find out soon enough.

The fact that this disjointed continent of Europe, so often inflicting torture on itself, has managed to eliminate borders is an incredible achievement. Nowhere else in the world has this been done. Quite the opposite in fact. Some people want to see border fences and walls again, restricting access at their own borders. This is no way to move forward. However, when arguing the case for Europe, we must not limit ourselves solely to matters of the past, even if the past could very quickly become a reality again. If we look to the immediate, direct periphery of the European Union, to Ukraine etc., warfare is not so far away. There are 60 wars ongoing in the world. They are not playing out on the European continent but are on our doorstep. They are still very much alive. We must be very careful.

As we are constantly being told, it is hard to get young people enthusiastic about Europe, and I can to some extent understand this, but we are not going to win them over by telling them tales from the past. The future is important. What is the future, Europe's future? We all have plenty to say about what is going on in the world. We lecture Africans, Asians and others on how a state should be run, and we forget to take a look at ourselves. If we look in the mirror, what do we see? We never see ourselves, because we never look. We look at others. We are the smallest continent. Many Europeans think we are lords of the world. We are not. The European Union weighs in with 5.5 million square kilometres, our neighbour Russia with 17.5 million. And then we tell the Russians how they should contribute to shaping the world's destiny. It would be a good thing for us to be a bit more modest. Yes, we have a strong economy. Depending how you measure it, we currently account for a quarter of global added value, although we should be aware that 80% of new value added is created outside the EU. In fifteen to twenty years we will only account for 15%. Since you have drawn our attention to the subject: in twenty years' time, not a single member of the EU will be a member of the G7. Thank goodness, we are the only ones who know. The others haven't found out yet that we are in decline — demographically speaking. Politics is where geography and demography intersect. At the beginning of the 20th century, Europeans made up 25% of the world's population. Now it is still 7%, but by the end of this century we will account for just 4% of 10 billion people. So anyone who thinks that, given these unalterable facts about our future, now is the time for u-turn back towards the nation state is making a fundamental mistake. If I were not from Luxembourg, I would warn against the dangers of small-state parochialism. And if we want to have influence in the world - not just for economic reasons but for cultural reasons and because of our values too — we must find the strength to come together and to achieve greater unity, and we must move faster than at present. Tasks for the future, yes. Europe is of the future. I take no comfort from the thought that Mr Trump, whom I recently had the chance to get to know — and he me— in Sicily, is helping us to get on better with each other. As Mr Kramer has rightly pointed out, Trump and Brexit are now realities, and have prompted many to think again about how and why we need the European Union, European integration. For the reasons I have given and for many other reasons. As we work to shape our future, we must take things resolutely in hand.

In digital terms, we have fallen behind other parts of the world. If, as the Commission has proposed, we really allow the digital single market to develop in a way that contributes, I hesitate to say to our happiness, but at least to our prosperity, then that is what will happen. If we fully implement what the Commission, with its insight on the subject, has proposed, the outcome will be €415 billion of added value for the European economy. 100,000 jobs a year. That is the future. The future does not lie with heavy industry. I am a big fan of the steel industry — my father was a steel worker. We must do much more to defend the European steel industry than we are doing at present. But steel is not the future. Blast furnaces cannot build that future. That future is digital, and we have to recognise it and take that road.

Similarly, we must bridge the investment gap that Europe now has. We are still lagging behind the level of investment we had in 2007, the year before the crisis. That is why we launched a European investment plan. This was dubbed the Juncker plan, because many thought it would come to nothing. They therefore wanted to pre-ordain the culprit behind the catastrophe. Now it is up and running, under the name of the European Fund for Strategic Investments. But it amounts to the same thing. To date we have managed to unlock €194 billion and create 200,000 jobs within the space of 18 months. We must continue with these investment initiatives, and this country also needs more investment. On my way out of a meeting with the Federal Minister for Finance, I heard that the construction industry for example was saying: please, no more orders, because we do not have enough workers. To my mind this is complete nonsense. In that case they should hire more workers. If the work is there, and the work has to be done, we should therefore be hiring enough people to get it done. In Europe, things are going a lot better than people think. Growth rates are rising. Not by enough, however, and still meagre so to speak. Unemployment is falling — 232 million Europeans are in work. The employment rate in Europe has never been higher. Unemployment is still unacceptably high. But things are changing, and firms are hiring once again. People are returning to work and we need to support that process.

Just as we also need to work more on the Europe of Defence. As a Luxembourger, I am not really a currency and military specialist. Luxembourg has an army of 771 men, the Defence Minister included. In other words, Luxembourg's contribution to strategic balances and imbalances on the European continent and in transatlantic relations has always been modest. But still, we have an opportunity. By which I mean Europe, not Luxembourg. I have repeatedly told Putin: why has Luxembourg still not attacked Russia? He couldn't comprehend it either. So I explained it to him. We do not have enough space to accommodate the prisoners, of war and that's why we have never gone through with it! In Europe there are 178 weapons systems — 80 % of military procurement takes place nationally. The Germans buy weapons in Germany. The French in France. The British in the United Kingdom. If we had sense — and sense is a virtue that is spread very unevenly around Europe; just as common sense — we would address the issue. 178 weapons systems in Europe compared to 30 weapons systems in the United States. The US defence budget is double that of Europe's, so we should at least be 50% as efficient. We only achieve 15%, because we do things on such a small scale. So the Europe of Defence — without wishing now to militarise Europe, which really isn't my thing — also needs to be pursued more sensibly.

We need to get a grip on matters so that we can talk to the United States on an equal footing. I am a transatlanticist. But if the US president announces in the next few hours or days that he is withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, Europe would then have a duty to say: that's simply not on. Not only is the future of humanity in Europe at stake, but above all the future of humanity everywhere. 83 islands are in danger of vanishing off the face of the Earth if we do not act resolutely to combat climate change. The climate agreement clearly states that it will take three or four years from its entry into force in November 2016 to get out of it. So this idea of ‘America first' — and now I shall go into hiding — is not going to happen. We tried to impress this on the US president in no uncertain terms in Taormina. Our efforts, it seems, were in vain, but the law is the law. And everyone must abide by it. Not everything in law and international agreements is fake news. They have to be complied with.

I would also like to say that we in the Commission are very keen to continue with the Erasmus Programmes. This year, we celebrated 30 years of Erasmus — Erasmus and Erasmus+. Nine million young Europeans have taken part in these Programmes. And many of them have fallen in love: according to unofficial estimates, a million children have been born thanks to the scheme. And I am all in favour of these continental love affairs, so we will be taking the Programme forward, and lowering the age limit for participating. I would also like 15, 16 and 17-year-old secondary school pupils to take part — of course, they don't have to make babies right away — well they can try, but that is not our objective! It is simply nonsense to think that only those with a bucket load of degrees can take part. No. Younger people should be travelling too, getting to know Europe, falling in love in Europe, and not just with their compatriots, but with their European neighbours too. We are putting huge efforts into this. We have also increased the budget for the Erasmus Programmes — as Günther Oettinger has just been telling us. I think there are worse things we could be doing than funding programmes for the benefit of young Europeans — and indeed for European integration — because a German, not just a Bavarian, but any German who goes and studies in Portugal sees Europe from a different perspective than one who has only ever lived and worked in Bavaria or Berlin.

That is why I think we need to rediscover a particular European virtue: that of solidarity. In the last few years it has pained me to see that many people in Europe think that the refugee problem is a problem for the Germans, the Italians and the Greeks to deal with. That is not the case. When refugees arrive in Greece or in Germany, it is not only a German or Greek problem — it is a European problem. And I have nothing but praise for those Germans, particularly young Germans, for the commitment they showed in 2015 when they offered a peaceful and friendly welcome to unfortunate people from another part of the world. And our efforts to redistribute the volume of refugees — and please forgive me that ghastly expression — among all European countries will continue uninterrupted in the coming years.

I would also like lots of young people to get involved in something I suggested in my State of the Union address before the European Parliament in September 2016, and which went largely unnoticed by the general public. I am referring here to the establishment of a European Voluntary Service. 30,000 young people have already said that they want to get involved. And that is like the Erasmus Programme, hinged on the idea of continental solidarity. I would be delighted to see as many people as possible taking part.

Steffen, I'm now going to turn to the social union. We in the European Commission made a suggestion that did not go down well with all employers here in Germany, i.e. that we need to complement economic and monetary union — the European Union per se — with something that is partially lacking, namely the social pillar. I firmly believe — and not just because I was Employment Minister for 17 years — that we will not get the people of Europe onside if the only thing we talk about is the euro, the Central Bank, Draghi, Juncker, etc., etc. No! We also need to deal with the social dimension so that people realise that it matters to us. That is why we proposed the European Social Pillar, which is now taking shape. But when Europe no longer enjoys the support of its workforce, then it is time to shut up shop. What we do is all about people. It is also about working people. But it is not just employees that work; small businesses work too. And, incidentally, the German small business sector should not get too excited about the scrapping of the master craftsman's qualification, because that was most certainly not provided for in the Services Directive. You issued press releases on the matter but you should have saved yourselves the bother because the Directive makes no provision for anything of the sort. I attach great importance to the quality of dual training in Germany and also to the master craftsman's qualification. I am only bringing this up because the same rules apply in Luxembourg — yet another argument for supporting Germans on the issue.

So, basically what I want to say here is ‘stay true to Europe!'.

SPEECH/17/1492