Foreign Affairs Committee
Oral evidence: Joint session with the German Foreign Affairs Committee, HC 668
Tuesday 13 October 2026
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 13 October 2026.
Members present: Emily Thornberry (Chair); Fleur Anderson; Alex Ballinger; Aphra Brandreth; Dan Carden; Abtisam Mohamed; and Edward Morello.
German Foreign Affairs Committee Members present: Armin Laschet (Chair) (CDU/CSU); Adis Ahmetovic (SPD); Jürgen Hardt (CDU/CSU); Stefan Keuter (AfD); Stephan Mayer (CDU/CSU); Lea Reisner (Die LINKE); and Awet Tesfaieses (Green Party).
Questions 1 to 14
Examination of Members of the Bundestag Foreign Affairs Committee
Chair: Good morning—or guten Morgen—to our guests. Today, the UK Foreign Affairs Committee is holding its first joint session with our sister Committee from the German Bundestag. We have visited you, and we are so pleased that you accepted the invitation to come back for this joint session.
This session is against the background of the Kensington Treaty, which sets out co-operation between the UK and Germany and was formally ratified last week when the Prime Minister visited the German Chancellor. Both our Committees will hold our Governments to account when it comes to delivering on that treaty, but it is also important for parliamentarians to come together to discuss our priorities and understand where we have concerns or where we can point out best practice to ensure that our relationship is as good as it can be. We all have a role to play in that. We want to have a closer relationship with our European partners. Germany is and always has been a key ally in so many areas. We want to talk about many of those today.
Before we start, I will hand over to my opposite number, Armin Laschet, Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Bundestag.
Armin Laschet: Thank you very much again for the invitation. It is an important time to exchange views, even on the parliamentarian level, because Parliaments have different political parties and different political positions.
The Government always acts officially for the state, but the debate across the party lines is something our Committees practise every week. Therefore, it is good to discuss not only in your own country, but with important partners. That was the idea of the Kensington Treaty: to not only bring Governments together in different fields, but to have a parliamentarian dimension. Therefore, we are happy to discuss Ukraine, the economy, competitiveness between the European Union and Great Britain and the future of our relations.
Chair: We will start with the Kensington Treaty.
Q1 Fleur Anderson: Thank you for coming to the UK Parliament and meeting the Committee. This is an historic occasion. We are doing this the week after our leaders met to talk about the Kensington Treaty. I look forward to working together as Parliaments, as the Chair said, to scrutinise our Governments’ delivery on this treaty, which was agreed by both our Parliaments. The Bundestag voted to agree to it and it was presented to our Parliament on 7 January. We have spent a long time creating this and talking together.
There are many different aspects, from defence and security to economic growth, resilient societies, climate and agriculture, and further co-operation. As Committee members, which aspects of the treaty do you think are important to highlight? For example, I am very interested to see visa-free school trips being delivered, so that our young people, including my young people in Putney and young people from Germany, can visit each other’s countries from a young age and learn about each other, as well as the very big issues of defence, security, migration and environment. Which aspects of the treaty do you want to see action on in particular?
Awet Tesfaieses: We had that conversation yesterday in a meeting. It is a really important aspect. I was here as a young person, because in my school, when you are in the last grade, you always come to London. I do not know if it is still like that after Brexit, but when I grew up, it was like that. That is so important because of the memories. It is a special relationship because if you are in a country in your young years, you have certain associations. That is so important for a relationship between two countries because these memories go on.
For me, to be honest, being here, in a different setting now, is also sad because I feel like Britain is not so close as it used to be. It all has to do with the memories you have as young children. That is something we are losing, so I totally agree with what you said. This is really what we need, beside all the economics and the other stuff: we need people to get closer, and this is a good way to achieve that.
Jürgen Hardt: I am Jürgen Hardt from the CDU party—the foreign affairs spokesperson. When we had a debate in the Deutscher Bundestag after the Brexit decision—we regret but also accept the decision of the UK—some of us mentioned that the next thing we need is a friendship treaty between the UK and Germany. Fortunately, this Kensington Treaty is what we wanted, with a strong pillar for Government co-operation, but also for parliamentarian co-operation and some in civil society.
Concerning youth exchange, I remember debates in the last years about the problems school classes from Germany had when travelling to the UK, because of the obligation to have a passport. It was maybe not an unsolvable hurdle but, for a teacher who has 25 students, I am sure that one student will not have a passport in the morning when they start to travel, and they will therefore decide not to go to London but to Vienna, for example.
I have now learned that we have a new procedure on that: we have a list concept where students are put on a list, and the list as a whole is enough to travel to the UK. That is what I have learned, but I will go back and ask people who are doing that in practice if it works in an unbureaucratic way. That is one of the small practical problems we have with Brexit that we have to overcome to make it as it was before for our people.
Q2 Fleur Anderson: Do any other Members want to highlight any other issues?
Stephan Mayer: First, I want to underline that the best way to enhance the relationship between two countries is to bring the youth of the two countries together. I think that we should elaborate very much on extending and intensifying the youth exchange between the UK and Germany. It is certainly a tremendous advantage that it is not necessary any more to have the passport of every pupil who wants to travel to the UK, because you can now make a summary list.
On the other hand, I would recommend that we go even further. We have quite experienced programmes with the US, for instance. We have an exchange programme with the US Congress, and it would be worth thinking about establishing a small programme between the UK and Germany that is comparable to that parliamentarian partnership programme with the US Congress. That is one idea.
Another idea I would like to advocate for is establishing British-German youth work. We established the first one in 1963 with France, and that is certainly the biggest one. We also have other ones with Poland, Hungary and Greece, for instance. That is my second idea, and I am very ambitious in advocating for that. I would suggest starting with a small programme to establish British-German youth work, comparable to the French one and the Greek one.
Those are two ideas to intensify the youth exchange between our two countries. I am deeply convinced that this is by far the most important pillar of creating an understanding of the other people and the other country.
Q3 Fleur Anderson: They are great challenges to us. I hope that someone listening to this will hear that idea and take up the challenge to set up that kind of programme. The treaty is established, but it is over to us to come up with ideas for what we do with it.
Mr Keuter, your party did not vote for this. Could you elaborate on the reasons why and what you will be looking for from the treaty now it is established?
Stefan Keuter: There are some aspects of the treaty we don’t agree with. In general, we support a very strong co-operation between our countries, Great Britain and Germany. Youth exchange is very important, and I once more congratulate you on stepping out of the European Union. We are the biggest Opposition party in Germany, and we want to reform the EU. You are lucky that you made it out, and I am quite interested in the situation in your country regarding perhaps rejoining the EU.
I had a very interesting talk yesterday with a taxi driver on the way to London from the airport. We had quite a discussion about what we expect from the EU and what it brings to the people. He said he is very happy that the country made it out of the EU, but that there are movements, under the new Prime Minister, to rejoin or to get closer in co-operation. For you, it is an internal aspect, but for us, it is foreign affairs, so perhaps you can give us some information about the situation in Great Britain.
Fleur Anderson: You give a perfect example of how we can differ in our views, and of how this cross-party work is important. The Prime Minister gave a statement yesterday on the international work that he is doing and on greater co-operation with the European Union, with this treaty being an example of that. I think there is a very live discussion in this country now about the effects of Brexit on people in our constituencies, who are bearing that cost of living difference. We want to see an open conversation about how our country and Germany can thrive—and we can do that together.
Q4 Armin Laschet: What aspects of the treaty are a problem?
Stefan Keuter: There are too many aspects, so I did not read it personally, but we got recommendations from the people who worked on this. They said that, in general, it is good, but there are some aspects they cannot agree with.
Q5 Chair: Can you give us an example?
Stefan Keuter: I was not in Parliament yesterday, or last week, so I am not very familiar with this one. I have been to the IPU, to the main assembly. I have not been in Parliament, so please do not ask me about the topics themselves.
Q6 Fleur Anderson: How will you, as the Foreign Affairs Committee, be scrutinising the treaty? It has 17 lighthouse projects, so it is quite ambitious. We will be thinking about how we can scrutinise it as well.
Armin Laschet: The treaty is very young. The Committee has meetings every two weeks for hours, and every political group has the opportunity to bring issues to the agenda. As you can imagine, we are not speaking about friendly topics, or of our friends and partners. We only discuss crises every session—Iran, the Middle East, Gaza, Venezuela, Greenland, Ukraine, Russia—you name it. Sometimes we also discuss the forgotten conflicts such as Ethiopia, Sudan and Africa.
We did not discuss the treaty in the Committee, but I think we will check it once, probably one year after the signing, to see where we stand and what we have to work on. Of course, the other Committees discuss it too—it is not only the Foreign Affairs Committee. We will have a broad discussion in the different Committees about the issues of the treaty.
To compare, we do not discuss the Élysée Treaty with France because it was signed in 1963. The new treaty is the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle—the Treaty of Aachen—of 2019. There we have a German-French assembly. At every meeting, we look at how we stand, what has been implemented and what has not. They are working very closely to the treaty. That is probably what we should do with the Kensington Treaty, as well as follow the discussions.
Jürgen Hardt: We could probably do that together. Before we meet next time, every member of your Foreign Affairs Committee and our Foreign Affairs Committee could put topics on the agenda—for example, what is the status of youth exchange, military co-operation and so on. Then we can concentrate on Kensington Treaty issues in one of our next meetings. That is just a proposal from me—it is not yet communicated to my colleagues.
Q7 Edward Morello: Some of your members have already mentioned the dreaded Brexit word. The Prime Minister met your Chancellor last Wednesday. At the time, he said he wants to bring the UK closer to Europe. Yesterday, the Prime Minister made an announcement in Parliament about the upcoming UK-EU summit on 20 November, outlining the Government’s ambition for the areas of co-operation or agreement and the treaties that might be agreed.
We had a very public statement last week from the French Finance Minister about a desire for the UK to be back in the EU. The Kensington Treaty is a wonderful example of bilateral co-operation in a number of areas. I wonder what the view is in Germany, and whether your members can give us the view in Germany on the UK’s opportunity with the EU for closer relations—whether or not full membership again is a potential option or whether there are other areas where, at a supranational level, the EU and the UK should be co-operating more.
Chair: We are not avoiding answering the question that Stefan asked us. Around this table, there will be different views. We are perfectly happy to exchange views on what we believe our constituents think—they will all be slightly different. But we would also be very interested to hear what the German point of view is.
Armin Laschet: First of all, it depends on the political position. Our colleague from the AfD said he is happy that Brexit was successful and congratulated you—I wouldn’t. I would have a different position. His party is against supporting Ukraine any longer. The Left party is against weapons delivery to Ukraine. We have different political positions.
In the situation we are in, we need practical answers. Of course, since Brexit, Germany and Europe have never worked so closely with the United Kingdom, even in the time before Brexit, because security co-operation is so close because we have to react to an aggressor. Before 2016, we did not have that situation. We have to develop the possibility to work with the E3 format, or with other formats, and to work closely with our non-EU European members like Norway, Turkey and the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom is, of course, the important one. That’s No. 1.
No. 2, economically, if we argue you are out, you are out and you are a third state like China and Zimbabwe. Okay, we can argue that, but it is a problem, because we have close co-operation between our industries. We have BMW or others who produce in the United Kingdom. If you say you are a third country, you are out, and we have nothing to do with you—we say buy only European products. That would damage ourselves and damage Great Britain.
We therefore need, before the European Council summit meets, an answer that Great Britain is something other than Zimbabwe and China—that we want Great Britain to be in very close economic co-operation to the single market. Now you can name it along with three, four, five or six other issues and then, at the end, you decide whether or not you want to join the European Union again. But if you are out, we need ways to co-operate with this important European state, which, at the moment, is not in the Union.
Adis Ahmetovic: Thank you, Chair, for being here and for having us. We also thank the ambassador for their invitation.
I want to be clear: sometimes in life you need to break to know why it is better to be in unity—why it is better to be together than to be divorced. I am sure that this break is not the worst thing. After 10 years, you have to ask yourself, and we as Germany and the European Union also have to ask ourselves, is life better after Brexit or not? From the perspective of foreign affairs and defence, it is not.
This century started with the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Then you decided to go out of the European Union. In 2022, we had Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine. We have had the Hamas terror attack of 7 October 2023 and then the very horrible war in Gaza. We also have an unstable situation in the western Balkans—in Bosnia, Kosovo and North Macedonia.
If you look at all these conflicts around the world, is it possible that Great Britain can solve these problems alone? No, you cannot. Do we, as Germany, have the power to find a solution for all these conflicts? No, we do not. Is it possible for France, Great Britain and Germany to find a solution? Maybe, yes. But we are still not at the table; we are not at the table together to find a solution for the Gaza conflict and war, and we are not at the table to find a solution and a way out of the war in Ukraine. Is this the position and role that we want to have in this chaotic world and in this terrible current situation?
It is your decision, but I am really sure that if your country, your society and your Government—I am a full supporter of your Government because I am officially a social democrat, and I am very happy about your new Prime Minister, who is doing a brilliant job, as is your Foreign Affairs Minister, who made a wonderful speech in Liverpool—decide to go back to the European Union and be a full member, my society, the majority in Germany, will love to see it.
As the Social Democratic party’s spokesperson for foreign affairs, I am so full of passion for the UK. I also want to share my experience. In 2008, I could not have imagined visiting the UK, and especially Leeds, but my school had an exchange programme with a grammar school in Leeds. Those 14 days in Leeds and four in London gave me a passion and love of the UK—despite David Beckham and his free kicks, it was still a special moment for me.
We have so much potential on so many different levels that every one of us should ask, is Brexit the best answer 10 years later? What is better now? I think that we should work for a reunion between the UK and the European Union. My party totally disagrees with the political position of Stefan Keuter, but agrees totally with this idea of Stephan Mayer’s to see how we can work on good, concrete ideas for both our societies, which we, as foreign affairs politicians, can win sympathy for in those societies—because we also want to be re-elected. I think the young people in your constituency, like those in my constituency, would support us if we were working on more mobility between the youth. I am really sure about that. It is not a question of us losing trust; I think we will win new trust, so I express full support for it.
Q8 Dan Carden: It is wonderful to have our guests here today. Can I welcome all of you? My name is Dan Carden. I am a Member of Parliament for Liverpool—a Labour MP. I want just to respond to a few points and ask perhaps a fairly general question.
The Prime Minister has set out his ambition to secure a relationship with the EU that takes us forward, and I think he is doing that on the basis of trying to smooth out economic restrictions that still exist, to try to make sure that we are doing as much as possible to encourage growth in the UK economy and for all economies across the EU, but also to do it in a way that is respectful of the result that was given in 2016. We are thinking about the relationships, especially in security and defence, between the UK and our European allies, and you have said that they have never been stronger than they are today. And there are plenty of ways, whether it is the E3 or the Kensington Treaty, to build the bilateral and minilateral relationships involving our two countries.
For me, there is a frustration, when we look at agreements like SAFE, that the UK was almost past the line and then it was kept out of SAFE by the European Union, by the Commission. I wonder whether the parliamentary dialogue that we have, in Germany and in other European states, can be focused on making sure that the relationship we have right now, post Brexit, with the EU meets the challenges of the security issues that we face, and that we are working together as efficiently and effectively as possible until a pragmatic settlement is reached in the future.
Armin Laschet: You described this as well. The world has changed since 2016. I was in the European Parliament from 1999 to 2005. When the first Brexit debate started, Nigel Farage was a colleague in the Parliament, and every week he said, “This is too much superpower for Brussels; we need more decisions in our country—in London, in Westminster.” This was the debate, but today we have a completely other situation. We have the competition with China. The German Chancellor and Macron wrote to the Commission to say, “Let’s change the strategy towards China and fight for fair conditions with this superpower.” Every one of the 27 member states is too weak to implement this; you need the whole power of the single market to show China, “If you do this, we will react like that.” This is one thing.
The second thing is Russia. Of course, we can only work together. We support Ukraine, and the support is broader than only the European Union. We are with our NATO allies in Europe, and of course Canada, and sometimes the United States. So this is, again, an answer.
On foreign policy, somebody mentioned Gaza—Adis mentioned Gaza and Iran. We, as Germans, are completely out. In relation to Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, you are a little bit active with France, but Germany is completely out. In relation to the Middle East, Israel/Palestine, in the 2000s we had the Quartet; there was a role for Europe, together with Russia, the United Nations and the US. We started to build up the Palestinian Authority. There was the Barcelona process. There was a lot of movement. Today, we are completely out. Nobody asks us. There is Trump’s Board of Peace, and Great Britain and Europe—the EU—are out.
The third thing is very new. We have competition with our friends in the US. The tariffs against the European Union member states were stopped only because we had the power of 450 million people, with a single market, to answer Trump: “If you do this with tariffs against us, we will answer with special methods.” If there were no single market, it would be easy for him to punish Spain, this country or that country. But now he knows that you can only interact with the European Union as a whole and that we are stronger than every nation state.
Therefore, Farage’s theory was wrong—giving power to the nation state. The answer is the nation state is weaker; your country is weaker and your population, and the consequences are worse than they would be as a member of the European Union.
Jürgen Hardt: I think this is the core of the challenge: some think that if you hand over sovereignty over your national responsibility to another body like the European Union, you will lose control. But the contrary is true: if you do it in a good way, you can make much bigger leverage on your interest and sovereignty.
After Trump won, four weeks after the inauguration, I was in the White House talking to the deputy chief of staff, and he told me, “We don’t want to have a trade agreement with that European Union; we want to have a trade agreement with you—Germany.” My answer was, “We have no sovereignty in trade. The Trade Minister of Germany is Madam Malmström, the Commissioner for Trade in the European Union.” He looked at me as if I was foolish, but I explained that because we have all foreign trade issues together in one box, and consensus in the Commission and the Council on how to handle that, we are much stronger. That is also true of the success story of the trade agreement with Canada and now with India—and before with Indonesia and others. We match our power. This is what I would like to mention on that point.
My second point is answering your question concerning SAFE and so on. From my point of view, security in Europe is unthinkable without the UK. That is due not only to NATO, but also to the capabilities of British industry to produce high-quality, effective and cost-efficient military goods. The German Government and I personally—and, I think, the majority of Parliament—were in favour of integration. Unfortunately, the negotiations went in the wrong direction, with an unsuccessful result.
We have a new discussion now on the question of how to spend the £90 billion for Ukraine, and I hope—and promote—that the UK is allowed to participate in that. Probably out of the positive results of that, we can come back to the question, “What about SAFE?”. For me, it is necessary that not only Canada and other NATO partners but also the UK are part of our common procurement in military goods.
Q9 Aphra Brandreth: Thank you for being here. I really welcome this discussion. As you can imagine, there are a range of views around this table about whether the UK should be in the European Union or not, just like there is a huge range of views across the country.
My concern is that, in the UK, we have spent many, many years debating and discussing this, and we have had a referendum, a democratic vote, and a result from that referendum. While I think all of us want to make sure that we have strong collaboration with Germany and other countries in the EU, I am concerned that reopening this debate is potentially going to hold us back from being able to find areas where we can unite and work collaboratively together. So this is obviously an important issue, and I understand why everybody raises it, but I think many people are concerned about going back into those years of disagreements that we had from people with a range of views across the country.
I would like to focus, if possible, on areas where we are already working collaboratively together or feel we could work bilaterally or multilaterally more closely together, particularly around security. We talked about the importance of some of the really challenging conflicts that are happening around the world at the moment. I want to touch briefly on Iran and the actions of the Iranians and the Houthis, and the challenges for energy security. What more could we all do to try to improve energy security and work in that area to improve things for all our constituents, in the UK and in Germany?
Stefan Keuter: Again, this is an Opposition opinion, but we want to go back to Russian oil and gas because it is cheap, it is reliable and it is enough. We have big problems with high energy prices—for petrol, for example—in Germany. People really feel the problem, so we have to solve it, and saying, “We don’t want to buy from Russia,” is, from our perspective, the wrong way to do that. We would go back to that reliable supply. If we look at the negotiations between Russia and the United States, the US will probably buy the Nordstream pipelines. Then, we will have Russian gas again but will buy it not from Russia but from the US. We could buy it directly.
Q10 Chair: What happens to Ukraine if you do that?
Stefan Keuter: You are changing the topic now, but our opinion is that this is not our war. The war did not start with Russia invading Ukraine—we totally do not agree with that, so that is a problem we have to solve. If you look at the Ukraine conflict, it started long ago: we had the Minsk negotiations and there were results, but Ukraine did not stick to this.
Q11 Chair: So it is Ukraine’s fault?
Stefan Keuter: No, it is not Ukraine’s fault—listen to me.
Chair: I am listening.
Stefan Keuter: The conflict started earlier. You know the results of the Minsk negotiations. Ukraine did not hold the elections on where they wanted to belong to and did not stick to the agreements they made with Russia. That pushed Russia into an inconvenient situation. We do not agree with the war at all, but we do say that the conflict started a bit earlier and is not just between Ukraine and Russia, but a geopolitical topic.
Q12 Chair: Was Germany not one of the guarantors of Minsk? You were involved to that extent, but with the war going on, it is “not your war” when it comes to buying Russian oil and gas?
Stefan Keuter: The former German Chancellor, Mrs Merkel, said that the Minsk negotiations took so long because we wanted to buy time for Ukraine to arm themselves. That is not really what we are looking for in fair negotiations and when finding solutions that all parties can live with.
Armin Laschet: Ms Reisner from the Left party.
Lea Reisner: Thank you. First, I apologise; there are also different Opposition opinions in this room. Coming back to your question about energy security, right now, there is a gap and a lack of a topic in our discussions about defence and security, and I believe that that is climate change. We have to tackle that and to work together more closely to do that, because we can only react to that topic if we do so very closely in partnerships. Investing and building renewable energies would be the best way to tackle the issues we have right now, with the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz and the war in Ukraine, which obviously was started by Russia. It is important to work together on those topics as well.
Carney’s speech at the Davos forum stuck with me, and it is something we can keep in mind when working on topics like the Kensington Treaty. Middle powers could unite, not to become another superpower but to use the leverage to change the world so that it becomes a better place: to tackle climate change, make the United Nations great again—please!—and defend international laws on any and every front. We should also keep this in mind when discussing issues of security. The topic of security and defence is not only about having more arms and weapons to be ready to defend—although I am not arguing against that right now. There needs to be another layer as well that we should also tackle and work on together.
Chair: I also wanted to say this. I speak on behalf of some members of this Committee, but definitely not all of them, when I say that many of us believe Brexit was a mistake, as do our constituents. While it was extremely painful to go through the referendum and all the arguing and so on, that should not be a reason for us simply to say that we have to stay in this mistake when it is not to the advantage of our country—our small businesses, our young people, our security.
Aphra will not agree with this, and there are other members of the Committee who will not agree with it, but the Prime Minister has talked about the need to make amendments to the agreement. We have to remember that it was signed by Boris Johnson on Christmas eve, so, even if you did not know any of the details, you would know it was likely that there might be some mistakes in it. Repairing those is important, but the PM has gone further, I think, and said, “We need to think about how much further we want to go, and we will be led by the public.”
There is no avoiding it: we will be discussing this, and we need to work out the best way forward. It may well be that some people say, “I really don’t want to discuss Brexit ever again. It was too painful, and it is too close. I don’t ever want to do it; I just want to stay with what we have.” But there will be others—and, certainly in my constituency, it will be the vast majority—who will say, “This was a mistake. We want to leave it behind and join the other countries that are very like us in terms of size, attitude, economy and geography. We will be safer close to them, and we want to be back in the European Union.”
There will be a debate—we cannot avoid it. How that is resolved, I don’t yet know, because we are in the early stages, but we as a country need to remember that this is not just a debate among ourselves. We cannot spend all our time debating among ourselves without bringing in the European Union, as we did on some other aspects. For example, in some of our debates about repairing some of the more obvious damage of Brexit—for example, as Dan has already mentioned, on SAFE—we have a debate among ourselves and then we come to the European Union and the European Union says no.
That has been quite difficult for us, because over a period of two years we have had this debate going on, and we are yet to have any particular advantages in terms of what we have had back from the European Union. We hope that the summit in November will be the beginning a warming of relationships but will also deliver tangible results that we can show the British people and say, “This is to your advantage if we become closer to the European Union. Now we have done this, do you feel confident to move forward and continue to move closer?”
I don’t know. I thought it was right to make that contribution; as I say, I appreciate that it is not representative of everybody, but I think it is representative of quite a large number of politicians.
Jürgen Hardt: The decision was as it is. We have to accept the sovereignty of the British people—the people of the UK. We may regret it, but it is a fact. We all know that we can co-operate closely, both bilaterally and between the European Union and the UK, even in the situation we are in now.
My prognosis for the future is that the further we go with co-operation, the more we will come to points where the British people see that they should follow the regulations of the European Union—for example, to enter parts of the single market, you have to accept a set of regulations of the European Union—but that it is only the second-best option to be obliged to follow those regulations without participating in the regulation-making process of the European Union, with a commissioner, a seat on the Council, staffers in the Brussels bureaucracy and Members in the Parliament.
In the end, if there is very close co-operation between the UK and the European Union—something like it would be if the UK were still a member—the House of Commons will probably have to take decisions once a week on a list of 10 different topics, where you can only say yes or no to the 27’s change of directive on chemical products, for example, because otherwise you are not allowed to participate in the single market.
People in the UK—not only politicians but those in the industry—would ask, “Okay, isn’t the better option to be part of the decision-making process in Europe to come to better results?” This is something that should be experienced in the next years. We will probably also see fields where this is not necessary. In the end, our hearts are open for your rejoining the European Union, but you have to decide.
Q13 Chair: We have a little example: plastic bottles. When you take the cap off, it sticks to the top, right?
Jürgen Hardt: Yes, in the hotel I saw it was not like it is in Europe.
Chair: But the vast majority of our plastic bottles do that now, not because we have been involved in a discussion about that but because that is what they are doing in Europe.
The companies in the UK that want to export to the European Union, without any discussion, have to stick to those rules, and we end up being subject to those rules too, without it ever being discussed in Parliament or anywhere else. If you want to export to the European Union, you have to abide by those rules. Small businesses, in particular, cannot do two versions; they are too small, so it is easier to simply abide by European Union rules. It seems to me that, as you say, that will become increasingly self-evident.
Q14 Alex Ballinger: Welcome. I represent a seat that voted quite heavily to leave the European Union. I did not support that decision, but it is worth pointing it out. There was a big discussion about exactly what you are talking about, Jürgen Hardt: the UK having sovereignty and being able to design and produce goods in our own way, and not being stuck with the strictures of the European market and the challenges that that brought.
Ten years on, you can probably count on a hand or two the number of goods that have changed, for exactly the reason that you spoke about. Businesses in my constituency and all across the west midlands are having enormous problems exporting to the European Union. In some cases, for the same people who thought this was actually a very sensible thing to do, the demonstration of the past 10 years has been that it has been really economically damaging and unhelpful. There are also barriers, of course, that have been put up by the European Union; the steel tariffs are another one, as well as SAFE, which have been particularly difficult.
I want quickly to come back to Ukraine. While there are differences among the Committee on our relationship with the European Union, I think there are no differences on our relationship with Ukraine. The UK is very united in supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression, we are very united in providing military and financial support, and we want to give frozen assets and the like. I am interested in hearing from the dissenting voices on the Committee—Stefan has already spoken, but perhaps we could hear from the left wing—why there is a different position in Germany and why the German public, from your perspective, feel that the threat of the Russians does not require that level of military support and co-operation.
Lea Reisner: Thank you for the question. In my party there is a debate around that topic. A lot of things that we always believed in rapidly changed in 2022 at the latest; some of it started in 2014. It would be a bit too easy to say that we do not support Ukraine; I do not believe that that is true. We just think after five years of war that, as I touched on before, we are missing a part of the discussion that we believe is necessary as well, which is the topic of how to end the war.
We all know that this will happen at a negotiating table, and we believe that we are not talking enough about how to get to that negotiating table. We know that Germany, especially, and probably the UK, will not be able to mediate the discussions, because we are way too far in, but we have a responsibility to look for people or countries to act as mediators and do the negotiation to bring this war to an end, because it is five years in.
I have been to Ukraine and talk to Ukrainian people a lot—I am in touch with a healthcare union in Ukraine—so it is not like this is foreign to me. I do see how people in Ukraine are suffering under this war. It is war of aggression started by Russia; Russia could stop it today if they would take out their troops. There is 1,000% agreement on that; it is just not happening by our wishing for it. I believe we have to work for it to come to an end.
We believe that we are not talking about this part of the topic enough. We are talking a lot about defence. We talk a lot about weapons and about this system and the other, and then Ukraine can stop Putin, and so on. We have been doing that for five years. I just believe that we have to talk about this other side as well. That is why we are trying to talk about that, and not so much about the other things, because they are talked about enough. That is our position.
I believe, importantly, that Ukrainian sovereignty is not only threatened by Russia right now but also by the US and what they are doing, selling out and making deals on rare earths and so on. The European Union, Germany and so on should not support that—seeing Ukraine as a place for big investment and not as a place where people are suffering under a war—so that Ukrainian sovereignty is upheld on all fronts.
Armin Laschet: May I try to describe the differences between the parties, and even in Government in some discussions? You described the Left party’s position. In fact, that means that when we vote in the Parliament, they are against weapons support for Ukraine.
Lea Reisner indicated dissent.
Armin Laschet: Is that wrong? You’re against?
Lea Reisner: No, go ahead.
Armin Laschet: And against the armament of Germany. We are increasing the money for the defence budget to a very high level, and the Left party says no to that.
Lea Reisner: Yes.
Armin Laschet: But then you say we need more diplomatic activities, and I agree, because it is not acceptable for the European Union that Mr Kushner and Mr Witkoff speak in Moscow about the European future and we are not at the table, because the European Union is not willing to speak to Russia. That is, in my opinion, a mistake. It is not the position of the German Government; it is my opinion.
Our Foreign Minister, at the last United Nations General Assembly, met Lavrov and started a discussion for the first time in four years. It was a hard and unfriendly discussion; there was nothing in 20 minutes, but it was the signal that we are willing even to speak to Russia if they are willing to negotiate with us. At the moment, they do not want to negotiate but we are willing to do it. This is a question about diplomatic solutions. Nevertheless, we say we support Ukraine as much as is necessary—whatever it takes, said the Chancellor.
Adis Ahmetovic: I would like to add something, because we are not so far apart as social democrats. It is right that we stand with Ukraine. We have a coalition: CDU/CSU and SPD. At the same time, we have to start to talk about diplomacy. Our opinion and view about security is not to see security only from the defence side; security is more than investing in defence. It is development. We are always talking about the three Ds: defence, development and diplomacy.
I would like to describe the atmosphere in German society. We as a coalition are clear that we want to support the sovereignty of Ukraine. At the same time, we recognise and realise now, after some elections at state level, that in Baden-Württemberg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Saxony Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and also at the level of the republic if you look at the polls, the anti-Ukrainian coalition—that is, the combination of the AfD and BSW—has gone up in the polls, and maybe together they have a very strong majority.
Currently, we are seeing that the anti-Ukrainian coalition in Germany is very strong; that is a problem for our foreign affairs policy right now. We have to look at how we can create a strategy that has societal legitimation for our support for Ukraine. Ukraine might not lose this war or can win this war if we as Germany still support Ukraine. But how can we guarantee this—that the German Government and Parliament will stay very strong with Ukraine—if we are losing the support of German society?
Why is it so? Four years ago, we had the full support of German society for this kind of plan. Now we have a budget discussion about it—that we are investing hundreds of billions in defence, and we stand behind that, because it is necessary. We do not have 100% protection any more from the US—we realised this new situation after 2022. At the same time, we have a budget discussion in Germany about not being able to finance some social programmes anymore. People are mixing up those social programme cuts and the budget discussion with our investment in defence systems and weapons and in support of Ukraine.
In reality, technically, it is not true—the one thing does not depend on the other. But still, it is easy in this vacuum for right-wing parties and for left populists to say, “Look, the money from Germany going to Ukraine is not going on social programmes for the people in Germany any more.” That is currently the debate and the atmosphere in German society and the media, which makes it a bit more difficult to stay on this path.
The lessons learned from this are not to stop the support for Ukraine, but that we have to show our people in Germany and in partner countries that we are ready and that we have the will to find a diplomatic way forward for this war. It is not our fault that it is not possible currently—it's the fault of Putin. We want to talk, and he does not want to talk. At the same time, we also have to find a solution for our budget problem. We have to show the people in Germany that we will not cut social programmes.
Foreign affairs are often the result of a strong society. We can be strong in foreign affairs if our society is strong—if we do not accept dividing our society into poor and rich. We also need a social answer on all these big issues. That is the biggest problem that we have currently. It is not easy for our coalition to find the right answers to it, because the two polarised positions in our Parliament—the left populists and the right populists—are using this situation for themselves.
Alex Ballinger: This is the same argument that our Prime Minister was making: to have strong national security, you need to have strong security in society. It is interesting that exactly the same debate is playing out in Germany right now.
Armin Laschet: But the populist parties in the UK support Ukraine.
Alex Ballinger: In most cases—to different degrees, yes. I think the Green Party is probably the most opaque about the way they do that.
Lea Reisner: I believe that things are getting confused. Support for Ukraine is getting confused with the rearmament of Germany, and that is an issue. We have to discuss whether Germany needs the biggest conventional army in Europe again. It is fair to discuss whether that is a good idea, not only in Germany but in Europe. I am not at all denying that there is a threat from Putin and Russia, but we have to be very honest about what we need and what the cost of this kind of rearmament is.
You talked about billions invested in arms, but on the other hand social security is getting cut. I am an ICU nurse, and “security” means something very different for my colleagues and for those of us talking in this room. For my colleagues, “security” means that there are enough staff on a night shift to take care of their patients. It means making sure no one is dying because they are understaffed.
We always have to keep in mind that “security” means very different things to different people. The security of a single mum who does not want to be evicted because she cannot pay her rent any more is very important too. That is a very, very real security threat for people, and we have to keep that in mind. We have to make sure the balance is in place.
Jürgen Hardt: I have a lot to say about my colleagues’ arguments, but I will not. I just want to say two things. First, when foreign affairs decisions are taken in Germany, there is sometimes a big public controversy. The rearmament of Germany and the joining of NATO in the ’50s did not have majority public support at that time. NATO’s decision on rearming with medium-range missiles at the beginning of the ’80s did not have majority public support, but it was necessary and was therefore done.
Concerning support for Ukraine, my assessment of the situation is that the best strategy is to make Ukraine as strong as possible so that Putin has to go away from his position that he will sooner or later win. If his personal assessment is that the war against Ukraine might fail, he will be willing to start negotiations to avoid a critical situation. Our strategy is to make Ukraine as strong as possible and bring Putin to the table for fair negotiations, but he has to take the first step. Up to today, he has been convinced that he will win.
It was interesting to hear that, despite all the hiccups between North America and Europe on that question, Mr Ratcliffe, a member of Donald Trump’s Cabinet, went to Moscow and gave two messages. The first was, “Putin, don’t believe that NATO will struggle, split or fail. Be sure that America is standing on the side of NATO and Europe.” The second was, “Our assessment of your situation and the situation in Ukraine, from our intelligence and all the information we have, is that you cannot win that war.”
That is the message that we need to transfer to Putin. We must bring him to a point where he says, “Oh, the best way out is now to do something disruptive like starting negotiations.” We are not yet at that point, but from my point of view it is the strategy most likely to have a positive outcome, compared with all other strategies.
Alex Ballinger: I think you will find lots of agreement on our side.
Chair: I do not know whether any of the other German representatives have other questions to ask us during this formal session. If not, perhaps we could bring this open session to a close by saying thank you very much. It has been really interesting. I hope people watching it will also find it interesting, and presumably it will be in Hansard. There will be an official record of this too.
This is a unique and historic moment, and we are so honoured to have you here. We are so thankful that you have come all this way. Once we finish this formal session, we would like to break into an informal session that is not online, so there will not be an official record of it. That will allow us to continue this conversation in a more free-flowing way.