over $7000000000.00 euros with additional work still required that will cost close to another $3000000000.00 even after 3 parliamentary committee investigations. no one is taken responsibility for the airport debacle. it became a job quite a few years ago already. a was budget. i think initially around $2000000000.00 euros odd, build the airport as what generally an airport of the size would cost gold. and then it was for a little bit sakes. and i think the current total now including all those, some sweet regarding to wrapped around $7000000000.00. and it's going and they're talking about having to put another 2000000000 subsidies into just keep it running until 2026 for that kind of money. they could have built for airports, this is a public project right from the beginning. or i should not, for instance, for a from beginning was supposed to be a private project and nobody wanted to do it in this location. which is why this,

that the government could over, but the governance made a bloody disaster of it. at one of the problems with the government's doing it is a, they don't really know what they're doing. and b, there is nobody that's really going to be held responsible for this in the end, which is really our problem. this is just one unmitigated disaster. these are unprecedented times. of course, as people start to travel again, as covert restrictions are lifted, but the chaos with berlin's airport predate anybody having ever heard of the corona virus. it continues to give, kicking to those stereotypes of german efficiency that are so popular still with people at olivia. it's estimated that between the 8th and the 24th of october, around 1000000 passengers, including myself, next week, will fly through berlin brandenburg airport. the only advice from airlines on the airport themselves is arrive early and expect delays. peter, all of our tea. berlin. yeah,

more information on that report and other stories from germany as well. if you just check out our sister channel, our t deutsche, for the mean time to go friday program on our t international returns, the top of the ah, it will join me every 1st day on the alex salmon. sure. i'll be speaking to guess of the world of politics, sport, business, i'm sure business. i'll see you then. ah ah.

hello and welcome to cross stock were all things are considered. i'm peter lavelle . when europe is mentioned, what do you think a place an idea, a commonplace with diverging ideas? maybe you think of the european union, think what you wish, but europe is in crisis. it must choose between being an ideological construct or a place with real people. and real needs, i cross sucking european disunion. i'm joined by my gifts, john laughlin in paris. he is a university lecture in history and political philosophy. also in paris we have properties at the own. he is a teacher and entrepreneur and an expert in social media use in politics and in guilford, we cross at the found this exec theo's. he is a professor of european politics at the university of siri or a gentleman. crosswalk rose in fact that means he can jump anytime you want. and i

always appreciate, john, let me go to you 1st in paris because when i posed my last question in my introduction, it asked to choose between being a ideological construct or a something for real people and real needs. you were nodding your head already in the program. why go ahead? well, the european union is an ideological construct. it's based on the idea that nation hurts needs to be overcome. that the european past is nothing but a series of was and that european societies need to be remodeled. ready in order for the continent to be at peace and that say, an ideological construct because it turns its back, not just on history, but also on religion of course. and as i've said on nationhood, so it's driven profoundly by ideology. and you only need to observe a debate to what they call a debate in the european parliament, or see the kind of nonsense that comes out of the mouths of the people in the paid

commission to see that it is driven primarily by ideology and hardly at all by a desire to improve the lives of ordinary people. it's as simple as that. you can see it all the time. well, somebody's also and parents here, if it is an ideological project and obviously that's why i mentioned in my probably my introduction because i think it is. and i'm agreeing with john here. but is, is there a consensus of what that ideology should be because you can look at the squabbling that brussels has, with poland in with hungry. i mean, is it the side, the ology tends to is pending to push people apart. not bring them together. is that a fair assessment? go ahead properties? it used to work, it's not really working very well right now, specifically because there are countries like full and or hungry who do not agree with this european ideology and even within countries like france, lots of people do not agree with the european and ology. we have the major poll

referendum in 2005 and french people voted against this idea. ology, but still it's going through. and right now it's having a very hard time to convince european people that all this is done for there will be that for sure. yes or so europe has been built in order to prevent wars and so for his hat work more or less pretty good. but right now it needs to have something more to convince everybody to continue this adventure. what they found. this is the same thing. question to, i mean we just heard from somebody says that, you know, you know, trying to convince the people i thought this was a democracy, isn't it? the other way around that the people tell their leaders what they want. i mean, it seems like it's turned on upside down on its head, go head. well, democracy is about building consensus is about aggregating interests and being able to actually a speak on behalf of a common interest rate. so ideologically,

the european union is built around this kind of premise of trying to find a consensus to move forward. now, obviously as a living organism, the european union acts more like any other country in the world. more like any other local community in the world where, you know, there may be disagreements that may be agreements, but there has to be a discussion about moving that way forward. and i don't, not really by this argument about, you know, what the people need versus what people say in the sense that the whole history of the world has been around trying to figure out ways forward. and the fact that there is a european ideology doesn't mean that that goes against the will of the people in maybe just going against the ideology of another group. and this is precisely what we see in the context of hungary and poland in this case. and the reference to france that my good colleague made just now i, you know, in that sense, i think that we are looking to

a debate and debates or have to produce some outcomes, whether those outcomes come shortly. or they come in the long term. that's a different story, and also we need to identify particular issues that are at stake. so for example, the evidence from, ah, different public opinion surveys show a growing support for the european union in the past couple of years, especially in light of the response of the you to the, to the cold 19th. and then so there are issues where we need this kind of common approach and where the common approach can be found. and there are issues where we need to discuss issues and i don't things out based on different interests, effectively a democracy is about to balance. okay, but okay, let me go back to john here and this, you know, like a country, but the european union isn't a country. that's the problem. that's the problem because it's not a country. go ahead, joe. and that's one of the reasons why it doesn't have like a country, because in the country you don't say,

let's work everything out. you expect opposition to be part of the political process and indeed to be an invigorating prostate. and that's not part of the european way of functioning. i think the issue that we are driving at when you ask about how to do hungry and so on to peter is that there is a certain amount of consensus, obviously on piece, obviously on the civilization values of europe and all the desirability of some kind of common european civilization, the reason why there are divisions now to keep the 2 in east and west, is that the european union is ideologically crazed with a number of very radical ideas, which indeed most people and certainly people in central europe do not want about whole immigration and societal issues like gay rights, gay marriage, and transgender right? small respite. that's why i said in my best on. so that is ideological there's, there's no, there's absolutely no practical need for these radical attempts to remodel society

. it's bad enough when you try to overcome nationhood, because that has already created russian ticket calls with britain. but when you try to introduce mastic numbers of migrants, when you try to impose a radical understanding of gay rights transgender rights. and so these are very, very hard cool, revolutionary societal issues and they are being pushed. and i use the word deliberately onto societies in central europe, which are relative to the ones in western europe, relatively conservative. and i'm not interested in having such ideas pushed on to them, and that's the ideological aspect. that's what is divided in europe, as you say, in your intro to this program. well, probably so i don't understand what i can understand, you know, legal, you know, having some kind of uniformity with law, with finance, with commerce, i get all of that. but why does it have to be with cultural values,

what ways brussels given get involved in that? okay. i mean, i can understand, you know, that the, the, the, how to make the union work. okay. i get that. but why do you, why, why do they get it get themselves involved in the teaching of, of in school in hungary i why, why, why should brussels be involved in that at all? go ahead. well, probably to protect gay rights and to enable gays to leave peacefully over europe. but in my opinion, the main divider in europe, whether it's between countries or within countries, is more about migration right now. a major topic in or french fraser campaign which is to be going on and it is so for that the campaign has been running for a few months. and so for that's the only topic of the campaign. and everybody is going crazy about this topic. and my point is that it's not only a divide between countries like poland and france is to divide within france. i

don't know if it's a divide within pulled him, but it's definitely a major problem that europe is not able to tackle. and or politicians in friends are not even able to tackle if they're trying to, but they're not able. they don't have the means to tackle the problem with the apartment and on the, in the, on the issue of immigration. why should one country, for example, in 2015 germany say we will take in migrants. ok, well why does every other country in the european union have to go along with that? i mean, who elected to germans to make that decision? i mean, it seems so such an assault on the sovereignty of other countries. i know that being part of the union, european union, you lose part of your sovereignty. but i mean, that's just, you know, that's just in your face. i mean, you have to take people that no one consulted, go ahead. well, we are talking about different things. so immigration versus refugees in this case,

right. so i think the problem rose up after the refugee crisis, and that was the kind of original, you know, root of the, of the issue whereby we know that the refugee crisis was a transnational problem, right? so refugee routes are north house, east, west from europe, and also refugees moved from country to country and now well to sleep and they found it's, i mean, i be all right, i'm sorry you're conflating. the 2 terms is one, there. very different things. and plus, you know, to be read a country, the 1st country you can get to, i mean, that's international law. i mean, why is everything suspended? ok, just go ahead john, before we go to the break. well, you have fun and says he's trying to distinguish things. he should indeed distinguish between migration and refugees, or the status of refugees is laid down in the united nations conventional refugees

and the people who are flooding into europe, which is not just wanted in the same way all managers of the european union. john, he's going jumping up. i didn't hear, sorry, i didn't hear that remarks. the fact is that the wave of immigration that we 1st heard about in 2015, but was actually predates it by many years, and it still continues. now is not a refugee where it's not a wave of refugees, it's a wave wave of migration of largely we cannot make migration is collided with refugees at all. the stages of refugees is governed by the un convention. and one of the ideological a, things that europe is obsessed about is trying to efface the legal distinction between a migrant and a refugee and trying to legalize through migration what is currently illegal. namely for refugees to basically shop around and come wherever they like. this is all part of the program. it's part of the program of importing as many people as possible into europe, partly to drive down labor costs, but also to remodel european societies. it's the same program and i'm going to have

the japanese gentlemen, i have to go to a hard break. and after that hard break, we'll continue our discussion on european disunion. stay with our ah long when our thing wrong, when i just don't want you to see how it is because of the antics and engagement nicholas the trail went so many find themselves well to mine. we choose to look for common ground. ah ah

ah ah welcome back across that were all things are considered. i'm peter a bell to remind you we're discussing european disunion. ah, okay gentlemen, we didn't really resolve anything the 1st part of the program, and i'm going to make it even more complicated because i want to go to foreign policy. right now. we go to, for the beach in paris, here are the french, a finance minister and the saying this in an interview and published in the new york times. it was a very interesting interview. so this is part of it. the key question for the european union is to become independent from the united states, able to defend its own interests, whether economic or strategic interests here. and what i find really interesting, we looked at the differences in the 1st part of the program. and now we have a french finance minister talking about a for a foreign policy for the entire european union. i mean, if you don't have your house together for domestic issues,

how in the world you're going to be able to do that foreign policy wise for breach . go ahead in paris. well, when it comes to france in my field, which is i t, we are currently being colonized by american i t or major i t business like are the major internet service provider and telco business in france for talis, which is one of the biggest armament industrial armament company in france and even in europe, are curiously making deals with microsoft and google in order to provide secure cloud for everybody in france. and this is colonization, no more, no less than. that's what's happening in france. and when it comes to being independent, we have for them like recently that pandora paper revealed that there were lots of tax happened all over the place and plenty of rich people taking advantage of that . and the 1st thing that happened 2 days after those revelation,

whereas all the finance minister from europe deciding to take off se shell from the past have been the black list. so my guess is that what's really happening right now, maybe not in europe, is at least in france, that i'm sure is that we're being colonized by the united states no less. and it's a major, major problem because tomorrow, one, the cloud will become a major thing. is this not yet a major saying, but it will within 10 years, because it becomes so big that every profit will depend on every company's ability to tag to, to use the cloud and all the profits will go to the united states. this is something very similar to what europe has done to africa in the 19th century, cerebral ways, mining stuff, and extracting all the value from africa for europe. profit right now, this is what you know said is doing to europe. well, they have hundreds. i mean,

remember when joe biden came into power moreno america's back, you know, it's, you know, good old days or back, you know, was always an orange man that cause trouble, but then trump had nothing to do with it. this is a long term pattern, and you know, you had the submarine deal with australia. i mean, how much longer is that? i mean, europe is being turned into a strategic backwater. oh, and by the way, you're supposed to fight the russians and the americans will take care of the chinese hope, but you can't use chinese technology. i mean, europe, the european union is bigger economically than united states has more population. and you guys are so flacid, it's extraordinary to me. go ahead. the pharmacy. good. ok. so the issue of a common foreign policy for the european union is a long standing one. and it seems that it's probably one of the issues that nobody can actually agree on what to do if that famous line, you know, of who do i call when i call europe. now, effectively, the alert was, was,

was obvious when, when president trump was arguing in favor of pulling out the american support in things like nato and sort of pushing the europeans to get their act together in order to finance their own sort of mission. and what have you, so it is, it is a response, the wards that obviously this is not new, right? so it's basically an expression of the withdrawal of the united states from the general affairs of europe. now the, the economic and financial side is a different story, but at least when it comes to foreign policy and defense and security, i think we're looking into this. and the problem here is that precisely because of an absence of a common direction within the european union, every member state is pursuing very strong bilateral relations with different partners. and of course, we see this every time there's a gas and energy crisis in europe. you know, all of

a sudden russia is becoming very close to some member states. and, you know, you know, once the crisis is resolved and all the problems emerge, again, china becomes an issue when it comes to trade and infrastructure, especially as they are also operating in the context of the, of african nations where the european unit has a long standing sort of a program and we now see how the european union may be being bypassed in certain deals between the united states trailer and the u. k. so effectively, europe needs to, to figure out precisely what it's role as a global actor is. right. and this has not been agreed upon yet, and i don't think it will be agreed in the short term. however, we, we need to think about what kind of margins does you don't have to to actually exert is kind of a role in any what kind of issues. so for example,

europe has been very, very prominent in the context of climate change and, and the discussions around the environment leading the summits. it hasn't been so successful, for example, in, in containing terrorism and security threats coming from the least. so it is, it is, it is on an issue by issue basis, but you're right, there is no, no common direction. and i, i don't think there will be a common direction that is meaningful. i mean, yeah, okay. but then i have to agree the magenta and then then then then europe is, it's irrelevant. ok, it turns into a backwater. i mean, it would be, i'm much, i'm much more having for multiple loyalty in the world. ok. and the european union is perfectly poised for that, but i mean, if you're still having washington say, you can't have a pipeline between russia and germany. why? why does the united states have to do with that at all? okay. okay, and then you know, you can't,

you can't criticize the sacred cow of nato, but what is nato? other than a wasteful p. r machine. ok. that turned on deer to fight people in the balkans, which they may end up doing again very, very soon. ok. i mean, again, as an american living in russia for 20 years now, watching europe is it's, it's, it's bewildering. i mean, it, it has so much capacity and it's never used. go ahead, john. well, the problem is it doesn't have capacity. the european union is part of the problem if you want a multi polar world. because the european union as a structure, we can collectively weakens europe as a continent. strengthening the argument is always that it strengthens the stronger together. the states of europe are not stronger together if they're all pulling in different directions, they're weaker together if they're pulling indirect different directions. and that has been the case most obviously with respect to russia, the decades now with the poles in the bolts putting in one direction and the french

to some extent the germans in the other. so the problem is europe and ready resistance to the american colonization, which for police rightly talks about which of course is absolutely not limited to the i t sector. that includes the whole range of defense issues as we seen from the submarines. the whole issue of nato to which the european union is subjugated by its own treaties, never forget this. this whole issue of american dominance has only ever been addressed by the states of europe, never by the european union as a body. when i, when i say by the states of europe, i'm referring to the thing you just said peter, about germany. the germans did stand up to the americans are not stream to and the pipeline has been built. the french are making noises, although i don't believe they will ever go very far with them. as you said in your question. but these are things coming from the nation states of europe. they never

come from brussels and they never will. because brussels is part of the problem, brussels after all, is capital to both the european union and to nato. and people should never forget that fact, good point. but it's a, it's, it's very interesting is that each europe, most important trading partner is china. but you're the u. s. wants of the european union to take a leading role. and it's anti china crusade. i mean, how is that in europe's interest whatsoever? and will it cow to those interests? go ahead as so i don't really see the interest or whether there's the way we can do with china. so my guess is that if we, if we went to war, even a commercial war with china alongside us, we will be in deep trouble. and i sure hope that the way europe is working will leaders to not doing anything like visual. so my guess is that we

will not follow too much the u. s. when they want to go to war and talk about trade war war, which china, and we will continue to do business with china as we always did. and we're doing more and more business with china. and besides human rights, which is a major problem in china, we need this business definitely does business and china and euro as the market. so my guess is that the it will continue whether the american likes it or not. ok, it won't be a found us. i mean, i think we're all kind of come to a consensus here. there has to be, you know, it was really interesting. it was during the trump years, the u. s. s a d couple from china, but really it has to be europe in whatever form has to start the coupling from the united states, if it, because europe needs its own google, its own amazon and needs all these things here. and, and so already been mentioned this program, then you'll just always be, you know,

i'm 2nd rate junior partner and the world is such a dynamic place. you don't want to be junior and anything. go ahead and finish up the program for us. that is correct. i think europe needs to find a voice in the primary voice, not the junior voice as you suggest, peter. and of course, the problem in this case is, is, is the way that the european union is structured. so as long as the member states decide to have this kind of, of common joint line towards all other partners of europe outside europe than i think that we would be looking into a more and more successful global position of europe in the world. and you are right, we need to do to get the act together. somehow we need to understand what are the challenges that are coming up in the next decade and the next 20 years and 50 years down the road and be able to plan ahead. and of course, the idea is to do this in

a kind of a multi lateral away. and in a way that preserves somehow peaceful cooperation between trading partners between associates in this case. okay, we do have run out of time. we've run out of time, i guess a major question is, can europe survive the european union to be continue gentlemen? okay, many thanks them i guess in paris and in guilford. and thanks to our viewers for watching us here at r t c. next time. remember, prospect with with oh is your media a reflection of reality?

in the world transformed what will make you feel safe? isolation, community? are you going the right way or are you being led to direct? what is true? what is great? in the world corrupted, you need to descend a join us in the depths or remain in the shallows. oh, when i was shopping wrong when i just don't hold any well. yes. to shape out because of the advocate and engagement. it was betrayal.

when so many find themselves worlds apart, we choose to look for common ground. ah, top stories for this, our live on our t street classroom is blocked ports and sirius and strike action. the italian government is bracing for a wave of civil unrest that had rolled out mandatory coated greenhouse is for all work. what we want is for this green possible to be revoked. if this doesn't happen, we will close the whole thing that the green pass is an unlawful tool, an improper one that should not be forced to from the workers because it is discriminatory. billionaire, facebook boss, mog stock, a bug is accused of election meddling as were searches for the new york post clay and his donations aimed at boosting. turn out in u. s. swing states may have well helped joe biden get into the white house. the usa .