Thank you very much and thanks to the committee for giving me the opportunity to speak here today.

Given that we study the same thing, we have quite a lot of overlap so what I will do is focus on some points that Yascha hasn't mentioned and elaborate on some of the points he did.

I agree that populism is the defining force at the moment. However, I think it's very important to remember that on average they get only about 20% of the vote, and that the percentage ranges from 70% or 80% in certain countries to almost zero in others. In the vast majority of countries of the EU, populists, whether of the right or the left, are a minority. The reason they define politics today is that other parties allow them to set the agenda. I think this is very important. We're not all Hungary where, by and large, free and fair elections are no longer around and you have to play by their rules.

In most countries, self-professed liberal democrats still set the rules and still control the media. However, they have pretty much given the public debate and the issues, as well as the issue framing, to the populists. I think that's an important point. It points to something that I think is much more problematic, something that is almost like an ideological vacuum.

Today there are very few parties that defend what used to be the absolute consensus 20 years ago—things like economic integration, European integration and cultural integration. All of these things still happen but no one defends them. I think the best example was the “Remain” campaign during the EU referendum in the U.K., which, by and large, had nothing to say other than the alternative is worse. It never sold what the European Union did, and if you don't sell liberal democracy, if you don't tell people why it's good, it creates a space for those who have an agenda, even if it is a very problematic agenda.

I think it's also important to understand that populist rule is different from what we generally think authoritarian rule is. Authoritarian rule does things that go pretty much against the law. There are blatant violations of law. The clever populists, in contrast, stay within the law. They control the law, and there's no better example than Viktor Orbán in Hungary, who through a very well-timed set of changes has legally changed the whole system so it works for him.

American scholar Kim Lane Scheppele has referred to this as a “Frankenstate”, and in a Frankenstate, every individual, specific law is totally democratic. Actually, Orbán almost always makes sure that each law also exists somewhere else. Whenever you criticize him on a law, he will say, for example, France has it. In other cases, he will say Germany has it, or Canada has it. However, when you put them all together, you have an illiberal democratic state.

In the simplest of things, various countries have first past the post. Some countries have only one electoral district. This is perfectly democratic, but if you have first past the post and only one district, then one gets everything. You can have two rules that are each pretty much democratic, but when they work together, they can create a massive problem. That is pretty much how the smarter populists work. Everything individually is almost impossible to criticize, but you have to assess it on how everything works together.

Let me focus on the international relations of the populists. There's a lot of speculation about a “populist international”, but I do not believe such a thing exists. First of all, populism is divided ideologically. Left-wing populists rarely work together with right-wing populists.

However, even the radical right populists, who are by far the most important, share mostly a negative agenda. They share an anti-establishment agenda, which means that they are also anti-international establishment. They're Euroskeptic. They're skeptic about any multinationalism, be it NATO or the UN.

However, they differ on all kinds of different issues. For example, some parties are pretty much pro-American—the Dutch or the Poles—and many are anti-American, particularly in eastern and southern Europe. The position on Israel is very different. Some have become very pro-Israel, and others are still staunchly anti-Israel, bordering on anti-Semitic. They have very different positions on NATO, which is absolutely crucial to Baltic or Polish populist radical right parties, whereas some other parties see it skeptically.

They're skeptical about the UN, although that's more of a fascination or an obsession of the U.S. populist radical right than many others, but they're even very divided over the EU. Today, because of Brexit and the way it is going, there are very few parties that still openly call for an exit. Instead, quite a lot, in part because of their growing success, now don't want to get out of the EU. They want to transform the EU. They want to create an EU in their image, and this is very much what Viktor Orbán wants. It's to a certain extent what Matteo Salvini wants in Italy.

However, there, again, they have problems because in the end they're still nationalist, and their national interests are more important. A good example that we see is with regard to the so-called immigration crisis, which, of course, is crucial to the recent success of these parties.

Viktor Orbán in Hungary doesn't want to share and redistribute immigrants because that would mean that Hungary would get more, whereas Italy does want to redistribute immigrants because that would mean it would have fewer. Quite a lot of these points on which, in opposition, they have been very strong, they now find out are pretty problematic when they're in power. I think this is important. I agree with Yascha that the insecurity is problematic. I think the insecurity that comes out of the White House is much different from the insecurity that comes out of various other countries. Whatever Hungary does is much less important, obviously, than whatever the U.S. does.

However, if you look at it, in the end, very few of these governments have done fundamental things. I think Italy is a very good example. The new populist government came in with a lot of bravura. They were going to not do this and they were going to do that. In the end, they kind of rolled over. There is still damage to be done, but it's important that, so far, they haven't really offered an alternative. They mostly frustrate the existing order. Again, Donald Trump is a very good example. He doesn't blow up NATO. He doesn't blow up even the climate treaty. He just pulls out, which leaves space for others and confusion.

This is pretty much what populism is doing. It's a wake-up call to the liberal democratic forces, which are still in a majority, to actually come up with not just an anti-populist agenda, which would also be divisive and moral, but a positive liberal democratic alternative. I think that is lacking today.

Thank you very much.

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