They're both in Brussels.
Both headquarters are located in Brussels.
But they are far apart.
Not geographically, but mentally.
That has a number of reasons which have to do with the Cyprus problem.
The position of Turkey inside NATO.
The position of Cyprus in Greece inside the European Union.
I'll save you those details.
But sharing 21 members, its, is an imperative in my
opinion, that NATO and the European Union work more closely together.
European Union will without any doubts having
to face more responsibilities, when the Americans as
we see now happening, have many other areas
and regions of the world on their minds.
The American president Obama has qualified himself as a pacific president.
He is dealing with the [UNKNOWN] with the, with the pacific.
That means that more of the responsibility and the burden will
fall on European NATO allies and on EU members, for that matter.
So, it's really an imperative that they should work more closely together.
But we hear very far from the ideal situation in my opinion.
>> Thank you.
Actually some people have claimed that what we see now in the European
union is a slight trend since
the treaty of Lisbon towards increased inter-governmentalism.
Notably the European Council being a very
dominant and prominent institution in the setting.
Now, what is your opinion?
This is a general trend we are witnessing.
>> Yes, it's definitely a general trend.
You do not only see that in the European Union, but the
European Council the, the institutions where
the heads of states and government meet.
All by themselves, by the way, without, without collaborators, which brings the
confusion from time to time as we've seen in the recent past.
Where they have claimed we are the crisis mechanism.
We are heads of states in government, we are the
highest level there is, I mean there's nothing above us.
And you see that in, in the United Nations framework, in the NATO framework as well.
NATO has more frequent summits than had in it's, in history.
You see it in, in other international institutions as well.
That slowly but definitely heads of states and government take over decision making.
That has pluses, because they can really at,
at, at the final stage come to a decision.
Because that's their responsibility as the highest in the land.
It can also have minuses because from time to time decisions
are not properly prepared by
defense ministers, foreign ministers, finance ministers.
And that has also led to confusion from time to
time and, and to a sort of, strange [UNKNOWN] down process.
Where normally you would have finance ministers decide.
And if they can't agree bringing up two heads of states in government.
And now you see a decision by heads of states in government going down
to finance ministers, who say, who say why have you decided it's your half?
In other words, it can lead to some form, forms of confusion as well.
>> Mm-hm.
Yes.
You can imagine that this would happen.
Actually this brings me to the question, there's another organization of which some
have claimed that it has become extremely
important in today's structure of global governance.
The G20.
What kind of role do you think is there for the G20?
And is it actually reflected sufficiently in
the institutional global framework that we have today?