On the 14th of May, Dr. Franziska Brantner, co-leader of Germany’s Alliance 90/ The Greens, came to the University of Oxford (at St. Antony’s College) to hold a talk on ‘Reinventing liberalism: Europe’s project of freedom in an age of crisis’. Her talk – open to the public – united quite a diverse audience – lecturers, journalists, students- and developed on a future vision of Europe’s outline but on a different type of security architecture.
One of the ideas addressed by Dr. Brantner during her talk was Europe’s vulnerability and need to readapt from a traditional liberalism to a fragmenting global landscape. She proposed some shifts, such as an European military independence from the United States, as well as a German shift from its demilitarised post-war foreign policy position to a more major one, that would be at the centre of Europe’s security foundation, emphasising in this sense an idea of ‘nie wieder’ (= never again) and ‘nie wieder allein’ (= never again alone).
Moreover, during her talk she advanced the idea that economic resilience, environmental sustainability issues and regional defence are now all intertwined. She critiqued Europe’s spendings on defence and also advanced a special European defence framework where the focus would transform from each individual state to a common one between European states. She referred to NATO as a ‘dictatorship on time’ – attributing it essentially to the political unpredictability attitude perpetuated by Trump’s Office – and therefore the argued necessity of a independent European security organism.
She asserted, rather importantly, that for a relevant achievement in continental resilience and independence, the project has to look beyond the EU, and namely, include essential European countries like the UK, Ukraine and a later (post-Putin) transformed Russia.
To conclude this lecture, the public was free to ask Dr. Franziska Brantner questions.
More things could have been answered, talked about or at least mentioned, however, nonetheless, it represented a special opportunity for the Oxford community to engage with a German Bundestag member!
