Glenn Diesen interviews former Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl on energy wars, Europe's decline, and the collapse of international law
Glenn Diesen interviews Karin Kneissl, former Austrian Foreign Minister and head of the Gorki think tank, on energy geopolitics, Europe's industrial decline, and the erosion of rule of law.
Summary
Karin Kneissl, former Austrian Foreign Minister and current head of the Gorki think tank, joins Glenn Diesen to discuss energy wars, the collapse of the liberal international order, and Europe's accelerating decline. Kneissl argues that Europe is a resource-poor continent that has squandered its access to affordable Russian energy, and that the continent is now deindustrialising at a pace that will reduce it to a "museum." She contends that the dismantling of freedom of navigation — including proposed fees on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz — represents a fundamental breakdown of centuries-old maritime law and global trade. Kneissl also reveals that the Austrian government has initiated proceedings to strip her of her citizenship — which would render her stateless — on the grounds that she works for St. Petersburg State University. She argues that the loss of rule of law is the gravest threat facing European societies, citing the European Commission's recent order barring Ukrainian men of fighting age from claiming asylum as a direct violation of the 1951 UN Refugee Convention.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction and the concept of energy wars
Glenn Diesen: Welcome back. We are joined today by Karin Kneissl, the former Foreign Minister of Austria who now heads the think tank Gorki. Thank you for coming back on the program. It's great to see you again.
Karin Kneissl: Thank you, Professor Diesen, for the invitation. The pleasure is mutual. Very glad to see you again.
Glenn Diesen: Well, we know that after the Cold War and the end of communism, a lot of scholars — such as Edward Luttwak — were arguing that we were now transitioning from geopolitics to geoeconomics, that is, that countries would increasingly compete over the control of markets: seeking technological leadership, industrial might, control over energy resources, physical transportation corridors, banks, payment systems, the currencies we trade in, and so on. The overall logic being that others should be more dependent on you, and you should be less dependent on others — this is essentially how economic power is extracted. As we now see the United States decline, these economic conflicts take on a much more coercive format. Not just with the tariffs, but also with the wars against Iran, Russia, and Venezuela — they all seem to have a very strong economic component and especially a strong energy component. How are you reading the commonality here? Are we in an energy war?
Karin Kneissl: Energy is the name of the game, and it has been that way for at least the last 120 years when we speak about fossil energy. Most probably when we think about energy in terms of water and grazing grounds for animals — because over millennia it was animals which produced energy — it was always about energy to a certain extent. But you correctly pointed out this shift from pure geopolitics to a more subtle form of geoeconomics. For at least two decades I was teaching in my various courses the return of geography — from the end of an ideological confrontation, from the end of some sort of culture wars, Huntington's clash and so on — geography was back. And now we can say that energy, as the basis of any economic activity and any human existence, is definitely what is at stake. I would fully agree with you on that assessment.
Europe's abandonment of affordable Russian energy
Glenn Diesen: For the Europeans, though, they don't seem to appreciate the central role of energy, which is ironic because the industrial revolution began in Europe. Energy has fueled all the different industrial revolutions and been the source of economic as well as military might. How easily the Europeans gave up on cheap Russian energy and effectively redefined what energy security means. In the past, any academic in Europe would have cited energy security as meaning cheap and reliable supply of energy. Now energy security means cutting yourself off from Russia, even if that makes you more dependent on less reliable and more expensive energy from the US. Does it surprise you that the Europeans essentially cut themselves off from energy in this way? This has been one of the sources of European success over the years.
Karin Kneissl: I don't want to dwell too much into the colonial history of Europe, but we all know that the continent of Europe — wherever it starts, wherever it ends, but let's say it starts somewhere on the British Isles and ends somewhere on the EU's outer borders at the Black Sea — is a poor continent. It's not as wealthy as Africa. It's not as wealthy as South America. Why do I quote those two? Because there we have abundant arable soil, water resources, and all sorts of minerals. The African continent is wealthy, and this was very much in the back of the minds of the European colonial powers. Everybody wanted to go to Africa at a certain point in the 19th century. Germany was the latecomer among the colonial powers, arriving just before World War I. But this is all due to the fact that Europe is a poor continent. Europe had to export its surplus population — especially, if I may say, its angry young men who had to find some sort of activity. At a certain point in history it was the Crusades, just to get the second and third born off the farm that was given to the firstborn. At a later stage it was the colonial empires that absorbed this surplus of European population. But Europe as such is and was not a wealthy continent when we speak of arable soil and minerals — speaking in financial terms, both hard and soft commodities.
This is now coming very much to the surface. I see a very explosive mix in Europe — not only when it comes to a shortage of gas for the next heating season, because the gas storage basins are not filled as they should be, but also right now because of a mix of problems: the water situation in the Rhine and Danube rivers, the cooling of nuclear reactors in France. This is not the first time — I remember 2003 and 2018 it was already an issue — but the French nuclear plants are so old that it is even too expensive to decommission them, not to speak of bringing in some innovative cooling system. So the mix is very, very dangerous. It is explosive, because in the absence of energy, how do you want to organise any kind of economic life? This is the current situation of the Europeans by and large, whether they are in the Union or not.
In contrast to Europe, if I may go back to the African continent, we see a race for arable soil that has been going on for twenty or thirty years. Uganda is one example, where sovereign wealth funds — especially from the Arab Emirates but also beyond — are eager to get hold of arable soil. Two weeks ago here in the district town where I live in Russia, a little ancient Tatar town called Kasimov, I organised together with my institute, the Gorki, and a regional university of Ryazan, a seminar on food sovereignty, food security, and supply lines. We have here a surplus of dairy production and food production. It is a very rural and in theory wealthy region when it comes to water and grazing grounds. I mention that in particular because I see with sadness the slaughtering of dairy animals in countries like Austria or Switzerland because farmers simply cannot find hay now. This is a traumatic situation.
What I would like to point at is the following. We are not only speaking about Europe being dependent on energy imports, whether from North America or from Russia — that was always the case and will always be the case. But it is also about how the European Union, which in the late 1940s was all about food, and then had the agricultural surpluses of the 1970s and 80s with a very distorted European agricultural policy they tried to reform but never managed — I come back to food because in the end we will have to eat. This is very much on the agenda of sovereign wealth funds which are buying arable soil wherever they can find it. Central Europe and Southern Europe are right now in a very big quandary.
The breakdown of freedom of navigation and global trade
Glenn Diesen: Besides energy, we also see another historical economic competition playing out over physical transportation corridors. Much of geopolitics has been about this over the years — controlling key sea lanes and land corridors. We see this playing out to some extent as well: the blockade on Venezuela, the Strait of Hormuz, the attempt to seize Russian ships in the Baltic Sea, the attacks on shipping in the Black Sea. The shipping lanes are essentially down as well. Do you see this in the same context as the energy wars?
Karin Kneissl: What is at stake — and maybe we will really lose it completely — is free passage. You know, it is a principle of shipping. You come from a country with a maritime tradition. I come from a landlocked country, but I always had a keen interest in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. I was teaching the topic for many years. UNCLOS — that is the acronym of this convention — was drafted and negotiated for decades. It really took a long time until negotiators could sign it, and then it took another nearly two decades until there were enough ratifications for it to enter into force, sometime in the early 1990s.
Why do I mention the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and free passage, innocent passage, high seas, international waterways? The principle of free passage is, if I may say, the oldest principle of maritime law — customary law. Before the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, we had mostly customary law, and what the negotiators did was codify existing customary law to a large extent. The main principle was free passage. Merchant ships could go through the Bosphorus, could cross the Gulf of Aden, could cross the Strait of Hormuz, the Strait of Malacca, the channel between the British Isles and France. That was necessary. Why? Because for centuries Europeans above all had been fighting each other with all sorts of piracy. There was no security for merchant shipping. There were pirates sitting somewhere on the shores of what is today the Netherlands, somewhere in southern Italy. There was a huge business of piracy run by different European dynasties as well. At a certain point in time the Europeans came to the conclusion: we have to establish free passage for merchant shipping, otherwise we will all drown in our recurrent acts of piracy and there will be no global trade. Global trade was only possible with the recognition of this principle of freedom of shipping and innocent passage.
Right now what we see is the dismantling of this principle. The Strait of Hormuz negotiations are all about the Strait of Hormuz in a confrontation between the US and Iran — and it is definitely not anymore about the uranium enrichment program. Oman and Iran are close to an outcome according to the latest information. Iran wants a five to seven percent fee per cargo going through the Strait of Hormuz, and Oman wants three percent. The Sultanate of Oman was not very delighted to go into these negotiations over fees, because the Sultanate of Oman, being a state of high-calibre diplomacy and a huge old maritime tradition, actually wants freedom of navigation and innocent passage. Now there is this bilateral arrangement which would eventually put the Strait of Hormuz under bilateral control with a fee. This fee did not exist prior to the 28th of February. So we see on a global level the dismantling of a major principle of international law and maritime shipping. This, for me, is quite something — even though I come from a landlocked country.
What I see is not only a deglobalisation that started in my estimate in 2008 with the financial crisis. It started with a decoupling between the US and China — that is really a long time ago, it didn't start in the last few years. We see a regionalisation, a fragmentation — whatever you call it, it is certainly deglobalisation. When you add to that the fact that freedom of navigation is put into question by piracy, by fees, by all sorts of military actions — and let us bring in also the acts of piracy exercised by British and French authorities against Russian ships — then we can say goodbye to global trade.
The transition from unipolarity to multipolarity
Glenn Diesen: Goodbye to global trade is a dramatic development — how the whole system is breaking down. Geoeconomic rivalry is supposed to be about shaping dependence in one's favour, but what we are seeing now is the breakdown of the entire system that everyone relies on. This is going to be very bad for everyone.
It does seem, though, that one of the challenges is this: historically, when the British dominated as the economic hegemon controlling the seas in the 19th century, or the United States in the 20th century, the hegemon had an interest in keeping the sea lanes open because it administered them and extracted a lot of benefits from doing so. But a concern is always what happens when that hegemon is in decline — will it use its administrative control over the international economy in a coercive manner to prevent the rise of rivals? And then of course everything falls apart. This could be a symptom of our time: the unipolar moment of the US as the sole superpower has already come to an end, we effectively live in a multipolar world, and without an agreement that replaces the idea that everything is simply under Uncle Sam's control, we are going to continue to see the international economic system break down.
If we take a step back, what are the wider consequences of this shift from unipolarity to multipolarity — not as a policy, but as a reality of the distribution of power?
Karin Kneissl: Let me bring in a very concrete example from yesterday. It is a security alliance brokered between Turkey, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan — three powerful Sunni Muslim countries which work together in large entities like the Conference of Islamic States, and are connected to some extent via BRICS and other regional forms of cooperation. It is interesting that they are heading for a closer military alliance. We see this kind of regionalisation, which is one form of multipolarity, on many levels, and it is very often about security.
It is interesting that these three — especially Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which were at loggerheads a few years ago because of the killing of the Saudi-American journalist Mr. Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, and because Turkey was a steadfast supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood while Saudi Arabia considers the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation — are now cooperating. This is one form of multipolarity as a reaction to the breakdown of the larger guarantees that existed. A country like Saudi Arabia has definitely understood that a US military base is not a guarantee for security but is a risk — it can be a casus belli.
Changes are happening in West Asia — what some call the Middle East. We see that also in terms of BRICS, which is not a legal institution but some sort of larger marketplace. Let me highlight that BRICS started in the early 2000s as an object. I remember commodity conferences I attended where investors like Jim Rogers would say: go for BRICS, there you can make money, it is all about commodities — hard and soft commodities. Back then it was only Brazil, Russia, India, China — important commodity producers and important commodity importers, namely China and India with their tremendous industrial rise some twenty years ago. BRICS back then was just an object. With the adding of South Africa and enlarged cooperation with others, it became over the years an actor — a subject, not just remaining the object of investors' ambitions.
It is a far cry from having a statute or being a full-fledged organisation, because there is no charter, no statute. I believe it should have one, but I also understand the reasons why certain countries refrain from writing and adopting one. But this is definitely the largest example where new venues are being identified. Even though we don't have something like a BRICS Secretary General, there is plenty of cooperation in the academic area, in sports, and they are trying to find alternative reserve currencies. I think this will not work the way some are writing about it, but it is interesting because there are other venues to test.
Let me quote something here once again because it encapsulates the narrow-minded thinking in many EU capitals. When I assumed my office in December 2017, one of my first questions to my colleagues was: can you please provide me with the EU position on BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation? They looked at me and said: we have never written about it, we have never discussed that at any moment. I was really profoundly astonished, because I myself in the previous years had been teaching that topic at least once a week. I then had to understand that the practitioners — those working for the European Commission on Asian neighbourhood policy and so on — had not produced a single position paper. This is just a reflection of the frog pond in which they are sitting, not understanding that there are lakes outside, there are rivers, and there is even an ocean.
Europe's failure to adapt to a multipolar world
Glenn Diesen: This often characterises how European leaders behave — in order to hold on to the unipolar moment, they pretend that there is no multipolarity. For all these years we saw, for example, that NATO did not want to have any relationship with the Russian-led CSTO, and there would be no cooperation between the EU or NATO with BRICS or the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation or any other grouping, because that would signal a shift to multipolarity. But the problem is that by holding on to the unipolar moment and ignoring the new realities emerging, the Europeans are failing to adjust to this new distribution of power in a way that would strengthen Europe. Not engaging at all with BRICS — it is hard to explain why that would be in the EU's interests. Do you see a challenge there — the inability to adjust to a multipolar world?
Karin Kneissl: If I put myself into the shoes of an EU official — how can I really engage in multipolarity if my task every day is to make sure that this multipolar Europe, where you have Paris, Rome, Berlin, all with their own different ways of looking at the world for centuries, is brought into one monolithic position? Because Europe by history and by geography is multipolar as well. Of course it is tiny polars, but it is bigger than Qatar and the Emirates, which are also part of this multipolar activity.
There is a lot of talking about it. I remember former German Chancellor Olaf Scholz admitting yes, there is a multipolar world — he made a watershed speech just before he left office on that. But they try to act as one monolithic actor. On the one hand they say EU-Africa cooperation is fantastic and wonderful and we have to do it. But in addition to EU-Africa summits, we have the French Africa summit, the British Africa summit, the German Africa summit — even tiny Austria did its Africa summits. So everybody does its own African summits and African policy in addition to the EU-Africa cooperation. And there we see how they are standing in their own way when it comes to some sort of sincere implementation of a multipolar policy.
Europe's role in the new world order
Glenn Diesen: My last question, or one of my last questions, is on how Europe is dealing with other countries adjusting to this. From the American side, they are more or less recognising that the world has become multipolar, and if they now have to make priorities they cannot be everywhere at the same time. They seem to be accepting that something has to be prioritised over others — they would like to look more towards the western hemisphere and East Asia. The impression we get, not just from the Trump administration alone but also from the new national security strategy, is that Europe is not that important anymore. And this is quite evident by now.
You also see Russia — it is not just the war in Ukraine which is forcing a divorce from the Europeans because of sanctions. Beyond that, the Russians in general see a lot of the economic rise coming in the east and are more accommodated there. The economies there are seen as more dynamic. So even the Russians would do an economic pivot to the east irrespective of what would happen in Ukraine. Much of this is pushed under the greater Eurasian partnership that the Russians are promoting. So what does this mean for the Europeans? What is Europe's role now in this multipolar world?
Karin Kneissl: A museum.
Glenn Diesen: A museum. Yeah.
Karin Kneissl: A museum. Factories are turning into museums. There is even no need to buy Louis Vuitton or certain Chanel products in Paris anymore — you have top-notch cosmetic brands now in Asian countries which are more popular among clients. The museums are nice. I visited once upon a time the house of industry in Chemnitz — which in between was called Karl-Marx-Stadt when it was the German Democratic Republic. What I didn't know was that Chemnitz was the most important industrial town across Europe before 1945. Today it is a museum, a nice museum. The same holds true for the Fiat museum in Turin, northern Italy. Fiat — Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino — was, as I didn't know until I visited that museum, the most innovative and largest car factory in the world before World War I. So we see the decline with Fiat, which then merged with Chrysler some time ago. We see what happened to Chemnitz. The story is long.
There was an effort a few years ago to return to "Made in England," "Made in Germany," "Fabriqué en France." But then they themselves, with the series of sanctions — and it is not only about sanctioning Russia — undermined that. I refrain from speaking about cheap energy: it was affordable energy. It was not that cheap, but it was affordable and it was predictable, because there were long-term contracts. They didn't have to hedge and compete with other buyers on the global market to buy LNG every day on some exchange market. No, there was a predictable delivery of gas volumes thanks to long-term contracts. I think that made life much easier for industry.
The other thing is that Europe is marginalising itself because many people — and this is not only China, not only Russia, I am thinking also of many Arab countries, in particular Qatar and the Arab Emirates — they don't want to be lectured by the Europeans anymore. They don't want to be given conditions on how they should produce their oil and gas. For instance, there was one EU order — I have forgotten the exact technical name — but what it was all about was proving in the supply chain of the product that everything was fine in terms of climate change and labour regulations. Qatar and the Emirates said: sorry, we are not going to deliver you a vessel of LNG because we cannot meet your requirements on that EU order. So you see, they are putting themselves out, because people prefer not to do business with Europe. They say: we can sell our LNG to another partner who is not putting so many obstacles in our path.
I think this is not really understood in the European Commission. The Commission some thirty years ago had a lot of legal people. These lawyers were replaced by political scientists who have become very ideological, and many of them had not seen the world before starting to work for the Commission. This is the underlying drama. What is interesting — in inverted commas — is that when I read statements now by chambers of commerce and heads of industrial associations of certain EU countries, they are constantly warning their governments against deindustrialisation because of red tape, because of EU regulations. And recently I have not heard them say it is Russia's fault. They have stopped referring to Putin inflation. They have stopped referring to the — I quote — "unprovoked Russian aggression against Ukraine." When you listen to some of these heads of industrial associations, they name bureaucracy, the absence of skilled labour, underinvestment, and geopolitical insecurity by and large. These are the problems they identify as causing the very high degree of deindustrialisation going on. So deindustrialised Europe — and this had been happening already for some decades — will turn into a series of museums.
The collapse of European optimism and the loss of rule of law
Glenn Diesen: A problem there would be how the European public feels about living in a museum. I remember back in the early 2000s how much optimism there was in Europe about its future. I remember reading articles and even books on how this century would essentially belong to the Europeans because everything was looking quite well. They tried to define what makes Europe so unique — they were a normative power, a civilian power, a moral power, a regulatory power — different definitions, but they all agreed that the EU was destined for greatness through unity, the end of war, and cooperation. Europe united would be the central pillar in the world, together with the United States forming this collective hegemon.
But in a relatively short period of time we now see the US partnership declining, Europe likely to fragment without common political and economic interests, the political class increasingly unpopular and in many cases also illegitimate, and the Europeans without a clear economic model — especially in digital technologies, or in terms of where the energy comes from. What is the role of Europe in the new world? Some would argue the moral compass is gone as well, and this was — for a group of very different countries who defined their common identity based on being liberal democracies — not great when the liberal aspect is challenged by growing authoritarianism at home or support for genocide abroad.
You have no crystal ball and we should always be careful about making predictions, but where is this headed? Living in a museum, remembering better times, is not a recipe for stability.
Karin Kneissl: No, not at all. I remember very well what you just described — the so-called Lisbon Strategy of the year 2000. It was, I think, in March 2000 under the Portuguese EU presidency that they signed and then did the utmost to put into work the so-called Lisbon Strategy, which said that by the year 2020 — I quote — the European Union would be the most progressive, innovative, stable, and important actor on a global level. That was the ambitious goal in the year 2000. In the year 2020, while there happened to be a pandemic for everybody, before that already and certainly afterwards, the EU had not been reaching these ambitions even by far.
I would add to that: EU officials cannot keep the promise to the younger generations, who expect to have work, who expect to have high-quality infrastructure and medical services. It is in decline. I would not only focus on the political level here. Politics is tough, but I come from administration. I never was so much in politics, even though people consider me a politician because I was a minister — but I was an expert minister. I am a firm believer in effective administration, civil administration. This is the world I come from. I served in a foreign ministry for some years. I had the tremendous privilege to attend the ENA in France — which was abolished by Mr. Macron. We were brought up there for two years in efficient, high-level civil administration. People who work in civil administration are not supposed to be changing every few years because of elections or whatever. They are there. They should not be in the limelight. They do their work. An ambassador does not run for elections, and a civil administrator in a justice ministry should not be involved in politics. We know that is a different story in practice, but that is what efficient civil administration was always about for me — a state that can claim it has an efficient bureaucracy. And bureaucracy as such is not a bad word. Bureaucracy should be a powerful apparatus that puts political announcements into action.
Now we lack that. We lack efficient administrators. We have a highly ideological European Commission which is not that efficient. We have national administrations where people are underpaid, miss career perspectives, or are not recruited well. So I would say that in addition to economics, it is the administrative system as such that is in crisis. And that adds to the whole thing. What I said in my book — Reclaiming Europe — two years ago, and I would like to highlight it here once again: for me the biggest drama for Europe is the loss of law.
Glenn Diesen: The loss of law. Yes.
Karin Kneissl: Yes. The loss of law, the loss of the rule of law. Lists have replaced laws. It is lists now — all these compliance things. When you look at the sanctions, people have no idea what the current legal situation is within which they can work as a company, as a bank, whatever. Because most of these things are not published. They are just somewhere in the drawers of compliance departments. And when they close your bank account, the bank will tell you: we cannot tell you why.
Currently in my case — I don't want to bring up personal things, but just for you and your viewers — a procedure has been started to take away my citizenship. I have only one citizenship. It would make me stateless. Austrian law foresees statelessness, but Austria is also party to several conventions by the Council of Europe which forbid statelessness, because Austria has a long tradition of expelling its own citizens for whatever reasons. I happened to meet some of them — like the assistant to the creator of the Austrian constitution, Professor Kelsen. He was expelled and went to Berkeley. And Professor Klinghoffer, who was a very good mentor for me when I lived in Jerusalem, was his assistant and was also ousted from Austria. So it is a long tradition. But this is just to highlight where we stand today. You can lose your citizenship. You can be rendered stateless by your own state. What is your crime? In my case, the crime is that I work for St. Petersburg State University. That is my crime.
Glenn Diesen: I remember — was it back in 2018? You were still Foreign Minister of Austria and you got married, and Putin came to Austria for your wedding and danced with you, and this is still brought up as a means of demonisation. The idea that a foreign minister would cultivate good relations with foreign leaders is quite extraordinary. But that was on the diplomatic side. Even after leaving diplomacy and working at the university of your choice, that is a reason for stripping your citizenship. As you said, when the rule of law goes away, we have lost something very important.
Karin Kneissl: And in my opinion this is the worst that can happen to a society — the loss of law. You can overcome an economic crisis. You can overcome an energy crisis. But the loss of law destroys your society from inside. This is what I have been observing from far away — luckily, because when I left I said: in a few years it might be too late. And I was unfortunately right.
A few days ago the European Commission ordered a new rule that Ukrainians between the age of 23 and 65 who want to apply for asylum in the European Union are not allowed to receive asylum because they should fight the war. This is in plain violation of the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees. And the real thing is: a Russian who would come to Germany or France and say "I don't want to fight the war" would get asylum. A Ukrainian would not get asylum because he should fight. This is what Zelensky tells all his EU partners: bring me back all the men who came to your countries. 3.4 million Ukrainians are living in the EU. Not all of them are men between 25 and 65, but a large number are. And here we see the wonderful European Union — the Olympus of human rights and rule of law — violating in a way the UN Convention on Refugees.
I was always critical of mass illegal immigration of economic migrants. They were all looking for a better life — it is legitimate, but it is not covered by the UN Convention on Refugees to look for better circumstances. Whereas wishing to flee a country where there is a war is the basic case for refugee status.
Glenn Diesen: Especially for the self-described moral superpower. This is quite extraordinary. But again, it is all instrumental. Zelensky says we need more manpower, we have to fight Russia, the Europeans have them — if they don't have weapons, they can send Ukrainian refugees by deporting them. It is sad to see the rule of law collapse, and also the whole idea of what they define as standing with Ukraine — because obviously they stand with Zelensky, but not with actual Ukrainian people who do not want to fight, the ones who went to Europe, and who now want immediate negotiations while the EU doesn't even want to talk to the Russians. It is quite shocking.
Do you have any final thoughts before we finish?
Karin Kneissl: Well, we should not leave our guests, the viewers, in such a dramatic state. I don't know what the weather is like in your place. Thank God here we have some soft sunshine and green grass, for which I am very grateful because I have animals, and I really feel sorry for the farmers and the animals which don't have hay these days in many European countries.
What can be the better note? I am trying to think of something. I can only say: please, everybody, use your critical mind. Don't be cowards. There are so many cowards. The two of us — if I may say — you have to prove backbone every day, also in your situation. I went through hell more than once, and in all those chapters of my life I saw around me too many cowards. That is how we got this far. So I can only ask people to be a little bit less cowardly. Don't think that social media is the battlefield — there are other, more important areas where one should speak up, prove a backbone, and remind your respective government of what is written in the constitution, what is written in certain instruments that we have. When it comes to taking away the citizenship of your citizen, Article 9 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 says every human has the right to a citizenship. But this is something that is not at all in the back of the mind of the governing party in Austria, not to say the administration. So there is something wrong.
Glenn Diesen: I am not sure what the purpose will be. At least we are petty — that is for sure. Anyways, thanks again for taking the time.
Karin Kneissl: You are welcome. And I wish everybody a peaceful summer, and please try not to be a coward.