18.04.2012

34. Economic Conference

Why Liberalism Sells so Poorly

Marina Masoni

«Why Liberalism Sells So Poorly. From the perspective of Switzerland.»

Arnulf Baring

«Why Liberalism Sells So Poorly. From the perspective of Europe.»

Content

«Why Liberalism Sells So Poorly. From the perspective of Switzerland.» «Why Liberalism Sells So Poorly. From the perspective of Europe.»

«Why Liberalism Sells So Poorly. From the perspective of Switzerland.»

Speech by Marina Masoni (in German)

Swiss lawyer and politician

Liberalism is not in good shape. Liberal policies are increasingly facing resistance. It is the politics of statists and interventionists that are once again in vogue and shaping the tone in many European countries. Meanwhile, there is much discussion and debate about the crisis of liberalism, about why it is performing so poorly today. This is also the question that concerns us here today.

I would like to briefly touch on one of the numerous articles on the subject that have appeared in the German press in recent months. The choice was purely random. The text is symptomatic and gets to the heart of the matter. It comes from Tobias Kaufmann, a German journalist who was named “Author of Freedom” by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation in October 2011, and was published under the title “In Praise of Liberalism” in September 2011 in the “Kölner Stadtanzeiger.” The text uses the crisis of the German FDP, which governs together with the CDU under Chancellor Angela Merkel, as an opportunity to reflect on the state of liberalism today. It begins as follows:

“The crisis of the FDP goes beyond personnel and specific policies. It also marks a crisis of liberalism—this political ideology to which Germany owes part of its success. For the spirit of the times is blowing in a different direction. Unfortunately.”

The spirit of the times is indeed blowing in a different direction, even though the results we owe to freedom—and primarily to entrepreneurial freedom—are undisputedly positive. And then follows a bitter realization that I would also like to quote at length:

“Yes, the free market is anarchic, and free people can be dangerously selfish. But in the end, what counts is the balance sheet. In the 21st century, we live freer, richer, healthier, and more peacefully than in any previous era. This would be inconceivable without the contribution of liberal thinking, which believes in the potential of people without needing to be re-educated by the state.”

We can hardly disagree. All objectively measurable data tell us, beyond prejudices and feelings, that progress has been considerable in societies where liberal thinking has prevailed and where it succeeded in translating its principles into concrete political measures and reforms: more prosperity, more knowledge, more rights, more freedoms, as detailed, for example, in the book “The Rational Optimist” (2010) by the British author Matt Ridley. Nevertheless, liberalism is facing a tough time today, and worse still: liberalism is being rejected even in middle-class circles, as if it were a false friend who has betrayed us. Reading the comments on Tobias Kaufmann’s article on the “Kölner Stadtanzeiger” website only confirms this. Most of the comments have nothing good to say about liberalism.

Switzerland is no exception here. I do not want to go into whether our FDP truly pursues liberal policies or whether it has forgotten its heritage and now merely adheres to an exaggerated pragmatism that fails to inspire anyone. That is not the point. Rather, the issue is that today, not even in our country can freedom-oriented reforms be realized. In the 1990s, we were able to liberalize the telecommunications sector, weaken the state monopoly of the postal service, prepare the labor market opening with the Bilateral Agreements, and make the tax system more competitive. Today, the same reforms would most likely not pass. This development was already foreshadowed in 2002 when voters rejected the law on the electricity market. The government and parliament had to settle for a reform that brought less openness and liberalization. The most recent example concerns the agricultural policy. On March 7, 2012, the Council of States, during the spring session, comfortably approved a motion already passed by the National Council to halt negotiations with the European Union on an agricultural free trade agreement. It is true that Switzerland has always had strong protectionist tendencies in this economic sector; yet, despite this, progress was made in the 1990s. Nowadays, we even refuse to negotiate.

All these are signs that undoubtedly point to a shift in direction: the wind is blowing in other directions. Liberalism is not selling well today. Freedom of choice, competition, the ability to exchange goods and services freely so that everyone benefits—these freedoms now arouse mistrust and make most citizens anxious. The crisis of international finance and the state debt crisis have overturned the fundamental orientation of society. One could put it bluntly: we live in a society that seems tired of freedom, yes, in a society that fears freedom and would prefer to place this value under guardianship. It really seems that the stock market ratings of freedom are on the decline.

When did the turnaround happen?

We could all see that the financial crisis since 2007 had very strong effects in this regard, but something had already happened before that began to slow the momentum that the ideas of freedom had since the 1980s. I believe the turnaround can be pinpointed quite precisely: it was the Enron scandal. This is, of course, a debatable opinion, but many reasons indeed support this view.

Do you remember? I am referring to the $60 billion American corporation involved in the energy business, which falsified its balance sheets, then imploded on the stock market, and filed for bankruptcy in the fall of 2001, shortly after the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in New York. Among the board members of Enron was economist Paul Krugman, who would later receive the Nobel Prize in Economics and who positioned himself as a fierce critic of the New Economy, globalization, the new financial industry, and the so-called wild liberalizations, with Enron being one of their greatest protagonists. This scandal was the impetus for growing criticism of political measures that had adopted the slogan “Less state, more freedom,” even though Enron—this is the essential point—was the denial of that very policy.

Liberalism has nothing in common with the business practices that thrive where public and private interests are mixed, where state and market are intertwined, or more precisely: where those holding political offices work hand in hand with those in leadership positions in private companies and now benefit from a privileged market position thanks to political support. This business practice, by the way, has no political affiliation and easily aligns itself with whichever politicians are in power, whether they follow a more statist or liberal direction.

Did these businessmen simply make use of freedom? No. Rather, they unscrupulously ventured into the gray area between state and market. Thanks to their privileged connections, they benefited from advantageous conditions that, in many cases, allowed them to ignore the rules, cross the boundaries of freedom, and, in short, exercise a freedom that knows no responsibility.

At the beginning of our millennium, however, it was the liberal view of society and the state that had to suffer. According to the prevailing doctrine today, it is liberalism that is blamed for the economic and financial disasters that have followed each other between cyclical highs and lows since 2001. Liberalism is derisively labeled as “neoliberalism”—regardless of the historical context. In reality, liberalism, whether with or without “neo,” has been and remains the most consistent opponent of any form of corporatism and cronyism, which are at the root of these crises.

The subsequent international financial crisis delivered the fatal blow to the variants of policies that focus on the primacy of civil society, the freedom of choice of citizens, and free competition. It was generously overlooked that the crisis was triggered by falling real estate prices in the US and caused by the state-supported subprime mortgages of the banks. Initially, it was interventionist policy, guided by good intentions. Everyone, regardless of wealth—this was the intention of the American government—should be able to own a home. Consequently, the banks granted mortgages to everyone, regardless of wealth, at the behest of the government. This suited everyone due to the politically desired, artificially low-interest rates, which in turn encouraged speculation in real estate. But, well, no one wanted to know about this then and still doesn’t today. And so it happened that the cause of the disaster was once again attributed to neoliberal policies and deregulation. Liberalism was once again in the dock—and remains so to this day.

Another sensitive point arises. Naming it may appear as a provocation here in Zurich, among representatives of the financial world. But it is part of liberalism to have no prejudices and to have the courage to address uncomfortable questions. So what has happened?

Many who made poor use of freedom and violated rules did not have to bear the consequences that entrepreneurial freedom, free competition, and the free market foresee in these cases: loss, failure, bankruptcy. The protection of “too big to fail” has equally rewarded irresponsible or negligent handling of freedom. If a company poses a systemic risk, it can engage in behavior that would have been sanctioned under normal circumstances.

This was further exacerbated by the fact that this rescue policy, already incompatible with the principles of a free market, was applied selectively, thus failing to ensure equal treatment. This was strikingly evident in the US: a liberal finds it hard to understand why, in September 2008, the commercial bank Lehman Brothers, with its 26,000 employees and a debt of $600 billion, had to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after its request for government assistance was denied, while other banks with similarly unsustainable debt and in comparable situations were rescued through government intervention.

All of this must be viewed against the backdrop that government intervention has not been able to solve the problems to this day. On the contrary. Intervention has actually exacerbated them in two ways. First, the debt crisis became a state debt crisis. Second, intervention has allowed public bodies to cover up the true causes of their mismanagement. The origins of mismanagement lie much further back, in the public spending policies that were already untenable before the crisis. The degree of public debt in most Western states, which has risen to alarming levels as a result of this interventionism, is staggering. The crisis that has developed is primarily a crisis of state interventionism, a crisis that has fundamentally questioned the relationship between state and market, the relationship between private and public interests.

This means that, after having found their ultimate success in the early 2000s, liberal reforms are now stagnating and running into new obstacles. The reactions to the financial crisis and the increase in state intervention have pushed reforms to the back burner. The public’s perception has worsened as a result of the crises and the rise in state intervention. The successes that liberalism has achieved seem to have been forgotten, and in their place, a state-centric thinking is emerging that goes hand in hand with a growing regulatory zeal.

As a result, the space for freedom is shrinking, while the state is expanding its influence. It is no wonder that the European countries affected by the crisis, and increasingly others as well, have become aware of their stagnation in the development of reforms, which is becoming more and more apparent. This is why liberalism is facing a particularly tough time.

But this is not an argument to abandon liberalism. On the contrary: it is all the more important to continue defending and promoting it. It is necessary to strive for new solutions that allow for reforms and progressive change while ensuring that the principles of freedom and responsibility remain intact.

The Second Industrial Revolution, marked by electricity, the internal combustion engine, oil production, the chemical industry, and the commercialization of numerous new household and everyday devices, set in motion a process of creative destruction that was more widely accepted societally. The new opportunities and prospects for advancement were greater, and the new inventions benefited more people: from the light bulb to the telephone, from the refrigerator to the gramophone, from radio telegraphy to cinema, from tires to bicycles, from the railway to the airplane. Indeed, it was a time of optimism. Economic freedom, combined with technological and scientific progress, brought benefits even to countries without natural resources. Transportation options for people multiplied while distances became shorter. Society was and felt overall freer and wealthier.

The economic globalization we are experiencing today began in the late 1970s, accelerated by liberalizations in global trade and the spread of new electronic information technologies. It led to an unprecedented economic acceleration and further multiplied the potentials for creative destruction. Moreover, it ensured that the stage for this process is no longer the individual national economies, but the entire world. This created numerous new opportunities: countries that had long experienced high poverty rates saw increases in wealth and freedom that were previously unthinkable. From a global perspective, poverty has drastically decreased in recent years and decades—once again, referring to the studies of Matt Ridley or the poverty statistics from the UN. Entire populations suddenly had new prospects for improving their conditions and achieving economic and social progress. The engine of this upheaval was freedom, primarily economic freedom, to produce, offer goods and services on the global market, and thereby improve oneself.

As we heard at the beginning of the talk: “In the 21st century, we live freer, richer, healthier, and more peacefully than in any previous era. This would be inconceivable without the contribution of liberal thinking, which believes in the potential of people.”

However, the problem now is that despite these global advances, people in our highly developed Western societies have begun to doubt the potential of liberal thinking and the liberal policies derived from it, and in many cases, to lose confidence in them.

Again: Why? One of the reasons I see is that globalization involves separating and distancing the processes of destruction and creation on a global scale. In other words: With globalization, the competitive disadvantages of freedom in relation to security, equality, and stability become more pronounced.

Let’s consider a trivial example. The mail carrier in Zurich loses his job because electronic mail—email—leads to fewer letters being sent through traditional postal services. He is unlikely to care that the young Chinese man in Shanghai, who manufactures the computer from which the emails are sent, sees his wealth increase, so that one day he might come to Zurich for vacation and create jobs for our hotels, restaurants, and souvenir shops. The Zurich mail carrier does not want to wait for this return of opportunities and wealth. The spatial and temporal separation between destruction and creation has become too great for him. Consequently, he demands not a policy of reforms and liberalizations but immediate protectionist measures from the government to restore the security of the past and promise him the same prosperity and social stability as before.

The practice of social damping mechanisms of the welfare state contributes to the fact that the divide between destruction and creation is increasingly unacceptable. This hardening is accompanied by a general growing mistrust of political measures that rely on creative destruction as a motor for the spread and deepening of wealth. Creative destruction is perceived by many as a process that leads to decline rather than to advancement—this perspective holds for people living in countries that have long achieved a high level of prosperity. This is viewed very differently by people in countries on the path of growth—for them, creative destruction is the process that offers them the opportunity to escape poverty and deprivation through their own efforts. This dynamic in emerging countries additionally unsettles many people in the West—they fear losing wealth while others gain. Thus, the number of those who prefer the risk of (partial or full) isolation from globalization to the risk of openness grows. More and more people think that the welfare state, which promises short-term security, equality, and stability, is threatened by a policy of competitiveness and thus needs to be protected. This is understandable: It is precisely the policy aimed at competitiveness that would subject the welfare state to constant reforms. Indeed, it is also this policy of competitiveness that would help preserve welfare state achievements; yet for many people, the risks associated with a policy of isolation are easier to accept than the uncertainty and instability that are the inevitable price of a policy focused on openness and competition.

This is why liberalism is struggling today: It is rightly identified as the ideological current leading to a policy of openness, which opens many new opportunities, but these opportunities are spread across the globe and over time; meanwhile, this policy brings with it a degree of uncertainty, inequality, and instability that is higher than in the decades following World War II, when the West seemed to grow relentlessly. A policy of freedom needs constant successes and a noticeable multiplication of opportunities to be supported by the vast majority of the population. It cannot afford longer interruptions in the process of creative destruction; and above all, it cannot afford abrupt setbacks caused by questionable behaviors perceived as immoral, unjust, selfish, and driven by greed.

It is difficult, really difficult, to say how often these setbacks of the zeitgeist occur. It is, however, a fact that “the zeitgeist today blows in a different direction.” Unfortunately.

Freedom functions like a slowly swinging pendulum. When the state restricts freedoms, regulates them too much and too long without fulfilling its promises, the pendulum tends towards a widespread desire for “less state, more freedom.” However, when people, companies, managers, and politicians misuse freedom for too long, when freedom reigns but is not accompanied by responsibility, when opportunities and successes are concentrated and selective rather than broad and general, when only a few win and many lose (and operate in an environment of uncertainty and instability), the pendulum swings back and moves towards the other pole: “more state, less freedom.” The goal then is to achieve more security and more equality in stability, even if it means a loss of wealth. And this is exactly the pendulum movement we are currently observing. It happens, even though the damages are not attributable to the policy of freedom itself, but to the severe malfunctions in the exercise of freedom, to the misuse of freedom, in short, to a policy that proclaims freedom but no longer applies it. And in the end, liberalism pays the bill—a high, consequential bill.

The development can be compared to what happens in markets. There are moments when investors tend to take risks; and there are moments when they prefer to invest in less risky ventures. These preferences depend both on personal inclinations and on past experiences.

When a society imposes too many regulations through the state because it begins to distrust freedom, it deprives freedom of part of its meaning. Freedom ceases to be a value that guides people’s behavior; it becomes a good withdrawn from the citizen and managed by the state. This strips freedom of its fundamental ethical component: responsibility. When individuals are faced with too many regulations and too many restrictions on freedom, they become fixated on merely going straight and passively adhering to the guardrails, without being aware of the ethical implications of freedom.

Schumpeter predicted in his seminal work “Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy” that the process of creative destruction underlying economic progress would lead to an economic order that increasingly resembles bureaucratic management rather than innovative entrepreneurship. This is an order that fits a socialist society that values stability over freedom and denies almost all principles of capitalism to which it owes its success—whether we speak of a social-democratic or a socialist society today is ultimately just a matter of terminology. Analogous thoughts were developed by Ayn Rand, the American writer with Russian roots, in her work “Atlas Shrugged” (1957), recently released in a new German translation as “The Strike.” Rand eloquently demonstrates her literary talent in addressing many people and evoking emotions—a talent we need more than ever today. Those who recall John Galt’s radio address—where he portrays his country as a victim of the economic crisis and a values crisis stemming from a policy of isolation, driven by the collusion of political power and unscrupulous businesspeople—will understand what I mean.

The pendulum of freedom is now swinging towards the pole that is less favorable to us liberals: where freedom is less a value lived by people and more a good managed by the state. It is difficult to say what the remedy is to overcome this situation. Besides, it would be rather presumptuous of me to proclaim any remedies or advice here. Nevertheless, we must learn from mistakes and understand and explain their causes.

I have pointed out the analogy between citizens’ inclination towards freedom and investors’ risk appetite. However, there is a fundamental difference between the two. The investor who has restricted himself to less risky investments due to recent experiences can always change his investment strategy and return to riskier ventures. The citizen who has given up freedom, however, will only be able to reclaim it with great difficulty. All those who now advocate “more state and less freedom” should be aware of this.

That is why we must uphold the value of freedom, the ethics of freedom as the substantive core of democracy, as a necessary and sufficient condition for the proper functioning of a market economy. Freedom as a moral value contains the good of responsibility: there is no ethics of freedom when freedom is divorced from responsibility. And this ethics would be sufficient within the rules of a liberal democracy to avoid those unacceptable and immoral behaviors that have caused so many disasters in the last ten years and thus put liberalism in trouble. It would also be sufficient to prevent our society from embarking on dangerous paths and to guide us back to the path of social and economic progress.

¹ SCHUMPETER: „Kapitalismus, Sozialismus und Demokratie“ (1947), A. Francke Verlag: Tübingen und Basel 2005, S. 137-138.

«Why Liberalism Sells So Poorly. From the perspective of Europe.»

Speech by Arnulf Baring (in German)

German lawyer, historian and publicist

Ladies and gentlemen, esteemed guests, dear Swiss neighbors, the brilliant and penetrating lecture by Mrs. Masoni, my predecessor, has put me in great embarrassment. For as she spoke, she increasingly expressed everything that I also believe to be right and would have presented to you if I had been the first speaker. She naturally articulated it much more beautifully than I could have. After all, she had brought along an elaborate and excellent manuscript from which we all benefited greatly. I, of course, could not compete with that. As you may have noticed, I have recently gotten into the habit of speaking freely. This has its drawbacks, but also its advantages. For one, when speaking freely, one perceives the mood in the room more strongly than when looking at a manuscript. You inevitably see, when you look into the audience, whether someone is nodding, that is, agreeing, or shaking their head disapprovingly. This can be the occasion to refine a thought. Another advantage is, if I interpret correctly, that instinctively the listeners’ anxiety that the speaker might falter, crash, spreads. One feels, as a speaker, how the nervous concern of the audience carries one along. Knowing that Mrs. Masoni has covered essential aspects of today’s liberalism and its threats, I will limit myself to what professors like to do: I will focus on footnotes that might complement the magnificent lecture of my Tessiner predecessor here and there.

I will only address what is worth noting from a German perspective. Mrs. Masoni did not discuss the role and significance of personalities. They seem to me to be very significant, especially in liberal parties. The German FDP was never (until the last election in 2009, when it had a spectacular victory, which, however, did not carry the promise of permanence) a large party. Nonetheless, it played a significant and decisive role in the decades of the Bonn Republic. This was due to the excellent personalities in its ranks. The crisis of today’s FDP is closely related to the fact that the personnel of this party has become increasingly weaker in recent decades.

This weakness is not a peculiarity of the liberals alone. All our parties suffer from this ailment. It probably has a lot to do with the fact that we – unlike France, Great Britain, and the USA – have not developed recruitment processes that combine expertise with personal charisma and thus leadership ability.

Think of France. There, a large part of the leadership personnel of all parties still comes from the graduates of the Grandes Écoles, which, by the way, is not only an advantage. Consider Great Britain, and imagine having sat three times a day in Hall as a student at one of the two famous universities, you would have felt the gaze of the prime ministers who emerged from the college. It was inevitable that enterprising young people would come to the idea that they too could reach the position achieved by those solemnly gazing men. The elite formation in England is still significantly shaped by what is endorsed and realized in these famous old colleges.

In the United States, as you know, it is a personal challenge but also an honor for men of business, regardless of party affiliation, to dedicate a few years to the President and the country, applying the skills acquired in management, economic judgment, and also political empathy.

We know none of these three recruitment processes. We do not consider them necessary. Surprisingly, we had much better political leadership after World War II than in Weimar. It was surprising because one might assume that due to the massive losses of German elites as a result of emigration, Nazi persecutions, war casualties, and those involved in the July 20th plot, the leadership personnel after 1945 would have been meager, and today, almost seventy years later, it is excellent. The reverse is the case, which had several reasons. On the one hand, the Nazis – unlike the Communists, who managed to hold on for many decades – quickly exhausted themselves. Thus, many politicians from the Weimar era were still available. Adenauer was the most prominent of them. He was significantly shaped by life when he became Chancellor. At 73, one has a more sovereign judgment than at 63, 53, 43, or 33. Moreover, many young war participants flocked to the three then and still most important parties, namely the Christian Democrats, the Social Democrats, and the Liberals. They had gone through the fires of war, were mature and discerning politicians at a young age. They remained influential until the 1980s, up to Chancellor Kohl. We have had true post-war politicians only since Schröder and now Merkel, that is, only relatively recently.

The decline in leadership quality in all our parties, but especially among the liberals, is quite fatal. The liberals have long been a small party. This began even during the Kaiserreich when Bismarck did not stay with the liberals, so they gradually became a shrinking party, also afflicted by wasting away in Weimar. After 1945, they were for a long time a small but energetic and well-staffed party of the middle class, that is, the self-employed, pharmacists, doctors, lawyers, family entrepreneurs. In this respect, they initially had a firm place in our party system. Exaggerating a bit, one could say that in the Bonn Republic, the FDP always governed, sometimes with the right wing, the Union, and sometimes with the left, the SPD. This enviable situation is gone due to the various course changes of the liberals and the emergence of new parties. They no longer have a core audience but are dependent on the fluctuations of political opinion formation. This naturally brings great difficulties for the FDP.

But they are further enlarged by the increasing absence of outstanding personalities. From decade to decade, the leadership elite of the FDP has become weaker. As in other parties, but also in other areas. In journalism, in academia, fewer and fewer young or mid-aged individuals make a public impact. Someone like Guido Westerwelle was a strong-willed opposition politician and significant parliamentarian, who significantly contributed to the great success of his party in the 2009 Bundestag elections. But he was also a major misfortune for the liberals because his understanding of people, particularly regarding women, was very limited, and he therefore promoted several women who, as women, were certainly respectable but had a limited impact on the public thought of the party, on representing its core positions. The personnel difficulties have not been resolved even after Westerwelle’s downfall. The party’s personnel base remained thin. Due to the failures of the Westerwelle era, the FDP leadership lacks middle-aged members. The young guard of the thirty to forty-year-olds, which is now increasingly becoming influential, this so-called student patrol leadership, as it has been called, has entered a position too early that one would have wished for them ten or fifteen years later.

For example, consider the current party leader Philipp Rösler. Imagine for a moment that you were an orphan shortly after birth who ended up in Vietnam. Then your adoptive parents in Vietnam separated, and you would have been raised only by your Vietnamese father and later entered the local politics in mysterious ways. You would probably never have the security of understanding the local world, the history, traditions, mentalities – all the mechanisms, forces, what makes Vietnam, as your own. It’s not a matter of intelligence, learning, but of generational-rootedness in a politically significant culture. These intertwinings are missing from Mr. Rösler. This became immediately painfully apparent to me. One must assume with him that he is not truly anchored in Germany because he lacks access to which he cannot be blamed. You can always notice this in his strained voice – however winning his personality may be. Such observations are naturally not a criticism of him but rather a criticism of those who put him in his unfortunate position.

Christian Lindner is now 33, six years younger than Rösler. Therefore, Rösler was made chairman instead of Lindner. Lindner long believed he was too young for the top position, did not trust himself. If he thought his qualifications and chances would be better in ten years than today, he would, in my opinion, have been mistaken. Now, in the entire media landscape, a young man like him would indeed receive broad attention and support. Whoever has a great opportunity in their early thirties, I told him, will not necessarily be called upon a decade later, when more mature. He seems to have realized this now, as his admirable commitment to the FDP in North Rhine-Westphalia before the elections in May of this year shows.

The liberals are not the only ones with difficulties finding future leadership. Also, among the other parties – if you look at the Greens or even the SPD and CDU/CSU – the pool of personnel has become incredibly small. I consider it a major cause of the stagnation of our party system, its increasing distance from the population, that young, energetic, decisive, opinionated younger generations are missing in politics.

Now, this shortage is certainly not the only cause of the decline of the liberals. With what topic, with what demands, could the FDP have been successful, despite all the difficulties that I have only hinted at and that you, Mrs. Masoni, have already wonderfully clarified?

I believe that the question of the future of the Euro, which deeply concerns the population here, could have been a promising point for successful liberal action. Before the last North Rhine-Westphalia election in 2010, I was firmly convinced that the FDP would achieve a remarkable result if it presented itself publicly and defined itself as a party of a stable Euro. In my opinion, it could have garnered 30% of the votes. If seventy percent of our citizens thought that the course of the Berlin government triggered by the Greek crisis was wrong, did not correspond to the Maastricht Treaty, and also not to our interests, then a reasonable, moderate liberal course could have attracted all those who were looking for stability and strength. Unfortunately, the FDP, under the then leadership, did not seize this opportunity. A courageous, well-supported European course could have been the right answer to the current developments in the liberal landscape.

Thank you very much for your attention.