I gael gweld y campaign a'r ymddangos, a dwi'n cael ei wneud gyda'r ysgol yma yma, am ymddangos eu bod yn eu bushyn i Gwyrddiaeth, a'r bushyn yn eu bushyn i Eurow. Llywodraeth ymlaen i'r ysgol gyda'r ymddangos ymddangos yma, am wnaeth i gyda'r hyffordd ymddangos ymddangos ymddangos ymddangos ymddangos, rwy'n mynd i'r hyffordd am ymddangos ymddangos ymddangos a'r hyffordd ymddangos ymddangos, It looked like Martin Schulze, who was standing as the candidate for the social democratic SPD, was neck and neck with the CDU having surprisingly emerged as its candidate as a former president of the European Parliament early in the year. That turned out to be a flash in the pan, a novelty effect. Ac we had in many ways was the very conventional, very stable, very settled German election. Angela Merkel ran under the slogan in Deutschland in den debut um den Leben for a Germany in which we live well and happily and was anodyne, to the point, to the point almost, a parody speeches in which she would seemingly negotiate with herself whether she was really on the right or the left, speeches in which she offered pleasant living and stable a rhai economiau, ac oedd eich sgwrdd yn cael y cynhyrchu chael y ysgwrdd yn gwneud yn fwy o'r ymddangos, rydyn ni wedi'i dda i gweld y ffordd i'r ffordd i'r cyffredinol, mae'r sgwrdd yn digwydd o dda i ddwylo ddwylo, mae'n rhaid i'n mynd i ddwylo sydd yn cyfeirio i'r dddangos sydd i'n mynd i ysgrifennu. Dwi'n ddweud i'r ddweud i'r diwrnod ychydig. floerwydweill yn y sredig yma cwrdd yma fyddai wedi gweld yn ystod y cwrdd yn fwygo mwyso hammeriwyd o'r rhaid o'r cyfnod arall chi'n ddiwedd gan y ddiwedd cyfnod ym mhwyl�r. Maeherwydd, yn y midst, byddwn ni'n cymru saen o'r dddorol iawn, gan hynny i gael gyntaf eu cyfrifio cyngorol yn arddangos o'r cyfrifio cyr Konstaeth yma sy'n gweld o'r cyfnod yma ar hynny'n gweithio'r gymoedd, today is to see and to look at Germany's election campaign and particularly to look at the contest between the two big German parties, the two parties capable of putting up a chancellor was to see a country very stable, very settled and living well and gloudly, as Mrs Merckwood put it, a country with unemployment according to the économis measures of 3.6%, the fastest growth in six years, the lowest unemployment since reunification, 81% according to one poll of Germans feel satisfied not just with felly rydym sydd wedi'i gwneud y gwirio hefyd. Mae'r oeson o'r awdurdid yma yn ymddangos yr ysgolwyddon a'r swerth o'r dewch. Mae'r cymryd a'r hynod dechrau ar gyfer y cyfrifau sydd ynhygr yw'r cyfrifegau yn y ddweud o'r ffordd ymddangos yng Nghymru, ynghydfynu Llywodraeth Ffawr Rhaggrifedd, a'r ysgrifennu i'r Llywodraeth yn 2013 a os ydych yn y rai ffagwyd, ymddangos ynghylch i'r Ddiwrddol Imbigwyr yn Gweithio. Maen nhw'n gwneud y meddwl, ac mae'n bwysig. Mae'r ffartys yn ymwysig yng nghermoneg yn ymgyrchol iawn o'r bynnag o'r mwyaf a'r dyn nhw'n bynnag o'r bwysig yr iawn o'r ddechrau cyflawni ac yn gweithio gwyllustreitau, o'r ddechrau ymgyrch, o'r ffartys yn Yw Pwysig Llywodraeth, o'r ffaflingol, oherwydd yn y gallu'n ei hyffordiad o'r ddechrau, o'r ffartys yn y cyfrifiadau profiadol, y cryys y dylaid y cyfrannu gynghwlad. Mae'r cyfrannu cyfrannu cyfrannu, mae'n cysylltu cyfrannu. Mae'r cyfrannu cyfrannu sy'n meddwl ysgrifennu a'r cyfrannu cyfrannu i'r gwybod yn ymddiad. Rwy'n bwysig oherwydd mae'r omfrain yng Nghymru, ac yn cael ei ddweud o gael y ddefnyddio. Mae'r ddau yw'r ffordd sy'n ei ddweud, y gweithio'r ddwy'r dweud o'r ddwy'r ddwy'r ddeueth a'r lefnod, Mae'r lefwyr mwyaf o'r cyfnod haes, sy'n 53% oes ar 67% yn y ffordd mwyaf i'r sgwspeth. Mae'r rechyd yn ei ffordd eraill wedi'i wneud o'r CSU, ymgyrchaf o'r Unio Social Cymru, o'r Pwg Perfariad, o'r Pwg Perfariad Pwg Perfariad i'r Cdus Merchys Merchys Cdus. Mae'r pwg perffodiadau 38% o'r Pwg Perfariad o'r Pwg Perfariad, o'r Pwg Pwg Pwg Perfariad, o'r gyfnodd hynny'n ddwy'n dod i'r pwg. Many directions going to the greens, going to the AfD, going to the left, going to the Liberals, going to the non-voter column. And so things are churning in Germany in a way I don't think I anticipated when I moved out to the country. And many of the beneficiaries of this churn, with a smaller parties. All four of which saw their vote share go up slightly or a great deal in the selection. Fy enw, y FTP, y pechydig ffartig pro-busyniol, ymlaen i mewn maen nhw'n gyfnodol sy'n ymdynnu yma o'r Ffudiau yma, o'r bwysigol, o'r dweud o'r ddweud, o'r ddechrau a'r ffastrwch. Mae'r bwysig mwyaf, ddyfynu'r cymhwyllteis ar gweithio a'r eu ddweud. Mae'r bwysig yn ysgwrdd ar gyfer y dyfodol sy'n ddysgu'r ysgrifennu 2013. Mae'r grwngau sydd wedi bod bod yn rhaid i gael yr ysgrifennu, ond mae'n gweithio yn ddysgu'r geithredu sydd yn ei ddodol yn ysgrifennu ac yn ei ddodol yr oedd o'r fwybr iawn i gael gwahanol yma yn Llyfrgell. Mae'r Dilinka, y dyfodol yma i'r parwys i Gweithgell Cymru, ac yn ystod yn ystod yn ymwybodol metracholio'r gweithio'r gweithio yma, yn ystod y bastion yn y gweithio'r Gweithio. A ddod yw'r afgwyd yn ystod yn cyfnod yn fawr, ac yn ofertyn yn gweithio'r gweithio ar y campain antihislam. Mae'r gweithio'r gweithio'n gweithio'r gweithio yn ystod yn ysgol yn y south gweithio'r gweithio. Yn ystod, y newb yng ngheilwyr yn ystod yn yr hystod yng ngheilwyr ymlaenau ymlaenau With seven parties in six fractional groups, the CDU and the CSU sit together. German politics is in flux. It's changing. And that's also true of Germany's next government, with the SPD bastardest result the party has ruled out, joining another so-called grand coalition on Mrs Merkel. And so the only other, arithmetically possible coalition given this fragmentation of the Bundestag, is a new three or four-way coalition, if you count the CSU separately from the CDU known as Jamaica because it's the colors of the parties in question match those of the countries flag, so you have the CDU-CSU, the FDP and the Greens, so a very large ideological spectrum within one coalition. I'll come onto that in a moment. What's the rest of the landscape? We have a myrcle somewhat weakened, I think you can overstate the extent to which she was weakened by this result, but it's worth dating that her party is now just on 30%, which is a very low number for that party, ac mae'r gwestiynau yn y gwestiynau i'r gwestiynau. Mae'r gwestiynau yn llawer yn y gwestiynau. Mae'n gwestiynau wedi'i wath i'r llwyffyr, ac ymwylo'r cyflwytaeth yn y cyfrif, oedd y byddwyr y byd hynny yn cael ei gwych. Mae'r gwestiynau i gwestiynau, cyfriffyrdd i'r gwestiynau, ac ymwylo'r cyfrif. Yn y CSU mae'r crisis, y gwestiynau i'r gwestiynau. Horseehoffer mae'r hwnnw nifer i'r lleoedd cwspol o'r ddiwylliant i gyrtwg dda'r cyfnod oherwydd mae'n rhan o'r ddiwethaf yn gyflwyno'r gweithgrifennu. Mae ysgol i'r FDP, oeddwn wedi gweithio'r bod wedi gweithio'r cyflwno'r ddechrau, sy'n mynd i'r gweithio'r dda'r cyflwno'r ddechrau'r ddechrau'r ddechrau. Rydyn ni'n ddweud y FDP yn gweithio'r ddechrau'r Gweithgrifennu, a'u eu ffordd mewn i'r dda i'r ddechrau'r ddechrau, I would put money on a walk out of the AFD's MPs at the first thing that they strongly disagree with. And one of the party's joint candidates in the election even said the morning afterwards that he plans to yagwn Mrs Merkel or hound her down. They're using a language very unusual in Germany's consensus oriented and usually fairly placid parliamentary politics. What about Jamaica? The talks are currently at an exploratory phase then towards the end of this month the various parties will take them back to or take the initial agreements back to their parties to see if they can get agreement which looks likely. Then they move on to the final stage which is actually drawing up the coalition agreement. It might not be until January that we have a new government in Berlin which of course has implications for European discussions, European meetings in the interim period not to mention issues like Brexit. It looks initially like the problem or the difficulty of forming this new Jamaica coalition which has not existed at a federal level in Germany before would be in bringing together the FDP which as I said has moved in a more conservative you might even say nationalist direction in the recent years and the Greens which whose membership goes quite a long way to the left of the politics. But as predicted if I may say so in the economist the two parties are actually getting on all right. It was always clear that the battles between them during the election campaign were largely for show and I understand that the leaders on the two main figures in the two parties actually refer to each other as do or the informal pronoun which I think hints at the private level of sympathy between the two. No the problem with forming a Jamaica coalition is much more the CSU which as I say has been really beaten back in its home state. There's a state election in Bavaria next year. The party was already pretty upset with Angela Merkel's refugee policies and is going to really want to extract some concessions in a more closed border kind of anti-immigrant direction from these talks. So I think that will be one of the major sticking points in the final stages of the coalition talks. Nonetheless I think there will be a deal. There will be a Jamaica government in Germany. It will work pretty well. The German system is geared up for compromise and trade-offs between different parties and most importantly of all none of the parties involved want new elections although they talk a lot about well if we don't get what we want we'll pull out and force new elections. In practice they will understand that new elections are most likely to boost the AFD of all the parties. Not to mention the fact that there's also quite a lot of money around to lubricate the wheels of a new deal which always helps. Who will get what? I wouldn't be surprised if the Greens ended up putting up the foreign minister as they did under Gerhard Schröder. So Chemo Zdemir who would be of course Germany's first foreign minister of Turkish origin is I think a strong candidate for that position. The FTP have said they want the finance ministry where I think in many ways they will continue the legacy of Wolfgang Schäuble who has moved to become head of the speaker of the Bundestag. Meanwhile the CSU is likely to demand the interior ministry. So that's the government that is likely to take Germany forward from the start of next year but I also want to use this talk to talk a bit about the sort of country that this Jamaica formation will actually be leading. This is an interesting period of political transition in Germany. Fragmentation in the Bundestag, a new sort of government in Berlin but it's also one of a much broader transition away from what I'm going to refer to as the Heiler Welt. If those who don't know this phrase it's a phrase referring in German to, it's quite hard to translate. It literally means a healthy or a wholesome world but it evokes a certain sort of Germany, a certain sort of life in Germany. It evokes a Germany of good living, comfortable living, security stability of the post-war economic miracle of a quiet life after the tumult and turbulence and violence of the mid 20th century in Germany. It evokes cultural homogeneity. It's the fountain of many post-war films and songs. It's a cultural icon, an image of a Germany rooted in tradition and order of security and work and life. It perhaps helps to think of it as the perfect Bavarian village set in rolling hills with a beer garden and a church and a well-kept park and a factory with apprentices and people who know their place. It's a very powerful, I mean whether or not it's explicitly or consciously referred to as such, that vision of the good life is a very powerful part of the German mentality, the German consciousness. And it's underpinned and driven many of Germany's existing political and economic structures in the past decades. This was a country sheltered under the security umbrella of the United States of NATO. It was that protection that enabled this good living in the high level of Germany. It's a Germany with quite a strong role for the church with quite traditional social values. It's a Germany that has quite a homogenous and settled society with stable and relatively egalitarian economic structures, much of what we think of as distinctive about the German industrial model, the apprenticeships, the co-determination in workplaces, the collaborative relationships between unions and bosses, the companies owned by generations of the same family, slightly tweaking every so often a formula that has worked very well down the years and doing it very well. It's also reflected in the German economic model, a political model sorry, the system of consensus of big, relatively centurist, Forksparteion or People's Parties, the SPD on the left and the CDU on the right, cooperating together to maintain this happy status quo. Now what I observe in Germany today is not that this high level is disappearing or that it's in many ways becoming any less attractive to the average German voter. But the many of those structural elements that underpin it that I've just described are being challenged or being changed or in some sort of evolution. Germany's becoming a much more plural, diverse and open country. It's in the grip of a series of disruptive changes. The bracing winds of the wider world are making themselves felt more in the comfortable Bavarian village and demanding more of its inhabitants outside of their own country. I think this trend can be described on various fronts. The first is of course German society which is becoming much more fragmented. Germany has traditionally been among the big economies of the West, one of the most egalitarian and yet wealth inequality has grown there more in the last few years than in almost any other Western country. It's the most by wealth, now the most unequal country in the Eurozone, believe it or not. 40% of German earners have not seen any real wage increases since the late 1990s. The country's current competitiveness driven by the in the view of the economists, very wise reforms of Gerhard Schroeder in the mid 2000s has come slightly at the cost of lower wages and stagnant wages for many German workers. I think this is very intimately bound up with that simmering dissatisfaction I described earlier in this talk. There's a growing gap that I think many of us in the Anglo-Saxon world are quite familiar with between the successful booming cities and more rural areas and small town areas that feel left behind. This, remembering in Germany, is still quite new and quite different and quite unsettling for many people. This opening up of German society is happening in more positive respects. It's becoming a more relaxed and tolerant country having been one of the more socially conservative countries in Western Europe. It's now introduced gay marriage. It's to those who were there during the rather stuffy coal years. It's a much more free, free, free going, easy going place. The labour market for a long time very much geared around the idea of a male breadwinner and a female homemaker is evolving and becoming more open and more gender balanced. Meanwhile, the very meaning of what it is to be German is in flux. It used to be unofficially rather ethnically based until the late 1990s. The whole immigration, the legal structure of the immigration system was built around the assumption that most immigrants were people with German forefathers coming from Eastern or Central Europe. That's changed. You only have to look at how the shades of skin colour and the surnames of the German national football team have changed even in the time of Angela Merkel's chancellorship. If you look back to 2006 when Germany hosted the World Cup, the German football team I think had almost all German surnames. Now it's a panoply of German surnames, Turkish surnames, Asian surnames. It's becoming a much more melting pot sort of a country and that's happened very recently and it challenges many of the foundations of the federal republic. Germany's economic model is in flux too. This traditional model based on the steady incremental change in certain industries that Germany does very well, car making, machine tools, pharmaceuticals. That still works very well and it's reflected in those impressive statistics I listed at the start of this talk. At the same time, those are also industries that are going through revolutionary transformations in a way that I don't think they have in decades. Just think of the car industry, the shift to electric cars for example where the German car makers have been rather left behind and have made a very bad bet on diesel engines. The shift to self-driving cars and what that means about the internet infrastructure you need in terms of the physical infrastructure you need. Manufacturing is increasingly melding together with services which are less of a German strength, melding with digital consumption. Again an area where Germany is lagging behind and so to maintain its strengths in its traditional areas, Germany is going to have to change I think in a way it hasn't had to before in a more radical and disruptive way. The very export success of Germany is in question. It's done very well in the last few years by making things better that the rising economies like China either couldn't make themselves or couldn't make as well. That's increasingly changing. Just look at the state of the Chinese car market, the Chinese machinery market is becoming much more sophisticated. It's interesting to see that German firms are starting to outsource, hire up the value change, they're outsourcing more high skilled work. It's not just the manual labour of physically connecting parts of machinery but they're outsourcing quite skilled work now to particularly central European countries with good education systems and much lower labour costs like the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and so forth. The manufacturing share of the German workforce is believe it or not falling although it remains higher than it is in other countries. Indeed this whole workforce that the post-war baby boomers are about to retire. The largest age segment in Germany is now the 55 to 60 year olds. The next 10 years a huge number of those who built Germany's current prosperity going to retire and the dependency ratio will change dramatically. In Europe the high level that I described was built on a sort of European integration that was idealistic and very positive but in which Germany was always mostly able to hold the line on economic sovereignty even with the introduction of the euro Germany was able to insist on certain rules, insist for example on the fact that the ECB be based in many ways on the Bundesbank and whether it can continue to hold the line on economic sovereignty within the eurozone is now in question with this bold vision set forward by Emmanuel Macron many of Germany's safeguards within the eurozone within the monetary union are in question and it's going to have to come up with some answers to the proposals that he made and then on the world stage Germany has been traditionally a pacifist power it's been a peacekeeping power but its stature and its size and its wealth at the moment are causing not to mention developments like the election of Donald Trump and his demand that Europeans pay more into NATO and do more for their insecurity are demanding things of Germany that the country's politics I think are not comfortable with that means spending more on defence a subject which is extremely controversial in Germany that means integrating with nuclear powers like France it means deploying German troops into harm's way in a way that hasn't happened in the history of the federal public to date and then of course there's politics as I've already discussed that the rise of a more antagonistic less consensus based more confrontational sort of politics so all these different areas where you look at society you look at demographics you look at the economy you look at foreign policy you look at Europe the the stable settled Germany that I think many in which many Germans are living well and happily is in transformation and demands things of this of of those underpinning structures that I think will make the next few years probably the most demanding on Germany and its leaders since reunification and so that's that's the country which this new sort of government this Jamaica coalition takes over and I think when it does so it's going to have to take over a country that mrs Merkel in her various in her three governments to date has in many ways prepared for these changes has has guided into this period of transition but in some ways has not on the positive side of the balance sheet mrs Merkel in her 12 years as chancellor since 2005 has prepared Germany for its future with things like high levels of research and development spending a strong priority to her as a trained scientist by background she's presided over a more relaxed and modern society that is partly her doing I think we can say for example I mean she may not have driven it always but she never stood in the way of her social democratic coalition partners when for example they wanted to introduce quotas for women on corporate boards when they wanted to end conscription when they most recently wanted to introduce gay marriage she's let that happen um her own leadership style may be bound up with that Germany has for the last few chancellas been governed by very macho masculine sorts of leaders you think of helmut kohl you think of gehrhard schroeder the tub thumping sort of leadership Merkel's bought a more subtle and in some ways more sophisticated sort of leadership to the chancellery and I think that that will be a leg one of her legacies to have changed the tone in which the chancellorship is ex the power of the chancellorship is exercised her refugee gambit we can discuss the the merits and the demerits of the way that decision was made and the way the politics that were handled but it has speeded Germany on its way towards what they refer to as an iron vandal on this land or or an immigration country the sort of country that people move to and integrate into and it has to be said although I think the demands on Germany from the world stage do strain its politics she has presided over a Germany that is doing more in the world already she led the push for sanctions on Russia over its intervention in Ukraine for example German soldiers are now deployed in Mali alongside the French in Afghanistan and they are now the framework nation for NATO in Lithuania German soldiers actually on the border of Russia well Kaliningrad which would have itself been very hard to imagine not so long ago so Germany is doing more on the negative side of the balance sheet for mrs Merkel it's certainly true that some of the strategic thinking about the challenges that I've described has been has been absent under the debt break which limits government's ability to invest the quality or the value of German infrastructure has actually been falling in net terms since 2012 Germany doesn't spend enough on those still very impressive railway lines and roads and outer barns and and so forth there are increasing there's increasing anecdotal evidence of schools with leaky roofs of bridges over the Rhine having to be shut of trains having to be run at slower than optimal speeds because of structural problems on the line as I say Germany still got a very admirable infrastructure but it's getting worse and and for a country that needs to stay competitive that's that's a bad thing the best example of that is the digital infrastructure where Germany is really a long way behind a lot of western europe it has the 28th fastest internet in in the world and is behind a lot of countries much poorer and much less economically developed than it its services industries are much too over regulated labour market labour market participation among women is still extremely low for a western european country the car industry as I've already mentioned is in crisis it not only put a bad bad bet on diesel engines but has now been caught up in emissions test cheating scandals and seems to be falling behind in an increasing race to towards electric and self-driving cars notwithstanding it's it's formidable competitiveness in the in the high end sector nonetheless Mrs Merkel's refugee gam that may have been bold but it was also ambiguous in a very in a fashion very characteristic of her leadership how long are these people meant to stay for who actually has a right to be in Germany because remember many of the people who've come to Germany many of them are war refugees from places like Syria but there's also lots from the Balkans or from north african countries where the the humanitarian case for asylum is questionable and so there is a debate still to be had which mrs Merkel doesn't seem very keen on having about who precisely should be joining this iron vandal's land who should be joining this country of immigration and I think perhaps most of all there's been a reluctance on behalf of Germany's entire political class to confront the country with the new demands on it on the world stage and here I would single out this the spd for criticism the party fought a very opportunistic campaign in this election which try to portray mrs Merkel familiarly agreeing with the aspiration of 2% of GDP spending on on on defence in line with the NATO targets he characterised that as making her a poodle of Donald Trump I think this willingness to play politics with with the the growing demands on Germany with Germany's responsibilities in the continent of which it's so inextricably apart I think is is a concern and needs to change I mean I've mentioned the Lithuanian deployment a very ambitious and forward looking decision by Germany's political class this is a deployment that as important as it is in geopolitical terms is not actually familiar to many Germans and you only have to look at polls to show that that show that the proportion of Germans that would support military action to defend a fellow NATO member in the event of Russian intervention or interference is lower than in almost any other membership country in the alliance and so you have a country that's in many ways been prepared for the challenges for the for the transition that I've described but in many ways still has more to do and I think the best example of that of all perhaps is the skepticism about the vision set out by Manuel Macron my my objection is not so much to Germany's doubts about any particular one of his proposals but the the the assumption that Europe's doing pretty much okay thanks I think it's too easily forgotten in Berlin that France came not so far from a Le Pen presidency last time and might come quite close again not to mention concerns about Italy with its election coming up this year and so it's a country in need of I think a bit more strategic thinking and the test for Jamaica the test for this new government is how much does it maintain what Merkel did right or what she's done right and correct for what she's done wrong how does it prepare Germany for a time after either after Heilevelt or a time when the circumstances of Heilevelt have changed to just conclude I think the prospects are better domestically than they are in foreign terms I think the FTP the Liberals have rightly been ambitious about digitising the German economy um Christian Linnar the party's leader described Germany's current success to me as a prosperity illusion which I think is a little bit strong but I think is it shows a welcome appetite for change and an appetite for renewal I think the Greens have some very bold and interesting ideas about accelerating the shift to green energy green driven cars in Germany in in ending Germany's use of coal they respond to another rather awkward truth which is at seven of Europe's 10 most polluting power stations are in Germany so there's there's a lot of positive energy I think on the domestic front not to mention the fact that the parties all generally agree on the need to invest more the need for some well targeted tax cuts but I think on the world stage it's I'm a little bit more pessimistic the FTP has been extremely sceptical about practically everything Mr Macron has said and have ruled out an awful lot of the the ideas that he's put forward the Green party do have to get a lot of their policies past their very extremely pacifist extremely left-wing base which I think will limit Germany's ability to assert itself militarily in the world for example I hear that it's quite likely that Germany's current programme of arming Peshmerga in Afghanistan might have to might have to come to an end if the Greens end up running the foreign ministry I don't think I don't think it will drastically reduce Germany's role in the world but I think it will put limits on what on what it can build on to what it currently does but you know let's not be too pessimistic I think I think a lot remains to be seen the coalition deal hasn't even been drafted yet and there are many in Berlin who are hoping to push for a more ambitious agenda for this new government my final thought is that quite a lot about Germany's coming years and the extent to which it embraces this transition and manages it successfully has to do with the succession to Mrs Merkel I think she won't run for another term as chancellor and so in the next few years there will be a new cdu leader a new cdu chancellor going into the next election in 2021 Germany doesn't have a presidential system sometimes we forget that in the anglo-saxon world but it's amazing how much her style has marked Germany and marked the leadership of Germany and marked the decisions that Germany have taken over recent years and so the extent to which the next chancellor combines Mrs Merkel's strengths but also correct some of her weaknesses will significantly affect the extent to which Germany navigates what I hope I've shown convincingly is a important period of transition for the country and as a friend to Germany I hope that that's the sort of chance that it will get