Arancha Gonzalez: Why isn't the world working together?
The Interview
BBC
4.3 • 537 Ratings
🗓️ 17 June 2020
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Covid-19 has presented governments across the world with a common threat, but the response has been far from united and collaborative. Has the pandemic further weakened the multilateral institutions that were the hallmark of globalisation? Stephen Sackur speaks to Spain's foreign minister Arancha Gonzalez. Is Europe's liberal political elite struggling to cope with a geopolitical reality increasingly defined by nationalism in the US and China?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to a podcast from the BBC World Service. This is Hard Talk with me, Stephen Sacker. |
| 0:06.7 | Thanks for downloading this edition of the program. I do hope you enjoy it. |
| 0:11.2 | Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service, with me, Stephen Sacker. My guest today is the |
| 0:17.3 | archetype of the well-connected, economically liberal European politician, |
| 0:23.0 | thoroughly at home in the world of multilateral institutions and globalisation. |
| 0:28.7 | Arancho Gonzalez has held senior posts in the European Commission |
| 0:32.7 | and the World Trade Organization. |
| 0:35.5 | In January of this year, she was appointed Spanish foreign minister |
| 0:38.9 | by the country's socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez. Since then, of course, the world has |
| 0:44.7 | been rocked by the coronavirus pandemic. Spain was badly affected, with a death toll of more than |
| 0:51.2 | 27,000. The EU is struggling to formulate a coordinated political |
| 0:57.0 | and economic response, and in the wider world, a generation of assumptions about |
| 1:02.8 | globalisation, multilateral cooperation and free trade are being challenged, most significantly |
| 1:09.9 | in Donald Trump's White House. It is, in short, |
| 1:13.9 | a difficult and potentially dangerous moment for Europe's leaders. Are they capable of meeting |
| 1:20.5 | the challenge? Well, Arancho Gonzalez joins me now from Madrid. Welcome to Hard Talk. |
| 1:27.1 | Let us start with the latest on the coronavirus |
| 1:30.5 | pandemic in Spain. Is your country ready to declare that your national emergency is over? |
| 1:38.2 | Well, we will be ending a state of alarm in Spain on the 21st of June, but I don't think we can claim victory against COVID. |
| 1:47.4 | Until we have a vaccine or a treatment, we have to remain vigilant. |
| 1:52.5 | With the Spanish Central Bank predicting that your economy could contract by between 9 and 11% in 2020, |
| 2:00.5 | would it be fair to say that your prime concern right now |
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