Welcome to In Conversation, the regular podcast of InCompass.

Go to InCompass-Hevon-Europe.com for free access to all our podcasts to date.

This is Paul Adamson and I'm in conversation with Anthony Luzato Gardner, who is a former ambassador of the United

States of the European Union and also a new book, Stars with Stripes, The Essential Partnership

Between the European Union and the United States. So my first question to you, Tony, is,

why did you write the book? What was the inspiration? Well, I thought writing a book would be

cheaper than going to a therapist.

You know, when I left, do you recall this very well? When I left in January 2017, I was worried

that things would unwind. But I had no idea how quickly and how dramatically things would unwind.

And as I was watching the damage to the US-EU relationship, I started thinking myself when I was

teaching at the College of Europe and Bruges, you know, somebody should write an account,

a non-academic account, of what the US and the EU actually do together.

And then I concluded pretty quickly,

well, my goodness, perhaps that person should be me. So I started researching this and one thing

led to another and I decided to write an account with a lot of anecdotes and hopefully it's

readable of how we work together in nine different areas.

Simple as that, and also provide perhaps a roadmap of how we can fix some of the damage later.

Well, what kind of damage do you think the Trump administration has done to the transatlantic relationship?

I ask the question because I appreciate it's in a different order of magnitude, but we do actually

tend to maybe idolize sometimes, people like you and me, the transatlantic relationship.

And even under previous administrations, it's always, I always always hadn't been hunky door.

It has been many tensions.

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