This lecture, given by Tomasz Kamiński (Associate Professor, Department of Asian Studies, Faculty of International and Political Studies, University of Łódź) on February 22, 2024, was part of the 2023-24 IGI Series on Global Responsibilities: “China and the World.”
Welcome to the European Union Center Brown Bag Event. My name is Kostas Kourtikakis and I am a political scientist working on the European Union in the Political Science Department. Thank you all for being here and I would like to also thank Kelsi Quick who is a PhD student
In the Political Science Department and also a European Union Center Research Assistant for being instrumental in organizing this talk. This event is part of the Illinois Global Institute’s lecture series on global responsibilities. Each year the IGI organizes a series of lectures around a theme. This year’s theme is China and the World.
Units within IGI organize a single lecture about how the theme resonates with their regional focus. Today’s talk, Cities as Actors in EU Policy Toward China, is the EU Center’s contribution to the series. It asks us to consider the role of sub-state actors in the development of relations between
The European Union and China, two of the most important international actors. On behalf of the European Union Center, I would like to welcome Tomasz Kaminski, who is a political scientist and associate professor in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of Łódź in Poland.
Dr. Kaminski’s research is focused on para-diplomacy and city diplomacy, particularly in the context of EU foreign policy. He is the author of numerous articles and notably the book, The Role of Regions in EU-China Relations. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Kaminski. Thank you.
Thank you very much. I’m really honored to be here with you. I want to start with presenting you my team, because my research is not an individual research. It’s a team research. These are my colleagues, my PhD students from the para-diplomacy lab, our research team, which is focused on para-diplomacy and city diplomacy.
So, I will take all responsibility for my words, but the research is our common exercise. Okay, talking about para-diplomacy, let me start from an American example. This is a governor of California, Mr. Newsome. In a very unique situation, when the governor of a sub-national unit meets with the president of the superpower,
In this case, the president of China, Xi Jinping, it was last year, just before the meeting, or weeks before the meeting of President Biden and President Xi Jinping in San Francisco. Very big political event, the whole world was watching this.
And before this event, the governor of California went to China, to several cities, and to Beijing, to meet with President Xi Jinping and to invite him to San Francisco. Governor Newsome was his former mayor of San Francisco.
So, in a sense, the White House used instrumentally this Californian politician to invite President Xi Jinping to stress that he is really welcome in San Francisco. This is a very interesting case when local politicians or regional politicians have an opportunity to meet with the president of China,
Which is a very, very unique situation. One reason, of course, was the political situation in the political context in the U.S., but another reason is the situation of California. California, if counted as a separate state, is the fifth economy in the world.
So, it’s one of the reasons why President Xi is ready to talk to the governor. Okay, moving to the European Union context. I want to start with the European Parliament resolution from September 2021 on a new EU-China strategy.
It was not a very important political document because the European Parliament has no right to impose anything on other institutions, European institutions, in foreign policy, but it was symbolic. It was the first document when the European Parliament stressed the need to coordinate policy,
European Union foreign policy, towards China with local and regional actors. It was the first time when it was expressed openly. In our research and in today’s talk, I would like to endorse this message. I would like to argue that regions and cities should be placed in this toolbox of EU foreign policy.
This is my main argument. I would like to give you some theoretical and empirical arguments to back this statement. At the end of my speech, I would like to show the policy relevance of paradiplomacy in this European and EU-China context in particular.
I’m going to show you research that is going to be published very soon. Yesterday I made the last editorial changes. It’s going to be published in the Journal of Common Market Studies, but it’s already as a preprint. At the end of my speech I will give you the link to this.
The paper and my today’s speech try to answer two questions. To what extent are subnational relations important for the EU policy towards China? And the second, what is the scope and what are the patterns of cooperation between European and Chinese cities? Okay, let’s move to the theoretical argument.
I would like to start with the concept of paradiplomacy. Maybe you are familiar with it, maybe not. The basic definition is that paradiplomacy is international relations conducted by subnational governments or regions or cities on their own with a view to promote their own interests. So, a very basic definition.
By the way, I would like to recommend this book. It’s about Chinese paradiplomacy. We have a very good introduction about the term paradiplomacy, the general overview about it. If you are not familiar and you want to familiarize yourself with this, it’s a very good starting point. This book, Chinese Paradiplomacy at the Peripheries.
And city diplomacy is part of it. It’s a part of paradiplomacy. So, paradiplomacy is, let’s say, a broader term. To make it even more broad, we can think about pluralization of diplomacy that we see in the world. Traditionally, diplomacy was perceived as relations between states.
Now, we have relations between business, between academia, between cities, between many, many different actors. And we can tell that we see the pluralization of those contacts and we can tell about pluralization of diplomacy. So, paradiplomacy is a part of this bigger phenomenon. In our research, we combine, let’s say, three streams of literature.
The first one is about multi-level governance. A very important stream of literature when we talk about European Union. In many different contexts, not particular in external policy, rather various domestic areas. But this is a very, very important stream of literature.
The second one is about city diplomacy and is very much linked to urban studies. And the third one is about multi-layered diplomacy. There is a nice book about California, for example, and multi-layered diplomacy of this state. Multi-layered diplomacy is, frankly speaking, a different name for paradiplomacy. We can also talk about subnational diplomacy.
There are many, many terms with not much difference in meaning. And when we look at EU foreign policy, we see such a picture. So, we see multi-level structure with European level when European institutions have contacts with foreign partners. In the case of China, of course, with the Chinese government.
But this structure works when we talk about Ukraine, when we talk about all partners. In fact, the United States of America, for sure. So, this is a European level, right? With European Commission or European External Action Service engaged. Then we have a national level with member states having their own policies toward China.
Almost all EU member states have their own national policy and national contacts with China. And on the bottom, subnational level of relations between regions and local authorities. And the question is, to what extent and how the subnational level can influence a European level.
And looking through literature, we’ve found three ways of such an influence. The first way is through lobbying and networking. Subnational units can use some transnational city networks to lobby European Union institutions. They can use their offices in Brussels.
Almost all regions, maybe not all, but the majority of European regions have their official office in Brussels. Like a regional embassy to Brussels, to the European Union. Of course, they have no diplomatic status of embassies, but they serve as official representative offices. They can use a committee of regions as well.
This is a special EU institution that gathers representatives of regions and cities. The second possibility is through formal power. In some countries, like for example in Belgium, regional parliaments are very powerful in the legal terms. I give you examples of free trade agreement between European Union and Canada.
It was negotiated for many years by European Commission, but in the end it had to be ratified not only by all national parliaments, but in Belgium’s case also by regional parliaments. And a small region of Wallonia, regional parliament of Wallonia, vetoed this free trade agreement.
And you know, it was a huge mess in European Union. So, ten years of negotiations and in the end a small Belgian region stopped the whole agreement. And of course, European politicians engaged with the local authorities and persuaded them to refuse or to accept this agreement.
But it shows how it works. In certain cases, regional authorities can even block international agreements of European Union. And the third path is direct actions. And this path is the most interesting for us because this is our, let’s say, exploring this,
This way is our contribution to the literature, so that citizens regions can influence through direct actions. And we propose, let’s say, four roles of citizens regions talking about those direct actions. So, they can be troublemakers, they can be contributors, they can be deal brokers, or antennas.
And let me explain all those four roles. Citizens regions as antennas. So, because subnational units have so many contacts with outside partners, they have access to knowledge, they have possibility to transfer European ideas through dialogue, through various exchange, and they can share knowledge with national authorities or European authorities. They can collect data.
And this is particularly interesting in the Chinese context. When you know China is huge, and it’s very difficult to map what’s going on in China when you have contacts from time to time with politicians in Beijing only. And contacts with the government in Beijing will not tell you the whole story about China.
You need to have hands on the ground in different provinces, you have to talk with different people. And that is what’s going on on a subnational level. We Europeans have virtually contact with all provinces and almost all important cities.
The problem is how to use this knowledge, which is in disposal, but on the subnational level, not on the EU level or on the national level. Talking about transferring of ideas, I can give an interesting example of the city of Amsterdam.
We did an interview with a lady who was responsible for the international relations of the city of Amsterdam. And he told us an interesting story. Whenever they have a partnership with Beijing, and whenever they invite a delegation from Beijing,
They try to arrange at least one meeting in Amsterdam showing Chinese partners the value of social engagement and civil society engagement. And the whole concept is, the whole idea behind this is to show them that democracy on this local level may bring benefits. Not by lecturing them, but by presenting them effects.
And this is nothing more than transferring European values, European ideas through the city level activities. So cities and regions as antennas. Troublemakers. So, subnational units can of course do some actions that may be harmful for the relations with foreign partners. And there are a number of examples here.
I like the one with Dalai Lama. He was, the Italian city of Milan granted honorary citizenship to him. And in 2016, and a few years later, when there was a discussion between EU and China about the EU-China tourist year.
And on the technical level there was a discussion, which cities should be engaged, what are we going to do in Europe, in China. Chinese said, Milan, no. It should not be on the list. It was on a very technical level of discussion. And because of this.
And another example of a president of Prague, Zdenek Hryb. That was an important case in Central Eastern Europe. He was a very liberal mayor of Prague in Czech Republic. And he decided to not only to host the Tibetan government in exile, but also Taiwanese. And of course it made a lot of mess.
Beijing, the sister city of Prague, cancelled the link. Or I’m not sure if they cancelled or if they suspended and Prague cancelled. But nevertheless, at the end it was cancelled. But it transferred also on the national level. So the Chinese government protested to the government of Prague.
And the government said, but we have no influence on the mayor of Prague. So it was a different level. But the Chinese were not persuaded. And that was a problem. There are many cases. The city of Weimar in Germany. They gave an award to one of the Chinese dissidents.
And again, the Chinese government intervened in Berlin in this case. I don’t know, we have nothing to say in the prizes in Weimar. But for Chinese it’s not always clear. So here, there are examples that you know.
Certain actions on the ground, on the lower level, may have detrimental influence on the relations on the national and the EU level. Citizen regions as contributors. Many different ways. So, subnational units may contribute to European foreign policy being donors. In developing countries. That’s by the way a very interesting area of research.
It’s a very under-researched topic, especially the cities as development actors. Cities and regions can help in implementation of EU foreign strategies. When we look at the EU strategy towards China, there are some, for example, points. Development of people-to-people relations. Development of academic cooperation. Attracting Chinese investment.
All those things are done, are decided on the lowest level. So cities and regional authorities are natural partners in this. Subnational level may also help in public diplomacy. Of course, if they organize a lot of meetings with people, a lot of events. These are the ways how the public diplomacy is done.
So, there are natural stakeholders in public diplomacy. And fourth, also crisis management. An interesting case, not linked with China, but with Lebanon. A few years ago there was a huge blast in port in Lebanon. You may remember from news. The government of the Netherlands decided to help. And they did an interesting thing.
They contacted the city of Rotterdam. Rotterdam is also a huge port in Europe. And asked them if they have experts who can help Beirut in this specific case. And of course, a big port had experts. And they sent them to Beirut. So it was an interesting thing that the government, the Dutch government,
Has a map of expertise in the country. And was able to use these resources, these local resources, as an instrument of foreign policy towards Lebanon. And I give this example as a very clever, very smart foreign policy. That you know your resources as a government. And you can use it when needed.
The third role, deal brokers or peace brokers. And a few examples from Africa and from Europe. First from Libya, when the country completely destabilized. Civil war, two political forces fighting each other. And it was virtually not possible on the national level or on the EU level to engage with those warlords.
But the European Union found a way to engage cities and organize an event in Brussels for city mayors. And it was the opportunity to have mayors of cities from those two opposing sides on one table. And on this level, it was possible to meet and to organize such a meeting.
Of course, when we talk about reconciliation, a very important example and very well-known example from Europe, between France and Germany, you know, hostility, two big wars fought. But then the process of reconciliation, when the contacts between cities and between regions were crucial in this context. I can say that also in Polish-German reconciliation.
That is, again, the self-governmental units on both sides play an enormous role. And peace building, an example from Rwanda, when engagement of European regional authorities helped to establish peace there. So, city diplomacy or para-diplomacy in general is not a substitute for traditional diplomacy,
And will never be, but can be complemented in a very valuable way. And city diplomacy should be coordinated and aligned with the broader objectives of strategies of the EU. When we talk specifically about China and the EU policy towards China. When we look at the Chinese side, China has already done it.
And Chinese sub-national diplomacy is very well coordinated with Beijing. Not fully controlled, but to some extent coordinated. Much better than in the European case. And China is able, the Chinese government is able to use provinces and cities as instruments in their foreign policy toolbox. Again, a book recommendation from my colleague Dominic Mierzejewski
About the role of Chinese provinces in the Belt and Road Initiative. Very nicely written book showing that China is not a unitary state, but rather a quasi-federal state. With a lot of competition between regions. And the Belt and Road Initiative is a good example of such a competition. So, finishing my theoretical argument.
We argued that the EU could also leverage the potential of cities in its systematic competition and cooperation with China. But, there is a need to create a cooperation coordination mechanism inside the EU. Okay. Empirical argument. I think the most important one and interesting one.
Because I’m going to show you the, I hope, interesting survey. And results of the survey that we have done. Let me start from the observation of the rise of regional and local, of the role of regional and local authorities in Europe.
Where the central governments, as well as the EU, increasingly have to compromise with sub-state actors. Throughout the whole political cycle, from the policy initiations to decision making and implementation. This is a big body of literature about this phenomenon. However, many political scientists overlook this role. Completely.
And this is, let’s say, something that not only political scientists, but also politicians or experts just don’t see. Okay. When we analyze documents in EU-China relations. And the role of cities in these documents. We found that the first time that cities, let’s say, appeared on paper is 2012.
With the big document focusing on cities called China-EU Partnership on Urbanization. And in this year, in this document, let’s say, urban cooperation between EU and China is presented as a flagship of EU-China strategic partnership. As something really, really important. As important as, I don’t know, academic cooperation. Another flagship.
And the same year, China and EU organized a huge mayor forum. A few thousand people gathering. A huge, huge event. And next year, EU-China strategic agenda for cooperation with a separate chapter dedicated to urban cooperation. And at that point, city-to-city relations seemed to be very, very important.
But later on, we realized that not much happened on the EU level. And when there is another EU strategy, the next EU strategy in 2019, EU-China strategic outlook, cities and urban cooperation disappeared from the agenda. Completely. In 2013, the whole chapter, in 2019, not even mentioned.
And in 2021, this document in European Parliament that I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, we perceive it as a kind of a turning point. The topic of city-to-city relations coming back to the EU political discourse. And our research project is, or was realized, was implemented in this context.
We call it the role of cities in the EU policy toward China. It was financed by the Polish National Science Center. So we received a generous grant and therefore we were able to do this project. A few research questions.
So we asked about the scope and patterns of cooperation between European and Chinese cities. We asked about the goals of European cities in their relations with China. We asked about the decisive factors for successful cooperation. We asked to what extent the city diplomacy is coordinated with regional, national, and European policies toward China.
And finally, what is the impact of city diplomacy on the EU foreign policy toward China. We did a huge survey. I think that the biggest so far. So we surveyed more than 700 cities in Europe. So all cities with a population more than 50,000 inhabitants.
It took us a year, almost a year, to conduct such a survey. And all 27 countries. So in fact we divided those cities into, let’s say, five groups. Like cloves, like from size S to XXL. And we looked at also how the size of the city, if the size matters in this sense.
And we were quite successful in our survey. Because we received almost 400 responses. So it means more than 50%. So we are really happy. Especially my research assistants who sit days and nights and calling, sending emails, and do whatever possible to force or to persuade officials to fill in our survey.
And we asked about goals. We asked about problems. We asked about forms of cooperation. Scope of coordination with national and regional authorities. Benefits. And also about local partners for the city office. So basically those questions are related to the main question of our project. And what we have found.
We have found that 40% of cities cooperate with China. And in the survey, directly in the survey, the number was even bigger because it was 50%. But we triangulate this trying to look at the websites of all those cities that did not respond.
And it seems that when we look at the whole, at all cities, the percentage is lower. So it’s 40%. But still it’s very high. It means that many cities and almost all big cities in Europe cooperate in one way or another with China. 70% of those links, those sister city partnerships were active.
So something has happened in the last two years. Right? So it seems that it is really a very vivid network of contacts. So we were able to map almost 300 cities with more than almost 500 partnerships. Some cities of course have more than one partner in China.
We asked also about importance of partnership with China. To what extent the link is important in comparison with other sister city partnerships. And 61 cities told us that the link with China is very important or even the most important from all sister city agreements. Many of those cities were in Germany and Poland.
Okay, now let’s look at the data. So first thing that in this case, size of the city definitely matters. So when we look at XL cities and XXL cities, almost all of them had contacts, sister city partnerships with China. But even the smallest, look at the S size.
So there are small cities, so between 50,000 and 100,000. And we expected much less contact with China on this level. Because you know, such a small city, how big is the asymmetry between this city and the Chinese partner? But even in case of those small cities, one third of them have contacts.
Sometimes they don’t have contacts with a partner agreement with the whole Chinese city, sometimes with a particular district in the city. So for example, we have a lot of agreements not with Shanghai, but with a particular district in Shanghai. Just to you know, overcome the problem of asymmetry.
We tried to look at the history of these links and how the partnerships were established through the years. And it’s clearly seen that belt and road initiative matters here. So in 2013, President Xi Jinping gave green light to provinces, to cities to go abroad to establish contacts on the belt and road.
And they started to be more active. Earlier, the important date was 2004 and the expansion of the European Union on the central eastern European countries. And for example, the majority of links between Polish cities and Chinese cities were established after 2004.
Because you know, the role of Poland in Chinese eyes increased when we became a member of the European Union. The same with Czechs and other central eastern European countries. We asked about forms of cooperation and without surprise, the official visits were the most often.
But we were surprised that the working within official central government delegation were less than 20% of cities point out that form. Because we thought before that maybe cities used the opportunity of for example, central government delegation to China, right? And go together. But it was not the case in majority of cities.
We asked about areas of cooperation. And here, culture, economy, education, academic cooperation. Before this project, we did a similar one. I should have said about it. We did a similar one with looking at regions, European regions. You mentioned the book, the role of European regions in the policy toward China.
And the areas were very similar. The only difference is that the culture on the city level matters more than on the regional level. I was a bit surprised by the relatively low number of cities that reported cooperation in environment and climate. We thought that it might be much more important topic.
Taking into account that we, the cities have the same problems with, or similar problems with this phenomenon. We asked about local partners. It was an important question for us. Because when we look at the regions, we found that we can draw a triangle between the self-governmental unit, business, and academia.
And this, the cooperation, whenever there is cooperation in this triangle, we can, let’s say, the probability of success, of successful links, increase. And doing this research, we tried to explore this topic in particular. To what extent we can have evidences on the city level of the same phenomenon. And we do.
So, universities, business partners are the most important. Local stakeholders. But when my colleague did statistical analysis of this phenomenon, we found that in fact, no matter how the triangle looks like, so there is self-government, academia or business, but it can be culture or educational institutions.
The rule is that you need, the self-government unit needs engagement of at least two local institutions to make the link with China successful. So, when the self-government is the only interested part, it’s not the way to success. You need to engage local partners, universities, business, cultural institutions, the more the better.
Of course, interesting result is here at the bottom, NGOs. This is a specificity of China, that European NGOs have no partners, no natural partners in China. So, that’s why they are not important in that context. We asked about the benefits also. And of course, exchange of experiences, culture promotion.
But what we found interesting is that those economic benefits, like attracting Chinese investments in the region, or better position of local companies in China, are not that important. So, even if the goals, talking about the goals, European cities show economy as one of the most important area,
When we talk about actual benefits, the picture is a bit different. We asked also about the main success factors, so what really matters. And engagement of Chinese partners at the top, the second position, the attitude of mayor.
And there is also some other research on para-diplomacy, looking at other topics, other areas of this phenomenon, that shows that indeed, the attitude of mayors, or attitude of the highest ranking local or regional politicians, is absolutely key. And I can give you an example of my region, Lodzkie Wojewodzkie in Poland.
We used to have a very vivid relation with Sichuan in China, and Lodz city with Chengdu in Sichuan. And the problem started when the regional governor lost election. And the next governor was not interested in developing relations with China anymore. So, he decided not to invest resources in that.
And this link started to decrease, because of the lack of the will of the highest ranked politicians. One thing that also surprised us a bit was the very low level of cooperation with national governments. So, the cooperation with national governments wasn’t pointed out as something important.
We asked about the cooperation obstacles for cooperation, and here distance and costs, of course, for obvious reasons. But what we found interesting as well was the political tensions between central governments. Less than 10% cities presented that as something important.
Before the survey, we thought that taking into account all those tensions, it might play a bigger role. We also asked if a city coordinates policy towards China with regional government, national government, and European government. And as you see, in the majority of cases, it’s not coordinated at all.
At all, even with other cities or regional government. And the same with impact on EU policy, or national policy, or regional policy. In the majority of cases, no impact. No impact at all. Or very low. So, the city to city relations are simply disconnected from the upper levels of European policy towards China.
Okay, and let’s move to the last part. What the EU can do with it. What are the policy relevance of this phenomenon. First of all, we argue that the European Union should create mechanisms of engaging those local and regional stakeholders. But thinking about mechanisms, we rather think about carrots than sticks.
So, about soft mechanisms of dialogue, cooperation, coordination. And being fully aware that the European Union or national government are not in a position to impose anything on the local level. But what can they do? First of all, and this is the first step that should be done.
It’s a mapping of what’s going on on the local level. I was really surprised in the external action service. I did interviews twice in 2017 and last year. And they had no idea what was going on on the local level. So, there is no mapping on the EU level.
So, if you don’t know what is going on, you cannot use it in any instrumental way. Then it’s knowledge sharing. So, I think that any form or smart form of consultation with cities, with transnational networks of cities, knowledge sharing and sharing of priorities, policy strategies.
Talking to city officials, many times they say they don’t know what is the EU policy or what is the national policy. They can only guess. And they want to know. And on the other hand, the EU and the national government should know what is going on on the ground.
We also argued that the committee of regions or in other forms, citizens and regions should be involved in EU foreign policy planning process as important stakeholders. And EU should financially support subnational cooperation whenever it means EU political priorities. So, EU should use instrumentally or try to use instrumentally cities and regions.
Okay, limitations to this proposal. We found three. Perception, law and politics and ignorance. Starting from perception. Mental nationalism. It’s the big obstacle. I mean, you know, if policy makers, planners, experts, scholars, if they omit the sub-state level of international cooperation,
If they structurally omit it, it’s very difficult to introduce it to the policy planning. First of all, you need to think outside your box and see that it is important. They are stakeholders, they should be engaged. So, that’s the first, let’s say, obstacle. The second is law and politics.
The first thing, on the local level, unwillingness to be under control of the state or the EU authorities. So, when we talk to the local officials and ask them, do you want more coordination or cooperation with national government? Many of them are afraid.
No, no, no, no, no, we don’t want any hierarchical, bureaucratical structures. Because the coordination with EU or coordination with national government means for them hierarchical structures. They don’t want this. And in some political systems, for example in Germany,
The federal states of Germany are very free to explore the world and to establish connections. And the German government has a very limited role. They cannot impose anything. But they can have a dialogue, they can have soft mechanism, it’s always possible. And they try to do this.
And the last barrier is lack of knowledge or ignorance. That we, in Europe, we do not know how to organize this structure of interactions between those levels. Because there are very few role models in the world how to organize it, right? To be efficient.
And we have some examples from Netherlands, where the system is quite good. I mean, the government tried to engage with regions, with cities. In case of China, for example, that’s a very good example.
In case of China, whenever they go to China, I mean the minister, Dutch minister, go to China or plan to go to China, regions and cities are informed in advance. In September I’m going to China. Are you going to accompany me? And this is a very easy message to send, right?
I’m going, you can join. They organize also meetings for people from the local level dealing with China. Just to talk. Just to create a space for cities to meet, to talk, to exchange opinions, to share knowledge. So, very soft mechanism. But I think it’s a good starting point.
There’s a problem also on the local level. Because very seldom local officials dealing with China or dealing with international affairs have a proper, let’s say, training. They are not trained paradiplomats, because there is no school of paradiplomacy. So, that’s the problem.
Sometimes they have not enough skills or knowledge to do this paradiplomacy and to have good contacts with the foreign ministry as well. Okay, to conclude. First of all, I think that EU should keep up with WONGS.
So, should follow the Chinese model in a sense that China tried to coordinate with local level, tried to use these resources on the regional and local level. Europe should see sub-state actors as resources or as tools of foreign policy.
And should engage them in the development of foreign policy strategy and later in the implementation of foreign policy. But I want to end with, I started with American case and I want to end with American case as well.
Because all I said here about European Union, I think is relevant also to the US. Two years ago, I think, two years ago, in the State Department, a special unit focused on sub-national diplomacy was created with Ambassador Nina Hetchigan as a chair of this unit.
So, you are one step ahead of European Union in this regard. But frankly speaking, the role of this unit is very limited. And there is no coordination and no cooperation between State Department, governors and local authorities.
Or if there is, it’s very rare and ad hoc like in this California case with the governor. And so this is a big task for US policy makers too. To establish an efficient system of cooperation with the local level.
Two days ago I had an interview in Chicago with a citizen diplomat responsible for Chicago contacts with Warsaw. And it turned out that all Chicago sister city agreements are based on volunteers. So they have 29 different city partnerships. They created a committee for each of them. But the committee are volunteers.
And you know, not accountable to the city governor. They may engage, they may not. And they are outside the city hall. I don’t know if it’s a proper system. It’s a totally different system than in Europe. But he said that it works very good.
And he thinks that it should not be changed in any way. And he needs no coordination with Washington, D.C. But my point is that to some extent this cooperation, coordination is good. And it should be established in European Union and in US way as well. Thank you very much for your attention.
Thank you.