Ms Almut Möller:

I agree. That will get a lot of traction in central and eastern Europe especially. The idea of second-class citizenship is very damaging.

I will finish by showing member a contact map, which shows the intensity of contacts in the EU. In order to show up in our visualisation, a certain threshold must be passed, so this does not mean that there are not ties between other capitals which are not shown here.

All I want to show the committee is that one sees clearly that regional engagement matters very much. What one also sees, by the way, is that there is only one link between the east and the west and that is through Warsaw and Berlin. As I stated, compared to our previous data, this is a weakened link. This should be of primary concern.

The committee will see the secondary ties there. We just want to illustrate that. This also puts Ireland on the map.

Then we see the Brexit effect. The committee will excuse me for being brusque with this as obviously, there is much more to tell about that, but this clearly shows how much work there is to do.

I offer to re-engage with the committee. We are happy that we had the chance to come here. It was an honour. I thank the Chairman and the committee for that opportunity.