'The International Criminal Court deserves the Sakharov Prize': CJEU President Koen Lenaerts
We speak to the influential and long-serving president of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), Koen Lenaerts. The court is the...
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Talking Europe
Politicians, activists and researchers debate the issues facing the EU and a 'guest of the week' offers their insight in a long-format interview that gets to the heart of the matter. Saturda...
Episodes
20 of 58 episodesCould US midterms impact the EU? Transatlantic ties hit new low after Trump-Putin diesel deal
From the EU's perspective, the second Trump presidency has felt even more destabilising than the first. From making the false claim that the...
Europe faces threat of organised sabotage, terrorist attacks: Estonian FM Tsahkna
Estonia's counterintelligence service has recently warned that sabotage operations orchestrated by Russian special services have reached a n...
EU member states wrangle over all-important budget: Is a deal this year feasible?
A marathon EU summit on October 15-16 failed to produce a breakthrough on the European Union's next long-term budget. Although EU leaders pu...
'America, with this president, is not our ally. Trump is a liar': French MEP Bernard Guetta
Our guest is veteran French journalist and commentator Bernard Guetta, who is a Member of the European Parliament for the centrist Renew gro...
EU and Canada seek closer ties: Will Canada become the EU's first associate member?
As the international context becomes more challenging for the European Union, the bloc is looking to boost its ties with like-minded allies....
EU's Covid recovery fund was 'absolutely a success': European Court of Auditors' Pierre Moscovici
2020 was an annus horribilis. Covid stalked the land. Lockdowns, curfews and social distancing were the order of the day. But there was a si...
Falling test scores in schools startle EU countries: Why are standards going down?
It has been dubbed "the PISA shock". Countries that had been used to their school pupils performing well in test scores are seeing a plunge...
'We have to close defence gaps urgently': EU Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee chief McAllister
We sit down with David McAllister, the chair of the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee. He talks to us about the security threa...
A grim winter ahead? EU states asked to prepare gas and electricity savings
Alarm bells are ringing about fuel prices across the EU. The average cost of diesel per litre is well above €2, whereas in October of last y...
'Moldova is the best performer in my class': EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos
The EU has gone through seven waves of enlargement since 1973, but there has not been one since Croatia joined in 2013. Indeed, there are no...
Climate breakdown: Is the EU adapting to the new normal? Europe's summer of disasters
It has been called Europe's disaster year. 2026 has seen more than 30,000 excess deaths linked to heatwaves, along with mega wildfires, nucl...
We’re ideally placed to chair EU budget negotiations, says Irish Minister of State
Ireland is managing a jam-packed agenda as the current holder of the rotating presidency of the EU. We caught up with the country’s Minister...
Ursula von der Leyen’s sixth State of the Union speech: A grand sweep, but thin on details?
In this episode, we debrief one of the key annual events in the EU calendar: the State of the Union speech. It was Ursula von der Leyen’s si...
I'm extremely worried by extremists that win elections in Europe: Luxembourg's PM Luc Frieden
"European strategic autonomy" is a buzz phrase in Brussels and in EU capitals these days. What does it mean for space policy? That was one o...
French far-right leader polling ahead for 2027 election: should the EU be afraid?
In Brussels, opinion polls coming out of France have not escaped attention. Two polls see far right leader Marine Le Pen beating all her lik...
Strengthening Africa is an investment in Europe's future: EU Commissioner Jozef Sikela
Are great-power politics back, at the expense of smaller countries? In an age of strongmen, is multilateralism in retreat? Not according to...
Struggling to make its voice heard: Can the EU forge a true foreign policy?
"Who do I call if I want to speak to Europe?" The famous quote attributed to Henry Kissinger still resonates today. There is in fact a Mrs E...
Heat domes test Europe's climate resilience: Is the EU ready for a hotter future?
The European Parliament declared a climate emergency in 2019, yet the EU still appears to be caught off guard by increasingly severe heatwav...
Sustainable transport key to Europe's 'strategic independence', EU Commissioner Tzitzikostas
Our guest this week is Apostolos Tzitzikostas, the European Commissioner for sustainable transport and tourism. Cancellations, delays and un...