Politico's Eu Confidential

For EU Green Week and EU Public Health Week, we go to an issue at the intersection of those themes: air quality. The World Health Organisation attributes up to seven million deaths annually to air pollution. The topic is getting political too, thanks to scandals like Dieselgate and a growing number of devices and apps that tell people exactly how exposed they are to the dangers. The EU is at the heart of these discussions: a would-be enforcer that doesn't do much enforcement, and which oversees contradictory monitoring systems. Here’s another thing to consider: unlike other deadly things you can breathe, like cigarette smoke, it’s a lot harder for individuals to control their exposure to air pollution. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We have a double-header this week: interviews with both Frans Timmermans (Socialist) and Margrethe Vestager (Liberal), two rivals to become European Commission president. Ryan Heath and Nazan Gökdemir jointly interviewed the candidates as part of a television series for ARTE, the franco-german television network. In the podcast panel Alva Finn and Lina Aburous debate whether it was right to offer Jean-Claude Juncker a "European of the Year" award at the European Business Summit this week, and a new documentary about the Brexit negotiations, based on two years of insider footage following around the European Parliament Brexit coordinator Guy Verhofstadt Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosted by Sarah Wheaton and featuring Corinna Horst, Lina Aburous, Jacinda Ardern and Lulwah Al Khater, this episode takes us from the Middle East to Mexico, and on to New Zealand, the United States and Rwanda to look at the challenges shared by women in politics, and what Europe can take away from those experiences. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode we offer you highlights from Monday's 95-minute EU presidential debate in Maastricht, co-moderated by EU Confidential host Ryan Heath. Five candidates debate on Digital Europe, Sustainable Europe and the Future of Europe. The podcast panel is back together to critique the debate and the five new far-right ministers who have joined the government of Estonia, even though two liberal parties won a majority of seats in the country's March election. If you want to here the full 95-minute presidential debate, you can listen to it at: https://soundcloud.com/ryanheatheu/2019-eu-presidential-debate-maastricht-full-length#t=7:49 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week it's a short episode: just a 20-minute interview with Manfred Weber, the person in pole position to succeed Jean-Claude Juncker as European Commission president later this year. The interview was conducted by POLITICO's Ryan Heath and Nazan Gökdemir, a journalist from the Franco-German TV station ARTE, part of a series of interviews with six presidential candidates. You can binge-watch all the interviews on politico.eu. We focus on Weber this week, because next week's podcast will be highlights of the Maastricht EU presidential debate, featuring all the candidates and parties except Oriol Junqueras (who is in in pre-trial detention in Spain) and Weber, who is skipping the debate to attend a celebration of Theo Waigel, his fellow Bavarian politician and a political mentor. Before the interview Ryan speaks to Andrew Gray, POLITICO's EU editor, about Weber's side of the story. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why do female candidates and politicians receive more negative coverage than men, and why are they seen as less newsworthy? In this episode we look at the case study of Italy with POLITICO reporter Silvia Sciorilli Borrelli, and speak to one of the most high profile members of the European Parliament Marietje Schaake. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The European Parliament has wrapped up its current five-year term, and the election campaign now enters into a final five-week sprint. This episode features a three-way discussion about what betting companies, opinion pollsters and journalists can tell us about election campaigns and results, featuring Cornelius Hirsch, co-founder of Poll of Polls, now with POLITICO; Eleni Varvitsioti, Brussels correspondent for Greek newspaper Kathimerini and Matthew Shaddick, head of political betting at Ladbrokes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For or against the EU? It's the biggest European question of all — and we tackled it in a debate in front of an audience in Brussels this week as the EU election campaign gets into high gear. Hear highlights of the debate between Sandro Gozi, Italy's former Europe minister who is standing for Emmanuel Macron's party in the election, and Anders Vistisen, Danish MEP and member of the European Conservatives and Reformists group. EU Confidential host Ryan Heath plays referee in this heated contest.Find out which candidate compared Viktor Orbán to the unobtainable girl in high school and the migration crisis to the weather in Brussels. And if you haven't had a chance yet, check out our special episode from earlier this week, recorded in front of an audience in London at the Podcast Live event, featuring Emily Thornberry, Labour's shadow foreign secretary. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Emily Thornberry, the U.K. Labour Party’s shadow foreign secretary, is our guest in this special edition of EU Confidential. The show was recorded on Sunday in London in front of an audience at Podcast Live, an event that brought together political podcasts from around the U.K. and beyond. In conversation with POLITICO’s Ryan Heath, Jack Blanchard and Annabelle Dickson, Thornberry calls for her party to support a new referendum on any Brexit deal agreed between Labour and the U.K. government. She explains why she thinks Britain should hold an inquiry into how Brexit was handled. She also speaks of her disgust at the latest anti-Semitism allegations to hit her party. And she tackles everything from Saudi Arabia to China on the foreign policy front. Find out whether she would ever own a Huawei phone and what she thinks is her biggest political mistake. The show closes with a panel discussion featuring regular EU Confidential panelist Lina Aburous and POLITICO’s EU editor, Andrew Gray. We haven’t had time to tid

Are we headed for climate disaster, and is the EU the solution? That's the question we ask in the second episode of "EU Confidential Goes Green,” the occasional series in which we zoom in on climate and sustainability challenges. Six Members of the European Parliament from across the political spectrum and around the Continent debated the question, and others, at the recent POLITICO European Elections Great Debate. Ryan Heath hosted the debate, which took place on April 2 in Brussels, between Mark Demesmaeker, Fredrick Federley, Jo Leinen, Marisa Matias, Adina Vălean and Thomas Waitz. This episode features highlights from their discussion. This weekend EU Confidential goes to London, where you can see and hear the team in action: we’re live on-stage this Sunday, April 7 from 2:30 to 3:30 pm at the Podcast Live festival. Our special guest will be Emily Thornberry, the U.K. Labour Party's Shadow Foreign Secretary. You can buy tickets to our show for £12, or an all-day ticket for £30 to see up to a dozen of your

The first of six special EU Confidential Goes Green episodes between March and September 2019.This episode is all about cities and features interviews with Amanda Eichel, executive director of the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy and Anna König Jerlmyr, the mayor of Stockholm & president of EUROCITIES. The Swedish capital is growing fast but shrinking its emissions — by 58 percent since 1990 — at the same time.The podcast panel dives into the Yellow Jackets, talk of a Green Wave in European politics, and asks why Manfred Weber, the center-right candidate to be the next European Commission president, is missing from the climate debate. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Irish MEP Mairead McGuinness, vice president of the European Parliament from Ireland’s ruling Fine Gael party, talks Brexit, the Irish border and about her interest in throwing her hat in the ring to be president of the next European Parliament, if reelected in May. But back home in Ireland, just one in five elected representatives are women. There’s never been a woman prime minister, neither of the two biggest parties have ever been led by a woman, and while there have been women ministers, they haven’t occupied the big-ticket ministries of finance, foreign affairs and defense. Are things about to be shaken up in May’s elections, at the local and the European level? Following the political activism surrounding the repeal of Ireland’s constitutional abortion ban, POLITICO correspondent Naomi O’Leary talks to some of the women shaking up the Irish political landscape. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's a summit special this week. POLITICO’s Andrew Gray, Rym Momtaz and Florian Eder discussed the topic du jour, Brexit, as EU leaders gathered in Brussels. They also chewed over Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party being suspended from the European People’s Party and the Continent's liberals entering the EU election fray. Keeping in mind that some things are bigger than politics, it’s a week of reflection in Brussels, three years on from the March 22 terrorist attacks on the city’s Zaventem airport and Maalbeek metro station. We try to gain some perspective with Flemish Culture Minister Sven Gatz, whose new book “Molenbeek/Maalbeek: A Brussels Tale” delves into the stories of seven fictional individuals on March 22, 2016. The book is as much about this "lowest point in decades" as it is about Brussels, the city, which is full of people “living side-by-side but not together,” in the words of Gatz. We also check in again with polling guru Cornelius Hirsch of pollofpolls.eu about the challenges of accurate polling for

Nick Pickles, Twitter’s senior policy strategist, is our main guest. He responds to heated criticism of Twitter’s handling of free expression, misogyny, disinformation and transparency.“Increasingly, problems have tech components, but often societal problems can’t be solved by technology alone,” he says.We also check in with polling guru Cornelius Hirsch, hashing out the details of what could happen if the U.K. votes in the European election.Our podcast panel discusses this week’s Syria conference in Brussels — and debates the tepid response from Germany’s Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer to Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance vision.And following up on a recent promise, we crunched the numbers to determine the balance between men and women featured on the podcast. Over the last year, 68 men were featured guests, compared to 44 women.Although it's not an exact science, we also had a shot at measuring total air time. Factoring in our podcast panelists Lina Aburous and Alva Finn, women accounted for 60 percent of speaking

Welcome to the first episode of our new mini-series on women, power and the EU election — a fortnightly spin-off podcast from POLITICO's EU Confidential.Our timing for episode one could hardly be better. EU leaders like Manfred Weber, Frans Timmermans and Margrethe Vestager are clamoring to demand gender parity in EU institutions.In this episode, POLITICO's Lili Bayer speaks with Belgian MEP Maria Arena about the current status of women in politics. At the rate we're going, it would take 107 years to overcome the gap in women’s political representation worldwide. And the situation in Europe isn't much better.We also hear a debate between some of Europe's youngest aspiring female election candidates, including Svenja Hahn, liberal MEP candidate from Germany, Tuulia Pitkänen, socialist MEP candidate from Finland, and Ana Lidia Pereira, who was selected as an MEP candidate this week for her center-right party in Portugal.Look out for our next next episode in a couple of weeks, when we'll feature women who are sh

This week’s podcast features Amal Al Qubaisi, president of the United Arab Emirates' Federal National Council, making her perhaps the most senior female politician in the Arab world. We cover a lot of territory including the blockade against Qatar and why the UAE proclaimed 2019 to be the Year of Tolerance. We're also taking the opportunity of International Women's Day to launch a special new EU Confidential podcast mini-series called The XX Factor, on women, power and European election. Listen to the teaser here: https://soundcloud.com/ryanheatheu/the-xxfactor-teaser-a-special-eu-confidential-series In other election-related news, Cornelius Hirsch is joining us as a regular guest on the podcast. He's the co-founder of pollofpolls.eu, Europe's answer to FiveThirtyEight. POLITICO bought pollofpolls.eu last week, and we'll be integrating their charts and insights in the coming weeks. The podcast panel of Lina Aburous and Alva Finn discusses diversity on-stage, tackling the question of who gets to speak on panel

In a week of geopolitical ping-pong we take a break to dive deeper into the politics of well-being and what it takes to be a great political communicator, with the 38-year-old prime minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, who joined Ryan Heath in front of a live audience at the POLITICO office in Brussels. In the podcast panel we discuss the dangers of dialogue with dictators, and what a public body should do when one of its staff stands trial for raping a junior colleague. Next week you can look forward to the first instalment of new regular feature: Ryan will be discussing European opinion polls with Cornelius Hirsch, the founder of pollofpolls.eu. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week’s podcast focuses on the Munich Security Conference, one of the big events on the global political calendar. It features two interviews from POLITICO’s chief Europe correspondent Matt Karnitschnig, who sat down with Rick Grenell, the outspoken U.S. ambassador to Berlin, and Slovakia’s veteran Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajčák. Grenell and Lajčák provided their divergent impressions of the conference and transatlantic relations. They also addressed the palpably divisive issues of the Iran nuclear deal and the general tone emanating from Washington, among other topics. We also spoke with POLITICO’s chief Brussels correspondent David Herszenhorn, one of our reporters who covered the event, to get an insider’s impression of this year’s “tense” conference. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

U.K. Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt talks to POLITICO's Ryan Heath in this extra edition of our podcast.Hunt once took heavy fire from Brussels for making a comparison that invoked the EU and the Soviet Union. But he's been much more diplomatic lately in his dealings with the EU.In this exclusive interview in our Brussels office, he talks extensively about Brexit. “It’s massively in everyone’s interest to get back to stability,” Hunt says, adding that he hopes negotiations between London and Brussels will yield a revised deal “in the next few days.”A quick resolution is necessary, Hunt says, “for the sake of sanity of the population of Britain and indeed of Europe.”In addition to Brexit, Hunt discusses Huawei, Facebook, the Iran nuclear deal and more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week's feature interview is a 15-minute highlight reel from John McDonnell's already famous interview with POLITICO's London Playbook editor Jack Blanchard. In addition to discussing Brexit next steps and Labour's anti-Semitism challenges, the U.K. shadow chancellor landed himself in hot water by describing Britain's wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill as a "villain" for sending in the army to tackle a miners' strike in 1910. The question now: Did McDonnell successfully tackle a taboo, or simply prove that the current Labour opposition is unelectable? The podcast panel of Alva Finn, and POLITICO's new Paris correspondent Rym Momtaz, advise an anonymous MEP who wrote to POLITICO to say that the pressure of living and working in three cities (their home city, Brussels and Strasbourg) is tearing families apart. To continue the family theme, we also discuss Viktor Orbán's new policy in Hungary: exempting the mothers of four or more children from income tax. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for mo