Talking Europe

Episodes

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  'America, with this president, is not our ally. Trump is a liar': French MEP Bernard Guetta 16.10.2026 11m

  Our guest is veteran French journalist and commentator Bernard Guetta, who is a Member of the European Parliament for the centrist Renew group. He tells the programme that Donald Trump is "a liar, because he tried to tell the American people that Zelensky and the Ukrainian resistance were responsible for the price of diesel. This is a pure lie. He (Trump) is responsible because he started the war with Iran." Guetta goes on to say that "without American intelligence sharing, Ukraine is weaker and weaker. That's terrible, to see the president of the United States giving a hand to Putin against Ukraine."
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  EU and Canada seek closer ties: Will Canada become the EU's first associate member? 16.10.2026 12m

  As the international context becomes more challenging for the European Union, the bloc is looking to boost its ties with like-minded allies. Canada is part of that architecture that the EU says it wants to build. The big news of EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen's State of the Union speech in September was that Canada could become an associate member – an arrangement that does not exist for the EU's partners at the moment.
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  EU's Covid recovery fund was 'absolutely a success': European Court of Auditors' Pierre Moscovici 09.10.2026 12m

  2020 was an annus horribilis. Covid stalked the land. Lockdowns, curfews and social distancing were the order of the day. But there was a silver lining: European countries showed themselves to be capable of great solidarity, jointly procuring vaccines and then agreeing on a mammoth post-Covid recovery fund, the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF). That fund has disbursed €450 billion in grants and loans to EU member states since 2021. As the RRF enters its crucial final phase, we take stock of the situation with Pierre Moscovici, the French member of the European Court of Auditors (ECA).
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  Falling test scores in schools startle EU countries: Why are standards going down? 09.10.2026 12m

  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 in standards. The PISA test is an international assessment led by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which measures how well 15‑year‑olds in over 80 countries apply reading, mathematics and science skills to real‑world problems. In the latest rankings, France's results were the worst it has ever had, and Germany's school pupils got their worst PISA report card too.
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  'We have to close defence gaps urgently': EU Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee chief McAllister 02.10.2026 12m

  We sit down with David McAllister, the chair of the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee. He talks to us about the security threats facing Europe, and what defence gaps the EU urgently needs to close. For McAllister, the EU is "not at war with the Russian Federation, but we are no longer at peace with Russia". He also believes that the EU is not, as yet, capable of making sovereign decisions in certain areas of defence "because we are too dependent on US capabilities."
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  A grim winter ahead? EU states asked to prepare gas and electricity savings 02.10.2026 12m

  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 year it was around €1.50. Even before this latest spike, the cost of living was already biting, and it seems that the conflict in the Middle East is not going to give Europeans much respite as the winter draws closer. We review what EU member states have done to cushion the blow of rising energy prices for ordinary people, and whether those measures have been effective.
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  'Moldova is the best performer in my class': EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos 25.09.2026 12m

  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 not likely to be any new members in the club before 2028 – some 15 years after Croatia entered. But 2026 undeniably has momentum, and is on track to be a record year in terms of opening and closing new chapters for existing applicants. That is why our guest, EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos, sees this as "the year of the enlargement."
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  Climate breakdown: Is the EU adapting to the new normal? Europe's summer of disasters 25.09.2026 12m

  It has been called Europe's disaster year. 2026 has seen more than 30,000 excess deaths linked to heatwaves, along with mega wildfires, nuclear power plants having to shut down, gas plants under pressure, droughts reducing hydropower generation from rivers and wild fluctuations in electricity prices, not to mention major disruptions to crops and farming in general.
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  We’re ideally placed to chair EU budget negotiations, says Irish Minister of State 18.09.2026 12m

  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 of State for European Affairs, Thomas Byrne, who was in Strasbourg for the 2026 State of the Union speech and debate with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. We discussed key points from that address, such as a proposed ban on social media access for children, which Ireland is keen to push forward with during its EU presidency.
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  Ursula von der Leyen’s sixth State of the Union speech: A grand sweep, but thin on details? 18.09.2026 12m

  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 sixth such address as President of the European Commission, and the second State of the Union speech of her second mandate.
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  I'm extremely worried by extremists that win elections in Europe: Luxembourg's PM Luc Frieden 11.09.2026 11m

  "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 of the central points that we raised with the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Luc Frieden, during his visit to Paris for the International Space Summit hosted by the French government on September 9 and 10. Major American aerospace companies were noticeably absent from the summit while the feud between Brussels and the Trump administration continues.
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  French far-right leader polling ahead for 2027 election: should the EU be afraid? 11.09.2026 12m

  In Brussels, opinion polls coming out of France have not escaped attention. Two polls see far right leader Marine Le Pen beating all her likely rivals in the French presidential election, which is set to take place in April and May of next year. 
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  Strengthening Africa is an investment in Europe's future: EU Commissioner Jozef Sikela 04.09.2026 12m

  Are great-power politics back, at the expense of smaller countries? In an age of strongmen, is multilateralism in retreat? Not according to Jozef Sikela. The EU Commissioner in charge of International Partnerships insists that traditional multilateralism is alive and well, especially in the EU's approach to Africa and to the Arctic. We sat down with him for an interview at the European Commission in Brussels.
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  Struggling to make its voice heard: Can the EU forge a true foreign policy? 04.09.2026 11m

  "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 Europe on the world stage: Kaja Kallas, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. She is actually the sixth high representative. But ever since that post was created, rivalries between different centres of power have diluted the EU's ability to speak with one voice. We saw that recently with tensions over who should represent the EU in any potential talks with Russia.
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  Heat domes test Europe's climate resilience: Is the EU ready for a hotter future? 09.07.2026 12m

  The European Parliament declared a climate emergency in 2019, yet the EU still appears to be caught off guard by increasingly severe heatwaves and heat domes. With temperatures this summer set to break records and expose millions of Europeans to dangerous heat, we ask whether the bloc has neglected the short-term measures needed to protect people from extreme heat.
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  Sustainable transport key to Europe's 'strategic independence', EU Commissioner Tzitzikostas 09.07.2026 12m

  Our guest this week is Apostolos Tzitzikostas, the European Commissioner for sustainable transport and tourism. 
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  EU ‘tech sovereignty’: Uncoupling from the US and China? 03.07.2026 12m

  The EU is trying to assert its strategic independence in an unstable world – a world of bullies, as some members of the EU Parliament describe it. That means independence in matters of defence and energy supplies, but also in the whole field of tech. The European Commission says non-EU companies provide more than 80 percent of the EU’s digital products and services. One of the key proposals aimed at changing that is the “Tech Sovereignty Package”, which was presented in early June. With our guests, we dive into the initiative, explain the geopolitical context and ask what it would take for the bloc to achieve real technological sovereignty.
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  'We hope the member states will recognise our effort' to join the EU: Moldova's President Maia Sandu 03.07.2026 13m

  FRANCE 24’s Europe editor-in-chief Caroline de Camaret hosts Maia Sandu, the President of Moldova. This in the context of an EU-Moldova summit held on June 22, 2026, in Brussels. The ex-Soviet republic of nearly 3 million people that borders Ukraine has opened its first “cluster” of negotiations to join the European Union. But, as it moves closer to the bloc, Moldova is becoming an intense battleground between pro-EU and pro-Kremlin forces.This edition also features a report by FRANCE 24’s Isabelle Romero and Anaïs Chesnel, set in the inaugural conference on EU investment in Moldova. 
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  Treating energy crisis with fossil fuels is like giving a diabetic sugar: EU Commissioner Jorgensen 19.06.2026 12m

  EU leaders have cautiously welcomed Donald Trump's signing of an interim agreement with Iran, after nearly four months of war in the Middle East. But it is only a Memorandum of Understanding, and Europeans know the US president too well to celebrate prematurely. The conflict has led to the most severe disruption in energy supplies in decades, and the EU has scrambled to contain the costs.
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  EU-UK relations, 10 years after the referendum: Brexit or Regrexit? 19.06.2026 12m

  It has been a decade since British voters made the momentous decision to leave the European Union. The EU referendum result on June 24, 2016 led to a profound transformation of British politics, and to Brexit-related infighting that refuses to go away. But if the UK has not truly moved on, what about its former partner in this divorce, the EU? And what does Brussels think when the British government talks about rebuilding this relationship? We put these questions to two MEPs.