Friends of Europe podcasts

Mark Rutte has officially survived his first month in office. To take stock of what Rutte has been up to since his new job started, host Catarina Vila Nova sat down with Jamie Shea, Senior Fellow for Peace, Security and Defence at Friends of Europe, and former Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges at NATO. They go over Rutte’s pivot to the Asia Pacific and what has be...

Fact-checkers in the United States have been under harsh scrutiny during the US Presidential election regardless of what they choose to do. To fact-check or not to fact-check seems to be the question but for Angie Drobnic Holan, Director of the International Fact-Checking Network, journalists should never compromise on their commitment to the truth nor should they negotiate away their right to fac...

As much as this US presidential election has been dominated by domestic affairs such as the economy and reproductive rights – the current most consequential foreign policy issue is without a doubt the risk of a regional war in the Middle East. In this week’s episode of Policy Voices, host Catarina Vila Nova sits down with Gilbert Achcar, Professor of Development Studies and International Relations...

Throughout this special series on AI & Democracy brought to you by Debating Europe we covered a lot of ground: from the impact on elections, to rules and regulations, ethics, and media literacy. In this episode of Policy Voices, host Catarina Vila Nova speaks with Sebastian Hallensleben, Head of Digitalisation and AI at VDE Association for Electrical, Electronic & Information Technologies, to look...

With the United States winning the AI race and the EU leading on legislative power, could this be the perfect match on global collaboration? It does seem like it but there might be some unintended consequences to the EU’s regulation force with the US taking a bit too personally Europe’s take on digital sovereignty. Bu despair not as this week’s guests remain optimistic nonetheless to the outlook o...

When regulating artificial intelligence, we want to make sure that the policies in place are conducive to innovation and don’t become a straightjacket. But as AI becomes a part of our daily lives, the worries that it will infringe on human rights are ever more present. In the fourth episode of the special series on AI & Democracy brought to you by Debating Europe, host Catarina Vila Nova speaks wi...

Soon enough, you will be able to send an AI-generated version of yourself to that Zoom meeting you’ve been dreading or ask it to stay on the phone for hours with customer service to cancel that gym subscription. It sounds like a dream, right? But this also means that, soon enough, we will no longer be able to distinguish fact from fiction when watching the news. In this third episode of the specia...

When it comes to artificial intelligence, two narratives dominate: it will either be catastrophic or the solution to all of humanity’s problems. The reality is not so black and white and we are actually operating in a much greyer terrain. However, there are real concerns surrounding ethics and artificial intelligence but there are ways to preserve democratic principles in the AI era we find oursel...

With the arrival of artificial intelligence, elections are a significant area of concern. AI has the potential to supercharge the misinformation and disinformation space but as much as these fears are legitimate, the concerns appear to be overblown. Nonetheless, with the US elections less than two months away, the time is ripe for caution around the use of AI during the campaign, especially by for...

So much has happened in the first half of this year and to take stock of where we find ourselves now, Dharmendra Kanani, Chief Spokesperson at Friends of Europe, spoke with Dacian Cioloș, former Romanian prime minister, and former European commissioner for agriculture, and Pauline Neville-Jones, Member of the House of the Lords National Security Strategy Joint Committee.

The success of last week’s NATO Summit in Washington was mostly due to the management of expectations. The Ukrainian President already knew not to expect a formal invitation to join the military alliance and had to content himself with knowing that Ukraine’s path to NATO’s membership was “irreversible”. With that in mind, the summit was a success, even if overshadowed by a possible Trump return to...

In France, an unexpected election sent the far-right National Rally to third place while the New Popular Front clinched first place. Without a clear majority, the question now is who will be the new French Prime Minister. Across the English Channel, everything seemed set in stone for a clear Labor victory – the first after 14 years of Conservative rule. Here, the question was not if Labor would wi...

The curtain has finally been lifted on who the new leaders of the European Union will be. After months of speculation, the heads of government of the EU member states landed on three names: Ursula Von der Leyen, Antonio Costa and Kaja Kallas. Von der Leyen will most likely stay on as the Commission President and will bring with her the still Estonian Prime Minister as the EU foreign policy chief....

In today’s episode of Policy Voices, host Catarina Vila Nova speaks with Katrin Hugendubel, Advocacy Director at ILGA Europe. Katrin warns that, in Europe, we still don’t have the necessary laws in place that protect the LGBTI community and laws are very often the last line of defence of LGBTI people. The LGBTI community is usually a target of the far-right, being used as a scapegoat, and this yea...

On the week the World Refugee Day is commemorated, host Catarina Vila Nova spoke with Jonathan Fowler, Senior Communications Manager for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Jonathan joined UNRWA shortly after the 7 October attacks and is currently based in East Jerusalem. What he details is an intense campaign against UNRWA by the Israeli aut...

It wasn’t as bad as every poll predicted but, nonetheless, ¼ of the next European Parliament will be made up of, to put it mildly, “parties that are difficult to qualify under one label”. As Alberto Alemanno, Jean Monnet Professor in EU Law at HEC Paris and Founder of the Good Lobby, says, in this episode of Policy Voices hosted by Catarina Vila Nova, “far-right does not do justice to all of them”...

In the fifth and final episode of the five-part special series of Policy Voices on the EU elections, host Catarina Vila Nova speaks with representatives from five parties on the key issue of the EU budget and the cost of living. In this episode, you will hear from Siegfried Mureșan, MEP for the European People’s Party, Didrik de Schaetzen, Secretary-General of the ALDE Party, Giacomo Filibeck, Sec...

In this fourth episode of the five-part special series of Policy Voices on the EU elections, host Catarina Vila Nova speaks with representatives from five parties on the key issue of migration and fundamental rights. In this episode, you will hear from Lena Düpont, MEP for the European People’s Party, Didrik de Schaetzen, Secretary-General of the ALDE Party, Giacomo Filibeck, Secretary-General of...

In this third episode of the five-part special series of Policy Voices on the EU elections, host Catarina Vila Nova speaks with representatives from five parties on the key issue of climate change. In this episode, you will hear from Peter Liese, MEP for the European People’s Party, Didrik de Schaetzen, Secretary-General of the ALDE Party, Giacomo Filibeck, Secretary-General of the Party of Europe...

In the second episode of the five-part special series of Policy Voices on the EU elections, host Catarina Vila Nova speaks with representatives from five parties on the key issue of artificial intelligence. In this episode, you will hear from Didrik de Schaetzen, Secretary-General of the ALDE Party, Giacomo Filibeck, Secretary-General of the Party of European Socialists, Simon McKeagney, Head of C...

In this first episode of the five-part special series of Policy Voices on the EU elections, host Catarina Vila Nova speaks with representatives from five parties on the key issue of European security and defence. In this episode, you will hear from Rasa Juknevičienė, MEP for the European People’s Party, Didrik de Schaetzen, Secretary-General of the ALDE Party, Giacomo Filibeck, Secretary-General o...

In today’s episode, host Catarina Vila Nova speaks with Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, former secretary-general of NATO. According to Scheffer, as long as Russia is engaging in war with Ukraine, Ukraine has no chance of joining the military alliance. This means no formal invitation to join in the upcoming NATO’s July Summit in Washington. The former NATO chief spoke candidly about Ukraine’s slim chances o...

On this episode of Policy Voices, host Catarina Vila Nova speaks to Julia Symon, Head of Research and Advocacy at Finance Watch, and Luke O’Callaghan White, Programme Manager for Climate, Energy and Sustainability at Friends of Europe. Friends of Europe recently launched a report on the EU’s sustainable finance agenda. Long gone are the days when tackling climate change was the number one priority...

On World Press Freedom Day, host Catarina Vila Nova spoke to Jonathan Dagher, Head of the Middle East Desk at Reporters Without Borders (RSF). At least 100 journalists have died since the war in Gaza began, 22 during the course of their work. RSF has been monitoring and reporting the crimes being perpetrated against reporters in Gaza which Dagher describes as “systemic” and an attack on journalism...

Today in our show we wanted to do something different. Instead of our usual interview, we want to play the speech Alexander Stubb, the Finnish President, gave recently at Friends of Europe during his trip to Brussels where he met with Ursula von der Leyen, Jens Stoltenberg, among others. Before that, he had been in Ukraine where he encountered President Zelenskyy. The Finnish President spoke freel...