Mark Leonard's World in 30 Minutes

With Trump´s inauguration in 2017 and his claims about NATO and the transatlantic relationship, Europe began to realize that it needed to take better care of its own security. With the official election result looming, host Mark Leonard talks to ECFR’s heads of offices from Berlin, Paris, Madrid, and Warsaw – Jana Puglierin, Tara Varma, Jose Ignacio Torreblanca and Piotr Buras – as well as Jeremy...

How will and can Europeans react in the event of a post-election chaos in the US? The election day is fast approaching yet the outcome still remains highly debatable and unpredictable. And, it is rather likely that also after November 3rd, no clear winner can be announced. How should Europe respond in this time of uncertainty? What impact will the prolonged power struggle have on the transatlantic...

European countries are increasingly coming under threat of economic coercion from great powers, as outlined in the latest ECFR’s policy brief. But what do we mean by economic coercion? What and who is currently threatening EU’s sovereignty, and what is likely to threaten it in the future? In this week’s episode, host Mark Leonard is joined by Elizabeth Rosenberg, Senior Fellow and Director of the...

Europe’s digital transformation and sovereignty has become a question of existential importance. But what does it actually mean to be digital sovereign? Host Mark Leonard is joined by Marietje Schaake, President of the CyberPeace Institute and International Policy Director at the Cyber Policy Center at Stanford University as well as ECFR’s Jose Ignacio Torreblanca and Jeremy Shapiro. Together they...

The covid-19 pandemic has shaken the EU’s conception of order and exposed a gap between European aspirations and actions. Firstly, Europeans are confronted with the fact that raw power, not rules, is the main factor determining today’s global dynamics. Secondly, global politics are now centred rather in Asia than Europe; the Sino-American rivalry has shifted attention away from European issues. In...

The contested Nagorno-Karabakh region is at the heart of a decades-long armed standoff between neighbours Armenia and Azerbaijan. The heavy clashes seen last week prompted fears that the dispute could spark yet again another war in the region. Host Mark Leonard is joined by Nicu Popescu, head of ECFR’s Wider Europe programme, ECFR’s Turkey expert Asli Aydıntaşbaş and Sophia Pugsley, Caucasus Regio...

In the eastern Mediterranean, a scramble is under way between countries in the region for access to recently discovered gas fields, often overlapping with wider battle lines across the Middle East, historical tensions and far-back-reaching sentiments. Following up on last week’s conversation with spokesperson and close senior advisor to President Erdogan Ibrahim Kalin, this week’s episode analyses...

Ursula von der Leyen’s first State of the European Union speech was as long as it was broad in topics and calls for action. Host Mark Leonard is joined by Alexander Stubb, ECFR Board Member, Director of the European University Institute’s School of Transnational Governance and Former Prime Minister of Finland and Carlos Moedas Trustee at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and former European Commi...

Although US President Donald Trump’s efforts to undermine the election are shameless, they are still more subtle than the outright election rigging that one finds in places like Belarus. Like other authoritarian leaders, Trump is deploying a new anti-democratic politics that has yet to be fully comprehended. Together with Asli Aydintasbas, Jeremy Shapiro and Andrew Wilson, Mark Leonard depicts sev...

In this week’s episode, we feature one of the focus sessions from our Annual Council Meeting this June. Policy Fellow Ulrike Franke moderated this online panel discussion featuring Marietje Schaake, International Director of Policy at Stanford University's Cyber Policy Centre and former Member of the European Parliament, and Carlos Moedas Trustee at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and former Eu...

In this week’s episode, Jeremy Shapiro stepped in as host and welcomes senior policy fellows Kadri Liik and Andrew Wilson as well as political scientist and editor of “Belarus-Analysen” Olga Dryndova to the podcast. Together, they shed light on the situation on the ground in Belarus: what are the goals do of the opposition in Belarus and what kind, if any, of strategy does it have for achieving th...

“Defending the WHO is necessary but not sufficient to address the weaknesses that the corvid-19 crisis has revealed. Fundamentally, those weaknesses revolve around the interplay between, first, underfunded national and local health systems and second, international coordination which relies on goodwill and is too weak in a world of great power rivalry,” write Jonas Gahr Store, Leader of the Norweg...

In this week’s episode, Mark Leonard presents the new and third edition of ECFR´s Coalition explorer, which also included special questions regarding the impact of the COVID-19 crisis. Together with policy fellows Ulrike Franke and Pawel Zerka, he analyses the collected data in depth, answering the question of France’s and Germany´s role within the EU: How are the two countries perceived by their...

After last week’s discussion with Matt Duss and Jeremy Shapiro, Mark Leonard follows up by gathering the European views on a possible Biden win and its effect on US foreign policy. Vessela Tcherneva, deputy director of ECFR and head of our Sofia office, Jana Puglierin, head of ECFRs Berlin office, Tara Varma, head of ECFRs Paris office and Jeremy Shapiro, ECFR´s research director and in-house US e...

The United States presidential election is approaching and there is no doubt that its result will have a significant and large-scale impact on global politics. Across the Atlantic, European analysts already started to discuss the possible outcomes and what they would mean for Europe and the transatlantic partnership. What changes would a Biden win bring? How could US foreign policy look like under...

The over 90-hour European Council summit in Brussels ended with a deal on a €1.82 trillion financial package. What does this deal mean for the future of Europe? Will the EU recovery fund, made up of €390 billion in grants and €360 billion in loans, be a historic change of our Europe and the eurozone, as Macron said? In this week’s podcast, Mark Leonard is joined by Guntram Wolff, Director of Brueg...

Can Europe compete in today’s new geopolitical realities? Does the Union find itself in a technology war with China? And are at least cooperative solutions with China on climate policies possible? In this week’s podcast, Mark Leonard is joined by Agatha Kratz, Associate Director at Rhodium Group and expert on EU-China relations, Janka Oertel head of ECFR´s Asia programme as well as ECFR co-chair C...

In his opening remarks at our virtual Annual Council Meeting, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, spoke about Germany’s Presidency of the Council of the EU and the high expectations which are placed on it. According to him, the next six months will be centred around two things: solidarity and sovereignty. In this week’s podcast, Mark Leonard is joined by our expert Jana Puglierin, head of the Berl...

“If it’s about Europe´s role in global health, a big part of it is Europe's health sovereignty which we want to make one of the big topics of the German EU Council Presidency”, Germany’s Federal Minister of Health Jens Spahn said in our Virtual Annual Council Meeting. The coronavirus pandemic brought the issue of health sovereignty affront: how can health security be achieved across Europe? In thi...

As covid-19 raged, speculation grew that the crisis would re- strengthen public support for the state; faith in experts; and both pro- and anti-Europeanism. But ECFR’s latest research reveals these all to be illusions. Instead, the crisis has revolutionised citizens’ perceptions of global order – scrambling the distinctions between nationalism and globalism. Host Mark Leonard is joined by Ivan Kra...

The coronavirus crisis brought about financial hardship for the European Union, and many agree that a recovery fund would be needed to overcome it. In the beginning, countries like Italy and Spain, in particular, felt left alone in dealing with this health, social and economic crisis. And still, support for financial burden-sharing is low in the “frugal” countries which would be the net contributo...

The ongoing anti-racism demonstrations in the United States spurred by the brutal killing of George Floyd spread across the Atlantic. In many European countries, people are getting behind the cause and protesting racism and police violence against BIPOC. How are the demonstrations in France and Germany connected to the ones in the US? Is Europe also starting to confront racial injustice on its own...

The attempt of a peace process in Libya is facing several substantial hindrances, where a variety of actors keep on inducing significant upheavals in its territory. Recently Turkey was observed to use Libya more and more as a playing field for its advancements - with some arguing that Turkey is becoming the new Russia on the geopolitical stage. In this week’s podcast Mark Leonard is joined by ECFR...

The recent Franco-German proposal for an EU recovery fund sparked a lively debate on possible changes in EU’s nature, suggesting that the plan to raise €500bn through common EU debt and hand it out as grants, not loans, marks an important shift in EU policy. But is this really a “Hamiltonian” moment, as some labelled it? In this week’s podcast Mark Leonard welcomes Lykke Friis, ECFR co-chair and d...

Last year, the European Union published a strategic outlook in which it reviewed China as a partner, competitor and a strategic rival, creating a lively debate about the nature of the EU-China relations. However, this outlook was designed for a pre-corona world. How has covid-19 reshaped the EU-China relations? What changes to the global order will the pandemic bring? Who will be the main actors i...