The Brussels Report Podcast

Dick Roche is an Irish former Fianna Fáil politician who has served, amongst others, as Minister of State for European Affairs from 2002 to 2004 and 2007 to 2011 and Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government from 2004 to 2007. He has also been a member of Ireland’s Lower House and Senate (Dail Eireann and Seanad Eireann) and he was the Irish Delegation leader of the Convention on...

Daniel Dalton is a former cricketer and a Conservative Party politician in the United Kingdom who has served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 2014 to 2019, previously having worked in the European Parliament for his party's Group. He is the outgoing ceo of Britcham, the British Chamber of Commerce in the EU and Belgium. In this this episode of the Brussels Report podcast, Brussels...

Dr. Thorsten Polleit , a German national, is Chief Economist of Degussa, Europe’s largest precious metal trading house. Before that, he worked for more than 15 years in the international investment banking industry. Since 2014, Thorsten is honorary professor for economics at the University of Bayreuth. He is Adjunct Scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn, US Alabama, and president of th...

Professor Em. Samuel Furfari is a Chemical Engineer, having taught energy geopolitics and energy politics at Brussels ULB University (Université Libre de Bruxelles), between 2003 and 2021, where he also obtained his phD, with a thesis in the field of energy. Between 1982 and 2018, he was a senior official at the Energy Directorate-General of the European Commission, where he has devoted an entire...

In this episode of the Brussels Report podcast, BrusselsReport.eu editor Pieter Cleppe interviews Pelle Christy Geertsen , a Brussels-based consultant and a true "Brussels bubble" insider. He is the Managing Director of Brussels strategy consultancy Euraffex , where he's active since 2014, and has lots of experience in EU politics, starting from 1997 in his native Denmark. He has been working at t...

In this episode of the Brussels Report podcast, BrusselsReport.eu editor Pieter Cleppe interviews Dr. Demir Murat Seyrek , a Senior Policy Advisor at the Brussels-based think tank European Foundation for Democracy , to discuss developments in Turkey. In particular, the following topics are being explored: - The prospects for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to remain in charge after the next...

After seven years as the EU-correspondent of Dutch magazine Elsevier , Jelte Wiersma has returned to the Netherlands to cover Dutch affairs. In this episode of the Brussels Report podcast, he looks back on his experience of covering EU politics, discussing the following topics with   BrusselsReport.eu editor Pieter Cleppe : - The attitude of Dutch public opinion towards the European Union. Is...

Zoltan Kesz is the Director of Operations at the Hungarian Civitas Institute , which promotes democracy, human rights, civil liberties and European integration, as well as the honorary president of the Free Market Foundation , which he helped to found. From February 2015 until 2018, he served as an independent Member of Parliament in Hungary, after he won a by-election, thereby depriving the Fides...

Fabian Wintersberger is an Austrian economist and rates trader, working in the financial sector. He also maintains a blog and twitter account where he comments the developments on financial markets, economics and politics. He is also the author of several comments on BrusselsReport.eu. In this seventh episode of the Brussels Report Podcast, BrusselsReport.eu editor Pieter Cleppe discusses with him...

Fredrik Erixon is a Swedish economist and writer. He has been the Director of EU trade and economic policy think tank European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE) ever since its start in 2006. The Financial Times has ranked Erixon as one of the 30 most influential people in Brussels. In this sixth episode of the Brussels Report Podcast, BrusselsReport.eu editor Pieter Cleppe discuss...

Sajjad Karim is a British politician and solicitor, who served as a Conservative Member of the European Parliament for the North West England between 2004 and 2019. He is a member of the executive board of European Movement UK and the Chair of Conservative European Forum Trade. In this fifth episode of the Brussels Report Podcast, BrusselsReport.eu editor Pieter Cleppe discusses with him: - how to...

Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Carl Baudenbacher was the President of the EFTA Court between 2003 and 2017, where he served as a judge from 1995 to 2018. Nowadays, he is an independent consultant and arbitrator as well as a senior partner in a Zurich law firm. He is a Swiss national. In this fourth episode of the Brussels Report Podcast, BrusselsReport.eu editor Pieter Cleppe discusses with this eminent legal...

Bojan Pancevski is the Germany Correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, based in Berlin. He is a native of North Macedonia. Before writing for the WSJ, he was covering Europe at large as The Sunday Times' EU Correspondent in Brussels, from 2009 on. Previously, he was based for the same newspaper in Vienna and Berlin, covering Central and Eastern Europe. He also is a book author and has been sele...

Belgian MEP Johan Van Overtveldt is the Chairman of the European Parliament’s Budget Committee. Between 2014 and 2018, he served as Belgian Finance Minister. He has authored many books on financial and monetary policy and is a Professor of Economics at the University of Hasselt. In this second episode of the Brussels Report Podcast, BrusselsReport.eu editor Pieter Cleppe discusses with him the dem...

Dutch economics Professor Lex Hoogduin, who teaches at the University of Groningen, has served as an advisor to the first President of the European Central Bank (ECB), Wim Duisenberg, as a member of the executive board of the Dutch Central Bank, and as chairman of LCH.Clearnet, one of the world's leading clearing houses, based in London.  In this first episode of the Brussels Report Podcast,...