Friends Of Europe Podcasts

Ahead of COP28 in Dubai, the stakes have never been higher and the expectations never lower. In two days, 70,000 people will be descending in Dubai and we spoke with one of them. Sandrine Dixson-Declève, President of the Club of Rome, makes the case for why we need to move beyond the business that has to happen and frames success as a pledge around fossil-fuel phase-down. Dixson-Declève is joined by Luke O’Callaghan-White, Programme Manager for Climate, Energy & Sustainability at Friends of Europe, and host Catarina Vila Nova, to discuss what is one of the most controversial COP's of the last three decades.

This week on Keeping an Eye on the Geopolitical Ball, Jamie Shea, Senior Fellow at Friends of Europe, examines where Kyiv and Moscow stand nearly two years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. With winter approaching, a growing ‘Ukraine fatigue’ in Europe and the United States, and attention being diverted to other conflicts such as in Gaza, it is now more vital than ever for the West to uphold support to the Ukrainian war effort. Jamie thus outlines the necessary steps Western governments must take in order to ensure Ukraine wins the war.

Polish propaganda against the LGBTQ+ community during the rule of the Law and Justice Party was compared to the Nazi propaganda orchestrated by Joseph Goebbels. The eye-opening statement was made by Michał Olszewski, Deputy Mayor of Warsaw, in this week's Policy Voices where he was joined by Bart Staszewski, Founder and CEO of the Basta Foundation. Together, they call for quick and overarching changes to undo the damage done by the Law and Justice Party to Polish democracy.

In this week’s episode of Keeping an Eye on the Geopolitical Ball, Jamie Shea, Senior Fellow at Friends of Europe, discusses the implications of the European Commission’s 2023 Enlargement Package adopted last week. The report recommends to open membership negotiations with Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as continue negotiations with existing candidates such as Turkey. Previous enlargement fatigue has been shaken up by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, demonstrating the pressing issue of grey zones in the EU’s neighbourhood. Jamie therefore outlines several recommendations the EU ought to consider when faced with one of the biggest challenges in its history.

Hanna Liubakova is a Belarusian journalist in exile. After the government’s crackdown of the protests that followed the elections of 2020, Liubakova had to flee because her country was not safe for her anymore. She was later detained in a country which she is not disclosing and ultimately let go without being extradited to Belarus. However, it was during her detainment that Liubakova found out that she was on the government’s wanted list. The reasons to not go back keep piling up but the democracy activist is not giving up. After all, she is one of the few voices left for those who cannot speak up.

On this week's Policy Voices, host Catarina Vila Nova speaks to Kim Smouter, director of the European Network Against Racism, following the release of the report "Being Black in the EU" by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights. Smouter details how people of color living in Europe face discrimination on an almost daily basis in all walks of life. He advocates for holistic solutions to tackle racism in Europe and criticises the European Commission for being too slow in responding to public displays of discrimination in member states.

Friends of Europe's Dharmendra Kanani is joined this week by Maria Elena Scoppio, Director for Indirect Taxation and Tax Administration at DG TAXUD. Fresh out of the EU Tax Symposium, Scoppio lifts the veil on what was discussed, sharing that, for the first time in the symposium, a psychologist was invited, which goes to show the importance of behavioural taxation. Given that tax is one of the most sensitive areas and subject to unanimity, Scoppio argues in favour of enhanced cooperation to advance legislation and not become trapped in "masochistic" endeavours.

In this week’s episode of Keeping an Eye on the Geopolitical Ball, Jamie Shea, Senior Fellow at Friends of Europe, reflects on the world’s first ever Artificial Intelligence Safety Summit convened near London. The Summit saw the three blocks, the EU, US and China, come together, with participation from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, US Vice President Kamala Harris and China’s Vice Minister of Technology Wu Zhaohui. With new technologies posing risks such as cyber-attacks, deep fakes and election interference, the aim of the Summit was to start a global conversation on the regulation of AI. To that end, Jamie outlines five key principles that should guide this effort going forward.

In today's episode of Frankly Speaking, host Catarina Vila Nova speaks with Rachel Rizzo from the Atlantic Council and Paul Taylor from Friends of Europe about the latest developments in the international stage. With the US still recovering from weeks without a Speaker and the EU divided over how to respond to the latest crisis in the Middle East, will Putin use this focus shift to his advantage in Ukraine?

Tune in to the first episode of Policy Voices to find out the secret recipe to make a success story out of implementing artificial intelligence in health. Nina Rawal, partner and co-head at Trill Impact Ventures, and Ricardo Baptista Leite, CEO of HEALTH.AI, share their expertise and tell us why we should not be afraid of the incredible potentials of using artificial intelligence to improve our healthcare systems.

In this week’s episode of Keeping an Eye on the Geopolitical Ball, Jamie Shea, Senior Fellow at Friends of Europe, discusses the importance of the 2024 United States presidential election. With two Republican Party candidates - Donald Trump and Vivek Ramaswamy - advocating for the US to withdraw from NATO and the UN, Jamie assesses what these elections mean both for the United States and the rest of the world. In order to ensure that the November 2024 elections are free and fair, Jamie stresses key elements that should be guaranteed, such as the absence of election interference and election denial, as well as mobilising the 50% of Americans that do not vote.

In this week’s episode of Keeping an Eye on the Geopolitical Ball, Jamie Shea, Senior Fellow at Friends of Europe, looks at last Sunday’s national elections in Poland. Despite populists having achieved great electoral success as of late, such as Slovakia’s Robert Fico for SMER and Germany’s far-right AfD in two regional elections, Poland’s opposition unexpectedly won against the ruling Law and Justice party. The victory of Donald Tusk’s Civic Coalition came as a surprise to many due to Law and Justice having put its trusted supporters into all key levers of power, curtailed the freedom of the media and tilted the electoral playing field in its favour. Consequently, Jamie dismantles how it was possible for the populists to be defeated despite having rigged the system in their favour. He outlines five lessons learned for other EU countries that struggle with populist actors in power.

In the aftermath of the Hamas attack on Israel, host Catarina Vila Nova interviews foreign affairs commentator Anchal Vohra on the repercussions that this event had inside and outside its borders. The European Union and United States are the usual suspects but also the role of Russia and China is analysed in this episode of Frankly Speaking.

In this week’s episode of Keeping an Eye on the Geopolitical Ball, Jamie Shea, Senior Fellow at Friends of Europe, analyses Saturday’s attacks by Hamas on Israel. Constituting Israel’s worst intelligence and security failure in decades, Jamie unpacks the two main questions that arise, namely why Hamas attacked at this particular point in time and why Israel was taken by surprise. The strategic consequences that follow these events are ample, whereby the international community should ensure the proportionality of Israel’s response, prevent the war from spreading to regional conflicts, as well as advance the political dialogue for a two-state solution.

In the return of Frankly Speaking podcast after the Summer break, our senior fellows for Peace, Security and Defence, Jamie Shea and Paul Taylor, weigh in on the Ukrainian counter-offensive. What is the minimum benchmark for success? Is the West up for the challenge? Tune in to find out what they had to say.

This week on Keeping an Eye on the Geopolitical Ball, Jamie Shea, Senior Fellow at Friends of Europe, reflects on the 78th Annual Session of the UN General Assembly in New York. Jamie describes the mood at this week’s summit as particularly gloomy, pointing to the 4/5 missing Security Council members, the very slow international humanitarian response to the flooding disaster in Libya, as well as the great challenge of meeting the SDGs. Against the backdrop of the UN’s lack of involvement in solving some of the big crises taking place around the world, the relevance of it as a global actor is being questioned. Jamie, however, contends that the UN remains irreplaceable in four main areas, namely in global climate change, international arms control, transnational justice, but most importantly, in providing the world with a platform for annual exchange. While the UN needs to reform, it is the only organisation we currently have to stop the world, as Secretary General Guterres said, from “ripping apart”.

This week on Keeping an Eye on the Geopolitical Ball, Jamie Shea, Senior Fellow at Friends of Europe, looks back on von der Leyen’s State of the Union speech that focused on the achievements of her Commission. However, according to Jamie, von der Leyen has omitted one vital topic, namely that of security and defence. Indeed, security and defence have been at the core of recent EU politics with many new defence initiatives such as the creation of the DG DEFIS and the European Peace Facility. Jamie Shea pleads for these to be addressed in the next State of the Union speech, in order to strengthen European defence cooperation, avoid duplications and secure peace on the continent.

This week on Keeping an Eye on the Geopolitical Ball, Jamie Shea, Senior Fellow at Friends of Europe, focuses on what happened this Summer, especially the consequences of climate change that have been observed this summer. He details the dramatic temperature “records” reached in many parts of the world, for instance in the UK, but also the floods and forest fires happening in other parts of the world. Jamie suggests the creation of a Summer task-force to prepare countries to face and anticipate natural disasters, and thus make those countries more resilient.

This week on Keeping an Eye on the Geopolitical Ball, Jamie Shea, Senior Fellow at Friends of Europe, focuses on the outcomes of the 15th Annual Summit of BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, China, India, China and South Africa) which happened this week. Those 5 countries have announced the admission of 6 more countries to the group: Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Argentina and United Arab Emirates. Jamie details in this podcast the stakes of BRICS’ expansion and what would be the consequences of this expansion for the BRICS, the West and the Global South.

On 20 June 2023, Friends of Europe held its annual Peace, Security and Defence Summit. For the first time, the summit was organised simultaneously in two cities, Brussels and Vilnius, ahead of the NATO summit in the Lithuanian capital on 11-12 July. Welcoming government representatives, leaders from the private sector and NGOs, activists and researchers, the summit brought attention to the growing security challenges and threats faced by NATO's eastern border from Russia and introduced Friends of Europe’s latest study, ‘After the war: how to keep Europe safe’. In this episode of the Frankly Speaking Podcast, you will find the key messages and most relevant extracts of the summit’s discussions. -------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe! ► http://bit.ly/2n5HBDp Connect. Debate. Change. Website: http://www.friendsofeurope.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/FriendsofEurope LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/friends-of-europe Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/friendsofeu