2025: The year untangled

EU Untangled

Politics, News

5.0 • 3 Ratings

🗓️ 17 December 2025

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As the sound of jingle bells draws ever nearer, Victor and Alex take you on a rollercoaster ride of the EU’s highs and lows of the past 12 months. Untangle with us a year of consequential elections, trade headaches, an increased focus on security and deregulation, a major new multi-annual budget for the EU and two failed attempts to oust the European Commission’s president. Tune in for the year untangled – the quick and dirty recap you didn’t know you needed to cheer goodbye to 2025.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi and welcome to EU Untangled, the podcast that untangles EU policy and politics.
0:05.2	I'm your host, Victor Aguilar.
0:07.6	And I'm your co-host, Alex Roth.
0:09.9	Today is December 8th. The end of the year is closing in.
0:13.7	And it is a good moment to look back at the past year and briefly untangle 2025.
0:19.7	Yeah, let's get started.
0:21.3	But wait, before we start, a brief disclaimer.
0:24.0	All the opinions expressed by us are strictly ours
0:27.2	and cannot be associated with any third party.
0:30.1	Let's go.
0:50.7	Music January 1st, the year gets off to a great start for the EU.
0:54.8	Bulgarian Romania fully joined the borderless Schengen area, bringing the number of EU member states participating in Schengen to 25. The only holdouts are Cyprus and Ireland.
1:01.6	The good news then are slightly darkened by Donald Trump returned to the White House on January 20th.
1:09.8	Well, depends who you ask.
1:11.3	On that same day, January 20th, the European Commission presents a competitiveness compass,
1:16.9	a new economic strategy.
1:18.7	It gives more emphasis on economic competitiveness and represents a shift away from the previous
1:24.3	major strategy of the European Commission, the EU Green Deal.
1:28.1	Back to good news on February 9th, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania fully disconnect from
1:35.0	Russian and Belarusian networks and join the European continental electricity grid ahead of
1:40.7	schedule. So that's really nice. Okay, on a sour turn of events, February 14th, Day of Love, J.D. Vance gives a speech at the Munich
1:49.2	Security Conference, which was seen by many as the US taking distance from Europe on security matters.
	...

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