Welcome to the Eurointelligence podcast.

I'm Wolfgang Munchau, and with me are Susanna Munchank and Jack Smith.

Now, this is going to be our last podcast before the summer break.

We will be back in early September.

And it is quite appropriate to talk about a number of the themes that we have been writing about

and talking about here in this podcast for the last six months. And they all came together this week. Marriott Ragi resigned

as Italy's prime minister. The ECB has launched an instrument that can conceivably only be used

for as long as Marit Ragi is prime minister. And we have a still very uncertain outlook for the gas supplies from Russia to Europe, which

will also influence the ECB's policy stance.

The ECB has raised interest rates this week.

And a lot of people are saying, look, this is potentially, potentially, you know,

potentially risky because the European economy may fall into a very deep recession.

So we are in a very interesting moment in European politics.

But let's start with Italy. Jack, you've written

about the decline and fall of Mario Draghi this week. It was quite an extraordinary story. It did

at one time look that he might just be able to get his majority, but then it didn't happen. Can

you just explain to us what happened and what do you think is going to happen now?

Okay.

So what happened?

Well, if we take it kind of all the way back to what's been going on over, you know,

like since the beginning of the year, there have been a number of different factors that have started, you know, like since the beginning of the year, there have been a number of different factors

that have started, you know, that kind of one by one destabilized the Italian government, right?

...