Annus Horribilis

The Eurointelligence Podcast

Wolfgang Munchau

Eu-china, Spain, Political Risk, Netherlands, European Politics, Eu, Brexit, European Integration, Eurozone, Uk, France, Italy, Political Economy, Recovery Fund, Political Union, Transatlantic Relations, European Union, Geopolitics, Business, Fiscal Union, Trade, Politics, Economics, China, Government, Banking, Ecb, News, Germany

4.5 • 30 Ratings

🗓️ 18 December 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In our last podcast of the year, our team looks back at 2025. It was an annus horribilis for the EU. Will 2026 be better?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Eurointelligence podcast. I'm Wolfgang Munchau and with me are Zuzana Monsenk and Jack
0:06.9	Smith. Today we will take a look back at 2025 and a look ahead at 2026. We're not predicting,
0:14.9	we're not forecast, it's not what we do, but we are going to identify some themes that were important and that are likely to remain important.
0:24.3	Jack, for you, what was the main theme of 2025?
0:28.8	I think for Europe, the overriding theme of 2025 was the Trump administration coming into power again in the United States
0:37.3	and how that changed
0:40.7	the U.S.'s stance and its policies towards Europe. And I think that will continue to be the big
0:47.2	theme in 2026. I think that many of the issues that we face in Europe have been longer term than that,
0:53.2	whether it's our security situation, whether it's the state of the European economy, whether it's our relationship with China.
1:01.0	But in the short term, what the Trump administration has done has brought these various things to the four.
1:10.0	Firstly, and most obviously with the security situation,
1:12.5	there's been a real change of policy towards Ukraine. With the Trump administration coming in,
1:17.3	USA to Ukraine almost completely ceased in value terms. And there was a real shift towards
1:22.6	trying to get some sort of ceasefire or peace deal on. We're still in the middle of that process at the
1:28.0	moment. And, you know, in economic terms, of course, there was the tariffs. But there were also
1:33.7	tariffs not just on Europe, but elsewhere. And that's had an effect. I mean, arguably, I think,
1:39.5	of course, you can you can already see that the tariffs have hit European exports towards the United States,
1:47.2	but perhaps the bigger long-term effect is going to be that they've led to quite a significant
1:52.0	redirection of global trade, which has had knock-on effects, especially in terms of China's own
1:59.1	exports to Europe. So you have that as kind of one part
2:03.1	of this big global overriding theme. And I think another one is that although there was already
2:08.9	some anxiety about the state of the European economy and its performance relative to the United
	...

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