Hello and welcome to Brexit Republic, RTE's podcast on Brexit. I'm Tony Connolly, RTE's

Europe editor in Brussels. I'm Sean Whelan, RTE's London correspondent in Westminster. And I'm

Cullum Ongoongown, RTE's Deputy Foreign Editor, normally in Dublin, but at home in Kildare. Each week,

Brexit Republic assesses all the latest Brexit developments

in Brussels, London and Dublin. This week Boris Johnson wants a tiger in the tank, but the EU doesn't

want a pig and a poke. We'll decipher the strange colloquialism table tennis both sides engaged in

this week after the so-called high-level conference between Johnson and the leaders of the three main

EU institutions. Amid the ongoing disarray in the UK over how to manage the coronavirus

pandemic, we'll look at how the prospect of another big Brexit upheaval at the end of the year

is going down. With Michael Gove getting a grilling before the Northern Ireland Select Committee,

we'll assess how the implementation of the Irish Protocol is going down

and take stock of yet another looming clash between the EU and the UK

over the issue of extraditing British citizens to the EU after Brexit.

The first, Tony, EU leaders have been meeting virtually on the COVID recovery fund today.

Brexit doesn't jump out at us from that. But is there a Brexit angle? And if so, what is it?

Yeah, there's a couple of Brexit angles column. First of all, the leaders of the Commission and

the Council, Ursula von der Leyen and Charlotte Michelle,, were due to brief leaders on that meeting on Monday with Boris Johnson.

And the Taoiseach Leo Veradkar was also due to brief leaders on how the Northern Ireland protocol is being implemented.

But most of the meeting was being taken up by the recovery fund and how that's going down.

We don't need to get into major detail on that, but effectively, 750 billion euro that the European

Commission will borrow on the international markets, and then that will be divided up into

loans and grants and given to the worst affected countries.

...