From the Centre for European Reform, this is the CER podcast.

It is a critical moment.

If we do not act with urgency, we would then severely undermine the liberal order.

Brexit means Brexit, and we're going to make a success of it.

The wind is back in Europe's sales.

We have now a window of opportunity, but it will not stay open forever.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Sea Year podcast.

My name is Sophia Bash. I'm a research fellow here at the Center for European Reform. And today I'm in conversation with Leonard Schutter, who's

the Clara Marina O'Donnell Fellow here at the CR. This is a very exciting podcast episodes because

it's Leonard's very first podcast. Leonard thanks for having me on the podcast

sophia and the thing that we're here to talk about today is european reforms and what happened to them

it's over a year now already that french president emmanuel macron gave his sorbonne speech

where he outlined his grand vision for Europe in the September of last year.

And Nanad, you've written a piece about what has happened since then.

How Macron's reform proposals have been picked up or not, really.

And we also want to talk a little bit about what the latest developments in German

politics, the fact that Angela Merkel has announced that she will step back from the leadership

of her party, what that means for the hopes for European reform. It's a kind of depressing piece

to read really, because as you're stating in it,

not all that much progress has actually happened.

But could you just outline for us to get us back into this topic?

What was the context of Macron's Sorbonne speech initially?

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