Hello and welcome to the latest podcast from the Centre for European Reform.

I'm Ian Bond, the CER's Deputy Director, and I'm also the author of a new CER policy brief supported by the Conrad Adanauer-Shtifung UK and Ireland, entitled EU-UK Relations.

Will 2026 be the year to reset the reset?

So the policy brief was intended as an overview of the status of the EU-UK relationship in a wide range of areas with some thoughts on what should be done to give more momentum to the development of the partnership.

And it's available on the CR website, cER.

And today I'm going to discuss how things stand in the relationship and what the prospects

for the future are with Janika Varkovac, a researcher at the UK in a changing Europe, and

with Anton Spisak, as of this week, a senior research fellow at the CER.

So it's very brave of him to come on the podcast straight away. Anyway, welcome to you both.

Thanks, Ian. Thank you.

So just a reminder, the Labour government came into office in 2024 with a manifesto that promised to reset the relationship with the EU.

And the EU-UK summit last May, which was the first since Brexit, agreed on two important documents, a common understanding which set out a number of areas for possible future cooperation,

mostly to do with economics and trade and the like, and a security and defense partnership,

and that filled in a gap where the previous British government had decided to exclude these

areas from the trade and cooperation agreement.

So perhaps I'll start with you, Yanaka, and ask you, what impact is the security situation

in Europe having on the EU-UK reset?

How much difference have the situation in Ukraine and the presidency of Donald Trump

and his attitude to Europeans made to the EU-UK relationship?

Thank you, Ian. I mean, if we look at what has happened in EU-UK relations since Russia's full-scale invasion

of Ukraine in February 2022, we can certainly see that the war has been a catalyst for

warmer EU-UK relations, particularly in terms of cooperation on sanctions and military training

...