I think we're living in the golden age of space exploration. The moon is really close by. We can be there, I think, between 2025 and 2030. There'll be missions to the moon, around the moon on the gateway, then to the surface, building a base, having a more sustainable presence. And then after this, we could be in good shape to go to Mars.

Welcome to EU Confidential. I'm Andrew Gray, Politico's EU editor in Brussels.

And you just heard Toma Peske, a European astronaut, who's preparing to blast off for the International Space Station.

Later in the programme, you'll hear directly from Peske and his colleague, Samantha Christoforetti.

We'll discuss their upcoming missions where Europe fits into the final frontier and the search for the next generation of European astronauts. But first, let's get to our podcast panel. So it's a warm welcome to Riem Montez in Paris. Hi, Rene. Hello all. Hi to Matt Karnichnik in Berlin.

Good morning. Actually, I'm in Brandenburg. Okay. Well, I didn't know if we wanted to get into that,

but you're always a stickler for accuracy. You're absolutely right. You're outside Berlin. Welcome.

Thank you. And in Brussels, our EU-China correspondent, Stuart Lau, hi, Stuart.

Hello. So we're going to catch up on some developments in EU-China relations, which we haven't

had the chance to talk about in depth. And this is a kind of row or multiple rows that are rumbling on,

if you like. But Stuart, I don't know if you want to just talk us through what happened

a couple of weeks ago where we saw sanctions imposed from the EU and then a stronger than

expected, at least as far as the EU was concerned, a stronger than expected response from Beijing.

Do you want to just bring us up to speed on what happened there? Yeah, absolutely. So it was the EU

that kicked off this wave of

sanctions by imposing sanctions on four individuals responsible for what they see as human rights violations

in Xinjiang against the Uighur population there. And China responded quite fiercely, even though the EU actually did it together with the

US, with the UK, and with Canada on the same day. So they sanctioned not only five members of the

European Parliament, but also the Human Rights Committee of the European Parliament, as well as

the Political and Security Committee of the Council. And on top of that, there was also a

sanction against Merricks, which is a very well-regarded think tank, specialising in China Affairs

in Berlin. And then a few days later, China also imposed similar sanctions against the UK,

...