The European Union is a great mechanism to avoid the crisis, but when the crisis has come,

there are two major deficiencies.

One is speed and decision making.

And secondly, with the pandemic, very much revealed the risk-averse nature of the European decision-making.

Welcome to EU Confidential Europe's number one politics podcast. I'm Andrew Gray, Politico's

EU editor in Brussels. And the voice you just heard was Ivan Krastev. The Bulgarian political

scientist and well-known thinker on European politics is our special guest. So stick

around to hear his thoughts on the pandemic's impact on the EU,

the evolving relationship with China and illiberalism in Europe. But before we get to him,

we are in the middle of a deadly pandemic, yet much of the EU political world was consumed this

week by the seating arrangements at a meeting in

Ankara. We'll explore why Sophagate, as it's been called, struck such a chord. And we'll also

look at why Central and Eastern Europe is struggling so badly with the coronavirus right now. To do all of that, let's get our podcast panel.

So it's a rather different podcast panel this week.

Matt and Ream are off and we're going to focus on central and eastern Europe in a moment.

We'll bring in colleagues from Warsaw and Prague to do that.

But I'm joined already by our Brussels politics reporter and former colleagues. We'll bring in colleagues from Warsaw and Prague to do that.

But I'm joined already by our Brussels politics reporter and former correspondent in Budapest, Lily Byer.

Hi, Lily.

Hi, Andrew.

And before we get on to Central and Eastern Europe and the coronavirus,

we wanted to talk about the kind of big story in the Brussels bubble this week, which has been dubbed

...