Europe: Dream or Nightmare?
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 30 November 2018
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Could the European Parliament elections plus Brexit next year together provide the death knell for the European federalist dream? Populist parties from the far right and far left across Europe hope to take control of the heart of Europe at the 2019 elections.
Manuela Saragosa reports from the parliamentary building in Brussels, in the last of our five programmes this week looking at the future of Europe. She meets two Brits whose careers were thrown into turmoil by the Brexit referendum in 2016. Simone Howse has been told that she can keep her job as an interpreter in the plenary chamber even after her home country leaves the EU. But MEP Catherine Bearder, along with her 72 compatriots, will be turfed out when her current term ends in July.
But what fears do the they and others in Brussels have of a looming populist takeover of parliament? What will it mean for the future direction of the European project? Is it the end of federalism? Someone who hopes so is the pro-European but anti-federalist Czech MEP Jan Zahradil.
(Picture: Manuela Saragosa in the European parliamentary chamber; Credit: BBC)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:05.0 | I'm Manuela Saragos and I'm speaking to you from the European Parliament in Brussels. |
| 0:09.5 | This is the beating heart, if you like, of the European Union. |
| 0:13.4 | But with Brexit on the horizon and populist parties on the rise across the EU, |
| 0:19.0 | is this Parliament now the place where Europe comes together or where |
| 0:22.7 | it falls apart? |
| 0:24.2 | UK traditionally has been a balancing factor, a counterweight to continental powers. Once UK is |
| 0:32.7 | out, then they might try to dominate, but this is not Brussels and Berlin and Paris only |
| 0:38.5 | that should dictate how the European Union of the future should look like. |
| 0:42.8 | That's coming up here in Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:50.8 | So welcome to Brussels. |
| 0:53.1 | All this week, Business Daily has been zigzagging its way across Europe |
| 0:56.8 | to see what Brexit means to the future of the European Union. |
| 1:00.5 | We've been in Poland, Italy, Germany, France, |
| 1:03.3 | and today, Brussels, Belgium, where the bulk of the European Union's institutions are based. |
| 1:08.7 | Here's a reminder of what people have been telling us this week from across the continent. |
| 1:16.3 | There is a lot of growing nationalism at the moment. |
| 1:24.7 | I cannot understand these people. |
| 1:26.8 | Germany and France are making the rules |
| 1:29.2 | and dominating their union. |
| 1:31.5 | Poland is often being taken advantage of |
| 1:34.7 | and I think Poland should finally take a stance. |
... |
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