My guest is Mouhtaba Raman.

Mastabah Raman is the managing director, Europe and co-head of the London office of the Eurasia Group.

Welcome to the podcast, Midge.

Thanks for having me, Paul.

Right.

We're going to use the next 2025 minutes for me to kind of pick your brains on the most important challenges

facing the European Union in the coming

year and how effective you think Europe's leaders will be in dealing with these challenges.

So in no particular importance, could you give me some of your top concerns about what the EU has

to face in 2024?

So European elections take place on the 6th to 9th of June. There's a lot of talk in the

ecosystem about the emergence of populist or the reinforcement rather or strong performance

of populist parties in that context. That's not a concern. For us at Eurasia group, it was one of our red herrings

actually in our top risk for the year, which means it's something everybody is incredibly concerned

about and motivated by, but we do not believe that risk is warranted or that concern is warranted.

The challenge to my mind this year is the impact populist parties doing well

will have on incumbent governments and how weakened incumbents is actually the risk for the EU this year.

And I would point to two examples that I'm sure we'll talk about this in more detail.

In particular, Emmanuel Macron, who's polling around 10 points behind Le Pen, his centrist alliance. would point to two examples that I'm sure we'll talk about this in more detail, in particular

Emmanuel Macron, who's polling around 10 points behind Le Pen, his centrist alliance, and the

wobbly coalition in Germany, Olaf Schultz's team. So I think both of those leaders will emerge

from the European elections week and that I think will ultimately create lots of challenges

...