Welcome to the Euro Intelligence Podcast. I'm Wolfgang Munchau and with me are Zuzana Munchank and Jack Smith.

Today we would like to talk about the European elections.

In a few weeks, Europe goes to the polls. It will be one of the most important elections in the world, one of the largest elections in the world this year.

A lot is at stake. We think it is one of the, probably the most important European

election in recent years. This has to do with the challenges that Europe is facing. The disagreements

that we have with one another on the future of Europe and also on what the priorities are. Jack,

you have written extensively about the European election. What do you think is important?

What is this election about? Any European election is going to be about several different things,

because as well as the themes that exist on the European level, the European elections are

almost in effect, oftentimes basically 27 different national elections that elect

into the same parliament. So the themes can be quite heterogeneous from country to country,

depending on what's going on in their own national politics. But I would say one of the biggest,

if not the biggest, overriding themes ahead of this election is the rise of the, I guess what you could say,

the far right and the radical right in Europe, which is that on the basis of current polling,

it looks like both of the kind of right-wing far-right, radical-right parliamentary groupings in the

European Parliament. So that's ID, identity,

and democracy in the ECR, the European Conservatives and Reformists will make gains in the

coming election. It's also possible even that one of these groups, or even both of them,

could push down the liberal group Renew, which is currently the third largest group in the European

Parliament.

The big losers from this shift will be both Renew, the Liberal Group, and the Greens as

well, who on the basis of current polling as well, will stand to lose quite a few seats in the

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