Focused group: Ukraine is now Europe’s war
Economist Podcasts
The Economist
4.3 • 5K Ratings
🗓️ 3 June 2026
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Now that America has stepped back, Europe is at last stepping up. We examine the bloc’s tactics (if not yet a strategy) and how steady its support is likely to be. With the coming public listings of SpaceX and Anthropic, we ask whether stockmarkets can handle a string of “giga-IPOs”. And our World Cup series looks at Iran’s side.
Guests and host:
- Tom Nuttall, chief Germany correspondent
- Joshua Roberts, capital markets correspondent
- Jon Fasman, senior culture correspondent
- Jason Palmer, co-host of “The Intelligence”
Topics covered:
- Europe, security, Ukraine war
- IPOs, investment, stockmarkets, SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI
- World Cup, Iran
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Economist. |
| 0:05.0 | Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist. |
| 0:13.0 | I'm Jason Palmer. |
| 0:19.0 | Today on the show, whether stock markets can stomach the coming wave of giga IPOs, |
| 0:24.4 | and our World Cup Contender series continues with Iran. |
| 0:33.7 | First up, though. |
| 0:42.3 | ... First up, though. I believe the people of Europe understand very well that we must stand up against this cruel aggression. |
| 0:50.3 | March 1st, 2022, the world was still digesting Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, called it a moment of truth for Europe. |
| 1:01.7 | Yes, protecting our liberty comes at a price, but this is a defining moment, and this is the cost we are willing to pay. |
| 1:11.6 | Four years later, and the time has come to live up to that impassioned notion. |
| 1:16.6 | This is now Europe's war to manage for three reasons. |
| 1:21.6 | Tom Nuttall is our chief Germany correspondent and Berlin Bureau Chief. |
| 1:25.6 | One is that America has disengaged, it's cut off financial aid, it's lost interested in |
| 1:31.1 | diplomacy. The second reason is that the election in Hungary a few weeks ago got rid of |
| 1:36.2 | Viktor Orban, who was the veto player inside the EU on things like sanctions and aid. |
| 1:41.3 | And the third reason is that there's now a sense of diplomatic |
| 1:44.9 | possibility because Ukraine has enjoyed some advances on the battlefield and with its deep |
| 1:50.0 | strikes inside Russia. And there's some hope that that might be the beginning of a process |
| 1:54.8 | that could see Vladimir Putin come to the negotiating table. |
| 1:59.7 | So it's in Europe's hands at last. |
| 2:03.1 | What is the strategy here? |
| 2:05.0 | Well, the question is, is there a strategy? |
... |
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