How to go from hero to zero, with Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel

EU Confidential

POLITICO

Politics, News Commentary, News

4.4 • 175 Ratings

🗓️ 17 October 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

French President Emmanuel Macron has gone from “Mr. Europe” eight years ago to the solitary man by the Seine. At the same time, ex-German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s legacy is also going through a sudden and sharp downgrade. How did these centrist pillars of Europe tank so quickly? With parties on the far right and far left rising up in their place, are citizens actually becoming more extreme — or are they just fed up? To discuss these questions, host Sarah Wheaton was joined by John Kampfner — an expert on Germany, Nick Vinocour — our chief foreign affairs correspondent, and Clea Caulcutt — our senior correspondent in Paris. Plus, we dive into the alleged espionage scandal facing Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey Jack, I'm seeing your business everywhere. Have you got a new marketing person or something?
0:04.7	You could say I've got a new secret weapon for print. Print? Oh, Vista print, right? That's not a secret.
0:10.8	How did you know? Come on. Custom posters, branded mugs, stylish flyers. Only one place prints all that. Vista print.
0:17.7	Yeah, I got business cards, stickers, t-shirts, booklets, signage, even photo books from my last holiday.
0:23.2	Print everything for your business with VistaPrint. If you need it, we print it at vistoprint.com.uk.
0:30.2	Hi, this is Ava from Vanta. In today's digital world, compliance regulations are changing constantly, and earning customer trust has never mattered more.
0:40.0	Banta helps companies get compliant fast and stay secure, with the most advanced AI automation and continuous
0:46.3	monitoring out there. So whether you're a startup going for your first SOC 2 or ISO-27,01, or a growing
0:52.2	enterprise managing vendor risk, Banta makes it quick, easy, and
0:55.8	scalable. And I'm not to say that because I work here. Get started today at banta.com.
1:01.0	Ladies and gentlemen, my first message is that France is back. France is back at the core of Europe.
1:08.5	That was French President Emmanuel Macron at the start of his first term.
1:14.1	We have to redesign a 10-year strategy.
1:18.0	We need more ambition in order to have a more sovereign, united and democratic Europe.
1:25.0	Mr. Europe, full of energy, ideas, big ambitions, dreaming of the EU strong enough to compete with
1:33.3	the world's heavyweights.
1:36.3	Seven years on, where'd that guy go?
1:40.3	We've seen Macron taking solitary walks along the Sen while Paris is politically burning.
1:47.3	He's weakened, increasingly isolated.
1:50.3	The economy looks very shaky.
1:53.0	Prime ministers are dropping like flies.
1:55.7	Parliament is fragmented.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from POLITICO, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of POLITICO and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.