From the Center for European Reform.

This is the CERR podcast.

Welcome to another episode of the CERR podcast.

My name is Sophia Besh.

I'm a research fellow here at the Center for European Reform.

And this is the second in our mini-Ditch, where we record from Digley Park, where the

CER every year takes around 50 of the top economists and policy commentators and political

scientists to discuss the big European questions of our time.

This year, it's How to Save the EU.

It's an ambitious program, and we've just finished the panel on what does the liberal

backlash in its newer members mean for

the EU. And to discuss this, I'm here with Heather Graeby, the director of the Open Society European

Policy Institute. Welcome Heather. And with Constance Estellez-Muller, a Robert Bosch senior fellow

at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. So I would like us because we have 10 minutes, and this

is a big topic, to jump straight into it. And Heather, maybe you could talk about this gap in

expectations, that the fact that we are seeing a convergence in economic living standards between

core Europe, Western Europe and yet there is this illiberal backlash.

What are we seeing here? Why is this happening?

Well, economic growth has been good and living standards have gone up, but wages still remain below the level of Western Europe,

and that's caused resentments. And of course, many people in Central and Eastern Europe had big dreams

about what EU membership would mean.

It has brought more money, but it hasn't necessarily brought all of the prosperity that they might have hoped for.

...