Welcome to the Euro Intelligence Podcast. I'm Wolfgang Munchau and with me, I'm Susanna Monsenk and Jack Smith.

This is our last podcast before the European elections, which are taking place this week, from Thursday to Sunday, in most countries on Sunday.

We would like to give an overview and our sort of thinking about current events in the run-up of this poll, of this important election.

Now, I've been looking at poles of poles, and they're difficult on the European level,

because we have had a lot of changes.

But it has to treat these poles with the more than customary grain of salt.

But what we have been observing is a couple of things in the numbers.

The big shift to the far right, while it's

certainly happening in France, is not really happening on the European level in the way people

had anticipated that before. There have been shifts. The Maloney group, the European Conservative

and Reformists have been weakening, along with Macron's Renew, that's Reformists, have been weakening.

Along with Macron's Renew, that's another group that has been weakening quite a lot.

The socialists have been pretty steady.

They've had the ups and downs, but fluctuating around a relatively small margin. Their forecast to get about 140, 142, according to the latest poll of polls, seats in the 720-seat European Parliament.

The EPP, the European People's Party, is still the largest of them, and they were the largest before.

After Fidesz quit, the socialist almost took a lead in the polls.

That has now been reversed.

So the EPP is relatively strong.

The Greens are weaker.

So we have a very mixed picture overall.

But the main story at the moment, if you look at the numbers, they may be wrong.

We're not saying they're right.

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