Hello, I'm Paige and this is the Euro Intelligence podcast covering current affairs in the

EU and Euro area. I'm joined by Wolfgang and Susanna, directors of Eurointelligence in Oxford.

For our last podcast before the summer break, actually, so thank you everyone for listening this

year. We start with a very sad and tragic story today, actually, which was the floods that swept

through several Western European countries. It today, actually, which was the floods that swept through

several Western European countries. It looks right now like Germany was the hardest hit. But Wolfgang,

you wrote about it a bit this morning. What can you tell us about flooding in Germany and

how it's played out historically?

I mean, this is a major, a major catastrophe. Germany's had its fair share of floods in the last century. One in the

flood in 2002 was so prematurely named the, you know, flood of the century, which it wasn't,

as it turned out. This may be it, but it, you know, it may, it probably won't because these,

these sort of climate catastrophes seem to be getting worse.

Germany, you know, we just only recently talked about the heat wave in British Columbia.

And there are major stuff happening in the United States at the moment.

What I wrote about this morning was about the politics of floods in Germany.

I think it's far too early to talk about the political implications of that. We are recording this year on Friday.

We don't know the extent of the damage yet. We see the pictures. There are still at this point a thousand people missing.

So this is almost certainly a thousand people missing. So this is a, you know,

this is almost certainly a very serious catastrophe. Flooding, especially in election years,

have been major political events in Germany. So it's probably worth, and what I did this morning,

looking at the history of that. And we've had a, the most recent case was in 2002

when Gerhard Schroeder, he seemed, you know, Gerhard Schroeder had just finished his first

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