Hello, I'm Paige and this is the Eurointelligence podcast covering current affairs in the EU and Eurozone.

I'm joined by just Wolfgang this week, Director of Eurointelligence here in Oxford.

Wolfgang, you said you do not want to talk about Brexit today.

I am with you.

What would you like to talk about instead?

Well, we didn't want to talk about Brexit because this is Friday morning.

We're recording this on a Friday morning. So, because, you know, something might happen in the next

hour and, you know, we would look extremely silly, even though I would not predict what's going

to happen because I've been saying all along, it's kind of 50-50, who knows. In fact, I didn't say 50-50. I said, I haven't got the foggiest, which isn't

exactly the same either. But it's, we've never pretended to know when we didn't. So it's,

it's not much point talking about by the time you hear this podcast. You may know, you will,

I'm sure you will know more about Brexit than we do at this point. But we had an important week in the EU, or important two weeks in the EU, because the

overriding theme, also in our coverage for the last week, has been essentially rule of

law and its various consequences.

Now, the latest news we've been covering is the

increasing likelihood of an EU-China investment deal, which is amazing because, you know,

there are serious human rights concerns, foreign policy concerns. We have issues with the Uyghurs, we have issues with Hong Kong,

we have issues with Trayvon. So, you know, these, you know, it seems to be that the EU has

brushed them aside in the hope of striking this investment deal. So the mercantilist side of the EU is winning out.

And we see a lot of commentary which says, oh, another great victory for Angela Merkel.

She did the EU budget, now she does the EU-China deal. But they both were bought at a price.

The EU budget was bought at a price of effectively nullifying the rule of law agreement.

...