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

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

So did you want to start with Italy or vaccines this week?

What do you think?

Well, Italy, I mean, it's a big mess and it's not getting as much attention right now.

Yeah, it's getting a lot of

attention from us though. But Italy is a very, very interesting situation. Italian politics is

not that easy to understand from the outside. One always, you know, things about coalitions

and when we can see the numbers, but one doesn't understand the dynamics, the complex dynamics that goes on between the leaders. And generally,

people have very strong views of individuals. For example, a lot of people have very negative

views about Mateo Renzi, and they project those views into their analysis and say,

and come to very bad conclusions like, you know,

this, you know, like four weeks ago and that Renzi will not dare

because he doesn't have the polling numbers.

In the end, he did there.

He went in all the confrontational issues,

which started really on the recovery fund.

You know, he took the most extreme position.

And even yesterday, he took this most extreme position of actually telling the president

that he does not support Giuseppe Conti to be given another mandate.

Now, that wasn't clear until two days ago that he would actually say that.

And we know now his strategy that even if Conte is given a mandate, which is possible,

...