Welcome to the Eurointelligence podcast. With me today, are Susanne Muncheng and Jack Smith,

and I'm Wolfgang Munchau. Today, we want to talk about Russia, Russia and Germany,

especially in view of the discussions of the European Council this week. We want to talk about

the Netherlands, the Dutch have a new government finally.

And we would like to talk about a surprising increase in the number of entrepreneurs in France.

These are the three subjects for today.

And we want to start with Russia and Germany.

We had a debate in the European Council on Friday. And in fact, it was actually not on Friday.

It was on Thursday. And in this debate, Germany came under pressure. And this was Olaf Schultz's

first council, European Council. And we were all wondering what he would say. And surprise, surprise, he said the same as Angela Maca said before.

So there was no change, except that he's slightly better at pretending not to say anything when he, you know, he is quite a good sort of, he's got quite a good poker face.

And I don't think anyone has ever got a straight answer out of him.

And anything he's ever sort of they've ever asked him.

He has a wonderful way of deflecting questions.

He was asked about the financial scandal in Hamburg, in which he, you know, is, you know, at least partially or tangentially involved.

And his answer was, you know, I have great trust in the police. So,

so that was basically, you know, his way of handling a very uncomfortable question. Yesterday,

the question was about North String True. And he asked, he basically said, oh, this is a private

sector project. It's got nothing to do with me, which is, of course, what Angela Merkel said.

But we all know that North St.

Trou is probably the most important issue right now in EU politics, because it is the,

it is sort of the culmination of an awful lot of things that had gone wrong in Europe, like,

...