Welcome to the Eurointelligence podcast. I'm Wolfgang Munchau and with me are Zazanne Monsenk and Jack Smith.

Today we talk about the center, the European political center being squeezed by the left and the right.

In our briefing this morning, we had three stories on France, Germany and the Netherlands,

where different versions of this story played out. In Germany, we had the rare spectacle

of a filibuster. In the Netherlands, we've had problems with the politician Peter Omtzig, who's been

forming a coalition with Gert Wilders and having difficulties. Zuzani, you wrote about France.

What happened there? When you look at French politics since the elections in July, we see an absurd story of loss of power and Maximus's claims. So on the one hand, we have the left alliance that won the elections. But because of their demands, they ended up in the opposition. They wanted to have their candidates through and they also insisted on their programs.

We had the center, the Macron's party and the four other central parties that are formed

together, the group ensemble, Macron's group, in the parliament, which officially lost

the elections, but they still came due to

tactical voting. They still came second. They are now the strongest force in a government

under Michel Barnier, who comes from the Goalist Party, which shouldn't actually be in

the government at all. We have thus a very strong representation of the center in the government.

At the same time, the centrist now seek to reinvent themselves as a party of their own rights,

because they have to prepare for an error without Macron in the picture. And that creates

this shizzen between wanting to keep on being

part of the power on the one hand in this government. On the other hand, distinguishing themselves

from a policy that Michelle Barnier is about to define, which is clearly more to the right

and it's no longer this neither left nor right approach that

McCall used to roll out. And it's also no longer consulting with McCone all these issues. So it's

clearly defined as a sort of as a rupture with the way it was, which was the verdict of the

elections to say, we don't want this to continue.

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