My guest is Stanie Pignall.

Stanie Pignal.

Stanley Pinal writes the Charlie Minc column on European Affairs for the Economist

and is the economist Brussels Bureau Chief.

Previous postings include covering economics and business from Paris and Mumbai, and prior to that,

he was the banking editor covering financial institutions out of London.

He joined the economist in 2012.

Prior to that, he was working for the Financial Times.

It was, in fact, in the FD, Brussels Bureau from 2009 and 2012.

Welcome to the podcast, Stanley.

Thanks, Paul. Thanks for having me.

Well, we did one of these podcast chats.

You may remember, Stanley, toward the end of 2022, and you hadn't not long been in the seat of the

Charlemagne author's job. I just wondered now, there's a new lexicon, as you may be familiar

with, with words like Rubicon existential tipping point.

The situation that Europe, European Union and Europe more broadly find itself, is it any

different from previous iterations when Europe is known for going through pretty regular crises,

crisis of confidence at least?

Yeah, so a good question. You know, we are constantly crossing Rubicon's in Europe. Yeah, so good question.

We are constantly crossing Rubicon's in Europe.

They're constant tipping points.

They just concern different things.

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