Welcome to the President's Inbox, a CFR podcast about the foreign policy challenges facing the United States.

I'm Jim Lindsay, Director of Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

This week's topic is The Right Surges in EU Elections.

Thank you. the right surges in EU elections. With me to discuss the results and consequences of the recently completed European

parliamentary elections are Leanna Fix and Matthias Matisse.

Leanna is a fellow for Europe at the Council.

She writes on German foreign policy, European

Security, Russia, and transatlantic relations. She's the author of a new German power,

Germany's role in European Russia policy. Matias is Senior Fellow for Europe at the Council

and the Dean Adjison Associate Professor of International Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.

He is an expert on comparative politics and European political economy.

He recently co-wrote a piece for CFR.org titled, What's at Stake in the EU Elections?

Leanna, Matthias, thank you for coming back on the president's inbox.

Thank you, Jim.

Thanks for having us.

Matthias, I want to start with you, given the piece you wrote for CFR.org.

Now, voters from the 27 EU members went to the polls over the weekend. What were they

voting for? Yes. So over 400 million votes across the 27 EU member states were eligible to vote.

And we know that roughly about 51% of them actually turned out to vote. So they vote roughly

along national lines, right? So that's why when we discuss the results, we will see that these

results differ across individual member states depending on who's currently in power. But in theory, at least,

they should be voting on a new slate of members of European Parliament. And so this is roughly

...