The UK and the EU: best buds again?
The Europeans | European news, politics and culture
Katy Lee and Dominic Kraemer
4.8 • 162 Ratings
🗓️ 22 January 2026
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
You’d be forgiven for forgetting that Europe is bigger than Davos this week, but we’ve got three great stories to remind you. First up: it’s been a good week for Berliners making Kartoffelsalat, Kartoffelsuppe, Kartoffelknödel, et cetera et cetera, thanks to an initiative that is distributing more than 170 tonnes – TONNES – of potatoes across the German capital. Then we examine a newly leaked “Made in Europe“ proposal that seeks to promote industrial production in the EU (very very fun, we promise).
We’re also joined by Nick Thomas-Symonds, the UK government minister pursuing a post-Brexit “reset“ in relations with the EU, about how the Labour government might help clean up some of the post-Brexit mess. This one goes out to those of you who like to email to remind us that Britain is still Europe. We see you. We read you.
This week’s Inspiration Station recommendations are the Norwegian film Sentimental Value and these 'tasting notes' from a water sommelier.
LISTENER SURVEY: Fear not – we are still seeking responses to our listener survey! It’s not too late to help! It’s simple and really does help us make the show better. Fill it out here and pat yourself on the back afterwards.
Resources for this episode:
- 4,000 Tonnen, the “great potato rescue operation”
- “Record potato harvest is no boon in fries-mad Belgium” – France 24, 29 October 2025
- “Den regionalen Erzeugern wird vors Schienbein getreten” – Taz, 15 January 2026
- “EU Aims to Fight Industrial Decline With ‘Made in Europe’ Law” – Bloomberg, 17 January 2026
- Aurora Notifier app
- Joachim Trier’s acceptance speech at the European Film Awards
- Veronika the cow, scratching herself
SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER: Other things happened/are happening in Europe this week (🫠) and if you’d like to learn more about them, join us over at our newsletter, GOOD WEEK BAD WEEK.
This podcast was brought to you in cooperation with Euranet Plus, the leading radio network for EU news. But it’s contributions from listeners that truly make it all possible—we could not continue to make the show without you! If you like what we do, you can chip in to help us cover our production costs at patreon.com/europeanspodcast (in many different currencies), or you can gift a donation to a superfan. We'd also love it if you could tell two friends about this podcast. We think two feels like a reasonable number.
Produced by Morgan Childs and Wojciech Oleksiak
Mixing and mastering by Wojciech Oleksiak
Music by Jim Barne and Mariska Martina
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This podcast has been produced in cooperation with Uranet Plus, the leading radio network for EU news. |
| 0:11.4 | But this podcast would not be possible without the incredibly generous support of our amazing listeners who donate a little bit each month at patreon.com forward slash Europeans podcast. Hello and welcome to the Europeans. |
| 0:49.2 | I'm Dominic Kramer in Amsterdam here with Katie Lee in Paris. |
| 0:52.4 | We're here to talk to you about Europe's politics, |
| 0:55.2 | Europe's culture, and this week for reasons that will soon become clear, Europe's potatoes. |
| 1:00.5 | How are you doing today, Katie? I'm good. Um, Kobo's update, or Kubeas, as I was calling it. Anyway, |
| 1:08.0 | that app, what you can play music on, that isn't Spotify, finally downloaded |
| 1:12.1 | it. Holy shit. Song sounds so good on it. I love it. It's really worth leaving Spotify for |
| 1:18.8 | and paying that extra euro or two. I'm glad I've made another Cobra's evangelist out of you. |
| 1:24.4 | There's so many of them now as well. We've had quite a few messages, I think, from listeners saying, I switched to Koboos because of Dominic. So, Koboos, we're doing free advertising over here for you. Get in touch. Yeah, they're still not sponsoring us. What's going on? But how are you over there in Amsterdam? Yeah, I'm fine. Whilst the post-war Western Alliance has been falling apart this week, I was on stage choking on confetti. Oh my God. |
| 1:50.8 | Like, in a serious way? Kind of serious, yeah. I mean, there's definitely a metaphor in there |
| 1:56.2 | somewhere, like about the current geopolitical shit show and me choking on confetti, I haven't found it yet. |
| 2:02.1 | It was basically just me inhaling confetti whilst trying to sing my lungs out, |
| 2:06.0 | which was rather uncomfortable and humiliating. |
| 2:08.8 | But I can laugh about it already. |
| 2:10.8 | What a weird celebratory way that would have been to die. |
| 2:14.2 | I do always wonder about this at huge pop concerts where, you know, |
| 2:17.3 | this thing explodes and those of confetti comes down at huge pop concerts where, you know, this thing |
| 2:17.7 | explodes and those of confetti comes down from the ceiling. Like, you can't be the first |
| 2:21.3 | performer to have nearly died choking on confetti. Absolutely. And it was really small confetti |
| 2:26.5 | as well. So fortunately, that means I wasn't likely to choke to death, but it really meant like a lot |
| 2:33.5 | of it got in my mouth when I took one of my deep |
... |
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