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

Today we would like to talk about Germany and France. Both countries had crisis in the past, political crisis in the past, but the distinguishing features right now is that they both have a political crisis and economic crisis at the same time.

This has important implications for each of the countries,

but also for the EU. Zuzana, you've been writing about France. What has been going on there?

Yeah, just to bring our listeners up to speak, whoever was on holidays. So since the elections in early July, Imam al-Bakron has pledged that he would nominate a prime minister only if he has a stable majority behind him.

So far, he still seemed to have not found one.

The proposal, the candidate from the left alliance who actually won these elections with 193 seats,

Macron consulted with all the parties and then decided not to nominate her,

saying that she would face immediately a sense of motion,

and therefore the stability would not be guaranteed.

Now, we have a calendar that is now imposing itself,

and the calendar is set by the budget.

And the calendar means that basically by the mid-Mid September, the first budget proposal has to be

submitted to the council and before it goes to the assembly in early October, which means that

if the new prime minister is to present a budget,

he needs to be nominated by the end of this week. That is actually in sync with Walter,

Macron himself promised he wanted to have a prime minister in place when the Paralympics begins.

It's just started. So this would be the time.

The question is, can he find that candidate after refusing that the candidate that the left

proposed?

There are all sorts of names coming up.

But they all have their issues because they either would split the left alliance or they

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