MCC Brussels Podcast

In this week’s episode, MCC Brussels tears into Brussels’ trade-deal frenzy from Mercosur to India, the capital’s 600-day political paralysis, and Trump’s Peace Board challenge to the tired old international order.Jacob Reynolds, Head of Policy at MCC Brussels, is joined by Barbara Bonte, Vlaams Belang MEP in the Patriots for Europe group, and Agnieszka Kolek, Head of Cultural Engagement at MCC Brussels.India is the deal dressed up as a geopolitical triumph, the “mother of all trade deals,” featuring export wins for big sectors and a momentous agreement on mobility (read: migration) tucked inside. The reality is that India’s most reliable export is people rather than steel or software. These mobility clauses aren't just a footnote to the document. They are the entire point.Brussels 600 days no government decay: Brussels without a government for 600 days is not a charming constitutional oddity.. It is the natural byproduct of a system designed to obstruct, run by parties that would rather exclude rivals than actually govern. No budget means no planning, no investment, no serious repair. Everyday life is left to fray by politicians who have no answers.The Peace Board is Trumpian in style, but not necessarily empty in substance. Post-war institutions are visibly exhausted: The UN moralises and achieves little. Europe spends and postures, but cannot decide what it wants beyond “more of the same”. Trump, for all his theatricality, forces a question the polite world avoids: what if the institutions built in a previous era are no longer fit for purpose.Follow MCC Brussels on social media:https://twitter.com/MCC_Brusselshttps://facebook.com/MCCBrusselshttps://linkedin.com/company/mcc-brussels/website:https://brussels.mcc.hu

In this week’s episode Jacob Reynolds, with Richard Schenk and Carl Deconinck, cuts through the Davos charade, the EU’s flailing response to Trump and Greenland, and Brussels’ latest attempt to muzzle free speech via its crusade against X.1) Davos / WEF: Davos used to be the annual summit of vague virtue-signalling and lavish self-regard. This year, it looks less like cosplay and more like crisis management. With the UN toothless and the old “dialogue forums” dead, Davos has become one of the few places rival blocs still talk . All the  while Europe’s leaders flail, delivering the same stale sermons about bureaucracy “reform” and Net Zero righteousness, as if it’s still 2019.2) Greenland / tariffs / EU–US tension: Greenland is a bargaining chip in a colder, harder world. Trump’s tariff sabre-rattling exposes a deeper truth: the post–Cold War fantasy is over, and national interest is back.Brussels, trained to govern by press release and “values”, now looks like a sleepwalker. The result is diplomatic cringe instead of strategy.3) X / Grok / illicit images / EU clampdowns: Yes, AI can be abused, including for non-consensual image manipulation. But the EU’s instinct is always the same: treat every new tool as an excuse to expand censorship and bureaucratic control. The EU’s long campaign against X suddenly has a convenient moral fig-leaf, while the EU AI Act and its wider regulatory reflex keep pushing innovation out of Europe. Follow MCC Brussels on social media:https://twitter.com/MCC_Brusselshttps://facebook.com/MCCBrusselshttps://linkedin.com/company/mcc-brussels/website:https://brussels.mcc.hu

Join Richard Schenk, a Research Fellow at MCC Brussels specializing in European defense and Arctic strategy, along with Agnieszka Kolek, Head of Cultural Engagement, as they dive into Europe's strategic failures. They dissect the precarious situation in Greenland, where NATO's weaknesses are laid bare. Discussions on the Mercosur deal reveal the EU's financial missteps impacting farmers deeply. Meanwhile, they critique Hungary's political maneuvering as the EU struggles with rule-of-law inconsistencies and its image as a democratic guardian.

Brussels insists it only acts where member states allow it. MCC Brussel's Deputy Research Director Philip Siegert shows that is simply untrue. h exists down with John O'Brien to talk about his latest report: Empire of Law: Pushing supranationalism beyond democratic legitimacy.For decades, EU institutions have quietly rewritten their own powers; through courts, crises, delegated acts and clever legal gymnastics,  creating a system where the centre expands and national democracy shrinks.This Deep Dive cuts through the mythology:• Competence creep is not an accident — it’s a methodCourts reinterpret treaties, the Commission legislates without legislators, and the Council ducks responsibility by outsourcing real decisions to the technocracy. The result is a Brussels that governs far beyond its mandate.• Crisis governance as a power machineFrom the Eurozone meltdown to COVID and now “values enforcement,” every emergency becomes an excuse for more centralisation. Whether the policy fits the crisis is irrelevant - the answer is always “more EU.”• Rule-of-law conditionality as political weaponryFunds can now be withheld from governments Brussels dislikes, on the basis of vague “country recommendations” and administrative judgments that never face democratic scrutiny.• And the warning that matters most:If this continues, Brexit will not remain an outlier. A Union that overrides sovereignty and ignores subsidiarity is a Union that erodes its own legitimacy.If Europe is to remain democratic, it must return to clear limits, respect for national self-government, and the principle that powers come from the member states, not despite them.Read the report here: https://brussels.mcc.hu/uploads/default/0001/02/406b613a4df11a5e76c55230e18034bbaa0a39bf.pdf

This week, MCC Brussels’ John O’Brien sits down with Leonardo Orlando. He is an  evolutionary psychologist, co-author of Sex, Science and Censure, and one of the harshest critics of gender ideology in Europe.Orlando makes a simple but devastating point: you can’t understand society if you pretend biology stops at the neck. Yet universities have built entire “gender” departments on the denial of basic human nature. The result? A flat-earth worldview masquerading as scholarship, and an academic culture terrified of the truth.In this Deep Dive, we explore:Why evolutionary science is now taboo in universities.Researchers are punished for stating biological facts, while ideologues with tenure churn out theories that collapse on contact with reality.How the censorship works.Orlando explains how hundreds of cancelled events and silenced researchers point to a global pattern, not isolated incidents, where dissenters are pushed out of academia altogether.What the science actually shows.Across cultures and across time, behavioural sex differences are robust, measurable, and rooted in evolution. The evidence is overwhelming, which is precisely why activists work so hard to suppress it.Why ignoring biology leads to bad policy.From domestic violence to fertility decline to the gender-neutral toy obsession, policymakers burn public money because they refuse to accept basic human nature.And the heart of the argument:Biology isn’t destiny — unless you ignore it.For anyone tired of ideological propaganda dressed up as scholarship, this conversation is a breath of fresh air.Follow MCC Brussels on social media:https://twitter.com/MCC_Brusselshttps://facebook.com/MCCBrusselshttps://linkedin.com/company/mcc-brussels/website:https://brussels.mcc.hu

This week, Jacob Reynolds is joined by Pieter Cleppe and Anthony Gilland to review 2025 – the populist surge, the elite fightback on speech and elections, and Europe’s growing weakness from Washington to Ukraine.Populists surge – and the public stops whisperingThe conversation opens on the mood-shift of 2025: farmer protests across Europe, citizens stepping in where the state won’t (including border pressure), and parents scrutinising what schools are teaching. They run through the electoral and polling picture – from anti-centralisation politics in Czechia to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, and a Germany where broken promises and a spending splurge fuel a protest mood and push the AfD higher in the polls.The elite fightback – Democracy Shield, “pre-bunking”, lawfareAs pressure rises, the panel argues Brussels reaches for control: the Democracy Shield’s language of “safeguarding” and “protecting” elections, and a wider push to police online discourse. They dig into “pre-bunking” as proactive narrative management (AI plus NGO fact-checkers), link it to the Digital Services Act, and discuss headline-grabbing interventions – including a major fine on X and the pattern of legal-institutional moves around high-stakes elections (from France to Romania).US–EU reality check – then the Brussels scandals pile upOn the global stage, they frame EU–US relations as a clash over regulation and values – with America increasingly hostile to Europe’s speech regime and Europe looking strategically irrelevant. Ukraine exposes that weakness: arguments over sanctions, Russian assets, and the EU’s limited leverage. Then the year’s “unmasking” theme returns via scandals – NGO funding and influence operations, Jean Monnet-style academic patronage, PfizerGate, and the College of Europe affair.Follow MCC Brussels on social media:https://twitter.com/MCC_Brusselshttps://facebook.com/MCCBrusselshttps://linkedin.com/company/mcc-brussels/website:https://brussels.mcc.hu

This week, Jacob Reynolds is joined by Philipp Siegert, Deputy Research Director at MCC Brussels, to unpack the EU’s migration pact blow-up, a College of Europe fraud probe, and the vandalism of Brussels’ Grand Place nativity scene. Pay up or take migrantsThe Commission sells the Pact on Migration and Asylum as “solidarity” – but the rollout is exposing open fractures across Europe. The Council is discussing relocation quotas (around 21,000) and a “solidarity contribution” of €20,000 for states that refuse to accept relocations, with Central European governments signalling pushback. The result is a policy that’s legally adopted, politically contested, and heading towards a confrontation that could run well past its planned June 2026 start date. A ‘quiet’ tender, then the real moneyA new scandal centres on the College of Europe and an EEAS-linked tender that allegedly stayed below a transparency threshold (around €143,000), before larger sums followed. The episode walks through how a dormitory requirement narrowed the field, how funding then jumped via additional grants (including ~€650,000) and later a much larger figure (~€960,000), and why investigators are now circling figures connected to the project. Defaced nativity, stolen JesusBrussels’ Grand Place nativity scene went “inclusive” – with faceless figures – and then got desecrated: the baby Jesus figure’s head was stolen and the tent was tagged “Free Palestine”, alongside reports of a major demonstration and clashes around the Christmas market opening. Philipp argues it’s not just vandalism, but a wider cultural pattern – a politics of deconstruction that leaves Europe’s Christian heritage permanently on the defensive. Follow MCC Brussels on social media:https://twitter.com/MCC_Brusselshttps://facebook.com/MCCBrusselshttps://linkedin.com/company/mcc-brussels/website:https://brussels.mcc.hu

Join Danish MEP Anders Vistisen, a crucial voice on immigration policy, as he reveals Denmark's unapologetic approach to migration. Discover how strict asylum rules and integration demands have shaped a cohesive society. Vistisen argues for the importance of language and civic values while highlighting the consequences of mismatched skills in the labor market. He advocates for open debate on immigration issues and shares lessons for other nations facing similar challenges. Denmark's model may not be ‘closed,’ but it's certainly a controlled success story.

This week, Jacob Reynolds is joined by Agnieszka Kolek and Richard Schenk to break down Brussels’ assault on X, Washington’s blunt verdict on Europe’s decline, and the Commission’s extraordinary pressure campaign against Belgium over frozen Russian assets.Brussels fines X to tame the last free platform.The Commission has slapped a €120 million penalty on Elon Musk’s platform, dressing it up as “transparency” enforcement. In reality, X is the only major network Brussels cannot control. It allows unfiltered footage, dissenting voices and inconvenient facts to circulate. So the EU is trying to discipline it through fines. America calls Europe a civilisation in decline.Washington’s new national security strategy says the quiet part out loud: Europe is losing confidence, population, and purpose. For all the EU’s grand rhetoric, the US sees a continent heading for demographic crisis and cultural fragmentation, while Central and Eastern Europe now look more stable than the West. The battle over Belgium’s Russian assets turns surreal.EU leaders insist Belgium must take on the entire financial risk of seizing frozen Russian funds to help Brussels fund the war in Ukraine.  A liability no other member state is willing to share. When Belgian leaders object, they are smeared as “pro-Russian.” It is less strategy than headless panic.  Brussels needs money for Ukraine, has none of its own, and is now bullying individual member states.

The gender lobby insists debate is forbidden. Institutions rewrite language. Women’s prisons, refuges and schools are paying the price -  and Europe’s political class looks the other way.In this Deep Dive, John O’Brien sits down with Kellie-Jay Keen (Posie Parker), one of the most outspoken defenders of women’s rights, for a blunt, unsparing conversation on how gender ideology captured institutions, intimidated feminists, and erased the very word woman.They discuss:• The moment she realised women were expected to stay silent• Why defining “woman” is now treated like blasphemy• How men are being placed in women’s prisons — and the cover-ups• Why the feminist movement caved so quickly• The indoctrination of a generation of children• What lawmakers must do if they wish to protect women and protect the truth• Why speaking plainly is now an act of civil courageHer message is simple:If you lose the word woman, you lose women.If you value open debate, freedom to speak plainly, and the protection of women and children, make sure to like, comment, and subscribe. It genuinely helps counter the algorithms that punish dissenting voices.And for more conversations like this, follow us every week on Deep Dives from MCC Brussels.