Is the contest to become the next president of the European Commission just make-believe democracy? We look for answers in the Dutch city of Maastricht, where candidates held their first official debate on April 29th. Christine Neuhold, the professor of EU Democratic Governance at Maastricht University, which helped organise the event, talks about what was real, and surreal, about the debate. We also hear from another EU expert who was in the audience: Pelle Christy Geertsen of Brussels consultancy Euraffex. Geertsen, who spoke with EU Scream in November about citizen democracy, shares his thoughts on an evening spent on Planet Europe. Please visit our website for episode art and more about EU Scream. “Beethoven Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125” by Papalin is licensed under CC by 3.0. “Airside No. 9” is played by Lara Natale.Support the show

This week we’re in conversation with Carl Dolan, the outgoing director at the EU office for anti-corruption organisation Transparency International. He explores links between populism and corruption at the European Parliament and in Hungary.We also meet civil society activist Julia Krzyszkowska. She and data geek Xavier Dutoit struggled — and succeeded — in creating an online tool called MEP Watch. Their goal is helping campaign groups track voting by members of the European Parliament.Please visit our website for episode art and more about EU Scream. “Beethoven Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125” by Papalin is licensed under CC by 3.0. “Airside No. 9” is played by Lara Natale.Support the show

Margrethe Vestager is the European Union antitrust enforcer who's earned global recognition for pushing Silicon Valley giants like Apple, Google and Facebook to treat consumers and competitors fairly.Last month she put herself in the running to succeed Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the European Commission. That makes her a Spitzenkandidat, a German word that is EU jargon for being one of the lead candidates for Mr. Juncker’s job. This conversation with Vestager is from an edited recording of a live event that was held on April 2 and organised by Res Publica Europa, a group of EU officials venturing beyond their civil service day jobs to defend the EU project. Follow Res Publica Europe on Twitter. The discussion was a chance to push Vestager for her stance on topics that are cornerstones of a progressive agenda such as climate protection, the rise of far-right nationalism, the power of social media platforms and tax justice. It also was an opportunity to hear about some of her other preferences. The Beatles versus The Rolling Stones, for starters. Please visit our website for episode art and for more about EU Scream. “Beethoven Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125” by Papalin is licensed under CC by 3.0. “Airside No. 9” is played by Lara Natale.Support the show

Historian Heidi Tworek talks about her book, News From Germany, which deals with the malign influence campaigns that foretold Nazism. It’s a fascinating look at the battle to control news and information in an era of immense turmoil spanning the First World War, the Weimar Republic, and the Third Reich. One of Tworek’s core arguments is that the immense power of British, French, American and German news agencies is comparable with the power now wielded by Google Facebook and Twitter. Tworek also says mistakes made amid hysteria over information warfare in the first half of the 20th century hold valuable lessons for safeguarding democracy in the first half of the 21st. First, Tom and James discuss what Facebook, Google and Twitter say they are doing to curb interference in the run up to elections for a new European Parliament. Read the platforms’ self-assessments here. Please visit our website for episode art and for more about EU Scream. Richard Wagner’s “Liebestod” from Tristan und Isolde played by Ilaria Baldaccini is public domain. “Beethoven Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125” by Papalin is licensed under CC by 3.0. “Airside No. 9” is played by Lara Natale.Support the show

This episode of EU Scream aired a couple of weeks ago amid expectations Europe’s conservatives would expel Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary and his Fidesz party for violating the rule of law and insulting EU leaders.Last week the European People’s Party, as the conservatives are known, agreed a mere suspension. Rather than showing contrition, Orbán immediately resumed his belligerent stance against migrants and the European Commission. Listen to this update to hear Orbán indulging in post-truth politicking so fanciful that journalists burst out laughing. It’s against this background that we are revisiting stories and analysis from three people smeared by Orban and Fidesz: the human rights activist Márta Pardavi; the European Parliamentarian Judith Sargentini; and the political scientist Péter Krekó.The smears they describe are part of an atmosphere of political and psychological warfare in Hungary and could serve as a model for other strong men and autocrats in Europe. Pardavi is co-chair of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a human rights group based in Budapest and among the most prominent targets of Orbán’s ire. Last year Pardavi was honoured for her courage and work by Human Rights First in New York. Krekó is a social psychologist and political scientist and executive director of Political Capital, a research institute and consultancy in Budapest. He’s the author of a book on the Hungarian far right and another on fake news and conspiracy theories. Krekó slams the European Commission for going too easy on Budapest for too long. Sargentini is a member of the European Parliament from the Netherlands who wrote a damning report last year on the erosion of democracy in Hungary. The report made Sargentini one of the prime foreign targets for Budapest’s smear campaigns. She says she can no longer visit Hungary. “Beethoven Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125” by Papalin is licensed under CC by 3.0. "Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2, S. 244-2” by Franz Liszt and played by Simone Renzi is licensed under CC by 3.0. “Airside No. 9” is played by Lara Natale.Support the show

As kids worldwide strike for action on climate change, James and Tom take a look at a group who doesn’t share their sense of urgency: Europe’s far right. The UK Independence Party has a long history of denying climate science while Marine Le Pen of the French National Rally uses global warming to whip up fears about mass arrivals of refugees. In Hungary, the Fidesz party of Prime Minister Viktor Orban broadly accepts the need to reduce emissions but does little to contribute to reaching that goal.The picture can vary markedly from country to country as a recent report by Adelphi, a German research organisation, demonstrates. Click here for Adelphi’s deep dive mapping climate agendas of right-wing populist parties in Europe.We also take another listen to our interview from December with Bas Eickhout, the Dutch green who’s vying for a top job in Brussels. Eickhout shares his thoughts on the far-right's climate record and he talks about the bungled tax on fuel that helped spark the huge yellow vests protests in France. Please check out the EU Scream website for episode art and more. “Beethoven Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125” by Papalin is licensed under CC by 3.0. “Airside No. 9” is played by Lara Natale.Support the show

The regime run by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary uses smear campaigns to feed an atmosphere of political and psychological warfare. The smears are felt far beyond Hungary and could serve as a model for other strong men and autocrats in Europe. This week we air stories and analysis from three people with direct experience of Budapest's dirty tactics: the human rights activist Márta Pardavi; the European Parliamentarian Judith Sargentini; and the political scientist Péter Krekó.Pardavi is co-chair of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a human rights group based in Budapest and among the most prominent targets of Orbán’s ire. Last year Pardavi was honoured for her courage and work by Human Rights First in New York.Krekó is a social psychologist and political scientist and executive director of Political Capital, a research institute and consultancy in Budapest. He’s the author of a book on the Hungarian far right and another on fake news and conspiracy theories. Krekó slams the European Commission for going too easy on Budapest for too long.Sargentini is a member of the European Parliament from the Netherlands who wrote a damning report last year on the erosion of democracy in Hungary. The report made Sargentini one of the prime foreign targets for Budapest’s smear campaigns. She says she can no longer visit Hungary.“Beethoven Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125” by Papalin is licensed under CC by 3.0. "Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2, S. 244-2” by Franz Liszt and played by Simone Renzi is licensed under CC by 3.0. “Airside No. 9” is played by Lara Natale. Support the show

Manfred Weber is the leader of the conservatives in the European Parliament who wants to become the next head of the the European Commission. But has Weber tainted his candidacy — and the broader European project — by acting as an enabler for the illiberal reign of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban? To his critics, Weber has come to represent a kind of moral black hole where democratic values go to die. They say he has engaged in a craven political calculus that makes him unsuited to run the Commission. The charge is that Weber and his European People's Party failed to act soon enough to expel Fidesz, the party led by Orban in Hungary.We speak with Heather Grabbe, the director of the Open Society European Policy Institute; Axel Voss, a German member of the European Parliament; Anett Bősz, a member of the Hungarian parliament; Judith Sargentini, a Green member of the European Parliament from the Netherlands; and Laurent Pech, the head of the Law and Politics Department at Middlesex University London. Click here for the complaint that Pech and Alberto Alemanno filed against the European People’s Party on behalf of The Good Lobby, a civil society group. First James and Tom talk about nicknames of other European politicians including Michel Barnier, Europe’s Brexit negotiator, and Matteo Renzi, the former Italian prime minister.  Please visit our website at EU Scream.“Beethoven Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125” by Papalin is licensed under CC by 3.0. “Airside No. 9” is played by Lara Natale. Support the show

Barry Eichengreen was an early skeptic about the prospects for monetary union in Europe.Nowadays the eminent economic historian acknowledges the single currency is here to stay. But he says much more should done to prevent the return of austerity that was the price millions of Europeans paid for saving the single currency this decade. A failure to make further reforms, warns Eichengreen, who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, could be cataclysmic for Europe.“There is a link between high unemployment and social distress on the one hand and voting for extremist parties by and large on the right because that then is a way to effectively shift some of the blame for what people are experiencing toward foreigners,” he says. "It’s much too easy to look at the incidence of unemployment in Germany in the 1930s and draw a link with the rise of voting for National Socialism but there is something of a link there.”Eichengreen spoke to EU Scream in Brussels where he was giving the academic lecture at an annual meeting of the Centre for European Policy Studies and presenting his latest book, The Populist Temptation, which he wrote with his family’s suffering at the hands of the Nazis in mind. “The fact that we see resurgent nationalism, xenophobia, antisemitism all alive in Europe today certainly resonates with history, and it resonates with my personal history,” he says.Eichengreen also identifies the perception that Brussels policymakers are overreaching as part of the narrative nationalist populists use to discredit the European Union. Brussels, he says, would be wise to pull back and return more authority to member states in the area of fiscal oversight. That would mean effectively ditching rules that oblige Brussels to punish countries violating debt and deficit limits.Eichengreen acknowledges such a pull back would rely on Germany creating a shared system to shore up European banks that run into trouble. Yet that could help reduce tensions between northern Europeans who see southern Europeans as profligate. “If you break the so-called diabolic loop between budget problems and banking problems, at that point I think it becomes safe to return control of fiscal policies to the member states,” says Eichengreen.The International Monetary Fund also comes in for criticism as supine by failing to insist on easier loan conditions for Greece in 2010.“I think what I find most extraordinary is the fact that the I.M.F. laid down and accepted the European institutions unwillingness to contemplate debt restructuring in Greece,” says Eichengreen. “That was a point I think where — had Strauss-Kahn not been running for the French presidency — the Fund might have behaved differently and that could have changed the course of history,” says Eichengreen, referring to the then-managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn.Strauss-Kahn was running the Fund when it accepted a role in the bailout. By involving the Fund in the Greek debt drama, Strauss-Kahn raised his profile for his presidential bid. But that locked the Fund into an arrangement with Germany, which pushed for tough loan terms on Greece.Please visit our website at EU Scream.“Beethoven Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125” by Papalin is licensed under CC by 3.0. “Muscovite NSupport the show

Heather Grabbe of the Open Society European Policy Institute says nationalist populists are closing the minds of Europeans to the values they have in common. She presents survey findings that could embolden centrists and moderates to drop their wishy-washy approach and confront creeping authoritarianism more directly. Look for the full set of reports here on Feb. 19. Soundous Boualam, a Moroccan working at the European Parliament, talks about dealing with prejudice, curbing stereotypes, and her project to give the unloved EU more of a human face. “Beethoven Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125” by Papalin is licensed under CC by 3.0. “Stimmen im Kopf” by Hans Atom is licensed under CC BY-NC 3.0. “Muscovite No. 9” is played by Lara Natale. Support the show