EU Confidential

Ryan Heath interviews Megan Richards, a Canadian who spent three decades working for the EU, rising to be one of its top officials in digital and later energy policy. It's a short episode this week, all the better to let you enjoy your holidays. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we’re going Green again: Ryan Heath talks to Kristian Ruby who runs Eurelectric and the Electrification Alliance, as a way to clean our energy systems. After that, POLITICO's Anca Gurzu takes a hydrogen-powered car for a wild test drive.It's all a world a way from where the EU started: as a coal trading community. After the greenest EU election ever, the question in Europe now isn't whether to go green, but how fast we should get there.We have a very special podcast panel this week. With summer holidays approaching and host Ryan Heath moving to POLITICO in the US, it's the last panel featuring the current trio.The podcast takes a brief summer break next week but we'll be back in a fortnight. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As Boris Johnson's begins his term as U.K. prime minister on a fast and furious Brexit course, Annabelle Dickson asks the Conservative leader of the House of Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg, and a group of U.K. Parliament staffers, what they think about a seemingly endless list of complaints and two official independent reports of bullying, harassment, and management in the U.K. Parliament, and what can be done to improve the institution's culture. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Best-selling author Peter May talks about his political thriller set in Brussels, The Man With No Face, just republished four decades after he wrote it. Forget the heatwave sweeping the Continent and dive into a dark and wintry world of intrigue and murder as May describes the Brussels bubble of 40 years ago that formed the backdrop for the book. May talks about what has changed in Brussels and European politics since those days — and what has remained remarkably similar.The podcast panel brings things bang up to date with Boris Johnson's Westminster wizardry — he really is very good at that disappearing Cabinet trick — and Martin Selmayr's intriguing career move. Then it's back to the literary theme with some summer reading recommendations from our panelists: "Merde in Europe" by Stephen Clarke, "Freshwater" by Akwaeke Emezi, "Reporter: A Memoir" by Seymour Hersh, and "Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence" by Rachel Sherman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mette Grolleman runs the biggest lobbying office in Brussels — FleishmanHillard — and isn’t tempted to return to the Berlaymont to work for her old boss Margrethe Vestager: “When you leave, you have to leave,” she told EU Confidential.Grolleman’s new goal is to bring nuance to how outsiders understand the EU. The different sides of the Brussels bubble need each other to deliver a functioning whole, she said: “We are an ecosystem ... I valued [lobbyist input] when I was on the inside.”FleishmanHillard has good reason to explain its values to the world in 2019: it has been mired in a controversy over its campaign aimed at winning the reapproval of glyphosate, on behalf of Monsanto, now owned by Bayer.Grolleman demurred when asked whether the company got its tactics right: “I can't speak so much to a specific case a because all clients need and deserve respect and privacy around what we do with them. But what I can say in more general terms is that when you are exposed to criticism … you need to take a step back and look at yourself and ask yourself whether you have acted ethically,” she said.Grolleman predicts that the new, fractured European Parliament will be good for the lobbying business. “It's much more difficult for companies to go in and advocate their case now” because standing coalitions won’t work, and more Euroskeptics are expected to stop “wasting” their votes and get involved in legislating. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In our latest podcast episode, we discuss the life of a lobbyist, the latest in the Brussels hustle, and the recent transatlantic twitterstorm.This week’s feature interview is with Paul Adamson, the godfather of Brussels lobbying. He talks to Ryan about his 40-year career in the EU capital, how Boris Johnson hasn’t changed since his own whippersnapper days on the continent, and why lobbyists get a bad name. We spoke before U.K. ambassador Kim Darroch offered his resignation Wednesday.The regular podcast panel looks into top-job nominee Ursula von der Leyen’s vote-gathering efforts, and debates the fate of the UK’s now ex-ambassador in Washington DC, Kim Darroch. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A surprise European Commission presidential nominee landed on Brussels this week: the polished and much-criticised defense minister of Germany, Ursula von der Leyen. The job is now hers to lose, and she might indeed lose it. German greens and socialists are furious about how the deal went down. Our main interview is with Mark MacGann: he’s a 25-year veteran of the EU’s tech and telecoms scene who runs Moonshot Ventures. We talk EU reform and how ended up needing 24/7 bodyguards during his time at Uber Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the latest in our occasional series focusing on green issues, we ask whether capitalism can save the planet.The European Commission held a sustainable finance conference this week, and two of our reporters went along to get beyond the hype. Tune in to hear them interview some of the conference participants, including the Commission's financial markets chief.On the podcast panel, we talk about the proponents and detractors of the 2050 climate-neutrality target discussed at last week’s EU summit. And away from the green theme, our panelists pick apart the rights and wrongs of the media coverage of Boris Johnson’s row with his partner. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David Miliband speaks to POLITICO’s Brexit editor James Randerson in our feature interview this week.It’s delicious timing, given the U.K. is getting a new prime minister and the EU is getting a new slate of leaders. Had history taken just a slightly different path, Miliband could have been a big player in those events.He talks about Boris Johnson, why he thinks U.K. Labour’s Brexit policy is a disaster, the time he met the Belgian who saved his grandmother and aunt from Nazi concentration camps, and his views on how we can help the 70 million people on the run from conflict or persecution.On the podcast panel, we talk about the strong and weak points of recent efforts by European and American politicians to rebrand themselves and their parties, and then move to the easy-listening topic of Middle East peace and development. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hear European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in conversation with POLITICO's Florian Eder, discussing Trump, Brexit and more.Also this week, Shada Islam from think tank Friends of Europe talks to POLITICO's Ryan Heath about educating EU newbies on Asia and how to counter Islamophobia.In the podcast panel, POLITICO's EU editor Andrew Gray is joined by Lina Aburous, Alva Finn and Carmen Paun to discuss the battle for top EU jobs, Moldova's double-government trouble and how to respond if the U.S. president's son-in-law wants to drop by for a chat. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices