Talking Europe

"European strategic autonomy" is a buzz phrase in Brussels and in EU capitals these days. What does it mean for space policy? That was one of the central points that we raised with the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Luc Frieden, during his visit to Paris for the International Space Summit hosted by the French government on September 9 and 10. Major American aerospace companies were noticeably absent from the summit while the feud between Brussels and the Trump administration continues.

In Brussels, opinion polls coming out of France have not escaped attention. Two polls see far right leader Marine Le Pen beating all her likely rivals in the French presidential election, which is set to take place in April and May of next year. 

Are great-power politics back, at the expense of smaller countries? In an age of strongmen, is multilateralism in retreat? Not according to Jozef Sikela. The EU Commissioner in charge of International Partnerships insists that traditional multilateralism is alive and well, especially in the EU's approach to Africa and to the Arctic. We sat down with him for an interview at the European Commission in Brussels.

"Who do I call if I want to speak to Europe?" The famous quote attributed to Henry Kissinger still resonates today. There is in fact a Mrs Europe on the world stage: Kaja Kallas, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. She is actually the sixth high representative. But ever since that post was created, rivalries between different centres of power have diluted the EU's ability to speak with one voice. We saw that recently with tensions over who should represent the EU in any potential talks with Russia.

The European Parliament declared a climate emergency in 2019, yet the EU still appears to be caught off guard by increasingly severe heatwaves and heat domes. With temperatures this summer set to break records and expose millions of Europeans to dangerous heat, we ask whether the bloc has neglected the short-term measures needed to protect people from extreme heat.

Our guest this week is Apostolos Tzitzikostas, the European Commissioner for sustainable transport and tourism. 

The EU is trying to assert its strategic independence in an unstable world – a world of bullies, as some members of the EU Parliament describe it. That means independence in matters of defence and energy supplies, but also in the whole field of tech. The European Commission says non-EU companies provide more than 80 percent of the EU's digital products and services. One of the key proposals aimed at changing that is the “Tech Sovereignty Package”, which was presented in early June. With our guests, we dive into the initiative, explain the geopolitical context and ask what it would take for the bloc to achieve real technological sovereignty.

FRANCE 24's Europe editor-in-chief Caroline de Camaret hosts Maia Sandu, the President of Moldova. This in the context of an EU-Moldova summit held on June 22, 2026, in Brussels. The ex-Soviet republic of nearly 3 million people that borders Ukraine has opened its first “cluster” of negotiations to join the European Union. But, as it moves closer to the bloc, Moldova is becoming an intense battleground between pro-EU and pro-Kremlin forces.This edition also features a report by FRANCE 24's Isabelle Romero and Anaïs Chesnel, set in the inaugural conference on EU investment in Moldova. 

EU leaders have cautiously welcomed Donald Trump's signing of an interim agreement with Iran, after nearly four months of war in the Middle East. But it is only a Memorandum of Understanding, and Europeans know the US president too well to celebrate prematurely. The conflict has led to the most severe disruption in energy supplies in decades, and the EU has scrambled to contain the costs.

It has been a decade since British voters made the momentous decision to leave the European Union. The EU referendum result on June 24, 2016 led to a profound transformation of British politics, and to Brexit-related infighting that refuses to go away. But if the UK has not truly moved on, what about its former partner in this divorce, the EU? And what does Brussels think when the British government talks about rebuilding this relationship? We put these questions to two MEPs.

With Europeans sizzling in a record-breaking heatwave in May, and lands and rivers facing severe drought conditions in April, the effects of extreme climate-related events are becoming increasingly obvious. We sit down with the EU's Commissioner for Climate, Net Zero and Clean Growth, Dutch politician Wopke Hoekstra, to talk about the EU's carbon emissions reduction targets, the next COP summit, and, of course, the energy crisis resulting from the war in the Middle East.

The EU Parliament and EU Council have provisionally agreed to simplify and speed up the return of migrants staying in the bloc unlawfully. Backers of the deal say it is urgent to do something about the low enforcement of deportation orders: 27 percent last year, and just 24 percent the previous year. But critics say governments are giving in to anti-migrant sentiment as they face pressure from rising populist forces across the EU.

Bulgaria has become notorious for holding elections. In 5 years, voters went to the polls 8 times. But this debilitating crisis finally ended on April 19th, when the Progressive Bulgaria party won an outright majority. It is led by the former president, Rumen Radev, now the prime minister.

Negotiators from the European Parliament and EU member states have been trying to reach an agreement on the rights of air passengers travelling within the bloc. The current rules date back to 2004, but the scale and nature of air travel have changed dramatically since then. We take you inside the negotiations, examine the key sticking points, and explain why MEPs are pushing for stronger protections for passengers affected by delays and cancellations.

This week's special edition of Talking Europe asks whether the EU is ready for the disruption that comes with Artificial Intelligence. It is the most important technological revolution of the century, and is set to impact every aspect of our lives.

It has been called Europe's demographic time bomb: Older people are living longer, while younger people are having fewer children. Last year in France, for example, deaths outpaced births for the first time since the end of World War II, prompting President Emmanuel Macron to call for "demographic rearmament".

Our guest has an important role in promoting social policies in the European Union, at a time when much of the political oxygen is being sucked out by the competitiveness and simplification agenda, as well as by defence and security issues. Roxana Minzatu is Executive Vice-President of the European Commission and is in charge of social rights and skills, quality jobs and preparedness.

In this episode we explore how the EU deals with outbreaks of disease. The latest scare for Europeans has been the hantavirus, detected on cruise ship the MV Hondius, which subsequently docked in Spain. Experts have stressed that this virus is not like Covid-19 and is much less infectious. Nevertheless, the EU's civil protection mechanism was triggered, and several member states took part in evacuation flights from Tenerife in the Canary Islands.

Our guest this week is Darragh O'Brien, Ireland's Minister for Climate, Energy and the Environment and Minister for Transport. In his position, O'Brien has been directly involved in dealing with the fallout of the Middle East crisis, especially rising energy costs.

The European Union is aiming to boost its defence capacities as part of a plan first called ReArmEU, when it was presented just over a year ago, and now known as Readiness 2030. This as European intelligence agencies warn that the bloc could face some form of major conflict by that date.

Over the past year, NATO has been dealing with an unprecedented split between the US and other members of the alliance. Our guest is Marcos Perestrello, the president of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, a body that brings together legislators from NATO member countries. Perestrello is a former secretary of state for national defence in the Portuguese government.

Nine countries are currently in the process of acceding to the European Union: North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia and Turkey. The European club seems to be growing ever more appealing, to the point where Iceland could also reintroduce a membership application. 

During her recent visit to France, we caught up with Sweden's minister for EU affairs, Jessica Rosencrantz. We discuss the energy crunch and what it means for Europe's competitiveness; Sweden's and the EU's relationship with Ukraine; and Sweden's dynamic tech and innovation scene.

In this week's Talking Europe, we take a moment to check the pulse of the European Parliament following a spate of European elections, to see how they'll impact the EU – and whether the EU should weigh on European domestic politics at all.

Our guest in this show is known for crossing swords with the Trump administration on the regulation of big tech and, more recently, for actually coming under a US travel ban. Thierry Breton was the EU Commissioner for the Internal Market from 2019 to 2024, when he had a major role in driving forward the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act. He and four other figures were hit with US travel bans at the end of last year, prompting Breton to denounce what he called "a wind of McCarthyism blowing again".

They are known as "forever chemicals": synthetic compounds that resist breakdown in the human body and the environment. Also known as PFAS, there are thousands of them, and you might not even realise that you are being exposed to them while doing simple everyday tasks like cooking. The EU does have a strict rulebook on chemicals, when compared to other parts of the world, but some say that industrial lobbying is holding back more stringent regulation. In this episode we look at how the EU is trying to tighten its rules on these pollutants.

We speak to an influential voice on European reform, former Italian prime minister Enrico Letta, author of a landmark report on the future of the Single Market, presented in April 2024. Two years on, he says many of its recommendations remain unimplemented, warning that continued fragmentation of the Single Market – and, by extension, the energy market – is contributing to higher costs for the EU amid the war in the Middle East. We also ask him about the EU's plans for a digital single currency, alongside a report on the issue from our correspondent Alix Le Bourdon.

Europe's energy dependence has been sharply exposed by the war in Iran. Although efforts have been made over the past four years to reduce reliance on Russia, disruptions to liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipments through the Strait of Hormuz have highlighted the EU's continued vulnerability. The impact is already being felt in European households, with inflation rising to 2.5% in March, driven largely by soaring energy costs.

Europe must speed up its push for energy independence and break free from "excessive dependence on fossil fuels" as the continent grapples with a more volatile and hostile global order, the head of the world's largest public bank told FRANCE 24's Douglas Herbert in Talking Europe.

After Greenland and trade tariffs, US President Donald Trump is threatening European countries once again. If they fail to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, "it will be very bad for the future of NATO", Trump has said. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has made it clear that the US will make its own security decisions, whatever Europe thinks. Admittedly, Europe's own standing has been diminished by its inability to speak with one clear voice on this crisis, as on previous ones. Our guests evaluate the EU's response as US-Israeli strikes on Iran continue.

Talking Europe travels to Warsaw to meet the mayor of the city and former presidential candidate Rafal Trzaskowski, just as the political temperature rises ahead of high-stakes parliamentary elections scheduled for next year. Trzaskowski argues that a long-standing consensus in Polish politics – being pro-European and pro-Ukraine – has been broken, as populist forces try to outdo each other in an effort to attract voters. Trzaskowski is an ally of Prime Minister Donald Tusk and was Civic Coalition's candidate in the June 2025 presidential election. He was elected mayor of Warsaw in October 2018.

MEPs recently approved a key report on housing, with the stated aim of securing decent, sustainable and affordable housing. They are responding to an EU-wide crisis in which property prices jumped by 15.5 percent between 2021 and 2024, according to Eurostat. That has frozen out millions of people looking to get onto the property ladder. Rental prices have continued to go up as well. Housing is a competence of member states, but there has been a push to do more at the EU level. We debate just how much Brussels should get involved, and whether the solutions it is proposing are workable.

It's no secret that farmers across the EU have grown increasingly frustrated with the state of their industry. Profitability is falling, competition from abroad is fierce, and worries about paperwork and bureaucracy continue to mount. Fewer young people are taking over the family farm, opting for other careers instead. On top of these long-standing challenges, the war in Iran is adding new pressures, particularly with rising fertiliser costs. We sat down to discuss these issues with the EU's Commissioner for Agriculture and Food, Christophe Hansen.

The EU is in a bind. EU institutions and many member states have condemned the Iranian government's waves of repression against its own population. At the same time, the EU has said it would welcome a more democratic form of government in Iran.

Talking Europe sits down at the EU Commission with a man whose work goes to the very heart of what the EU sees as its core values. Michael McGrath is the Commissioner responsible for democracy, justice, the rule of law and consumer protection. His work concerns not just breaches of the rule of law in EU member states, but also the whole online dimension of democracy, including disinformation and foreign interference. Indeed, he now leads a new European Centre for Democratic Resilience.

On March 8, 2026, the world marks International Women's Day, to celebrate women's achievements and reinforce commitment to gender equality. In fact, this year denotes 115 years of collective action and advocacy.

European countries have some of the best public health systems in the world. And yet cancer rates have been going up, according to the European Commission. For instance, in 2022, there was a 2.3 percent increase on the year 2020.

As FRANCE 24 covers another grim milestone in Ukraine – four years of full-scale war – Talking Europe hosts the former president of the EU Council, Charles Michel, who was in the job when that geopolitical earthquake struck the European continent on February 24, 2022. We also bring you a special feature, “Ukraine: Europe on the front line”, about the EU's wide-ranging support for Ukraine, by our reporter Mélina Huet.

As part of FRANCE 24's and Talking Europe's coverage of the fourth anniversary of the war in Ukraine, we host veteran diplomat Vsevolod Chentsov, Ukraine's ambassador to the European Union. He highlights the critical assistance the EU is providing for the country's military, budgetary, and energy needs, saying that the solidarity shown by Ukraine's European allies "cannot be underestimated".

Europe's regions are in danger of being squeezed as the EU considers sweeping changes to the way its 27 member states spend their money, warns the European official tasked with reducing inequalities among the bloc's hundreds of towns and regions.

Worries that too much time on social media may be hurting children's mental health, and creating addictions as harmful as alcohol or cigarettes, are sparking growing calls across Europe to block minors under the age of 15 or 16 from access to platforms.

Shared economic and security interests still bind Europe and the United States, even as trust has eroded, insults have flown and rhetoric has hardened in the transatlantic relationship, Brando Benifei, the chair of the delegation for relations with the United States at the European Parliament, tells FRANCE 24 in Talking Europe.