Simon Usherwood you are Professor at the Open University and chair of our partners UACES, and we are delighted to have you back for the end of the season!
When we talked for the opening of the season in September, elections were far off. And now, right after the European elections we find ourselves in the middle of national campaigns on both sides of the Channel!

Politics is both something that you can shape and something that happens to you, and both Rishi Sunak in the UK and Emanuel Macron in France have demonstrated this by their decision to call a vote. In neither case did they have to, in legal terms.

The mini-publics are an innovative method we used with the transnational REGROUP project. REGROUP stands for “Rebuilding governance and resilience out of the pandemic”. The project is based on the assumption that involving citizens in decision-making enhances transparency and trust in governance, as well as ensures that policies reflect the diverse needs and perspectives of the community. Especially in times of crisis, such as the Covid-19 pandemic...

How nice to have you back on Euradio! You are Senior Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the University of Surrey, in the UK, and you have already shared with us on several occasions your research on the role of women in the early stages of European integration.

While the commemoration of D-Day on the beaches of Normandy is dominating the news this week, you want to tell us the story of a simple tree.

Very pleased to have you back with us. You are Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the University of Augsburg, in Germany. As an expert on the European Parliament, what are your expectations towards the forthcoming elections?

Jannik Jansen, you are Policy Fellow at the Jacques Delors Centre in Berlin, and together with your colleagues, you express serious doubts about the famous anti-green backlash among European voters. Tell us where this narrative comes from in the first place.

With the European elections less than one month away, let me ask you what you think of all the media speculation about the rise in support for Radical Right Parties.

 I was a student, in my fourth year of political science studies! Membership negotiations and the opening prospects for education and work across Europe made a huge impression on my generation but also intimidated us. We didn’t quite believe that we would really become part of the world we knew only from our holiday escapades or from literature.

How old were you when your country became a member of the European Union, twenty years ago, on the 1st of May 2004?

In 2004, I was 32 years old, working as an associate professor at Vilnius University, teaching and researching EU-related subjects. Actually, I also remember quite well how I spent that day. I took part in a couple of official ceremonies organised on this occasion by our state institutions and then went to a party at a friend’s place to celebrate in private.

Less than three months left until the elections to the European Parliament. What are your expectations? Do you think these elections actually matter?

Whether these elections matter is a great question and one that often gets asked.

45 years after the first direct elections, it is still a key problem for the European Parliament that most people don’t know much about what it actually does. Instead, their main reference point is national politics.

Let me start with going back to the economic crisis that struck the world in 2008. This crisis revealed deeper problems plaguing representative democracies and party politics, but also effected a profound change in EU member states’ political and economic systems...

To start with, it was forced to rediscover that war is not a faint memory or a minor disturbance that happens in some distant countries on other continents. And the war that has been raging for two years now in its immediate neighbourhood brought with it a whole list of other very unpleasant truths. 

Yes, I would like to speak in defence of the trade agreement between the European Union and Mercosur.

You realise that many European farmers are protesting against such an agreement right now!

I am aware of this resistance and can understand it. The simple fact that the trade negotiations with Mercosur have been going on since 1999 exemplifies the complexities and challenges inherent in forging international trade pacts among blocs with diverging interests.

 Yes, it’s a historic moment for Moldova. Together with Ukraine, it is now taking part in accession negotiations initiated by the European Council just before Christmas. It is not exaggerated to call this a “milestone” in the EU’s enlargement strategy, a decision of geopolitical significance, in a region shadowed by war. 

We can say that these three topics have given rise to much contention for almost a decade now. 

During the migratory movements to Europe in 2015/2016, the dysfunctionality of the so-called Dublin regulation and by extension the whole European asylum system was under display. The political crisis was exacerbated when some Member States, like Poland and Hungary, refused to implement a temporary relocation scheme that aimed at sharing the responsibility for refugees more equally, even after the European Court of Justice had confirmed the duty to apply this measure. These countries then escalated the crisis by continuing to break EU law.

That’s right. And one crucial element of a democratic election is “loser’s consent”, the losing party’s willingness to voluntarily accept the election result, even though it might not have been the outcome for which they had hoped. We had a good illustration four years ago, when a crowd of Trump supporters attacked and invaded the Capitol building in an attempt to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s victory. A similar attack happened in Brasilia, two years ago, with the violent attacks by Bolsonaro supporters of federal government buildings...

It is a fascinating field of study that I have researched for over 6 years now. Let me focus today on the European Union's legal approach to cybersecurity.

It’s been 10 years since the EU adopted its first Cybersecurity Strategy in 2013. Since then, the regulatory landscape has been expanding. So has, however, the landscape of threats and dangers. Cyber threats – be they state-sponsored or not – are of ever-so-great concern for both states and companies alike...

Yes, the first in-person summit since 2019, which took place on December 7 and 8.

From the beginning, expectations were low: the relations between the EU and China are subject to increasing tensions. Everybody is nervous! 

 European policy-makers are concerned about the ties between China and Russia ties and the structural trade imbalances between China and Europe, while Beijing is worried about the EU’s agenda of “de-risking” and the potential challenges for China’s economic interests, such as access to the EU market...

That’s correct. As a quick reminder, the European Union introduced the Temporary Protection Directive in 2001, following the wars in the former Yugoslavia. However, it was never triggered before March 2022, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Yes, we all know that collective memory in the European Union has always been built on the ethical lessons of World War II. From the start, EU institutions have capitalised on a moral commitment to overcoming a traumatic past and promise a better future.

Accordingly, the foundations of European collective memory lie in the Holocaust. Through the late 1990s, national days of commemoration became more and more common across the member states, while already in 1993 and 1995, the European Parliament had passed two anti-discrimination resolutions, indicating an increasing focus on Holocaust commemoration. 

A few days ago, you co-organised a conference in London on the state of EU-UK relations. But who still speaks about Brexit?

That’s the big question. While a lot of people think that Brexit is ‘done’, it is clear there’s still a lot to be dealt with...

That’s right. And in the meantime, we have been granted a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence, which has allowed us to develop our activities further, form strong bonds with civil society, research institutes and universities across the UK and Europe. And we successfully applied for a transnational research project within the framework of the EU’s HORIZON programme...

Security has always been one of the most complex and critical issues for the EU. After decades of remarkable success in promoting peace, stability and prosperity on a continent historically marked by conflict and division, the EU’s security landscape has shifted dramatically in recent years in the face of evolving security threats and changing global dynamics...

That’s right. And one of the issues I mentioned in the discussion was how European Radical Right parties have traditionally tended to be in ‘denial’ or ‘sceptical’ about Climate Change.