MCC Brussels Podcast

In this MCC Brussels Deep Dive, John O’Brien is joined by Harvard historian James Hankins to discuss The Golden Thread: A History of the Western Tradition, Volume.Hankins argues that Western civilisation is not simply a sequence of empires, revolutions and crimes. It is held together by a fragile inheritance: Greek debate, Roman law and order, Christian ideas of human dignity, mediaeval scholarship, Renaissance renewal and Enlightenment reform.At the heart of the conversation is a sharp question: can the West still learn from its own past?Hankins warns that “year zero” thinking has taught many people to see Western history only as racism, sexism, slavery and oppression. But a civilisation that rejects its memory does not become free. It becomes frantic, ignorant and easy to manipulate.From Athens and Rome to Christianity, scholasticism, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, this Deep Dive explores the ideas that made the West possible, and why they now need defending.

In this MCC Brussels Deep Dive, John O’Brien speaks to Dr Ashley Frawley, Visiting Research Fellow at MCC Brussels and author of the new report Manufacturing Fragility: How Brussels’s Therapeutic State Makes Citizens Weaker.

The EU has committed more than a billion euros to mental health programmes across schools, workplaces and wider society. But Frawley argues that many of these initiatives are built on weak evidence and may be doing the opposite of what they promise. Rather than making people more resilient, she says, they encourage citizens to scan themselves for symptoms, reinterpret ordinary distress as illness, and become more dependent on professional and institutional intervention.

The discussion examines the rise of “mental health awareness”, the blurring of the line between serious mental illness and normal human unhappiness, and the way schools are being turned from places of knowledge transmission into sites of emotional management.

Frawley also argues that Brussels’s mental health agenda is not simply about health. It is a wider form of governance, one that gives the state new authority over education, work, speech and the inner lives of citizens.

link to report: https://brussels.mcc.hu/publication/manufacturing-fragility-how-brusselss-therapeutic-state-makes-citizens-weaker

This summer, the MCC Brussels podcast is doing things a little differently. In a series of more focused conversations, we take a deeper look at some of the big questions shaping Europe.

In this episode, Jacob is joined by Frank Furedi, Executive Director of MCC Brussels and author of Why Borders Matter, to examine what the scenes in Ceuta reveal about Europe’s political relationship with borders.

First, the discussion turns to the invasion of Ceuta and Frank’s argument that it should not be dismissed as an exceptional event. Instead, it offers a dramatic glimpse of the slower migration crisis taking place across Europe every day.

Then Jacob and Frank discuss Sánchez’s migration amnesty, Brussels’ performative politics of border control and the growing pressure that populist parties are placing on governments that previously treated borders as an inconvenience.

Finally, the episode turns to Europe’s reliance on Morocco, Turkey and other third countries to control migration. Frank compares the EU’s strategy to Rome’s decision to outsource its own defence and asks whether Europe can retain its sovereignty while depending upon other states to protect its territory.

Brussels wants Europe to achieve “digital sovereignty”, reducing its dependence on American and Chinese technology. But what if the entire project is based on a dangerous misunderstanding of how technological power actually works?

In this MCC Brussels Deep Dive, John O’Brien speaks to Dr Norman Lewis, technology analyst and author of the new MCC Brussels report The Grand Delusion, about why the EU cannot regulate its way to technological power.

Lewis argues that no country, not even the United States or China, is truly sovereign across the modern technology stack. Yet Brussels continues to pursue sovereignty through regulation, subsidy programmes and grand industrial strategies, while making it harder for European innovators to compete and scale.

The alternative is not isolation, but indispensability. From the failure of France’s Minitel model to the extraordinary strategic power of ASML, Lewis explains why Europe should stop trying to control the entire digital ecosystem and start building technological capabilities the rest of the world cannot do without.

Can Europe still become a serious technological power, or is Brussels regulating the continent out of the race?

Rea the report here: https://brussels.mcc.hu/publication/the-grand-delusion-the-european-union-and-digital-sovereignty

Host Jacob Reynolds is joined by Richard Schenk and Daniel de Liever, editor at the Dutch news and commentary platform NieuwRechts.

First, the panel turns to the growing revolt against asylum centres in the Netherlands. After scandals surrounding the huge centralised cetnre in Ter Apel, smaller centres are now being imposed on unwilling municipalities. Daniel explains how pressure on Ter Apel became the justification for spreading asylum seekers across the country, why local election promises have proved powerless and why public frustration is becoming increasingly difficult to contain.

The second topic is the resignation of Jens Spahn, leader of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, after he and his husband used a surrogate in the United States. The panel discusses the charge of hypocrisy, Germany’s ban on surrogacy and the EU’s attempt to make cross-border parenthood arrangements binding across member states.

Finally, the episode turns to Donald Trump’s proposed UN declaration on freedom of speech. Is it a useful challenge to Europe’s speech controls, or another attempt to settle national political questions through international institutions? The discussion ranges from the Digital Services Act and the Democracy Shield to media regulation and the economic cost of Europe’s regulatory state.

In this episode, host Jacob Reynolds is joined by MCC Brussels research fellow Richard Schenk and French MEP Virginie Joron to examine how Europe’s ruling class uses child protection, the rule of law and procedural trickery to expand its control over citizens and political opponents.
 
First, the panel turns to Ursula von der Leyen’s proposed social-media restrictions. The official justification is child safety. The likely consequence is that every European internet user may be forced to prove his identity using official documents, biometric checks or the EU Digital Identity Wallet. A policy sold as protecting children could become the foundation of an identity-controlled internet in which anonymity disappears and political speech is monitored by regulators and compliant technology giants.
 
Next, the discussion moves to Hungary, where Péter Magyar’s new government claims to be liberating the country from Viktor Orbán’s legacy. Its methods look rather less democratic. The president has been removed, senior judges forced out and constitutional rules rewritten to sideline political opponents.
 
Brussels, naturally, hails this as reform. Would the Commission applaud the same methods if they were used by a conservative government, or has the rule of law simply come to mean rule by politicians approved in Brussels?
 
Finally, the panel examines the resurrection of Chat Control. More MEPs voted against the measure than for it, yet it survived through procedural manoeuvring and the peculiar arithmetic of the European Parliament. The temporary regime permitting providers to scan private communications will now remain in force until April 2028.
 
Across all three stories, the pattern is unmistakable: Brussels is tightening its grip on the political narrative. Child protection, the rule of law and democratic safeguards are invoked as noble pretexts, while power shifts towards institutions determined to decide which voices are legitimate, which opinions are dangerous and which political forces may govern.
 
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In this episode host Jacob Reynolds is joined by MCC Brussels research fellow Richard Schenk and Carl Deconinck of Brussels Signal to discuss the growing struggle over democracy, surveillance and political opposition in Europe.

First, the panel turns to Marine Le Pen and the French presidential race. With Le Pen again able to contemplate a 2027 run but facing the extraordinary prospect of campaigning under an electronic ankle monitor, Carl and Richard ask whether France is witnessing neutral justice or a political system using the law selectively against its strongest challenger.

The second topic is the EU’s revived push for “chat control”. Presented under the emotionally powerful banner of child safety, the proposal would allow private communications to be scanned on a vast scale. The panel asks whether child protection is being used as a form of moral blackmail: a way of making opposition to surveillance appear suspect, while Brussels builds the infrastructure for unprecedented intrusion into private correspondence.

Finally, the episode turns to the campaign against the AfD. After efforts to blockade its party conference, attacks on journalists and a broader system of political exclusion inside Germany, the pressure is now extending to Brussels. The panel examines attempts to exclude the Europe of Sovereign Nations party, in which the AfD is the dominant force, from the normal rights and funding available to European political parties. Is the so-called firewall becoming a continent-wide mechanism for deciding which voters and parties are allowed full participation in democratic life?

For more than a century, the car has expanded personal freedom, economic opportunity and independence. Yet across Europe, policymakers increasingly treat driving itself as a problem to be managed away.

In this MCC Brussels Deep Dive, John O’Brien speaks to Brussels lobbyist Conor Allen about Europe’s growing hostility to the car, from traffic policies designed to discourage driving to the regulatory push for electric vehicles.

Allen argues that too much transport policy is now driven by political goals rather than consumer choice. The result, he says, is a system that punishes drivers, sidelines industry, weakens Europe’s carmakers and leaves the continent more dependent on China.

This is not simply a debate about cleaner transport. It is about an EU policy class that increasingly treats the driver as a problem, consumer choice as an obstacle and the car as something to be regulated out of ordinary life. The result is less freedom, weaker industry and a continent making itself poorer in the name of political dogma

In this episode, why has air conditioning suddenly become a political dividing line in Europe? Will Ireland’s EU presidency push Brussels further into NGO funding, speech regulation and woke priorities? And is the crisis at Volkswagen a warning of what the Green Deal is doing to Europe’s industrial base?

Host Jacob Reynolds is joined by Richard Schenk and James Holland, a parliamentary adviser and long-time Brussels observer, to discuss the week’s biggest political stories from inside the EU bubble.

First, the panel turns to Europe’s increasingly absurd air-conditioning debate. As temperatures rise across the continent, the simple question of whether people should be able to cool their homes, hospitals and workplaces has somehow become a culture-war issue. Richard Schenk argues that the obsession with net zero is crowding out practical solutions for the elderly, the sick and those who have to work through the heat. James Holland warns against Brussels using the crisis as yet another excuse to regulate what should be decided nationally and locally.

The second topic is Ireland’s presidency of the Council of the European Union. Ireland has long been seen in Brussels as the model pupil, rarely inclined to pick fights with the Commission. But with major budget negotiations ahead, the panel asks whether Dublin will defend its farmers and tax advantages, or simply help steer through more funding for NGOs, media projects and democracy programmes that too often reinforce Brussels’ own worldview.

Finally, the episode turns to Europe’s car industry. With fresh alarm over Volkswagen and the wider German economy, the panel examines how the EU’s hostility to combustion engines, high energy costs and green dogma are putting one of Europe’s most important industries under pressure. James Holland explains how Brussels regulation often rewards big players while crushing smaller suppliers, while Richard Schenk argues that Europe has trapped itself in a one-track electric-vehicle strategy just as competitors pursue a broader industrial approach.

In this episode: Is the Democracy Shield really about protecting elections from foreign interference, or about policing dissent at home? Ten years after Brexit, did the EU learn from Britain’s revolt, or double down on the federalist habits that caused it? And why is Brussels talking to the Taliban - realpolitik at last, or geopolitical naivety dressed up as diplomacy?

Host Jacob Reynolds is joined by Frank Furedi, MCC Brussels’ executive director, and Dr Philipp Siegert, our deputy research director, to discuss free speech, sovereignty, Brexit, migration, and the increasingly brittle politics of the Brussels establishment.

 First, the panel turns to the EU’s Democracy Shield, after a European Parliament committee backed proposals to strengthen the bloc’s powers over disinformation, media, elections and so-called internal threats. Philipp Siegert argues that the danger lies in moving from protecting democratic processes to managing political outcomes. Frank Furedi warns that the language of democratic protection is being used to justify a new kind of censorship - one that presents itself as the very opposite of censorship.

 The second topic is Brexit, ten years after the vote that shook Britain and Brussels alike. Frank argues that 2016 marked a turning point in European politics, exposing the weakness of legacy parties and giving new force to questions of sovereignty, patriotism and democratic self-government. The panel asks whether the EU learnt anything from Brexit, or whether its real lesson was to prevent voters from ever doing something similar again.

Finally, the episode turns to Brussels hosting Taliban representatives for talks on returning Afghan migrants. The panel discusses the need for realpolitik in foreign affairs, but also the risks of giving international legitimacy to a regime that remains deeply hostile to European values and interests


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