The European Union is made up of 27 sovereign member states and has several governing institutions. On 1 July 2024, Viktor Orbán’s government will hold the presidency of the Council of the European Union for six months.

This diplomatic role may present its challenges because Hungary takes a divergent view from centrist colleagues in a few areas, two of them being climate policy and support for Ukraine. And in the past Hungary has used its veto to stall votes on policies that support Ukraine.

After recent European elections hard-right parties now have a greater presence in the European Parliament and they have different priorities from their more centrist counterparts. The question is how the far-right, together with Hungary’s presidency of the Council of the EU, can alter the direction of European politics.

Presenter: Tanya Beckett

Contributors:

Thu Nguyen, deputy director of the EU policy think tank the Jacques Delors Centre in Berlin

Dimitar Bechev, from the School of Global and Area Studies at the University of Oxford and Senior fellow at Carnegie Europe

Marta Mucznik, senior EU analyst for International Crisis Group

(Photo:Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Mihaly Orban. Credit: Thierry Monasse/Getty Images)

Artificial Intelligence is something that’s all around us in our daily lives. And even if we do use it, whether that’s to search for a recipe online, make a funny photo, or ask it to help with our homework, every task that AI does uses power. That power is electricity.

Around the world there are thousands of data centres hosting computers that process all our requests. And as those tasks get more sophisticated, and AI becomes Super Intelligent, they will need even more electricity.

But as Super AI develops, could it become so intelligent that it is able to solve the very problems it creates?

Contributors:

Presented by David Baker

The Caribbean country of Haiti has been blighted for years by groups of armed gangs, who have proved more than a match for the national police force, who have struggled to confront them.

Now as the country descends further into lawlessness, a response to Haiti’s plea for international assistance may finally be at hand, in the form of a United Nations backed multi-national security force led by Kenya and supported financially by the United States. This East African country has volunteered to lead the mission with their own elite police unit, to help Haiti’s transitional authorities restore order. But the Kenyan government’s decision to involve itself in another country’s problems has raised some questions back home about the deployment.

Contributors:

Presenter: Charmaine Cozier

Image/Credit: Haiti awaits the arrival of Kenyan led international security support mission, Port Au Prince/ORLANDO BARRIA/EPA-EFE/REX Shutterstock via BBC Images

In September 2022 a Christian pastor had a meeting with Kim Keon Hee, the first lady of South Korea, in her private residence. That meeting was recorded with a hidden camera and the film was released a year later.

What happens in the footage is not entirely clear … except that it appears to show two people - a man and a woman meeting, and one offering an expensive bagged gift to the other. This obscure video triggered a political storm so large that some say it even affected the outcome of the country’s parliamentary elections.

So what does a designer handbag say about South Korean politics?

Contributors:

Presented by Tanya Beckett

Image Credit: Philip Fong\Getty

On the 28th of May, in a small country on the easternmost reaches of Europe, a new law came into effect.

For the vast majority of people around the world, this new ruling, in a nation of fewer than 4 million inhabitants, went largely unnoticed.

However, for many of the citizens of Georgia it marked a setback, throwing off course the country’s prospects of joining the European Union and aligning it more closely with Moscow.

This week on The Inquiry we’re asking, ‘Is Georgia turning its back on Europe?’

Contributors:

Megi Kartsivadze, DPhil student, Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, University of Oxford, and an invited lecturer at the University of Tbilisi, Georgia

Professor Stephen Jones, Director of the Program on Georgian Studies at the Davis Center at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

Dr. Lia Tsuladze, Executive Director of the Center for Social Sciences and an Associate Professor of Sociology at Tbilisi State University, Georgia

Maia Nikoladze, Assistant Director in the GeoEconomics Center, Atlantic Council, Washington DC

Production team:

Presenter: Tanya Beckett

Image Credit: David Mdzinarishvili/Epa-Efe/Rex/Shutterstock

The current record holder for the world’s biggest iceberg is the A23a. Back in 1986 this colossus broke away from an Antarctic ice sheet. This process of breaking off or ‘calving’ as it is known is a natural part of the life cycle of an ice sheet. But A23a then became lodged in the Weddell Sea for more than thirty years, until four years ago a gradual melting allowed the berg to refloat.

Since then it’s been steadily on the move, heading in the same direction as Antarctic icebergs before it, towards the warm waters of the Southern Ocean, where it will eventually shrink from melting.

As it travels, the iceberg has been playing an important role on the ecological environment around it, both in positive and negative ways.

Contributors:

Presenter: William Crawley

Image Credit: A23a in Antarctica, Jan 2024. Rob Suisted/Reuters/via BBC Images

In February 2024, Myanmar reactivated an old law which had been on hold for 14 years, stating adult men aged up to 35, and women up to 27 years old, must serve at least two years in the country’s armed forces. The plan is to add sixty thousand new recruits annually – and anyone caught avoiding conscription faces prison and a fine.

It’s part of the military-led government’s bid to fight back in a brutal civil war, which broke out in 2021 after its coup seized power from the democratically elected party. A violent crackdown on the peaceful public protests that followed triggered widespread armed resistance and has energised other groups who are determined to end military leadership.

Myanmar is no stranger to internal unrest, but this latest conflict is pushing it closer to the edge.

This week we’re asking - Is Myanmar on the brink of collapse?

Contributors:

Production team:

Image: A protester holds a placard with a three-finger salute in front of a military tank parked aside the street in front of the Central Bank building in Yangon, Myanmar, on 15 February 2021 (Credit: Aung Kyaw Htet/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Historically, Turkey has always had a strong women’s rights movement, stemming from the days of the Ottoman Empire through to the emergence of the Republic of Turkey into the present day.

Campaigners say that femicide and violence against women continues to plague society and that there is an increasingly anti-gender rhetoric within mainstream politics.

So, this week on The Inquiry, we’re asking ‘Is Turkey getting more dangerous for women?’

Contributors:

Presenter: Emily Wither

Image credit: Cagla Gurdogan via REUTERS from BBC Images

The war in Ukraine has reached a pivotal moment.

After months of an apparent stalling on the frontlines, Russia has recently made a series of critical breakthroughs.

Now the race is on for Kyiv to get newly approved military aid to the front line before Russian forces attack Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv.

The 60 billion dollar bill passed in America’s congress at the end of April allows for Ukraine to push back against Russian forces and prepare to mount an offensive next year.

But a gap in the supply of missiles has left Kyiv dangerously exposed and huge questions remain about how Ukraine’s President will act next.

So, on this week’s Inquiry, we’re asking ‘Has US military aid come in time for President Zelensky?’

Contributors:

Gustav Gressel, senior policy fellow with the Wider Europe Programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations’ Berlin office. Max Bergmann, Director, Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program and Stuart Center, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), in the US. Dr Marina Miron, post-doctoral researcher in the War Studies Department and an honorary researcher at the Centre for Military Ethics and the Department of Defence Studies, Kings College, London. Professor Olga Onuch, Professor (Chair) in Comparative and Ukrainian Politics at the University of Manchester, UK.

Presenter: Tanya Beckett

Image credit: Ukrainian Presidential Press Service via Reuters via BBC Images

Last year the US state of Texas introduced a controversial law designed to control the huge number of undocumented migrants crossing its southern border with Mexico. The law known as Senate Bill 4 or SB4, allows local and state police the power to arrest and charge people with a newly created state crime - ‘illegal entry’.

Immigration law has historically been handled by the federal government. Crossing the border is a federal crime and addressed by immigration courts that fall under the justice department.

Now Texas is embroiled in a legal battle and SB4 has been paused. But it’s just the latest measure that Texas has taken to stop hundreds of thousands of migrants entering the US on its border. Back in 2021 the state’s Governor, Greg Abbott launched a multi-billion dollar border security programme known as Operation Lone Star. Along with his Republican lawmakers, the Governor’s argument is that Texas has a legal right to defend itself and they allege that Democrat President Joe Biden has failed to secure the US southern border in violation of the law.

So, on this week’s Inquiry, we’re asking ‘Can Texas go it alone on border control?’

Contributors:

Dr. Ernesto Castañeda, Director of the Centre for Latin American and Latino Studies and its Immigration Lab, American University, Washington DC, USA

Dr James Henson, Director, Texas Politics Project, Department of Government, The University of Texas at Austin, USA.

Denise Gilman, Clinical Professor, Co-Director Immigration Clinic, The University of Texas at Austin, School of Law, USA

Julia Gelatt, Associate Director, US Immigration Policy Programme, Migration Policy Institute, Washington DC, USA

Presenter: Charmaine Cozier

(Photo credit: Adam Davis via BBC Images