← Brussels Playbook Podcast
Brussels Playbook Podcast
Europe watches as Trump’s threats escalate
00:15:57
Donald Trump’s threats to wipe out Iran’s “whole civilization” shocked the world.
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- [00:01]
A
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- [00:26]
B
Good morning. It's Wednesday, April 8, and this is the Brussels Playbook podcast. The vibe in Brussels today is watchful as Donald Trump issues a stark threat to Iran. And also on the pod. Hungary's election campaign is getting even more dirty and Australia wants Europe to follow its lead on social media use for kids. I'm Zoya Shevdolovich and with me today is Ian Wishart. Hey, Ian.
- [00:57]
C
Morning, Zoya.
- [00:58]
B
It's been quite a wild ride over the last few hours.
- [01:02]
C
It was quite a jolt to see the US President do a social media post yesterday afternoon saying a whole civilization will die tonight. It's quite sobering, isn't it?
- [01:12]
B
It is a bit sobering. Not quite the light hearted good vibes that we're used to on this pod, but sometimes you gotta roll with the punches.
- [01:19]
C
The rough weather smooth.
- [01:20]
B
Yeah. Well, it's been a really interesting story, Ian, because this has been ratcheting up over the last few weeks as this war has been heating up. Trump has posted increasingly on true social with frustration as EU leaders and other leaders around the world haven't done what he has wanted them to do and help him in this war. The latest threat came in response to Iran continuing to keep the straight of Hormuz closed. And he basically said over the weekend that there was going to be action. He gave Iran this Tuesday 2am Wednesday time Brussels deadline to unblock the straight off Hormuz or he would do something drastic.
- [01:58]
C
I was just stunned yesterday when, you know, his social media post came through. Just how quiet the reaction was in Brussels and around Europe. Do you think this is a deliberate strategy or do you think they just don't know what to say anymore?
- [02:11]
B
I think everyone has sort of absorbed the idea, which a few people have seen said, which is that you should take Donald Trump seriously but not literally. And so they're not taking him literally. I was doing the ring around yesterday afternoon. You know, we wanted to run a story with EU reactions because you and I both, you know, we read that true social post and we were both pretty shocked. So I rang a few people, some of my colleagues rang people and the general Kind of line that came out in those phone calls was no comment. And then the kind of. The other line that we heard was, look, if we start reacting to everything that Trump says that's so bombastic, we would just be doing this every single day, and they're just watching and waiting.
- [02:50]
C
There was a reaction over the Easter weekend, wasn't there, from Antonio Costa, the European Council president. And I think he went further than actually, I've seen any European official or even leader go, certainly since the start of the attacks on Iran, in calling out Trump for what he's doing.
- [03:07]
B
Yeah, this was on Monday. So there has been a general kind of avoidance of doing. Doing anything that might get people into Trump's crosshairs. And when I've been speaking with people around town, the general vibe is we don't want to get noticed by Trump because that way is how you get.
- [03:25]
C
Well, we've seen. We've seen what Trump has done with Starmer, once the sort of the friendliest, one of the friendliest leaders he had in Western Europe anyway, and now he's completely gone the other way because Starmer, the British Prime Minister, didn't want to join in as fully as Dharma as Trump wanted to in the Iran attacks.
- [03:41]
B
Yeah. So no one wants to be at the bottom of a pylon with Trump kind of sicking his MAGA allies on you. So there has been a general sense of like, okay, well, we're just going to stay quiet also, because we can't actually do anything, do anything, change anything, and we don't know if Trump is going to do anything. That's the bottom line.
- [03:59]
C
History watching, though?
- [04:01]
B
Well, yeah, I mean, you and I are watching and we're writing the first draft of history, apparently, so I guess so. But I think the general thing that the EU has learned is that you've got to just see what Trump is going to do, not what he says. And it's happened repeatedly. You know, these threats against Greenland.
- [04:19]
C
I was going to say, actually, I was really, really interested in one of the press conferences he did over the weekend. Trump was. He brought Greenland back again. And saying, NATO's not there for me. I wanted Greenland and they wouldn't let me have it. You know, we thought that issue had been solved, and clearly it hasn't been. Clearly it's still wrangling with him. And that's all part of the same thing. And how Europe and Europe's leaders reacted to the Greenland threats perhaps is playing into how what they're doing now just really staying quiet.
- [04:45]
B
Yeah. But the irony of those Greenland threats is that what Trump said he wanted when he started saber rattling about Greenland was for the EU and for NATO allies to do more to protect Arctic territories from China and Russia. And when they said they would indeed do that, he then got very mad and was saying that, you know, they're being very mean to him and not letting him have green. And I think here what Trump wants is for Iran to unblock the Strait of Hormuz. Ostensibly, that's what he said. But then at the same time, he said, you know, EU countries, this isn't our problem, it's your problem. We don't get our oil from, from the Gulf.
- [05:20]
C
Speaking of NATO, the Secretary General, Mark Rutter, is meeting Trump today. There's a limit to how much he can do, isn't there?
- [05:28]
B
Well, this is the thing. I mean, Mark Rutte has played this kind of good cop, charming guy who swans in and sweet talks Donald Trump into backing off of the Ed. I should say this visit was pre planned. This wasn't sort of a sudden.
- [05:42]
C
This isn't like a dash to stop Trump bombing.
- [05:45]
B
No, this was a pre planned, pre scheduled visit. But the timing is extremely apt. What he could do, we don't know. But what we've seen Ruta do in the past is he comes in and he sort of says, he, he says the things that Donald Trump wants to hear. He says the things that other EU leaders don't want to say. Yeah, they don't dare say because they are accountable to an electorate and Reuter isn't. He's appointed.
- [06:08]
C
But I was interested in some of that the diplomats said to our reporters covering the Rutte visit is that even now there's no real consensus among the allies about how to deal with Trump. They're kind of sick to death of him, but they don't know what to do. They don't really know what the American president wants anyway.
- [06:26]
B
Yeah, and this is something that Victor, Jack, one of our colleagues mentioned that, you know, one of the things that maybe might be discussed today is bringing the topic of Iran onto the table at this big NATO summit in Ankara in July. Although one wonders, A, that's several months away, feels kind of late, and B, like again, Victor said there's not even agreement that they want to discuss this there. Because, of course, the problem is that the US Is a key NATO ally. And I think everyone's a little bit afraid of what Trump might do. I mean, he's threatened increasingly to pull out of NATO. Marco Rubio, he echoed those threats. So It's a tough time at the moment in that NATO alliance.
- [07:04]
C
I mean, we talked yesterday about the inability sometimes of the EU to talk as one on foreign policy. And perhaps that's another reason for their silence. And at least Mark Rutter as the face of NATO, has a little bit more leeway to actually use his personal authority and personal charisma to actually talk to Donald Trump face to face.
- [07:22]
B
Yeah, Maybe they could play some golf, Ian. Surprise, surprise. Our second story today, it's about Hungary.
- [07:32]
C
It may well be the case that we speak about Hungary every day this week, the election Sunday night, or the results come in after the election on Sunday. We at Politico obtained quite a good document yesterday, quite an interesting one about sort of deepening ties between Hungary and Russia.
- [07:51]
B
Yeah, that's right. It's actually several documents that we've got our hands on and basically what those documents are, the main one is a 12 point plan to expand cooperation between Budapest and Moscow. And it's really wide ranging.
- [08:05]
C
And before you go on, it's really important, I think, to point out out that Viktor Orban's relationship with Putin and relationship with Russia has been a really big topic in this election.
- [08:15]
B
That's right. This is the Hungarian election, has sort of been essentially the campaign is one of which direction does Hungary want to go in? You know, it's been a case of Hungary is walking down the road towards the Kremlin and away from the eu and we've got two leaders who are vying for power, Peter Magyar and Viktor Orban, one of whom seems intent to continue down that path and get closer and closer to the Kremlin. And the other who is giving signals though, hasn't full heartedly committed to coming back towards that EU path.
- [08:47]
C
We'll talk about Magyar in a minute because we've got a big profile of him out today. But just to go back to these documents, this is from a meeting between a representative of Hungary and Russia in December. But I think you were explaining to me last night that, that this is sort of an annual meeting between these two governments. Is that right?
- [09:06]
B
Yeah, it's this cooperation commission that happens every year or so. This was from the 16th one, so it's been going on for a long time. Every year the Hungarian government and the Russian government, they meet and they commit to kind of closer cooperation in various areas and businesses, investment, all of that kind of stuff. I think it's really stark that this has continued, even despite the fact that Russia is waging a full scale invasion of Ukraine and Despite the fact that the EU has placed significant sanctions on Russia. So it's very stark, the difference between the Hungarian approach and the broader EU approach. The thing that makes it interesting is that in. We've known that this was happening. This was not a secret meeting by any stretch, you know, but these are the full documents so we can see exactly what it was that was committed to. And it's really, really stuck, the extent to which this is close cooperation included in it.
- [09:59]
C
There were things like Russian companies could join new energy projects with Hungary. There were closer links on oil, gas, nuclear, fuel, that type of thing.
- [10:08]
B
Yeah. And even plans for, you know, more teaching of Russian languages in Hungary, more teacher exchanges, more student exchanges. I mean, there's even a section which really kind of caught my eye about circuses, about cooperation, on sort of the circus arts. So it really is very broad.
- [10:23]
C
And Hungary talking about this is. This is their balance foreign policy, by which they mean we don't want to just want to be part of the eu, we want to be in the Russian orbit too. I just wonder how much this will play into the election in a few days time.
- [10:36]
B
I think it's all part of what this fight comes down to being about. So we've got on the one hand Orban, who has made this election about like, we, Hungary, are sovereign. We're here to say that. My government is here to say that we can have relations with whoever we want. We want to diversify our energy. And if that means buying Russian oil and gas, then will buy Russian oil and gas. The flip side of it is that Peter Magyar said, well, that's not sovereignty, that's actually just clientelism to the Kremlin.
- [11:06]
C
So let's talk about Peter Magyar then, briefly, because we've got this profile that people might want to read on Politico today. I think what's fascinating is that even though he's seen as the big competitor, the big rival to Orban, actually he doesn't draw huge support amongst the opposition. They just see him as best place to bring Orban down. They're talking about, you know, even those on his side talk about his. His abrasive style. His positions, which particularly on things like migration and Ukraine, are actually pretty aligned to Orban in the first place. It's. It's a really textured election that is
- [11:40]
B
in Hungary, Magyar, you know, when I talk to people around town, they're very cautious in Brussels, around whether they expect him to be significantly different from Orban and whether they think that he might unblock all of the various policies that Hungary is currently blocking. There isn't an expectation that he's going to be some magical savior that swans in like a Donald Tusk in Poland who came in and swept away all of the law and justice policies of the previous years, or at least tried
- [12:07]
C
to very much sort of out of the frying pan into the fire fear.
- [12:10]
B
Isn't there definitely the fear of the unknown with him as well? Although he is a member of European Parliament, so there is some familiarity with him in town, but, you know, no one is kind of hailing him as some great savior. Hey, in our last story, we're heading to Australia Down Under.
- [12:31]
C
You love it.
- [12:32]
B
Oh, any chance to talk about my Australian.
- [12:35]
C
Speak about Australia quite a lot on this podcast, given that it's the other side of the world.
- [12:38]
B
Well, sometimes Australia comes to Europe and today is one of those days. So we've been reporting for a while now about this Australian. It's called a social media ban, but actually it's not a social media ban for under 16s. Just Australia has implemented this rule saying that if you're under 16, you can't sign up to a social media platform. Okay.
- [12:57]
C
Is it working?
- [12:59]
B
No.
- [12:59]
C
What a surprise.
- [13:01]
B
And the problem is that the social media platforms, they're not being particularly cooperative. The Australian government claims, you know, it's being quite difficult to actually keep kids away from social media again, because it's not a ban, it's just kind of an account ban.
- [13:15]
C
So they want the EU's help, don't they, because they think EU could help regulate Big Tech.
- [13:19]
B
Yeah. And there is this sense in Australia that, okay, we can, we can try do this, but the tech platforms aren't going to change unless big bad Brussels gets involved. So that's what they want. And we've had Australia's envoy to the EU come into the political.
- [13:33]
C
Angus Campbell, do you know him?
- [13:34]
B
I do know him, yeah.
- [13:35]
C
Well, there's a shock.
- [13:36]
B
Yeah. Everyone in Australia knows each other. Don't you know, he's probably my cousin. So he came into our office and he said that Australia is moving from the carrot to the stick when it comes to the social media ban. But he says these penalties aren't going to be enough to make Big Tech actually change its ways. So they want global pressure. And he said, come on, Brussels, let's actually get our shit together and work.
- [13:58]
C
It's a big thing that people have known for a long time that actually what the EU can do to regulate is often replicated around the world. So it's Not a surprise that Australia wants to come here and try to persuade the EU to do the same.
- [14:10]
B
Well, while we wait for the eu, there are some EU countries that are already doing it. France is out in front on this one. So we'll see where else that momentum starts building. Hey, Ian, we've got a friend of the Pod celebrating his birthday today.
- [14:27]
C
Oh yeah? Who's that? Not Nick Vineke?
- [14:31]
B
No, not Nick Vineker. It's Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plankovic. He's turning 56.
- [14:35]
C
Didn't you interview him on a train?
- [14:37]
B
I did, on the train to Kyiv.
- [14:39]
C
Well, hope he's listening.
- [14:40]
B
He was the very first friend of the Pod. Happy birthday, Andre. May you get a giant cake full of delicious things. Cherries. I'd like a Black Forest one for my birthday. I said mud cake, but I lied. I actually now have revised. I'd like a Black Forest cake for my birthday.
- [14:53]
C
People can WhatsApp in and tell us their favorite cakes.
- [14:55]
B
Oh yes, people should. I mean, there must be some sort of EU policy. What's your favorite EU related rule for cakes?
- [15:03]
C
We don't like Swiss rolls because there's too many bilateral agreements. That's quite clever that. I hope you notice that was especially off the cuff. Like that. Come on.
- [15:12]
B
Yeah, you should be a comedian. Someone should get you a podcast. Folks, please do send us a note. Let us know what cakes you like. Give us a rating.
- [15:23]
C
And I think that's all for today, Zoya. We'll be back tomorrow.
- [15:26]
B
See you, folks.
- [15:38]
A
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