How to go from hero to zero, with Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel

Summary

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EU Confidential (POLITICO)

Episode: “How to go from hero to zero, with Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel”
Date: October 17, 2025
Host: Sarah Wheaton

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Episode Overview

This episode delves into the shifting legacies and fragility of European centrist leaders, focusing on Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel. The discussion analyzes how both, once celebrated as “heroes” of Europe, are now facing criticism and a sense of isolation as their respective countries and parties grapple with rising extremism, political fragmentation, and policy inertia. Alongside policy breakdowns for France and Germany, the conversation unpacks what their perceived falls from grace reveal about the current condition and future of European liberal democracy. The episode closes with reporting on an espionage scandal involving Hungary’s EU Commissioner.

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Main Discussion & Key Points

1. Macron: From Visionary Leader to Isolated President

(01:03 – 06:14)

• Macron's Early Ambitions:

  • Macron began his first term boldly, calling for a more “sovereign, united and democratic Europe.” He was hailed as “Mr. Europe,” pushing for ambitious reforms and a strong EU stance.

    “France is back at the core of Europe.” – Emmanuel Macron [01:03]

• Current Political Crisis:

  • Macron’s leadership is now marked by isolation at home, ongoing budget deadlocks, and a fragmented parliament. His own prime minister, Sebastien Le Cornu, had just resigned and been reinstated in a failed gambit to shock opposition parties into cooperation.
  • He has conceded to suspend his high-profile pension reform—a policy that faced enormous backlash, including weeks of protests and burning garbage in Paris.

    “The only person who emerges on top of the whole political chaos is Marine Le Pen.” – Cléa (Clea Calcutt) [11:25]

• Systemic Problems vs. Personal Missteps:

  • Macron’s struggles reflect the challenges of France’s Fifth Republic, which gives the president broad powers but little room for compromise—a hazard when the president lacks a robust parliamentary majority (Nick Winnicker [08:01–09:07]).
  • “It creates no incentives for compromise, no structures for power sharing. There are no written coalition agreements. There’s no tradition of that.” – Nick Winnicker [08:35]

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2. Germany After Merkel: A Tarnished Legacy and Shaky Center

(06:14 – 17:47, 19:41 – 24:17)

• Merkel’s Departure and Rapid Reassessment:

  • After 16 years, Merkel left office to near-universal praise and anxiety about her absence. However, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine upended her reputation, especially her approach to Russia, energy, and migration.

    “She went from hero to zero in a few days.” – John Kampfner [19:55]

  • Merkel’s recent remarks, such as praising Viktor Orbán and criticizing Poland for its approach to Russia, have further fueled debates about her legacy.

• Political Fallout:

  • Germany’s “grand coalition” (GroKo) of the center-right CDU and center-left SPD previously enjoyed dominance, but now both parties are weakened, with the far-right AfD polling at record highs and even threatening to win a majority in regional elections (John Kampfner [21:22]).
  • Even Merkel’s successor, Friedrich Merz’s harder stance on migration is now seen as a repudiation of Merkel’s 2015 openness to refugees, which is widely reassessed as a liability in today’s context.

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3. Decline of Centrist Politics: EU and Member States

(14:33 – 28:46)

• Centrism Under Siege:

  • Macron’s original claim to fame was uniting centrist forces in France, but now that approach is “falling apart,” squeezed between a resurgent far right (Le Pen, Bardella) and energized far left, with the center unable to rejuvenate itself (Clea Calcutt [27:40]).
  • Parallel challenges for Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels as her centrist coalition is being outflanked and undermined by surging right-wing parliamentary forces (Nick Winnicker [15:54]).

• European Phenomenon:

  • The “grand coalitions” and centrist power-sharing recipes of the past no longer seem viable in Germany or other states, leading to fragmentation and nihilism.
  • “Can there be such a thing as courageous centrist politics, a politics for the mainstream…that actually changes lives, enacts radical reforms?” – John Kampfner [26:19]
  • New politics is marked by strong conviction at the extremes; centrist “blandness” is increasingly viewed as weak or ineffective.

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4. Memorable Quotes & Notable Moments

• On Macron’s Changing Fate:

  “His legacy is melting in the sun…He’s just given up on one of his major domestic legacy achievements, which is the pension reform.” – Cléa Calcutt [12:29]

• On Merkel’s Fall from Grace:

  “When she stepped down… so many Germans were saying, oh my God, how are we going to survive… And then within two months… Putin invades Ukraine, and suddenly Merkel’s entire legacy… was trashed.” – John Kampfner [19:41]

• On the Unraveling of the Center:

  “You had the far right with leftist economic policies and you had the far left becoming much more strong on the left…that centre beast is just falling apart.” – Cléa Calcutt [27:40]

• Rise of Populist Messaging:

  “Marine Le Pen… throughout this whole debacle…has been saying consistently the same thing, which is this circus has got to stop. Macron’s got to go.” – Cléa Calcutt [11:25]

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5. Espionage Scandal: The Hungarian Commissioner in Brussels

(29:02 – 36:07)

• Summary of Allegations:

  • Oliver Varhelyi, Hungary’s EU Commissioner (formerly ambassador to the EU), is accused of overseeing a spy ring within the Hungarian Permanent Representation in Brussels—allegedly recruiting diplomats and targeting EU staffers for sensitive information (Nick Winnicker [29:19]).
  • The revelations are especially incendiary given Budapest’s combative stance toward Brussels.

• Brussels’ Response:

  • The European Commission has set up a working group, and Ursula von der Leyen privately questioned Varhelyi, who denies all allegations ([30:52–34:07]).

• Broader Implications:

  • The scandal highlights Brussels’ discomfort with counterintelligence, especially when national and EU loyalties appear to conflict.

    “When you are a commission staffer, you’re supposed to swear an oath…acting on behalf of your nation state is a big no, no.” – Nick Winnicker [30:52]

  • The situation’s resolution—and pressure on von der Leyen—will depend on how much the story escalates in Hungary and Brussels, where action against a commissioner is rare and very serious.

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Timestamped Breakdown of Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |----------------|-----------------------------------------------------------| | 01:03–06:14 | Macron’s legacy and internal French political crisis | | 06:14–09:07 | The French system’s weaknesses and consequences | | 09:07–12:14 | European populism’s appeal vs. “weak” centrism | | 12:14–16:18 | Macron’s contradictions and the rise of the opposition | | 16:18–17:47 | Comparison to Germany: Merkel’s centrist coalition, AfD rise | | 19:41–24:17 | Merkel’s reassessed legacy and impact of 2015 migration | | 24:17–25:36 | EU-level fallout of weak leadership and far-right focus | | 25:36–28:46 | Discussion: Is the rise of extremism demand or backlash? | | 29:02–36:07 | Hungarian espionage scandal and Commission response |

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Takeaways

• Both Macron and Merkel symbolize the precariousness of hero status for European leaders. Their destinies illuminate how quickly the political tide can turn as the old “center” collapses and voters seek more decisive action, often from extremes.
• The French and German systems—once sources of stability—now seem to exacerbate gridlock, with both countries struggling to respond to populist pressure.
• At the EU level, the absence of strong, centrist leadership means tough reforms are stalling, and long-term projects are left aside in favor of reactive, short-term fixes—mainly around migration and “holding the line.”
• The exposure of alleged espionage activities by a Hungarian commissioner underscores weakened mutual trust within the EU—yet another symptom of an increasingly fragmented and distrustful bloc.

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For listeners seeking insight into why Europe's center has crumbled and what this means for the continent’s future, this episode offers both sharp analysis and sobering context.

Transcript

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[D]

Ladies and gentlemen, my first message is that France is back. France is back at the core of Europe.

[A]

That was French President Emmanuel Macron at the start of his first term. We have to redesign a 10 year strategy.

[D]

We need more ambition in order to have a more sovereign, united and democratic Europe.

[A]

Mr. Europe, full of energy, ideas, big ambitions, dreaming of the EU strong enough to compete with the world's heavyweights seven years on. Where'd that guy go? We've seen Macron taking solitary walks along the Seine while Paris is politically burning. He's weakened, increasingly isolated. The economy looks very shaky. Prime ministers are dropping like flies. Parliament is fragmented, the budget is in limbo, and the leader who once pushed Europe forward with bold talk of reform is now hitting the brakes on major EU files. His legacy, the one we're told he's so focused on, is in question. But of course, he wasn't meant to carry this alone. The European score was written for a Franco German duet, as he said in the same 2018 speech.

[D]

I know that Angela Merkel expressed a few hours ago her vision and we.

[C]

Work very closely in that direction.

[A]

Macron's push plus Merkel's poise. But the former German chancellor once hailed as Europe's anchor is gone and her legacy from Russia policy to energy and migration tarnished out the window, as you'll hear one of our guests put it. She exemplifies how leaders can go from hero to zero. And now Macron seems to be edging the same way. And it's not just these individual figures who are unpopular. Their ideological heirs are struggling or non existent. In Germany, the far right is polling at record highs. The same is true for France, except that the alternative with the most energy is the far left. So why has the center bottomed out? Are citizens actually becoming more extreme, or are they just casting for any change, fed up with incrementalism and consensus that aren't delivering? Were Merkel and Macron bad leaders who were wrong about everything or just products of a more hopeful era? I'm Sarah Wheaton, host of EU Confidential. Later on, we'll dive into an alleged espionage affair involving Viktor Orban and Hungary's Commissioner Oliver Var Hellyi. But first, the sour reassessments of Europe's leading lights and whether anyone in Brussels can step into the gap. I'm joined by John Campner, an expert on Germany, author and occasional politico columnist, as well as Nick Winnicker, our chief foreign affairs correspondent, and Clea Calcutt, our senior correspondent in Paris. Claya. Well, first, thank you for joining us. Two weeks in a row, and the last time we spoke, we were waiting for President Macron to find a way out of the political mess by appointing a new prime minister. Instead, he just went again for Sebastien Leconnoux, the guy who'd just resigned a few days earlier. What was the thinking behind that?

[D]

The thinking behind it is difficult to unravel, but basically, there was no real wish, at least from Emmanuel Macron, to actually change Le Cornu. And Le Cornue's decision to resign was kind of hoped to be an electroshock that would wake up parties and get them to coalesce again around Emmanuel Macron towards getting a budget for France. As you know, there's fears swirling about the economy and things like that. In the end, I don't think that tactic worked because it hardened a lot of the opposition parties against Le Cornu and against Emmanuel Macron. And though we've now got through one of the hurdles, that was Sebastian Leconu's speech in Parliament. Macron has had to give an enormous concession to the opposition parties, which is the suspension of his flagship pension reform.

[A]

That was the thing years ago. People were protesting. And the garbage wasn't picked up in Paris for, like, weeks, right?

[D]

Yeah, absolutely. There were some very spectacular pictures of burning garbage or burning city halls and running battles in the street with police. I mean, it got very, very intense here for weeks. And the idea was they would push back the legal retirement age from 62 to 64. And this was a traumatic moment for the country, for Emmanuel Macron, something they really don't want to go back over. So. So they have, and we're still not out of the woods. Negotiations about the budget are ongoing coming up, and those are going to be really tough.

[A]

Yeah. So it sounds like we're still in for more drama. John, across the border in Germany, how is the French mass and weakened Macron? How is that being viewed in Berlin right now?

[C]

There's a parlor game being played in Berlin in which you compare and contrast Germany, France and the uk and you ask yourself, which country? I could use a more graphic term, but I'll keep myself polite. Which country is in more trouble? And I think France is definitely in the lead in that race at the moment, and it matters a lot. Merz has worked hard on reviving good relations between Germany and France, which were in deep freeze when Olaf Scholz was Chancellor. But it matters hugely. And the instability is undermining German confidence about Europe, which already was being questioned.

[A]

And, Nick, how much of this situation that Macron is in is just, you know, Macron being Macron, and how much is like the whole design of the current French system coming apart? I mean, it's set up to reward strong presidents, yet right now, prime ministers are dropping like flies. Macron can't get his budget through. He's dependent on the divided opposition's goodwill. Is the issue the structure or Macron?

[B]

Well, it's funny you should ask, because I wrote a whole piece about this this week.

[A]

Perfect.

[B]

I think it's a really interesting one because both answers are correct. A lot of people have pointed out Macron made a huge gamble by dissolving the parliament. He had a majority that he didn't have to do this.

[A]

Yeah. And let's just remind people, after Macron's centrist party did very poorly in the European elections last year, he just.

[B]

He decided to sort of roll the dice and ended up with a hung parliament and a kind of chain reaction which just keeps on sort of exploding, and a lot of people saying, you know, well, Macron is to blame for this. And that's true. But I would also say it puts a spotlight on the weakness of the Fifth Republic, this hyper presidential regime, which gives the president enormous powers, but also tends kind of not to work in anything but a situation where he's got a major. He or she has a majority in parliam. And this is kind of the perfect storm. And I say what's really wrong with the system, and increasingly kind of glaring, is that it creates no incentives for compromise, no structures for power sharing. There are no written coalition agreements. There's no tradition of that. And so what we're seeing now is one party after another saying it's not in our interest to prop up this weak kind of sinking president. Our interest is to roll the dice again and have a new, hopefully a presidential where we'll get to have all the power.

[A]

Well, yeah, so that's issue indeed, as Nick is saying, with kind of the structure in France. But John, is it even bigger? You know, we're seeing in liberal democracies that leadership is ineffective or changes are very incremental. And when people are suffering, they're saying, hey, you know, these leaders who are shifting away from democratic norms, populists, demagogues, they seem to be more able to just power through break glass, get things done.

[C]

Absolutely right. And this actually is the theme of a book I've just finished which is out next year.

[A]

What a coincidence.

[C]

Indeed. It's about courage and it's about what has happened to courage in liberal democracies. And it's absolutely at its epicenter in Europe. I mean, just quickly, the Tour d'. Horizon. I mean, you have Jupiter in Macron who is struggling for all kinds of reasons. In the UK you have Keir Starmer with ostensibly a huge parliamentary majority, but yet from the get go was looking over his shoulder and struggling to project, let alone know what he wanted to do with his power and as a result achieving very little and the populace absolutely preying on him and leading in the opinion polls. And nowhere is this more relevant than in Germany. And the system here, unlike France and the UK is designed to put compromise at its heart. It was designed to be impossible for there to be a powerful single leader for obvious Third Reich historical reasons and what had previously, until a few years ago, been regarded as a virtue. This whole question of division of powers, of checks and balances, of coalition negotiations being regarded almost as a sexy subject. We give a little bit here and you give a little bit there and then we'll put this to a committee and then we'll discuss this in cabinet. And now it's just regarded with Donald Trump as the cross reference as a sign of ultimate weakness. And in Germany that's exactly how the system is built. And it seems really difficult for Friedrich Merz or for any future leader to reconcile the system with what is now being regarded as so called good leadership.

[D]

I just wanted to react to what John just said, to say that what happened these past two weeks in France absolutely illustrates what you said in that people within Macron's camp are actually bemoaning the fact that right now the only person who emerges on top of the whole political chaos is Marine Le Pen. She's the only one throughout this whole debacle, talks with opposition leaders who's been saying consistently the same thing, which is this circus has got to stop. Macrom's got to go. We're fed up with this. It's a very simple message, but it's really strong. Whereas all the other ones are going pension reform. Ooh, this. And you can see it in the polls how her very we let's get rid of all this consensual politics is boosting her popularity.

[A]

Clia it's actually making me think of Macron defeating le Pen in 2017. And he cast himself as the great reformer Macron, the European. But where is Macron as a leader right now?

[D]

Well, he's in a very difficult spot, to say the least, because he's looking ahead to the end of his mandate, but it's not there yet. Very much focused on his legacy, but his legacy is melting in the sun. I mean, he's just given up on his, one of his major domestic legacy achievements, which is the pension reform. And that is something that is in addition to this impression that he basically screwed up the economy. And on Europe, you know, he did the Sorbonne speeches. He was really pushing for Europe to wake up and to become a geopolitical force in the world. And even critics admit it. He has a depth of thought, he thinks about issues and the future. And he's not short termist. But what we're noticing is as he's looking ahead to the end of his mandate, contradictions are really emerging. And the deep contradictions is this idea that you have to make sacrifices for Europe, but in the end there are certain national sacrifices he's not prepared to make for national reasons. And then other more deeper philosophical contradictions, which is about saving the planet. And his alternative goal, which is to make Europe battle ready, boost defense, boost industry, make it prepared for the global fighting competition. And these two ambitions, he can't keep them both going. Yeah.

[A]

And I mean, we'll have to see. But it may be that another one of his kind of only half accomplished ambitions will turn out to be holding back the far right. He twice defeated Marine Le Pen, but when he defeated Le Pen, especially in that first time around, he was more kind of defeating the original centrist parties. You know, instead of a center left and a center right, we kind of saw this centrist behemoth that he created with enemies on both flanks. Now we're seeing Racin Blonde, National Le Pen and her protege Jordaan Baudela, stronger than ever. Nick, what's the mechanism here.

[B]

I just wanted to say quickly on the, on the Sorbonne thing, I was looking back at some of our coverage from 2017 from that Sorbonne speech and it's really, really striking how idealistic, how ambitious he is about the eu. He's talking about the EU defense and integrated EU defense. That's the very thing that he was talking against at the last informal Yuko in, in Copenhagen. And the most recent Sorbonne speech he gave was in 2024. And he's talking about screen time for kids and giving cash back to people's families. This is a completely different president on that score. And at that time we were writing he is the last European leader to defend European integration. Well, there's just nobody anymore because Macron is not really doing it either. But on the point of centrism, I think it is a really interesting point because as successful as he was in creating this centrist bloc, what we're seeing is the center getting squeezed everywhere. And, and it's also happening in a way to Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels because she has this kind of center, right, center, left, a little bit of a centrist coalition. And she is getting outflanked by the right that is trying to attack her, trying to weaken her in the European Parliament with these no confidence motions. And you can see how her power base, the epp, is increasingly tempted to kind of get out of this sort of centrist alliance and start joining forces more with the right, which they're doing on kind of ad hoc bases. So I do think there are parallels there between Macron and VDL in Brussels, both of them struggling and of course Macron's much further along.

[A]

Yeah. And John, we have seen a similar thing in Germany as well, Right. I mean, during the Groco years, the grand coalition that was Angela Merkel's long partnership of the Christian Democrats with the Social Democrats that also created this kind of centrist behemoth. And the backlash helped fuel the afd. Is my parents parallel right here.

[C]

Yeah, I mean these are European, these are global phenomena. But I mean in Germany you have, it used to be Groco, CDU and spd, which would have produced a stunning majority in Parliament. Now they, they struggle to get anything over the line. The Christian Democrats have a wing which is represented by the guy who's in charge of the parliamentary party N and he represents this school of thought which is saying, well, maybe the AfD is not so terrible after all, or at least some of them. And this so called firewall, the Brandmauer that the Germans have, which is designed to say we can't deal with them, we cannot do business with them. Well, that psychologically, politically is fraying. And some on the right of the CDU are arguing, well, maybe we should start playing hooky with them. And the bloc that used to represent the so called respectable centre right meets center, meet center left is shrinking all the time.

[A]

Really interesting point. And to what Nick was talking about, we're seeing the Von der Leyen's kind of centrist platform. The cordon sanitaire against working with the far right Patriots for Europe is also fraying in Brussels. But I do want to just stay a little bit longer on Merkle and we'll get to that when we come back from a quick break. So stay with us. Uh, hello, Is this Pacific Source Health Plans?

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Songs, but they sound pretty sweet to your wallet. PNC bank, brilliantly boring since 1865. So, John, stay on Merkel here. If Macron's legacy is in question, so is hers. You know, she left after 16 years to widespread praise. Everybody seemed actually quite paranoid about, you know, how Europe was going to manage without her. But these days, you know, she's had this book come out. It's called Freedom. Recent interviews. Her legacy is being sharply reassessed. John, could you catch us up on some of the lines that have been making headlines in Germany?

[C]

When she stepped down at the end of 2021, so many Germans were saying, oh my God, how are we going to survive? How are we going to get up the next day? How is this country going to work without her? And Olaf Scholz and the Traffic Light Three Party Coalition comes In all, claiming to be carrying her mantle. And then within two months of the new government coming in, Putin invades Ukraine, and suddenly Merkel's entire legacy, particularly her foreign policy legacy, but elements of her economic legacy as well, were not just questioned, they were trashed. She went from hero to zero in a few days. I think the correct legacy is going to be somewhere in between. She provided what Germans wanted at the time, which was stability. Now, Merkel herself, she's been saying some weird stuff. A couple of weeks ago, doing a tour around Europe of her book, she was showering praise on Viktor Orban, of all people, and also at the same time, managing really to annoy the Poles by sort of saying, well, you kind of helped bring the. Didn't quite say it in this way, I paraphrase, but you sort of helped bring the Ukraine war on by refusing to negotiate with Putin. And it's absolutely infuriated people.

[A]

And now in Germany, even Merz is struggling. And we're seeing polls showing the AfD. I think I just saw a poll even putting the party in first place. And, you know, are we seeing problems in Germany that are activating voters that can be traced back to Merkel's decision?

[C]

There always is a series of elections in the lender, in the regions, and there is one that everybody is freaking out about next year in the former East German state of Saxony Anhalt, in which, according to opinion polls, the AFT could even get an overall majority and could produce for the first time, its own regional prime minister. I find it unfair on Merz. I think he is playing a difficult hand as well as he possibly can. And foreign policy, he is giving Germany a little bit more clout than it certainly had under Olaf Scholz. And in the economy. He has promised this autumn of reforms, but it's almost as if before he even came into power, everybody was writing him off. There is an element of nihilism going on here because I think he is trying to be more decisive than either of his last two predecessors were.

[A]

A big separation that Merz made from Merkel, and what he said was a key part of his strategy for dealing with the far right was to take a harder line on migration at the European level. We're seeing kind of a first big political discussion about making it easier to deport people who are not supposed to be in the European Union. How did Merkel's handling of the migration issue in 2015, how is that being viewed in this context today?

[C]

It's been pretty much repudiated, and it was repudiated by Merz at a very early stage. And her argument, you can talk about 2015 in the abstract or you can actually remember it at the time. You had this wave of some of the world's most bedraggled, most downtrodden people coming through across southeast Europe. And I remember her saying, what do you expect me, a German leader, to do? And then she used a deliberately emotive term. Do you expect me to build camps?

[A]

Well, yeah, and maybe that's the irony is that it was kind of a rare moment of decisive action on Merkel's part with, with migration. But broadly there's a, there's a slang term in German, merkelne, which means to, to buy time, to be indecisive, say nothing and then do very little clea. Back to you. Are we seeing a version of that from Macron?

[D]

He's definitely trying to buy time. We can see that he's in a very conservative mood and doesn't want to take any risks. He's trying to hunker down and save what he's got now that he's sort of lost power on the domestic fronts. And in contrast, he sort of deserted national politics to try and boost his international profile. And he's very much focused on what he can do for the Middle east, what he can do on Ukraine, what he can do on all these big theaters of war. He feels he's got agency there and so therefore on the national front, he's just trying to make time and drag things out.

[A]

Yeah. Nick, here in Brussels, what would you say the EU level fallout from Macron's sort of challenge and diminished ambition been?

[B]

Well, I think the main fallout is sort of no forward momentum on EU reforms. France was always a driver of ideas of pushing forward the EU project. And now you really see these three leaders, Macron, Mertz, Meloni. What's the common denominator is kind of fighting the far right. They can gather behind migration measures which are just getting tougher and tougher. All the kind of policies that were too radical for other European countries are now sort of center stage. And this has been the focus of one European Council meeting after another. And once again it's going to be in the upcoming one. We're picking at low hanging fruit. These are weak leaders who don't want to give the impression, who don't want anyone to say that we've given more power to Brussels. They're deconstructing effectively. What we're doing on competitiveness is deregulating. We're not creating huge investment projects for EU technology or EU defense projects we're deregulating. I think they're weak leaders primarily concerned by containing the far right and chasing their themes rather than building an alternative proposal of their own.

[A]

I want to kind of close out with this theme of sort of this obsession with holding off the far right. I mean, Macron's model is faltering. Merkel's legacy is under scrutiny. The thing that those two leaders had in common is they were both sort of overseeing, you know, as I, as I put it before, kind of this centrist behemoth, and now they're both being repudiated. Are people genuinely becoming more extreme? And that's why we're seeing this kind of call of the far right and to some other extent the far left, or is it just kind of a frustration with the sort of blob blob leadership, to put it pejoratively, or maybe the more, you know, centrist, consensual leadership that we had in the past. John, I'll let you take that one. First.

[C]

You ask, I mean, the question of our times, can there be such a thing as courageous centrist politics, a politics for the mainstream, a politics that straddles center left and center right, but actually does stuff, actually changes lives, enacts radical reforms? Tony Blair, whatever you think of him, certainly in his projection, used to call himself the radical center. That's how Macron started out, or at least that's how he branded himself as. Well, none of that is sticking anymore. People say if you want your politics with conviction, you go left or you go right, which in old school thinking, that now means far left or far right. The British Greens, an interesting but small case, have elected a new leader. He's like Melanchon in France. It's absolutely, if you want us, we're going to give you the unvarnished politics, and we don't care what people think. And that is the antidote, or that is perceived now to be the antidote to all things Trump. You either have Trump or you have anti Trump. And what is left with the middle? And that's a question. I mean, it's going to take years to unravel, and that's really for historians to work out how we got to this point.

[A]

Claire, your first draft of history here.

[D]

I think the difficulty is that the Macron sort of emerged on the back of that sort of disintegration of the left and the right. And so he intelligently spotted that the right was disappearing, that you had the far right with leftist economic policies and you had the far left becoming much more strong on the left. And so therefore he could sort of gather around and transcend that sort of left right thing and basically build a majority. But that recipe only works. Appears to only be working once because now we're in a phase where we've got a very strong far right, a very strong far left because of that reorganization of politics in France, which means we've got this centre beast. But the problem is that centre beast is just falling apart. And this is just creating a situation in which what's going to come afterwards for the centre is, you know, there's a lot of disillusionment, a lot of doubts because it's not managing to rejuvenate itself here. And I think that bodes really badly for the future.

[A]

Okay, we'll leave this conversation here. Nick, we're going to hold on to you to talk about a little bit of an espionage scandal here in Brussels. But Clea, John will let you go. Thanks so much for joining us.

[D]

Thank you.

[C]

Thanks.

[A]

Nick. Thanks for sticking with us. So, yeah, we have some excitement this week involves Hungarian Commissioner Oliver Verheli. He's now the Health and Animal Welfare Commissioner, but he's accused of being tied up in an espionage operation. Can you catch us up?

[B]

Yeah. Well, this was a major kind of bombshell report that came out in a couple outlets a few days ago. And the allegations were that while Mr. Varhely was at the Hungarian permanent representation here, first as deputy perm rep, then as perm rep himself, he oversaw essentially kind of a spy ring where you had intelligence agents inside the perm rep who were spying and collecting intelligence from other diplomats. But problematically, they were also allegedly reaching out to commission staff members, Hungarians, and asking them to provide information what was going on inside the commission. And that's where things become very difficult because as we know, Varheli went on to become Hungarian commissioner, now in his second term. And of course, this creates a very awkward situation for von der Leyen and the commission of how to deal with this.

[A]

What years are we talking about?

[B]

So Mr. Varhely is in the perm rep between 2011 and 2019, 2011 to 2015, he's deputy head of the embassy. And then from 15 to 19, he's the ambassador, He's a permanent representative himself. And in 2019, he leaves to become the commissioner. So it's kind of an unbroken line there.

[A]

Well, yeah. So what we know, at least according to these reports, is not only were Hungarian diplomats being sent to Brussels maybe actually as spies, which kind of Everybody does that. But they were also allegedly trying to recruit EU staffers to also kind of gather intelligence from inside the commission. And so how is the commission reacting to this?

[B]

That's the point that's really problematic. When you are a commission staffer, you're supposed to swear an oath where you. You don't work for your own country, you. The common good of the eu. And of course, acting on behalf of your nation state is a big no, no. And it also kind of undermines confidence in the whole project. Right. If people are just doing their country's bidding, it's bad. So they've had to react to this. And the commission did take it fairly seriously and said they were very concerned and they were going to set up a working group. And we reported on Monday morning that Ursula von der Leyen had had a private interview with Mr. Varhely on Sunday where he denied knowledge of this affair. Now, this is likely not the end of it. There is this working party. I've had some conversations with people inside the commission who describe the security apparatus there. So what's going on behind the scenes is probably much more. There are 10 different internal security groups within the commission, and most likely those are at work right now. And we don't know if he's been questioned in other capacities. We just know about that one conversation. But this group is now up and running. And at the same time, time you have the Hungarian context, because we're building up to this election next year. Orban is being challenged by Peter Magyar, and guess what plot twist. These two gentlemen overlapped in the Hungarian permanent representation for a few years. So the next question is obviously, well, what did Peter Magyar, the challenger, know about these intelligence operatives in the perm rep, and what sort of. Of shoe is going to fall next? And we had Mr. Macquarie react this week to say the full truth is not being told about this affair. And meanwhile, you have other Hungarian officials coming out and saying, well, if there were intelligence operations going on in Brussels, well, that would be a good thing. And I applaud that. Applaud them for defending Hungarian interests. So not really a strong denial coming out of Budapest. So part of the discomfort here is that. That Brussels does usually not concern itself with intelligence. You speak to Biblios, they say, well, that's not our problem, that's security. So for the commission to have to effectively mount a counterintelligence operation, right, and say we're rooting out spies is a place of discomfort for them, and they would need very, very strong proof to act on it. And now they're in this awkward position with a commissioner who may, may be compromised, may have been sort of double dealing and is very much active at the highest levels of the commission. How long is this sustainable? Depends on the level of scrutiny and also how important it is in the Hungarian debate. You know, the story has legs and is developing and probably going to sprout new limbs in coming days.

[A]

Yeah. So let's just. And again, Varhely has denied any knowledge, knowledge of, of any of this. But let's just say that if some allegations were proven, what can be done about a problematic commissioner?

[B]

Well, the commission president has the discretion to fire anyone from the commission at any time or it could be left up to the council. So a majority of countries could come together and say this person doesn't have our confidence anymore. Or an initiative can come from parliament as well to try to unseat this person.

[A]

Well, it would be the whole commission that they have to throw out that we'd see another one of these, these no confidence votes. Right?

[B]

Exactly. So far we've had one group leader in parliament ask for hard investigations here. The member countries, again because of this security and kind of EU thing are definitely taking a back seat. But if this continues to bubble along as a big story in Hungary, they will have to address it. I think. I think the von der Line will have to show that she's taking action somehow.

[A]

But I mean, does she necessarily. I mean, look, I guess I just sort of assume that all countries would be doing this type of thing. Like is this really a new practice or is there just a freak out because it's something Viktor Orban is doing?

[B]

I don't think anyone should be naive about, you know, the presence of intelligence people inside perm reps. We know that's the case. We've read dozens of times that Brussels is a den of spies. I do think there are a couple of, couple aggravating elements. One is if you're shown to have gone and tried to recruit the commission staff officials and flip the ones that are from your country, that really shows that you are kind of on your country's team and not on team eu. The second thing is obviously Hungary's unique status within the eu. Hungary is the rebel country. It is against, you know, Orban saying all the time I'm fighting Brussels. And here you have a sense that, that, well, this perm rep was operating as if it was almost in hostile territory and the commissioner is linked to that and is at the top of the commission operating that way. So it kind of exacerbates the Hungary problem, puts it into new light and of course, exposes this discomfort. Whether they will be able to take action on it, I have my doubts about this.

[A]

All right, we'll leave it there. Thank you so much, Nick.

[B]

Thanks very much.

[A]

Okay, that's it for this week. If you haven't already, please follow EU Confidential on your favorite podcast app, rate us and leave a comment or send us an [e-mail] thanks to Deanna Sturris, our senior audio producer, to Abigail Frison, our trainee, and to Ann McAvoy, POLITICO's head of audio. I'm Sarah Wheaton. See you next week. This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. It's Cybersecurity Awareness Month and Lifelock has tips to protect your identity. Use strong passwords, set up multi factor authentication, report phishing and update the software on your devices. And for comprehensive identity protection, let LifeLock alert you to suspicious uses of your personal information. Lifelock also fixes identity theft, guaranteed or your money back. Stay smart, safe and protected with a 30 day free [e-mail] Podcasts Terms apply.