← Brussels Playbook Podcast
Brussels Playbook Podcast
The Anxious Continent: Social media bans and boozy trade deals
00:40:31
Europe is testing how far it’s willing to go — at home and abroad.
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A
This week, the EU was testing what it really means to stand by its own internal rules and its wider external ambitions. At home, the European Commission has opened a new probe into Elon Musk's X after its AI tool Grok was linked to a surge of images of people's real faces on top of AI generated naked bodies. It's landed right in the middle of much bigger anguish about social media, what they're doing to children, to mental health, to democracy, and whether governments and the EU itself should go further. One big option on the table is banning social media for kids, as France and others are now proposing. That debate has been given fresh momentum by Jonathan Haidt, an American social psychologist, author and a prominent critic of social media's effects on children. His work has helped push these questions into the political mainstream. His conclusions, as well as his prescriptions are still subject to fierce debate, not only among tech companies, but also among researchers. He was in Brussels this week and joined us in the studio alongside Slovak MEP Veronika Sifrova Ostrichonova. They both argue that teen screen time isn't just a cultural or health issue, but one with long term consequences for Europe's economy as well. And abroad, EU leaders have been in New Delhi amid all the pomp and pageantry, finalizing a major trade and defense deal with India. Ursula von der Leyen has called it, and I quote, the mother of all deals.
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B
We delivered the mother of all deals.
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A
A phrase that sounds borrowed on purpose from Donald Trump's dictionary. Just as Europe is clearly looking to line up new partners, we are creating.
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B
A market of 2 billion people. And this is the tale of two.
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C
Giants, the world's second and fourth largest.
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Economies, two giants who choose partnership.
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So what kind of moment is this for the EU at home? How far is Brussels really prepared to go when it comes to reining in big tech and protecting children? And abroad, is the India deal mainly about trade or is or about making sure Europe isn't left exposed as its relationship with Washington frays under Donald Trump? I'm Sarah Wheaton, host of EU Confidential. We'll zoom in on New Delhi later in the episode, but first we dig into social media, their impact on children, and the limits and responsibilities of tech regulation. With me in the studio are Jonathan Haidt, author of the best selling book the Anxious Generation, and Renew Europe. MEP Veronika Cifrova Ostrichonova. My Tech Beat colleague Elisa Grizzi is also here. And Elisa, actually, let me kick off with you. Let's set the stage. The European Commission has just opened a new probe into X over Grok after a surge in sexually explicit AI generated images. Walk us through this.
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D
Thank you, Sarah. Yes, it's the latest beats in the commissions versus Elon Musk's X, which has been under fire for a little over two years now. Now, I would say over the holiday break, there was an explosion of these non consensual deepfakes, some of them being child sexual abuse material. And what the commission did just on Monday was to announce a new investigation into exactly how the platform has integrated Grok, the chatbot, and whether they did the correct risk assessment, as they are obligated to do before doing that. And now they've officially launched an investigation after many calls from lawmakers, including Veronica, who's here with us today, and the public. So we don't know how it will evolve, but we'll see.
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A
So, Veronica, why, why is this case important?
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B
Well, I think everyone can relate to that. Like if your picture is online and it can be notified in a matter of a second, it's a threat to children, obviously. But also look at it from the democracy perspective. Let's say, you know, if you're running for an office and mainly pertains to women and you can be undressed in a click of a second, then would you really want to put yourself through that? And I don't want to be too personal, but when I was running for the European Parliament, in the campaign, someone did a deepfake video of me and shared it online. It was me in a bikini dancing.
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A
Right?
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B
It was my head, not my body, not my dance moves. But it's still online until today. And I had people from my very immediate surroundings asking me whether it was real, whether it was fake. And this is not about me. I'm an adult and I should be able to handle this. But when it comes to minors, it's something that I think no matter what kind of political views you hold and what kind of political spectrum you're on, I think you need to feel that we need to protect them. And with the amount of material that is online with parents post of their children, if it can happen, then it can happen to your son, to your daughter, to your sister. So that's why we were very adamant myself. I wrote a letter, I had many of my colleagues join and we pushed the European Commission to act because as was said in the beginning, this is another part of the saga. And you know, Elon Musk is, is really mocking us. I mean, if we want to be taken seriously as the European Union. And we want our digital rules to actually have any clout. We cannot be afraid to use them and to enforce them.
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A
Well, and thank you for sharing your personal experience and staying with you. Veronica, you know you said Elon Musk has been mocking us, but is this about one platform? Are we entering a phase where the EU is willing to confront the big tech companies, even if that means an open clash with those like X?
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B
Well, let me be very frank, Sarah. I hope that we're not just entering it. We should have entered it a while ago because that's why we have our rules. We do not want to punish anyone. It's not a matter of punishing, it's a matter of respecting them. Right. If you want to be a player on our market, the European market, which is in a small market, and we shouldn't underestimate the amount of people that live here and use these services, then you have to abide by our rules. And yes to your question, this isn't about just one platform, as you know that there is a debate right now happening, very lively in the European Parliament and I'm taking a big stance in, is maybe looking also at the systems that allow it. We're talking about banning the nudifiers that actually make these photos, these sexualized images. Maybe this is another step that we have to take. So no, this shouldn't be a crusade towards Elon Musk. It is just insistence on keeping our social media and our digital sphere as it is. And we can't be lazy and we can't be afraid.
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A
Jonathan, I want to come to you. Your book, the Anxious Generation, it's been a huge global hit. It's had an impact in Australia and now we're seeing similar debates in in the UK and in France. Just this week, French lawmakers voted for a ban on social media for children under 15 years old and put limits on smartphones in schools. And you even discussed this directly with President Emmanuel Macron. It sounds like you made a strong case to him.
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E
I did, but I first want to just add on to what Veronica said. I'm a social psychologist and one thing we know in social psychology is that people are powerfully affected by norms and by direct face to face interaction. A related thing we know is that if you put a lot of people into a space where everyone has a mask, there's zero accountability, you are going to get some savage behavior. Not from most people maybe, but from a lot of people. Every day I hear a new story about this kind of savagery. But what I want to call attention to is it's not just the victims that are changed. If we're raising our kids in a savage environment in which they can destroy someone with a button, that's going to warp them too. So this whole thing, the idea that this cesspool is where we're raising our children is just so beyond comprehension that it just doesn't seem very hard to me that this is an adult activity, not for children. Now, to your question about Macron. I was in Paris in April and he agreed to see me. And I made the case. I showed him data on French mental health plummeting. I showed him data on French public opinion. As in all countries, parents on the left, parents on the right, everyone is in favor of doing something, especially an age limit. And when we ended that meeting, he shook my hand and he said, we will act. And he just requested a meeting with me at Davos last week and he basically said, we are acting. And it was amazing. He is fully committed. His people are thinking about this really carefully. And so he, he really is a leader on this. He, of course, he was one of the first to do phone free schools back in 2018. So I was thrilled by that. But what was also so interesting is it's not just France. He told me several other European countries have reached out to him as soon as he talked about it. I met with the digital minister of Indonesia. I was just in London. There's movement, a lot of movement in the last week towards an Australia style ban.
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A
And can you walk us through broadly some of the research findings that convinced you, that has convinced these leaders that, you know, social media and all this screen time is dangerous for this generation.
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E
So many listeners will probably have heard something like, well, we can't really know. It's just correlation, it's not causation. And that's the main argument that Meta makes. That's what Mark Zuckerberg said when he was questioned by the U.S. senate two years ago. It's just not true. First of all, there are a lot of experiments. One of them was done by Meta. It was called Project Mercury. We just learned about it a few weeks ago from a leak. When you experimentally have people get off social media for a week or two, they get less depressed and anxious. So that's an experiment. But what my group has done recently is we, we wrote a review paper on all the different kinds of evidence. It's not just correlations and experiments. There are seven different lines of evidence that show that social media is damaging children tremendously. In the briefest form. The kids themselves say it. In the surveys, the kids say this is harming my mental health. That's evidence. That's not just a correlation. The witnesses say it. Who else knows what's going on? The parents, the teachers, the therapists, they all say it. Good luck finding any organization, any group that works with kids that says, oh yeah, you know, Instagram's great. My kid got on Instagram and she just flowered. And when people say we need more evidence, I say, what other kind of evidence is there? Here are seven different lines. So, look, in science you can never say case closed, but I think the strong preponderance of the evidence about harm to kids says we need to act quickly.
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A
And Eliza, you have been talking to some other researchers about this. Is the case closed or is there still some debate, especially about the idea that a ban is the best solution?
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D
Yes. So last week we reported on a panel of experts that Commission President von der Leyen has put together to advise her on whether social media restrictions like the one Australia is doing are a good idea for Europe. And so I've been making the rounds asking some of these experts that have been invited, which unfortunately does not include John, I think, because you're not based in the eu, and asking them what they think they will say. And it was surprising to me to find that most of them are actually, at least the ones I've spoken to are not super pro banned for various reasons. One that is quoted is bans don't really work and kids find ways around them with VPNs with alternative platforms. Another one is that it's somewhat exclusionary and it doesn't actually take into account children's rights. Another one that I find quite interesting, and it's also interesting because Meta has actually supported what they call a digital age of majority. Is that perhaps putting a blanket ban and saying kids under 16 or kids under 15 or whatever age cannot be on social media is a way for the platforms to almost like evade the responsibility to have age appropriate design. The bottom line, I think, is that it's a bit of a hammer kind of solution and a lot of people I think would be in favor of more nuanced solutions.
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E
Can I address that, please? Okay, sure. It's a hammer. And sometimes when you have the most gigantic damage happening to kids all over the world, including declines in their mental health, declines in test scores, declines in iq, increases in suicide and self harm, I think it's not the time to say, let's continue trying to get more of the pluses. And fewer of the minuses. And let's try to tweak this design and maybe that design, those talking points, those are very widespread talking points. Let's go through them. They're based on a framing in which the kids love this stuff and it's so important to them and we can't take it from them. They have a right to it, but that's not the way the kids think about it. Survey after survey shows that when you survey kids who are 16 to 24, the kids who just went through it, they say they support an age 16 limit. They say that they would pay to get off social media if everyone else was off. My point is this is a trap and it's also an addiction. And if we care about children's freedoms, we all understand that addiction destroys your autonomy, addiction destroys your willpower. Kids are not begging for this. They're afraid of being the only one off. But if you offer them the possibility to end the trap and put on an age limit, a lot of them, actually majorities in many countries support it. What was the other? Children's rights. So again, all of us care about rights. We don't want to take rights away. There's a incorrect rumor going around that this somehow would ban kids from finding information. If a child wants to kill herself, she can still go to YouTube in Australia and she can say, how do I kill myself? And she can watch as many suicide videos as she wants. The Australia bill does not ban any content. All it does is it says, these are major consumer products that are used by almost everybody that already have a large death toll. And at what age can a child sign up for it, sign a contract to give away her data, to expose herself to addictive algorithms without her parents knowledge or permission? And until December 10, when Australia did this, the universal global answer was, if you're old enough to say you're 13, you can give away your rights and your parents have no idea what you're doing. And Australia is the first to call time on that and to say, you know what? This is a contract between a company and a child. How old should the child be before they can sign up, given the known harms, the massive harms. So I just don't buy that this is somehow a child rights issue that we're depriving kids.
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D
And what about the question as to whether this is an easy way out for platforms not making fundamental changes to their addictive algorithms for everyone?
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E
Oh, come on. I mean, look, we've been trying for 15 years to get them to make Changes. The only change Meta ever really made that seems substantial, they only made to avoid the Kids Online Safety act in the US as far as we can tell, we have not been very successful trying to get them to protect children. Now, maybe you guys want to say, let's try another 10 years. Maybe it'll work this time. But the parents of the world are saying, we hate this. We see what it's doing to our kids. The parents of the world are so far ahead of the legislators now. Once Australia went into effect on December 10, we saw so many people and leaders around the world standing up and saying, why can't we do this too? And once everyone stood up, then everyone knew that everyone knows that we all want to do something about this. So right now it's clear in January that legislators and leaders who don't act on this are so far behind public opinion of the voters and constituents, I think they're going to have to act this year.
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A
Veronica? Yeah. As the politician in the room, you know, are you feeling the pressure that Jonathan is describing?
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B
I would go to the last argument about whether we're taking. It would be taking the easy way out. And I hear this from time to time also in the European Parliament from some colleagues. And I think it's, it's built on a false premise that we will only concentrate on the age limit and we would stop doing everything else if we even decide on the age limits. That doesn't mean that we'll stop everything else. That's the false premise. We will still keep our pressure. At least I can say for myself, for my political group in Europe, to make the online sphere safer for everyone, not just for children. I don't think these two are mutually exclusive, that if we go over and try to install the age limits, then we leave the rest of the social media a wild, wild west without any pressure on the big tech. I think we need to keep the pressure. That's why we have the Digital Services act and that's why we, as the parliamentarians, keep pushing on the European Commission as well, to be bold, to act, to enforce it. We have to oversee that. That's not going to stop.
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D
I think it's beautiful that you guys are always, you know, you're calling for these things. You're trying to push the Commission to do, you know, and to do all of these things. And, you know, you're firing on all cylinders, but there are not that many cylinders. And I think, to go back to what we were talking about in the beginning, I think we are seeing that there are some limits to enforcement. Right. And is there no need to pick our battles when we see that the commission is perhaps like restrained in resources in some ways when it comes to even enforcing the dsa, which they've been trying to do for more than two years.
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B
But I don't think that this battle should be the one to be given up with the scale that we see. Even when we just look at the recent case of Ex Grok nudified images, sexualized images of adults, of minors. Just in 11 days in January, Grok created 3 million sexualized images in 11 days. So I don't think that these should be the topics that we let go and not concentrate on. I think we're at the point, and John was describing it, a lot of data suggests it, that if we want healthy and confident and resilient and competitive Europe, we have to really begin with making the online sphere safer for our mental health and for our being as a whole. And then we can build on that. But if our young people are being destroyed every day by the addictive algorithms, then I don't think that we can actually go through and actually carry out the competitiveness goals that we have and all of that that we really need to be self sufficient, resilient as Europeans, as the European Union.
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E
I'd like to add on, on the topic of competitiveness and European competitiveness, when I was in London, I met with a minister, a person in the Labour Party who was responsible for disability insurance. And he showed me the terrifying graph, terrifying for everybody who's thinking about budgets, of the rising roles of disability among middle aged and elderly people. It's just going up as you would normally expect. And it's physical disability. The gigantic growth is young people who say they are disabled by depression and anxiety. This is growing so rapidly, it's going to bankrupt them. They can't really pay all these benefits. And what I was able to tell him was it's going to get so much worse because the young people in their 20s now, they went through puberty on Instagram. They went through puberty in the early to mid-2010s. That was before TikTok. TikTok is much more effective at fragmenting attention, at shattering executive function, at creating young people who can't really keep their eye on something, read a book, do a job. And to say nothing about the iPad baby. So kids raised on an iPad, which has been the case since about 2015, so late Gen Z and Gen Alpha are going to be much more disabled, I believe. So what we all have Baked into our countries is very rapidly rising rates of mental disability. It's very hard to see how we have good employment, effective young people, a next generation that will be creative and productive thanks to these digital addictions that were pushed into our children's lives and pushed into all their schools without any safety testing and with a lot of evidence that they're causing harm. We've got to stop.
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A
Well, so are we likely to see more countries reach for outright bans or is this a time when, you know, politicians are sort of expressing a lot of panic but not actually making new policy?
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E
Well, I think our experience with phone free schools is very instructive. So in the United States, there were one or two states that were doing something phone free before my book came out in 2024. But once my book came out and the mothers of the country began getting active and calling for it, and some of those mothers were governors, and especially female governors said, right, we're doing this. It costs nothing. It's incredibly effective. And once the first round of states did it and the teachers were dancing in the hallways and the most common thing they said was, we hear laughter in the hallways again. We haven't heard that in 10 or 15 years. My daughter goes to New York City public school. She said, daddy, lunchtime is so much better. So phone free schools showed up the benefits so quickly that there was a tidal wave across the United States and around the world. Everyone's seeing incredible benefits. Now. The age restriction laws, they're not going to show within the first week or two. It's going to take longer. But as Julian Man Grant, who's their esafety commissioner, Australia, she put it, we are trying to change norms. We have to change norms. That will take a while. She said, we won't know all the effects of the Australia bill for 10 or 20 years, but we have to start now. We can't wait 10 or 20 years to collect more evidence.
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D
I find this very interesting and I think that, you know, in this case, policy sometimes takes a long time. Right. But the opportunity cost of waiting actually is quite big. So my question would be, do you think that EU countries and or Brussels will have something in place by the end of the year? It's still January, so we can still make 2026 predictions.
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B
I wish I had a crystal ball, but I think the numerous EU countries will move in this direction by the end of 2026 and I would love for the to have a harmonized approach to this. I think it might not be by the end of the 2026 cycle to be realistic at least. I would like all of us parents, not parents, to realize that social media can be toxic not only to children but also to adults and to approach them with more caution. Because I still to this day come across the argument that, you know, if you're trying to regulate the digital sphere, you're being a sensor and its censorship. Still, some of the people, and my colleagues in the parliament as well, some of them would say, you know, you just need to leave it to happen naturally on social media. You know, it's the market, it should regulate itself. Well, nothing happens naturally. It's all driven by algorithms. And those algorithms are set up by someone, by the owner of the company who wants to make as much money as possible with not much regard for our mental health.
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A
All right, Jonathan, Veronica, Eliza, thank you so much for joining us.
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E
Thank you, Sarah.
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B
Thank you.
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D
Thank you.
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A
Before we move on, since they were invoked with some pretty harsh accusations, we wanted to give some perspective from some of these tech companies. Meta stresses that teen mental health is pretty complex and can be narrowed down to a single factor. The company that owns Instagram and Facebook points to efforts it's made in recent years to increase parental controls, add safety features for teen accounts, and improve the ways to report bullying. And that these changes were spurred by their commitment to safety, not by regulation. And when it comes to some of the internal documents Haidt mentioned, a Meta spokesperson disputed his interpretation of the findings. TikTok likewise points to parental controls and the restrictive safety features that come with teen accounts. And with that, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we'll zoom in on India and unpack what's really, really behind the quote, mother of all deals. Stay with us. This episode is brought to you by Credit Karma. When it comes to your money, Credit Karma keeps you ahead of the game. You can count on Credit Karma to keep up with your financial needs as they evolve, helping you monitor your progress and giving you personalized recommendations so you can make strides towards your goals. Make sure you're on the right track no matter where you are on your financial journey. Intuit Credit Karma Karma you can count on Download today. Welcome back. I'm now joined by Nick Vinoker, Politico's chief foreign affairs correspondent, and Camille Gais, our trade reporter who was on the ground in New Delhi for the signing of the EU India Trade and defense megadeal. So, Nick, before we move on to India, I do just want to follow up on a conversation we had in the studio about the EU and its social media rigs. And you actually were just in Paris interviewing former Commissioner Thierry Breton. And of course, he was one of the architects of the EU's rule book alongside Margaret Sevestaker. And Breton is someone who's now been sanctioned by the United States. So what was he telling you about how he sees the EU's tech rules being applied these days? And does he still contend that they're a neutral regulation, or does he acknowledge that they've become political and maybe even a geopolitical tool?
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F
Yeah. Thanks. It was a fascinating conversation. We spoke for more than two hours, and what Seri Breton really wanted to do was kind of explain where these rules came from, almost from first principles. And his defense, in a way, as if he were pleading in a court of law, was to say, the sanctions against me are a misunderstanding of how the EU system works, and these rules are not designed or not the will of a individual commissioner or even of the Commission, but the expression of the popular will of the people of Europe. He insisted repeatedly on how they had been approved by large majorities in the European Parliament and how this was really what the European people wanted. And then he extended that to the discussion about free speech, saying, you know, we also have free speech here in Europe, but you have to understand it's through the lens of our own history, which is fascism, Nazism, also terrorism. And so those things are regulated in certain countries, and the people want them to be regulated. It's not against the United States. It's simply what the European people wanted.
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A
And now let's. Let's get to our main topic. Camille, you're on the ground in New Delhi, and before we get into the substance, what has this visit felt like? You know, you mentioned you were worried that we would hear the horns honking outside of your hotel room, but tell us what else has been going on.
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C
Yeah. So basically, I'm just back from a very busy day that has seen the conclusion of the trade talks between the EU and India. So it's been quite intense in terms of, you know, schedule and everything. We saw this week, the Republic Day in the Indian capital of New Delhi. It was quite a brilliant ceremony. Military parade. It was really seen as a tour de force on the Indian side. You know, there was a lot of dancing, a lot of military walking through the roads of New Delhi. What was interesting is also the security presence across the city. It was very, very much beefed up. We had to leave our hotel at 4am to make it on time for a ceremony that would only start at 10:30 to give you a sense of the whole security presence across town, security checks and so on.
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D
Yeah.
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A
And everyone was trying to, you know, embrace the other culture. It's always a little awkward to talk about women's wardrobes, but Commissioner President Ursula von der Leyen did make headlines in local media for her outfit.
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C
Yeah, totally. So on Republic Day, what was very striking was how Ursula von der Leyen was basically wearing a gold and maroon outfit, a traditional outfit that. That is apparently originally from the state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. So it was very carefully picked. And, yeah, I could see that the Indian press was all over it.
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A
And, Nick, how should we read into all of this ceremony and symbolism? Was it just theater or part of kind of a more strategic charm offensive? And if so, who was charming whom?
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F
I think we should read plenty into it. You know, the EU sort of desperately needs kind of a geopolitical win. We had a sequence where the Mercosur trade agreement has been sent for review to the EU's highest court. The EU US trade deal has been put on hold in the European Parliament. And we know that this commission wants to diversify EU's trading relationship. So a lot was riding on this EU India free trade deal. And the fact that they've been able to kind of sign it is significant. And then I would say the pageantry that grows around it is also important. We're in a world where visuals count a great deal to have the president of the Commission and the president of the Council welcomed as chief guests at India's Republic Day. It's the first time ever that heads of institutions have been given this honor. It obviously put them on a pedestal and kind of put them in a position of power and of recognition by one of the world's largest states, the second most populous state in the world, which we know is also having difficulty in its negotiations with the United States. There isn't a trade deal between India and the United States. And so I think people are sort of cautiously taking this as win. But as Camille will explain to us, obviously it's not a done deal. This is a framework agreement, an initial agreement that has to go through several hoops before it becomes a reality. But I think just based on the optics on the moment, it is this win that the EU was looking for.
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A
Yeah, Kimmy, Indeed, we are getting this kind of mixed signal. Indian media have been calling this a megadeal. Von der Leyen also called it the mother of all deals. But is that really accurate? Like some trade experts on my LinkedIn feed have been like maths actually kind of limited in scope. So why, why are they talking about it in these sort of extreme terms and, and what is in it?
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C
So I think, you know, the line that has been pushed out of India is clearly that this is a mother, the mother of all, of all deals. I think for the European Union, you know, it's basically about the size of the Indian market that EU exporters would be able to reach, right? So there is.4 billion people market that's opening up for the European Union. So it's true that in terms of scope, the European Union was kind of looking for more. So what is very clear is that basically after 20 years of on and off trade negotiations, it was really the sort of the pressure of the Trump's tariffs that kind of tilted the deal through the finish line. And so I think, you know, this is why, especially in the end game of the talks, they didn't have a choice but to sort of put aside some of the most difficult topics. For instance, at a press conference with the Indian commerce Minister, you know, we asked about what, what is in it for you guys in terms of the carbon border tax, which was, you know, sticking points. What is for you in terms of steel? Because India is a massive steel exporter. And so they were saying a lot to say that basically they, they haven't gotten a lot out of the European Union on that. And likewise, the European Commission had to somewhat reduce its ambitions when it comes to car, for instance. So now under the deal, the tariffs on the Indian side are going to drop from 110% to 10% gradually. And this is going to be applied only for a quota of 250,000 vehicles per year.
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A
And one other way that they sort of avoided controversy was by not really getting too deep into agriculture, but with, with one notable exception. And this statistic actually came from POLITICO's Agriculture and Food team. The EU currently exports more wine to Iceland than to India. So people are hoping this deal will change that, right?
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C
Indeed, under the deal, the tariffs on European wine will go from 150% currently to up to 30. So this is a boon for the industry macro culture. The two sides didn't quite have a choice but to exclude a range of sensitive goods from the negotiation. And this is very true for the European Union, which we know better, but it is also very true for India. So for instance, it was very clear on their side that, you know, the whole sector of dairy, for instance, was always going to be out of the scope of the negotiation. Because it's such a massive protected sector for the powerful Indian farmers on the European side. Obviously, the European Commission was also quite careful not to replicate a Marcosur 2.0. And that's also why I think that we have the broad sense that through the, you know, in the European Parliament and in EU countries, the deal is not going to face such a strong pushback.
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A
Okay, good. So we'll at least have some relief from the tractors.
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F
Nick just wanted to come in with one point, because obviously the trade deal is the main event in this EU India summit, but there's also a defense component. There's a security and defense pact that was signed this week by the high representative, kaia Kallis. And I think that kind of gives you a sense of why we're calling this a megadeal, the mother of all deals. There's this commercial aspect, but there's also this defense and security aspect. And we know India has been a client of the Russian arms industry. And what the EU is keen to do as it ramps up its own defense production capacity is to export much more to India. And that has started with the sale of some French Rafale fighter jets to India. But there's also talk of further arms deals. So I think we're looking at this in the round. And that's increasingly the sense that we get from officials here and in the capitals that issues are no longer isolated, they're no longer dealt with in silos. There isn't trade and security. In fact, they're bundled into one piece. And I think that's why you're getting this rhetoric from India and also, frankly, from the EU side kind of talking it up, saying, this is a big deal.
- [34:05]
A
Yeah, Kimi, kind of Moscow's shadow presence here was something that came up in your conversation with Trade Commissioner Mauro Shefkovic.
- [34:14]
C
Not only with Maro Sestrovic. I think overall it was very clear, and this is something, actually, that Prime Minister Modi also mentioned during his presser, is that the two sides did discuss the situation in Ukraine. I think the two sides are also quite realistic in the sense that for the European Union to sort of sway India out of Russia's specter is going to be quite a tall order in the sense that it has been such a traditional and historic leanings towards Russia that the European Union is also quite realistic, that it's not a great deal that is going to change the whole picture.
- [34:52]
A
Okay, on the one hand, this deal is signed, there is a lot of ceremony, both sides are very motivated, but, like, we keep Seeing, you know, as Nick mentioned before the Mercosur deal was signed, but now parliament is like, eh, we actually want this to go through legal review. We still don't like it. Ursula von der Leyen went to Scotland, signed a kind of theoretical trade deal with Trump and now with his Greenland tariffs that got put on hold as well. So like, how seriously should we take this deal? Kemi?
- [35:22]
C
I think Mercour and India on that front are different beasts in the sense that Mercour was also so inherently politically toxic within the European Union, within the farming community in France, in Ireland, in Austria and so on. I think there was like, even despite all the arguments that the commission was making, it just didn't land with whether it is MEPs or farming constituencies. So I think this is not at all the situation that we are seeing here with India in the sense that obviously India is still, there are a few agricultural openings for European exporters, but the crux of the deal is not about agriculture. So that's why I'm not sure, you know, the parliament is going to strike it down. We haven't seen a lot of pushback from MEPs, if at all. Let's see in the coming days obviously. But so far I don't expect this to be a massive hurdle.
- [36:17]
A
Yeah, and Nick, I mean, you know, we've heard Sheftkovich say related to the U.S. eU deal, like, hey guys, you know, I know we're mad at Trump, but we should really follow through on our commitments. Ultimately, Europe's biggest leverage comes through its market power, through its trade power. And yet aside from India with these other two big deals, there seems to be real ambivalence about using it either as a carrot and finalizing Mercosur, or as a stick and blocking the US deal.
- [36:44]
F
As Camille said, both of those deals are politically charged. We had a senior EU official talking about the Mercosur deal and saying that in a way this is kind of baked in. No matter what arguments you give to France, other countries, it just turned into a kind of red flag for them and it's beyond logic. I think what was striking here is the incentives because you have one strong incentive, which is Germany's car industry. Selling fuel operated cars into a big market is a huge incentive for Germany and for France, for the luxury sector, for the spirit sector. You have access to a massive population, a significant portion of which is able to drink alcoholic beverages. And that's actually the terms that I heard it from one diplomat saying, well, there are plenty of drinkers, so that's a plus. So I think, yeah, this one seems to have a more positive aura about it than the other two. That's not to say that obstacles, you know, won't crop up.
- [37:45]
A
All right, Camille, Nick, thanks so much.
- [37:48]
C
Thank you.
- [37:48]
F
Thanks for having us.
- [37:51]
A
Okay, that's it from us this week. If you haven't already, please subscribe to EU Confidential, rate us, leave a comment or send us a note at podcastpolitico.eu and keep an eye on your feed. You'll be hearing more from us soon. Politico will be launching a new daily podcast next month. It'll be another way to follow our reporting over your morning coffee or on the way to work. Stay tuned for that. Thanks, as always, to our senior audio producer, Deanna Sturris. I'm Sarah Wheaton. See you next week.
- [38:30]
E
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C
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