Brussels, My Love?

On this edition of “Brussels, My Love?”, we sit down with Belgian politics expert Lauren Walker. Born and raised in Brussels, she explains why the city has now gone 559 days without a government — and what that means for the people who live here, and for Brussels’ image abroad. With the region’s deficit forecast to hit €1.6 billion by year’s end, the stakes are high and in this episode we check what’s going wrong, and how does this affect locals and the European Union’s institutions? 

What are frozen Russian assets? Why is everyone talking about them now? What should we expect from the European Council meeting on Thursday 18 December in Brussels?The December European Council aspires to bring a final political decision regarding the use of Russia’s immobilised reserves to help close Ukraine’s 2026–27 financing gap.  Brussels, My Love? sits down with Euronews' EU politics reporter Jorge Liboreiro to answer the 10 most pressing and important questions on the issue.

Elon Musk is furious with Brussels. The European Commission has sent him a fine of 120,000 euro for violating EU transparency rules on X. President Trump also piled criticism on European leadership this week marking a tense week for the transatlantic partnership. Is the relationship under serious strain, and what lies ahead? Brussels, My Love? sits down with senior adviser at the European Policy Centre Ricardo Borges de Castro, Swedish correspondent Teresa Küchler, and Wilfried Martens Centre researcher Teona Lavrelashvili to discuss the future of the Brussels-Washington partnership.

A corruption scandal shook Brussels on Tuesday, December 2, when the EU’s former foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, and top EU civil servant Stefano Sannino were detained by Belgian authorities as part of an anti-fraud investigation. To delve into this story, as well as the ongoing talks to end the war in Ukraine, we are joined by Brussels' insiders Donnacha Ó Beacháin, Teresa Küchler and Euronews’ Mared Gwyn Jones.

This week European leaders were blindsided by a Trump plan to end the war in Ukraine that had the Kremlin's fingerprints all over it. In this episode, we take a look at Europe's role in ending the war in Ukraine and discuss EU efforts to tackle the acute housing emergency facing numerous EU countries. We are joined by Séamus Boland, an Irish farmer turned politician who recently was appointed the president of the European Economic and Social Committee in Brussels. The EESC was set up in the 50's to advise the EU on economic and social issues. Our other guests are Shada Islam, a well known EU and Asia commentator and contributor to The Guardian and Petros Fassoulas, the Secretary General of the European Movement International - an organisation set up in 1948 to promote democracy and European integration.

Should the EU rip up privacy rules for the sake of AI? How did the climate talks in the Brazilian Amazon go? Why did Shein just open a shop in Paris? The topics we dive into on this episode of "Brussels, my love?" the podcast. We are joined by Chloé Mikolajczak, the Belgian Climate activist and influencer, Tomi Huhtanen, the Director of the The Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies and joining us from the Brazilian city of Belém is Brigitte van den Berg, Dutch MEP from D66.