EU ‘tech sovereignty’: Uncoupling from the US and China?

Our guest is veteran French journalist and commentator Bernard Guetta, who is a Member of the European Parliament for the centrist Renew group. He tells the programme that Donald Trump is "a liar, because he tried to tell the American people that Zelensky and the Ukrainian resistance were responsible for the price of diesel. This is a pure lie. He (Trump) is responsible because he started the war with Iran." Guetta goes on to say that "without American intelligence sharing, Ukraine is weaker and weaker. That's terrible, to see the president of the United States giving a hand to Putin against Ukraine." Programme prepared by Oihana Almandoz, Perrine Desplats and Isabelle Romero

As the international context becomes more challenging for the European Union, the bloc is looking to boost its ties with like-minded allies. Canada is part of that architecture that the EU says it wants to build. The big news of EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen's State of the Union speech in September was that Canada could become an associate member – an arrangement that does not exist for the EU's partners at the moment. The EU-Canada summit, set to take place at the end of October in Montreal, might provide some clues as to what this enhanced relationship will look like. We delve into the topic with two MEPs. Programme prepared by Oihana Almandoz, Isabelle Romero and Perrine Desplats

2020 was an annus horribilis. Covid stalked the land. Lockdowns, curfews and social distancing were the order of the day. But there was a silver lining: European countries showed themselves to be capable of great solidarity, jointly procuring vaccines and then agreeing on a mammoth post-Covid recovery fund, the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF). That fund has disbursed €450 billion in grants and loans to EU member states since 2021. As the RRF enters its crucial final phase, we take stock of the situation with Pierre Moscovici, the French member of the European Court of Auditors (ECA). The ECA has just presented a report on the health of the EU's finances, which also talks about the implementation of the RRF. Moscovici says that the creation of the Covid recovery plan "was a crucial decision. Some people, and I was one of them, had been arguing for Eurobonds, for common borrowing, in order to invest together in Europe. And this was never possible due to some political positions between member states and the EU Commission. And finally, because of Covid, this was done. This was called Next Generation EU. It was the idea that we could borrow together some €750 billion in order to sustain growth, to be capable of facing the consequences of Covid. And this was absolutely a success. Some countries, for example Spain or Italy, massively benefited from this fund and were able to recover swiftly." Moscovici elaborates: "The question is, is this a one-off, or should we do that again? Should it become permanent? Should it also inspire the Multiannual Financial Framework (the EU's long-term budget) that the member states and the Council are now preparing? Because if we want to do that again – that's what Mario Draghi (the author of a seminal report on EU competitiveness) is proposing that we do massively. He believes that we need to have €1.2 trillion worth of investments in defence, in greening the economy, in order to face the future. But to do that, we also have to know what has been working in the RRF and what has not been working." Moscovici sums up: "The Recovery and Resilience Facility now also has to be evaluated not only on what has been disbursed, but also on the results. And that's what the European Court of Auditors is wondering or examining or evaluating with facts and findings. So our main concern and our motto is 'let's go to results'." Moving onto broader economic issues, Moscovici highlights the problem of debt, both at the EU and at the national level. "There two different things," he explains. "The one thousand billion euros of debt (that is projected to be reached in 2027) refers to the European Union. And then there is the problem of national countries. In France we have a debt-to-GDP ratio of 120 percent. That means that the servicing of debt is over €90 billion a year. The consequences of that are clear. When you have so much to reimburse, you cannot finance pensions, health, research and innovation, or schools. We are now in a in a crisis with education. We are in a crisis with the price of energy. That's the consequence when a country is indebted. The EU is not in the same situation. It still has a triple A (rating). But what the European Court of Auditors has flagged is that the EU has a debt as well. It is significant. The repayments will last for decades. And we must take care of that debt." Programme prepared by Agnès Le Cossec, Perrine Desplats, Oihana Almandoz and Isabelle Romero

It has been dubbed "the PISA shock". Countries that had been used to their school pupils performing well in test scores are seeing a plunge in standards. The PISA test is an international assessment led by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which measures how well 15‑year‑olds in over 80 countries apply reading, mathematics and science skills to real‑world problems. In the latest rankings, France's results were the worst it has ever had, and Germany's school pupils got their worst PISA report card too. When it comes to EU member states in the global PISA rankings, the top five performers are Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Austria and Poland. France hovers in 27th place, while the bottom five performers are Malta, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria and Cyprus. We look at these trends with two MEPs at the European Parliament. Programme prepared by Isabelle Romero and Perrine Desplats

We sit down with David McAllister, the chair of the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee. He talks to us about the security threats facing Europe, and what defence gaps the EU urgently needs to close. For McAllister, the EU is "not at war with the Russian Federation, but we are no longer at peace with Russia". He also believes that the EU is not, as yet, capable of making sovereign decisions in certain areas of defence "because we are too dependent on US capabilities." Asked about the worsening security situation that Europe faces, McAllister says: "We need to establish a fully fledged European defence by the end of this decade. We need to be able to defend ourselves against all the imminent threats we are facing. And that means spending more, but also spending more effectively, because it is taxpayers' money that we are spending in large numbers. There are certain military capabilities that we don't have in Europe, for the time being. There are fields in which we have to move ahead. I'm talking about ammunition and anti-drone systems. I'm talking about satellite intelligence. I'm talking about air-to-air refuelling. I'm talking about air defence in general. These are fields where we are not in a situation to take sovereign decisions because we are too dependent on US capabilities. We have to close these gaps urgently." Speaking of threats, McAllister asserts that "we are not at war with the Russian Federation, but we are longer at peace with Russia. We have every day, every week, violations of our airspace, attacks on our critical infrastructure, cyberattacks. That is also why it was so positive that the Federal Republic of Germany got the immediate solidarity of all 26 other member states (after the drone attack on Leipzig airport, attributed to Russian special services). An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us. And that's why it's correct to sanction the Russian Federation, to further sanction individuals, but also to come up with new additional ideas for how we can better protect our critical infrastructure." We ask about German Chancellor Friedrich Merz leading the charge to secure hundreds of billions of euros in cuts from the proposed EU budget, also known as the Multiannual Financial Framework, or MFF. Would Merz's proposal not hurt cohesion, regional development and social spending that EU member states actually benefit from? "We are now entering crunch time, and we still have a lot of work ahead of us," McAllister concedes. "There will be controversial debates, but I'm very sure that in the end, as always, there will be a last-minute solution. If you look back over the last 10, 15, 20 years, there have always been heated discussions about the size and the dimension of the MFF and who will pay how much and for what. [EU Council President] Antonio Costa has been clear. He wants an agreement on the next MFF, starting on the 1st of January in 2028. I would welcome that because we need the year 2027 for the necessary legislative work and so that everyone who receives EU money has clarity and can plan better for the years 2028 to 2034." In Germany, the far-right AfD party surged in recent regional elections in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-West Pomerania. What are the implications for conservatives, for Christian Democrats and for the European People's Party? "We have different political conditions in the 27 member states, and we have different strategies," McAllister says. "I can only say, as a German Christian Democrat, our strategy towards the AfD is that if we are convinced of something and we propose legislation, and by chance the AfD supports it, then we accept this. But they are our policies. We never support proposals coming from the AfD. We never actively engage with the AfD. We are strictly against this. Why? Because the AfD is questioning the fundamentals of the Federal Republic of Germany and also of the European Union. They are against the EU. They are against the euro. They are aga