MCC Brussels Podcast

Brussels wants Europe to achieve “digital sovereignty”, reducing its dependence on American and Chinese technology. But what if the entire project is based on a dangerous misunderstanding of how technological power actually works?
In this MCC Brussels Deep Dive, John O’Brien speaks to Dr Norman Lewis, technology analyst and author of the new MCC Brussels report The Grand Delusion, about why the EU cannot regulate its way to technological power.
Lewis argues that no country, not even the United States or China, is truly sovereign across the modern technology stack. Yet Brussels continues to pursue sovereignty through regulation, subsidy programmes and grand industrial strategies, while making it harder for European innovators to compete and scale.
The alternative is not isolation, but indispensability. From the failure of France’s Minitel model to the extraordinary strategic power of ASML, Lewis explains why Europe should stop trying to control the entire digital ecosystem and start building technological capabilities the rest of the world cannot do without.
Can Europe still become a serious technological power, or is Brussels regulating the continent out of the race?
Rea the report here: https://brussels.mcc.hu/publication/the-grand-delusion-the-european-union-and-digital-sovereignty

Host Jacob Reynolds is joined by Richard Schenk and Daniel de Liever, editor at the Dutch news and commentary platform NieuwRechts.
First, the panel turns to the growing revolt against asylum centres in the Netherlands. After scandals surrounding the huge centralised cetnre in Ter Apel, smaller centres are now being imposed on unwilling municipalities. Daniel explains how pressure on Ter Apel became the justification for spreading asylum seekers across the country, why local election promises have proved powerless and why public frustration is becoming increasingly difficult to contain.
The second topic is the resignation of Jens Spahn, leader of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, after he and his husband used a surrogate in the United States. The panel discusses the charge of hypocrisy, Germany’s ban on surrogacy and the EU’s attempt to make cross-border parenthood arrangements binding across member states.
Finally, the episode turns to Donald Trump’s proposed UN declaration on freedom of speech. Is it a useful challenge to Europe’s speech controls, or another attempt to settle national political questions through international institutions? The discussion ranges from the Digital Services Act and the Democracy Shield to media regulation and the economic cost of Europe’s regulatory state.

In this episode, host Jacob Reynolds is joined by MCC Brussels research fellow Richard Schenk and French MEP Virginie Joron to examine how Europe’s ruling class uses child protection, the rule of law and procedural trickery to expand its control over citizens and political opponents.
 
First, the panel turns to Ursula von der Leyen’s proposed social-media restrictions. The official justification is child safety. The likely consequence is that every European internet user may be forced to prove his identity using official documents, biometric checks or the EU Digital Identity Wallet. A policy sold as protecting children could become the foundation of an identity-controlled internet in which anonymity disappears and political speech is monitored by regulators and compliant technology giants.
 
Next, the discussion moves to Hungary, where Péter Magyar’s new government claims to be liberating the country from Viktor Orbán’s legacy. Its methods look rather less democratic. The president has been removed, senior judges forced out and constitutional rules rewritten to sideline political opponents.
 
Brussels, naturally, hails this as reform. Would the Commission applaud the same methods if they were used by a conservative government, or has the rule of law simply come to mean rule by politicians approved in Brussels?
 
Finally, the panel examines the resurrection of Chat Control. More MEPs voted against the measure than for it, yet it survived through procedural manoeuvring and the peculiar arithmetic of the European Parliament. The temporary regime permitting providers to scan private communications will now remain in force until April 2028.
 
Across all three stories, the pattern is unmistakable: Brussels is tightening its grip on the political narrative. Child protection, the rule of law and democratic safeguards are invoked as noble pretexts, while power shifts towards institutions determined to decide which voices are legitimate, which opinions are dangerous and which political forces may govern.
 
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In this episode host Jacob Reynolds is joined by MCC Brussels research fellow Richard Schenk and Carl Deconinck of Brussels Signal to discuss the growing struggle over democracy, surveillance and political opposition in Europe.
First, the panel turns to Marine Le Pen and the French presidential race. With Le Pen again able to contemplate a 2027 run but facing the extraordinary prospect of campaigning under an electronic ankle monitor, Carl and Richard ask whether France is witnessing neutral justice or a political system using the law selectively against its strongest challenger.
The second topic is the EU’s revived push for “chat control”. Presented under the emotionally powerful banner of child safety, the proposal would allow private communications to be scanned on a vast scale. The panel asks whether child protection is being used as a form of moral blackmail: a way of making opposition to surveillance appear suspect, while Brussels builds the infrastructure for unprecedented intrusion into private correspondence.
Finally, the episode turns to the campaign against the AfD. After efforts to blockade its party conference, attacks on journalists and a broader system of political exclusion inside Germany, the pressure is now extending to Brussels. The panel examines attempts to exclude the Europe of Sovereign Nations party, in which the AfD is the dominant force, from the normal rights and funding available to European political parties. Is the so-called firewall becoming a continent-wide mechanism for deciding which voters and parties are allowed full participation in democratic life?

For more than a century, the car has expanded personal freedom, economic opportunity and independence. Yet across Europe, policymakers increasingly treat driving itself as a problem to be managed away.
In this MCC Brussels Deep Dive, John O’Brien speaks to Brussels lobbyist Conor Allen about Europe’s growing hostility to the car, from traffic policies designed to discourage driving to the regulatory push for electric vehicles.
Allen argues that too much transport policy is now driven by political goals rather than consumer choice. The result, he says, is a system that punishes drivers, sidelines industry, weakens Europe’s carmakers and leaves the continent more dependent on China.
This is not simply a debate about cleaner transport. It is about an EU policy class that increasingly treats the driver as a problem, consumer choice as an obstacle and the car as something to be regulated out of ordinary life. The result is less freedom, weaker industry and a continent making itself poorer in the name of political dogma