Omnibusted: The EU’s competitiveness conundrum

Europe's leaders have been on the move this week. From boardrooms and the port city of Antwerp to a castle in eastern Belgium, ringed by a moat. First, they sat down with industry chiefs laying at a bleak picture, plant closures, high energy prices, collapsing investment, and Europe losing ground to China and the US. A day later, many of those same leaders gathered at Alden Beeson Castle for a little getaway hosted by Antonio Costa to talk about how to restore Europe's competitive edge and fix its sluggish economy. But haven't we heard all that before? Competitiveness has been the buzzword for years. The so-called Antwerp Declaration, a plea for support and regulatory relief from some of Europe's most powerful business lobbies, had its third anniversary gathering in the Belgian port city, and E-Leaders from the German Chancellor to the Commission President made enthusiastic appearances. And yet the divisions on actually doing anything remain. France is pushing for joint borrowing and by European, Germany is wary of New Dut, Nordic countries skeptical of protectionism. And then there's another split. The Commission insisting it has put the tools on the table while the member states refuse to pick them up. So is Europe finally ready to act? Or just rehearsing the same arguments in a different setting? Can the EU boost growth without sacrificing its green ambitions and throwing out the basics of good governance? Are the solutions on the table even going to fix the real problems? I'm Sarah Wheaton, host of EU Confidential. Later in the episode, we'll touch on the latest political developments in Portugal and how they reflect on Brussels. But first I'm joined by my colleagues to break down what this latest competitiveness push really tells us about Europe's direction. With me in the studio are Marianne Gros, Sustainability Reporter, Carlo Martouselli, who covers trade, and fresh back from that industry summit in Antwerp, Zia Weissa, our senior climate reporter. Alright, we have a full house in the studio today. Let's start out with a little tour de table. Competitiveness has been the buzzword that we've been hearing for over a year now. Are we at a turning point? Or is this just another Brussels cycle of diagnosis and delay? Carlo, you're closest to me. Start with you. So I'm going to be a bit of a pessimist here and say that I don't think much is going to come from this. Only because the problem has been diagnosed over and over again, and pretty much everyone knows what the options are. So I don't see how getting people around a table once again to talk the issue out is going to change something. Zia, you're kind of a tap-take. What Coliseard about, like, they've basically run the diagnosis a million times, but from a climate policy perspective, I don't know why do you think the solution is to dismantle that because that wasn't really in the diagnosis, settle or set of solutions. And I think what we saw at least this week was that the bashing of climate policy really went up and notch. But yeah, if that really helps with competitiveness, let's see. Marianne. It definitely feels like we're sort of stuck in the cycle of diagnosis and delay. The messaging I feel has changed quite a bit, and at least on the environmental topics, it's clear as day that you will no longer suggest any kind of policy or change or strategy that doesn't fit with what it defines as competitiveness. I do feel like they have perhaps put all of their eggs in this one simplification basket and are hoping to see a lot from these omnibuses, but omnibuses are policy proposals they take time and so there must be quite a lot of frustration around the lack of progress on that. We're going to unpick all of that more. Zia, you were just in Antwerp on Wednesday and this has kind of been the, what's become the annual festival of deregulation. So what did it feel like in the room? Who was there and who did most of the talking? So to be completely frank with you, this is not a very transparent or open event. So the process actually not even allowed into the same building as all of these people, always sort of shunted into a hotel across the street, given some occasional live stream of a speech there. So I can't actually tell you what the mood in that room was like because we weren't allowed in. That said, I mean, this has been sort of the highest profile of these events, which is now it's the third time this is happening because Macron and Meritz showed up as well as the Austrian, Belgian and Dutch leaders on Von der Leyen and a few commissioners. In terms of who did most of the talking, I mean, a huge influence at this event and I think in a debate generally is the European Union's chemicals industry because they actually set up this event and run it. And so a lot of the arguments and demands are very much at a forefront. And yeah, as you mentioned, you know, Sephich, the chemicals lobby has really been the driving force here and they argue that their sector is facing extinction. They say that since 2023, more than 20 major chemical sites have shut down across Europe and this has caused 30,000 jobs. Another 200,000 jobs could disappear in five years. That's pretty intimidating. And you know, we've been saying that this Antwerp Declaration gets more influential every year with more and more power players signing on, but like the results have not been very impressive. A report prepared by Deloitte on behalf of the Antwerp Declaration crowd looked at a series of measures like energy costs, digital connectivity and yes, simplification. And they said that on 84% of the factors important for competitiveness, the EU was showing stagnation or decline. So, yeah, I take the point that you couldn't really hear that much of the discussion yesterday, but you know, what was the mood and the message from industry? I mean, that's pretty much what you said. It was sort of a message that if we don't act now, like, we'll face extinction, now we need action. And the idea to sort of demands are very, very similar every year, you know, bring down energy costs, make sure we have fair playing field when it comes to exports, make sure there's more demand for our products on the internal market. But what isn't really addressed at the summit or maybe sort of like there's some wishful thinking that maybe with enough measures, we can turn back to clock somehow because there's just some changes like the rise in energy prices due to the fact that we just don't have access to cheap Russian gas anymore and probably never will. And that China has just become this export powerhouse and that's for very export dependent industries is a huge problem. I mean, these things are not things that the European Union can undo. So I think, yeah, I mean, it's sometimes the conversation doesn't quite align with the new reality. And Ursula Funderlian did actually try to make the point that she has been taking some action. Yeah, Funderlian's point on Wednesday at this event was that we, the commission, are taking action, but member states are not doing enough. So she's kind of through the ball into their court by saying, look, there's too many differences in regulation that are making it difficult to operate across our internal market. They're not approving the proposals that we make fast enough. So there was a lot of that. We had, I mean, politically we've seen both the commission and national leaders argue that they are friends of industry, but about what Brussels has been actually doing in the past. These meetings in Antwerp have really paid the way for all this deregulation that we've been seeing, but Marianne, very briefly, do they turn out to be what people have expected them to be? Is this simplification actually in service of boosting competitiveness? Yeah, I guess it depends which people you are talking about. I think civil society organizations and NGOs have warned that the simplification agenda would be about deregulation, and that's very much what is happening. The commission, however, is doing what it said it would do. Vandelaian made a promise to reduce administrative burden by 35% for SMEs, 25% for big companies, and it is going full steam ahead on this idea of identifying where regulation creates burden and getting rid of it. So we are up to 10 omnibuses now on the table. As I have said in this podcast before, the first one and the negotiations really showed the political division in Parliament and became an incredibly tense political file, and that kind of gives us a bit of foreshadowing on what negotiations for the other omnibuses could look like if the topics become politically sensitive. In the council, diplomats are working nonstop to review these proposals at once. Meanwhile, companies are complaining that the simplification process also leads to a very uncertain regulatory landscape, which makes it difficult for them to make investment decisions. Yeah, I mean, I find that a bit bonkers. They've been asking for the rules to be rolled back, and now there are complaining about lack of predictability. And even the European ombudsman, the use institutional watchdog, has been criticizing the sort of rushed process of these omnibuses legislation. Absolutely, but I think also on your point about the companies, perhaps there is a tendency to think the business world is one coherent voice. In reality, it's a lot more nuanced and complex than it may seem. You'll probably have just as many companies warning of the dangers or the issues with deregulation as the ones calling for more. The ombudsman, what she flagged was that the commission in its delivering of these omnibuses is rushing through the traditional policymaking process, and the executive is coming under fire and being accused of maladministration, effectively bypassing how the EU has always made laws and drafted policies and using this sense of urgency as an excuse. What are some of the warnings about the consequences of this? Right now what we're seeing is the commission trying to change its own rules around how they draft regulation in order to make it easier faster so that they can propose policy changes and implement policy changes a lot quicker. That means fewer impact assessments. These are basically the research papers that say if we do this then we think that will happen. Exactly. In normally when the EU proposes a lot it needs to also provide a thorough study of every single impact that this law will have on society, on the economy, on health, on the environment, on so many things. And the commission is saying that this takes too long and that if as EU leaders keep asking, as businesses keep asking, they want to see more deregulation, we need to add quicker. That probably means changing the rules. Okay so commission is embracing a FAFO approach. We'll see how that goes over. Zia, back over to you. The next target for this sort of regulatory rollback is a big one. The emissions trading system. So can you explain a little bit what that is and why is the carbon market suddenly in the crosshairs? Yeah, as you said, it's a carbon market which means that it requires companies that are particularly heavy polluters, like think steel or cement as well as power plants, airlines, shipping companies to pay a price under carbon-day emit. And well the reason it is being targeted is sort of twofold. One, there's just an opportunity the ETS happens to be up for review this year before the summer. So the lobbying is just going into overdrivers. Everyone tries to influence the way the commission might reform this system. And the other is that I mean a huge complaint from industry is just that their operating costs in Europe are quite high. I mean and a lot of that really the main reason for that is energy prices stay quite high in Europe. But now they're sort of like looking at the carbon price as sort of like an additional obstacle to competitiveness, which is unusual because that's not really been part of the conversation before. It's also as the commission pointed out at the summit on Wednesday and Antifiber, it's a very small fraction of kind of the costs that these companies have to bear. But yeah, their argument is that this cost nevertheless puts the industry at a competitive disadvantage to other countries that don't have this carbon price. So they're arguing, you know, that's just too high. The price needs to calm down. All we need to get sort of more freebie vouchers that give us some of these permits that they have to buy for free. So that's sort of the debate around that. That's a bit the point. It's supposed to be extensive to use polluting fuel. So if the ETS is significantly softened, would that be the biggest green deal rollback yet? Yes. So it's difficult to you overstay just how important the ETS is. It's the bedrock of the EU's climate policy. It regulates around half of the emissions and EU and including some of the ones that are sort of the stickiest that are like the trickiest to get rid of. You know, it's a lot harder to decarbonize a steel plant and to let's say road transport where we have like EVs more readily available than electric furnaces. But I think it's also really important to know that the ETS is not a green deal policy. It actually predates the green deal by over decade. It's a 20 year old instrument that has been fairly uncontroversial. I mean, not everyone likes exactly how it's designed. But it's it's really the first big climate policy of the European Union. Yeah. So having it come under attack is really that's what I meant with it takes it really up another notch because it's really the foundation after after EU's climate policy. Even that is now up for question. Then I think really nothing sacred. Really interesting point. And it feeds into this big overarching question that we've been asking here on EU Confidential really since even before the 2024 EU election when Ursula Fanderlion's own European Peoples Party was running on a platform of hitting the brakes on the green deal. We've been wanting to know which way things are actually going. Commission bureaucrats have said no, no, no, no, ignore that rhetoric. These green rules are baked in. It's just a question of implementation. But you know, I see these rollbacks that you're talking about including as you said, the bedrock of the EU's climate policy. And you know, on the surface, it looks like the climate agenda is really being abandoned in favor of so-called competitiveness. So Naryans, the EU are two of politicos experts here. How do you see it at this point? I think sort of politics and the rhetoric have been turning away from and against the green deal for a while. The green deal regulation, what was passed, which is a lot of it, is in place and is functioning. I think that's important to say. Like it is a reality. Now what we're seeing is that a lot of what is in place. I mean, as it comes under pressure, it's sort of like being wound down, changed, altered. And the big question is what kind of impact that has in reality. Because I think the rhetoric we're often seen from politicians when favor of the climate targets, but you know. So and it's like, okay, so you're tweaking all of these things constantly. Often, as Mary and said, without proper impact assessments as to what the impact will actually be, we had really no good overview over the last year of what emissions impact of all of these changes will be. So with all of these changes, can we still reach our climate targets? I don't know because at least reduction in emissions seems to be slowing down somewhat. So it's like, are we putting our targets into danger? Kind of an open question that might not be answered for you years. Mary Ann. Yeah. On environmental and particular nature laws, like the contradiction between what the commission says and then what it's willing to do is flagrant. Like the commission insists that competitiveness and the simplification agenda can contribute to the implementation of the green deal. They insist that these two go hand in hand, that there is no opposition of the two priorities. However, in practice, when you look at the proposals that they put on the table, environmental protection is constantly opposed to economic growth. For example, they're willing to relax water protection rules to allow more mining. The Austrian Chancellor recently was quoted in Politico saying that becoming greener cannot be our goal. It means becoming poor. I mean, the message is really clear that there is an opposition between environmental protection and competitiveness. And to hear the commission insists that the two can go hand in hand is really not aligned with what we're seeing in terms of deregulation proposals. Okay, we need to take a quick break that we'll be right back. Okay, let's bring Carlo in. You know, what makes this interesting is the timing. The same leaders listening to CO's on Wednesday are as we're recording now on Thursday at the Alden-Biesen Castle. Carlo, how directly does Antwerp shape today's retreat? I think the whole fact that we've been discussing the regulation and rolling back environmental rules this whole time shows that what Wednesday was about was about setting the tone and shaping the content for Thursday's more formal meeting. So I think there's another version of today's meeting that would be much more focused on French style economic policy. So looking at things like buy European clauses, protectionism, joint debt, state-led industrial policy, and the fact that's not happening is really because of Wednesday's meeting, I think. Yeah, that's interesting that these companies that many cases, you know, multinational industries are not seeking this sort of more protectionist by your piano approach. Another influential figure at the castle today is Mario Draghi. It's been over a year since his report on competitiveness was published. And so far, very few of his recommendations have been implemented. What do you think he's telling all these leaders? Is he still, you know, warning about a slow agony or are we closer to the funeral already? It has been grimly amusing watching Mario Draghi get increasingly pessimistic as if he's observing a patient dying. So indeed, he did talk about slow agony when presenting his competitiveness report. He then later warned that the window for change was closing. And most recently, he said that there's a future in which Europe is subordinated, divided and deindustrialized. So at the end of the day, Mario Draghi doesn't actually have any power. He has a lot of standing. And I think in using this language, he's trying to make the most of his moral swation to get leaders to take the problem seriously. So Karlo, can you just remind us what Draghi's top recommendations have been? And as you said, leaders, they really respect him. We just share tons of praise for Draghi. What's been holding them back from implementing these recommendations? Yeah, I mean, it is rather ironic, isn't it, that by all appearances, it seems like everyone completely agrees with Draghi and is totally behind him. And yet, when you look at the facts, barely any of his agenda has been implemented yet. And the same people who are praising him are the people in charge of pushing these reforms through. So it is a bit of a head scratcher. But I think what it comes down to is that what Draghi is recommending, let's say, very generally is a. gradual move to greater federalism, especially in the economy. So anytime we look at some part of the European economic system, let's say, and we find that it is divided or siloed, he says, "Look, if we join these bits up, we'll get greater economic efficiencies, we'll get more scale, and that will help drive growth." For example, with the energy grids, he says, we should join up the energy grids so that the places that are producing low-cost, renewable energy, or the case of France, nuclear energy, they can help power industry where it's more expensive, say, in Germany. It's the same with the financial system. We have 27 different banking systems and stock exchanges, and if we're able to take all of that money that's sloshing around and pull it together, we can then direct it much better and help European companies grow. Now, why isn't that happening? Because even though in practice, everyone agrees with the theory, politicians have constituencies that they need to cater to. So what happens in practice is that each country will have certain things where they'll be in favor of greater European integration, but then when it comes to certain different parts of their economy, they're much more protective. And when you play that out over and over again, you see what we have now, which is really a stall and a very slow pace of progress. I think that's a really good point because what is competitiveness? The pen's sort of a bit on who you ask. So you might ask in a case of, let's say, cars, Sweden, which might be concerned about a competitiveness of its electric cars, and Volvo, something like that. And then you might ask the Czech Republic, and they might say, oh, but we produce combustion engines, you know? So it's exactly what Carlos said. And I think that's also why the commission is so frustrated and why also the fondle line on Wednesday might have started being like, well, actually time for member states to do the erbit. We had, I mean, fondle line is floating more cooperation if unanimity blocks progress. She and Draghi both have been saying, look, maybe we need to find some ways to link up, even if not everybody gets on board. How significant is that, Carlo? Out of everything that I've heard come out of the summit so far, that seems to me one of the more important practical things, because I think more than a serious suggestion of a two-speed Europe, I think what fondle line is doing there is she's threatening the member states that aren't joining on board. She's saying, look, we can get the big Western European countries, France, Germany, Italy, Spain to work together on a capital markets union. And you know, if you don't want to join so be it, but what the countries that are outside of that capital markets union will find is that all the investors and all the savings and all the investment is going to flow out of their countries into that big pool that will have been created. So I think politically it's actually a very clever threat and I think generally a threat works better than carrots when it comes to politics. So yeah, good on her for doing that. Marianne, how much of this urgency that we're seeing in recent weeks is really about Donald Trump? You know, I don't know. I think Ursula von Erlein is under a lot of pressure from EU leaders to go full speed ahead on the deregulation drive. And when you speak to EU diplomats here in Brussels working daily on simplification files, they're not saying this is about U.S. relations. They're really saying that this is coming from the capitals and it's a national priority and we're tired of over regulation. So perhaps the fact that it's so important for national capitals is because of this new geopolitical reality that we're facing and because Trump has made U.S. relations so much more difficult. But let's not be fooled into thinking this is only about foreign relations. Like this is very much a national priority for many EU countries. Yeah, I think we have to keep in mind at the whole competitiveness rhetoric and green deal rollback predates Trump's election. For example, in Antwerp, like you didn't hear the word U.S. a lot. The country you heard most about was China. So I think really that is much more on on industry's minds and perhaps also like leaders minds is that like China is not becoming just export powerhouse. Karlo, you recently spoke with the head of the International Monetary Fund, Kristalina Georgieva. She's also a former European commissioner and she actually, she was a little more positive than those of us sitting in the studio. That's the ironic thing. Listening to leaders speak these past few days, you'd think that the European economy is cratering, that we're in the middle of a recession. But if you look at the numbers, Georgieva pointed out, we're not doing that badly. I mean, the American economy is expected to grow by around 2% in 2025. And for the EU, that number is 1.7%. So it's actually not a big difference. And if you drill down further, what you see is a very varied story in Europe. On the one hand, you have countries like Germany and France, where there's definitely some pretty big issues. But then you can look at countries like Spain, Portugal or Greece, which are showing very healthy growth, Portugal in particular. So I think we need to be a bit careful about talking about the European economy as if it's this one monolith. And just to add to that point, I think if we were to scrap all the environmental regulation and do this big bonfire of red tape, I mean, we could probably eke out a few decimals of percentage points. But I don't think that is fundamentally what is holding Europe back. I mean, what leaders are really worried about at the end of the day, as much as it is economic growth, it's technological development, which we're seeing out of the US and China, things like AI and semiconductor, manufacturing. And I don't think there it's environmental regulation that is holding us back. And to what Carlos said about that, you can save a few euros the end day with environmental deregulation. I think one thing that's always worth keeping in mind is that not doing anything about climate change has an economic cost. It's expensive to have a lot of extreme weather. As we record this, as we speak, Portugal, for example, has been battered by one brutal storm after another, like these kinds of storms. Maybe not this precise ones. There's not been a study on it, but they do get more frequent, more intense with climate change. And they have an economic cost. One of their main highways is going to be shut down for weeks because of that. That does have an economic impact. I'm actually really glad that you have both brought up Portugal, because our next discussion is going to be with Eitor Hernandez Morales, who is just covering the results of the Portuguese election. And what he observed is that voters there are really angry, and they perceive the economy to be garbage, even though as Carlos just said, it's actually doing pretty well. They just see their costs going up. And that really helps though understand why politicians are desperate to bring their voters a trophy and say, look what I got for you to try to reduce costs. But the message that I'm hearing from you is that like the thing that they're doing might not actually be solving the problem. Meanwhile, you know, the other headline in Politico this week was Friedrich Merz coming to Germans and basically saying, hey, you guys need to work a bit harder. And that does not seem to be going very well for him. So maybe a bit easier to just complain about environmental regs. As a German working on environmental regulation, you know, I think we're working quite a lot. Zia is a German who is working very hard. Carlo and Marianne are not Germans, but they are also working very hard. I will let you all get back to it. Thank you Zia. Thank you. Thanks, Sarah. Okay, as promised, we're going to discuss last weekend's elections in Portugal and what they tell us about the political dynamics around the continent. Joining me for that is Itora Hernandez Morales, Politico's Iberian Affairs expert also here in the studio. Itora, you're recently back from Lisbon where you covered the presidential elections for Politico. First of all, glad you made it safe and sound because there were some pretty gnarly floods there. It was the rainiest I've ever seen Lisbon, which is supposed to be one of the sunniest capitals in Europe, but I did not see the sun while I was there. Ad luck. It's funny you mentioned the weather because actually they had a major part to play in this second round of the presidential vote. We had an initial vote in January where the far right candidate and Draven Tura made it in as well as the guy who actually won or got the large share of the vote. Sarah left candidate and don't know, Zia, Seguro. And basically they were going into this election in the midst of relentless Atlantic storms hitting the country and really wreaking havoc. When the vote was held, you had mass disruptions on the railway lines. You had over 100,000 people without power. You had some areas that directly were flooded, voting was suspended in certain municipalities so they will be voting on Sunday, even though this election has already been settled. So it really was a situation with extraordinary circumstances and this for presidential elections, which generally don't have extremely high turnout, despite the fact that the president of Portugal, as head of state, has substantial powers, including the possibility of dissolving parliament and calling stop elections. He runs the army. Crucially, the president of Portugal kept Portugal out of the Iraq war, for example. So it really does give you some level of insight into how much power this figure does have. So who is the president elect of Portugal? So he's a really fascinating figure. This guy is Antonio Giseguro. If you've lived in Brussels long enough, you might have met him. He was an MEP here for a substantial amount of time in the 90s. Then he went back to Portugal to join Antonio Cuterres, the current. Secretary-General of the UN, when he was Prime Minister and he served as basically his right-hand man, and this meant became the head of the socialist party really was positioned to become, you know, the next Prime Minister whenever the socialist came into power until he ran into an up-and-coming political animal named Antonio Costa, at the time, Mayor of Lisbon, who successfully overthrew him and essentially hounded him out of the party. So this guy has been in the political wilderness, most people had forgotten he existed. In around 2023 he reappeared and gave this pretty noteworthy interview where he said that he was thinking of coming back into politics because he was so unhappy with the direction the country was going, with the men who was then Prime Minister Antonio Costa. And so last year he announced his long shot run for the presidency, few people really thought he'd be able to pull it off, but in fact, as Venturas possibilities for becoming President Rose, people coalesced around him because he is a very moderate left-wing figure, and ultimately he's been able to be elected. Okay, so that's interesting because he basically had to overcome two political rivals, one from his own political family, Antonio Costa, who will get to a bit later, but this is one of those elections where we're just as interested in how well the second-place party did. Yeah, so the guy that Segudo defeated on Sunday is André Ventura, he is the leader of the Shagua Party. He's a really fascinating figure because he actually started out as a politician for the center-right social democratic party. That's the party that's currently in power in Portugal. And he gained national attention in 2017 when he ran for local office and surprised everyone by making his campaign about his opposition to the Roma community. This was extremely unusual in Portugal and led to him receiving a lot of criticism, including from his own party. But even though he lost that election, he saw that this was mobilizing a part of the electorate that basically had been dormant since the 1974 Carnation Revolution. And so it's this electorate that's predominantly male, very, very conservative, in fact, ultra-nationalist, and pretty racist. And he saw that these people could be galvanized into action. Now he later founded the Shagua Party in 2019. Initially it was a bust. They ran for the European elections that year, got nothing. But he successfully got into the Portuguese parliament when legislative elections were held in the same year. And his dialogue began to change and wasn't just focused on this anti-Roma line, but became a broader, broadside against a corrupt establishment, mainstream parties that weren't doing anything for the dissatisfied citizenry. And he really has been able to keep building up and building up with this really significant frustration that exists in Portugal against the state. Worth noting, this is not a Portuguese phenomenon. We have looked at this many times in the podcast. There is broad dissatisfaction with what we would have referred to as the working classes before, with a lot of the mainstream parties that have governed in Europe over the past 50 years. And they really have flocked to extremist parties sometimes on the left and increasingly to the right, as we're seeing now in Portugal. We actually had you on the podcast last year when Shagua did really well, the name of the party means enough. And we talked about voter anger, really fueling people. And indeed, it seems like that anger was still pretty present in Portugal. Poles even showed that Ventura was ahead at least in the first round. So what happened in the end? Yeah, so just to underscore the meteoric rise that Shagua is having, this party has gone from having one MP in the parliament in 2019, Ventura, to now being the largest opposition party in Portugal. They really are a force to be reckoned with. And in terms of this election, so you are right that he was for quite a bit projected to be the winner of the election in polls. Essentially what happened was when he made it into the second round, what you saw was a mass movement to stop him. So a lot of really established conservative luminaries, people who would never, ever, ever think of endorsing the left wing came out and formally endorsed Antonias de Segudo. You had it obviously all of the prominent centrist and then the entire center left came out for him. So you really had a broad representation of the Portuguese electorate and more importantly, the most significant public figures in the country coming out to back him. Now he did not win the election, but it is absolutely worth looking at the results because ultimately Ventura secured 33% of the vote. So that means one out of every three voters ended up going for him. I think these are results that we should absolutely keep an eye on because they are indicators that would suggest that Ventura has the possibility of performing very well when legislative elections are held, especially if he continues taking advantage of his anti-establishment anti-corruption line. Speaking of corruption, corruption allegation against an ally is actually what forced Antonio Costa to step down as Portuguese prime minister. There's been no direct evidence tying him to these fraud allegations. But from what you're saying, I told you, it does strike me that the one thing that both candidates had in common was that they were running on a change campaign from the sort of situation that Costa had created. So it's worth reminding our listeners, if they're not aware that Costa left office in 2024 and then was still elected to be president of the European Council. We know him well here in Brussels. We see him on the streets. He's definitely still in the headlines. In terms of his figure in Portugal, I mean, he really has dominated the political landscape from 2015 to when he stepped down in 2024. And he is kind of this all-consuming figure that we can identify with how the country has evolved over the past decade for better or for worse. And the negative side to his legacy is that a lot of these core issues that are driving Shagas voters, so anger at the cost of living, and especially the cost of housing, anger over immigration, which has really grown dramatically over the past decade. And then just this perception that the mainstream political elites are corrupt, these are all issues that we can directly link to policies that were ongoing during Costa's time in office. And so it's a pretty tough legacy that he has to handle in that sense. I mean, strikingly, I think the vibe here in Brussels is that he's a pretty successful president of the European Council. Do you see him feeling any ripples of his sort of repudiation at home here in Brussels? I mean, Costa will always, I think, be cherished by left-wing voters in Portugal, and he was certainly representative of a very important moment for the country. The country had been suffering deeply in the aftermath of the Eurozone crisis. It was intervened by the Troika. They had no control over their finances. They were devastating cuts to public services. And people were really feeling that pain. And when Costa came in, he promised to turn the page on austerity. Now, there are many in Portugal who will tell you, of course, to essentially just deliver austerity with a smile because the investment in public services was very, very low for much of his time in office. But he gave the Portuguese people an opportunity to feel optimistic. This coincided with the tourism boom. So a lot of jobs were created. The problem that we're seeing in the long term is that much of the jobs that were created tied to that sector are low quality jobs. And ultimately, that tourism boom has raised the cost of living because it's attracted wealthy foreigners who are willing to pay a lot more for housing, a lot more for their local restaurants and who are ultimately displacing locals from places like Lisbon and Porto. In Brussels, though, I think his legacy in Portugal doesn't really matter. Ultimately, he was selected for this job because Costa is a proven and extremely skilled negotiator. He's very good at talking with people from all sides of the aisle. As we know from his very good relations, for example, the Viktor Orban, who could not be more ideologically opposed to him. So in that sense, I don't think anybody in Brussels is looking at, "Ooh, what a coach to do back in Portugal." I think they're more focused on, "Can he handle these council meetings?" Which, so far, he seems to be doing very, very well. All right. Thank you so much, I tour. No problem. And that's it for this week. You know, we've given you even more to listen to this week. Welcome to those new listeners who are joining from our new Daily Brussels Playbook podcast. You can subscribe to Brussels Playbook with EU Confidential on the same feed in your favorite podcast app. Radus, leave us a review and send your ideas and feedback to [email protected]. Thanks to Zoe DeYork for lending some extra production expertise and as always, to senior audio producer Deanna Sturis. I'm Sarah Wheaton. See you next week.