Less Beyoncé, more bouzouki

This week, music and politics collide. We're talking about Greece's plan to enforce quotas for Greek-language lyrics on the radio, and the racist backlash against Aya Nakamura's rumoured booking for the Paris Olympics. Plus, a great interview with Politico's senior climate reporter Zia Weise about the EU's once-trumpeted nature restoration law. Can the EU still claim to be a world leader when it comes to going green?

You can find Zia on Twitter here and read her reporting here.

The soundtrack to this week's episode: 'Doggy' by Aya Nakamura; 'Zari' by Marina Satti; 'White Foxes' by Susanne Sundfør. Also recommended this week: 'Smoke Sauna Sisterhood' and Utrecht’s fish doorbell.

Thanks for listening! If you enjoy our podcast, we'd love it if you'd consider chipping in a few bucks a month at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/europeanspodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (many currencies are available). You can also help new listeners find the show by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠leaving us a review⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or giving us five stars on Spotify.

00:22 Velkommen til The Europeans podcast!
02:23 Good Week: Aya Nakamura
10:35 Bad Week: The plan for Greek-language radio quotas
22:38 Interview: Zia Weise on the EU's nature restoration law
35:15 The Inspiration Station: Susanne Sundfør and 'Smoke Sauna Sisterhood'
38:43 Happy Ending: Utrecht's fish doorbell

Producers: Katy Lee and Wojciech Oleksiak
Mixing and mastering: Wojciech Oleksiak
Music: Jim Barne and Mariska Martina

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

00’22” - INTRODUCTION 

DOMINIC: Hello and welcome to The Europeans podcast. Or, hej og velkommen til Europeans podcast.

KATY: Oh! 

D: That's a special Danish welcome. I think.

K: Why the Danish? I mean, why not the Danish. But, why the Danish?

D: Because we've got quite a few new listeners in Denmark. We shot up the Danish podcast charts last week, thanks to a lovely review in a Danish magazine. 

K: Oh yeah!

D: So if you're new, thanks for joining us to hear about the serious and the silly things that Katy and I have found interesting in Europe over the past week.

K: Hello, Danes, nice to have you with us.

D: How are you over there, Katy in Paris?

K: I've got a very sore throat, so apologies for the very ill-sounding podcast you're about to hear. I thought it might sound like a sort of sexy ASMR podcast voice, but I actually think people are just going to hear this and think, ‘That woman needs to go see a doctor.’

D: You need to go and lie down.

K: But how are you, Dominic? Did you have a nice Easter break?

D: I had a very nice Easter break, finally sorting out my garden and pretending that it wasn't raining a bit.

K: That sounds suitably springy.

D: It does, right?

K: And speaking of nature…

D: Yes, speaking of nature. This week in our interview segment, we're going to be piercing the Brussels bubble and looking at a landmark law intended to protect biodiversity across the European Union. It's known as the EU nature restoration law, and it's been having a rather bumpy ride of late – that's a bit of an understatement – with some questioning whether it's actually going to be able to ever come into law. Later on the show will be calling up Zia Weise, an absolutely amazing climate reporter at Politico Europe. She'll help us understand why it is proving so difficult to pass and where it could be heading. But first, it's time for a very musical Good Week, Bad Week.

GOOD WEEK - 02’23”

D: Tell me Katy, who's had a good week?

K: I am staying in my own country of France, and I'm going to give Good Week to the biggest selling artist of the French-speaking world, Aya Nakamura. We’ve spoken about her on the show before. You might think from her name that she's Japanese. She's not, she's very much French. The name comes from the TV show ‘Heroes’, apparently the teenage Aya was a fan of the show. And if you watched it, you'll remember this character called Hiro Nakamura who shouted ‘yatta!’ all the time. So her performing name is Japanese, but Aya is French, her family arrived in France from Mali in West Africa when she was a baby. And you can hear African influences in her music, along with influences from French Caribbean islands like Guadeloupe and Martinique.

D: I understand from you that this is like a really big story in the Francophone world, but I'm quite confronted to admit that I actually hadn't heard about it until you brought it up. 

K: That's okay. That's why I'm here.

D: Could you give me like a very quick lowdown of why she's been in the headlines for the last couple of weeks?

K: Yeah, so she's been in the headlines over the last couple of weeks because of the frankly sickening racist abuse that has been directed at her after rumours emerged that she might be performing a song by the French musical legend Edith Piaf at the opening ceremony for this summer's Olympic Games in Paris. The idea of a black artist performing a tribute to the icon of chanson française was apparently too much for the racists in my country. Aya has suffered a ton of racist abuse online, there's actually been a criminal investigation opened into it. And some far-right morons held up a banner on the river Seine that read, ‘There's no way this is happening Aya, this is Paris, not a market in Bamako.’ Bamako being the capital of Mali where Aya was born. So it's been pretty vile, and far-right politicians have also not wasted this opportunity to play to their audience. Marine Le Pen accused the president, Emmanuel Macron, of seeking to ‘divide’ and ‘humiliate’ France by giving Aya the top billing at the Olympic opening ceremony. Not because Aya is black, of course, but because she is, quote unquote, vulgar. You might be gratified to know that anti-racism campaigners responded to Le Pen's comments by blaring out Aya Nakamura’s music outside her office and holding up a sign that said, ‘France is not humiliated by black people, France is humiliated by racists.’

D: Powerful statement. 

K: It is, yeah. 

D: What a horrible thing for Aya herself to have to go through. 

K: It's hugely upsetting. And I think the fact that this was even controversial in the first place, it casts a very ugly light on just how racist France can be sometimes. You know, this is a country that proclaims very loudly how colour-blind it is. So the idea of a black artist representing France on the world stage should not at all be controversial given how phenomenally successful she is. Aya Nakamura has 9 million monthly Spotify listeners. Every time she announces a live date it sells out in minutes. Why wouldn't she sing the opening ceremony, you know? So it's been quite an eye-opener and a reminder of just how hard some French people find it to accept any kind of non-white culture as mainstream culture, even when it is utterly mainstream, like Aya’s music is. It's also depressing because Aya grew up in Seine-Saint-Denis, the suburb just north of Paris, where quite a lot of the events for the Olympics are taking place. It's not a rich suburb, and there's been quite a lot of regeneration money poured into it ahead of the Games. And there's been a lot of talk about celebrating Seine-Saint-Denis during the Olympics. Aya Nakamura is probably the most famous person to come from there, alongside the footballer Kylian Mbappé. So she'd be the perfect singer to open the Games. But the very idea of it seems to have been intolerable for a certain portion of French society.

D: Has she said anything herself publicly about what she's been going through with this awful racism? 

K: Yeah, a couple of times already, not necessarily how she feels about it, but she did respond in tweet form to that horrible banner that those far-right nutters held up by the river Seine. And she tweeted in response to them, ‘I owe you nothing.’ She's also pointed out, maybe quite flippantly, that a lot of people are probably discovering the music of Edith Piaf thanks to her, which I find quite funny. But the reason I want to give Aya Nakamura Good Week this week is that she has a new single out. It's called Doggy. And this song appears to respond to her racist detractors.

[SOUND CLIP]

K: She sings, ‘I don't have enemies, it's them who don't like me, a ton of enemies, but I don't even know them.’ Which I actually think is quite classy. She's basically saying, you know, ‘These people are totally irrelevant to me. I am incredibly successful, I don't need to worry about these idiots.’ She sings later on in the song, ‘I don't need validation. I'm on the front cover of every magazine.’ And the lyrics are also a bit of a middle finger stuck up to Marine Le Pen. One of Le Pen’s complaints about Aya singing at the opening ceremony is that she, quote unquote, doesn't sing in French. And it's true that Aya mixes a lot of different languages into her lyrics, sometimes English words, sometimes Spanish. Also Arabic, bits of Malian dialect, some Roma words. And it's one of the things that people really love about her, this creativity that she has with language. I will say that this is something that makes her lyrics particularly impenetrable to older listeners. A few years ago, there was this Belgian singer called Jonathan Krego, who's also black, he released a version of Aya’s biggest hit, Djadja, in standardised French for like non-cool people to be able to understand it. And it went totally viral. People loved it. But to some extent, her lyrics do echo the way that young French people in city suburbs do actually talk. It is a really multilingual environment. And kids in the Paris suburbs do often sprinkle in words of Arabic and West African languages, even when those are the languages of their own families. So Le pen says that Aya doesn't sing in French; this is French, but it's a melting pot version of French, which is of course everything that Le Pen hates. But you know, as a lot of people have pointed out, French is a living language, it changes. And if we banned people that mess around with language, we wouldn't have poets like Baudelaire.

D: It's so depressing, and also very predictable that far-right politicians like Le Pen would try and instrumentalise this racist abuse and use it like as a dog whistle issue for her supporters. Isn't there a risk, though, for her that this is going to backfire on Le Pen? That actually, Aya is so popular, that people will think it's completely ridiculous.

K: I think so. And I hope so. And it also serves as a reminder that, you know, Le Pen, like quite a few other far-right leaders around Europe, have been really trying to soften their image in recent years and look like, ‘We're not we're not racists, we're just nationalists, it’s different.’ But this to me is very, very obvious racism. Perhaps her supporters won't see it that way. But for me, it looks like a bit of an own goal.

D: And I guess the big question is, presumably, this isn't going to affect Aya’s chances of singing in the Olympics? 

K: Well, this is what I'm wondering. You know, the crazy thing is that there were only ever rumours that she was going to perform in the first place, it was never confirmed that she'd been booked to do it. I kind of feel like the chances of her performing have gone up as a result of this row. You know, from the organisers’ point of view, if she doesn't sing, it will look like they let the racist win. And I also think from her own perspective, this is a very good opportunity to say screw you to the racists. So I hope she does do it, and I hope she makes a ton of extra money doing it. 

D: It's interesting that this comes in the week that Beyoncé, over the other side of the Atlantic, has released a country album, including a cover of ‘Jolene’ by Dolly Parton. There was one country radio station that refused to play the first single from that album.

K: Oh, for God's sake. 

D: But in the end, it was, yeah, they got too much pressure from the listeners saying, hey, we want to hear this song. So I hope these people who are trying to gate-keep these music traditions and keep them only for white people, I hope these racists learn that that's a battle they're going to lose.

K: I hope so too. And speaking of the radio, who's had a bad week?

BAD WEEK - 10’35”

D: I'm giving Bad Week to the Greek culture ministry, who are receiving a ton of criticism for a proposed law that would mandate that 45% of all music played on Greek radio and in public spaces in Greece must be songs that contain words of the Greek language.

K: Interesting.

D: Now, it's interesting, following on from your discussion of racism in the French music industry, because I think promoting Greek language in music and promoting Greek musicians in a very English-language dominated global pop market doesn't necessarily have to be seen as a terrible idea. But I am proposing, nonetheless, that this bill warrants a bad week because of how the bill is constructed. 

K: Well, what's wrong with it?

D: Well, one of the major criticisms is that the bill in its current form exclusively promotes music with Greek lyrics. So Greek musicians who make instrumental music, Greek orchestral music, lots of Greek jazz, or Greek musicians who sometimes sing in other languages than Greek, they will not count towards this quota. And that is seen by many as a huge flaw in this law. And for some people, it also harkens back to the tactics of the junta, the rightwing military dictatorship of the late 60s and early 70s. Back then, the censorship of music was used as a means of control and propaganda. The music of the Beatles, for example, was banned within days of the junta coming into power. And according to the research professor Anna Papaeti from the University of Cyprus, the dictatorship heavily utilised folk music in mass media in order to help solidify the relationship between the junta and Greek national identity. So the echoes of that nationalistic control over culture might explain at least some of the resistance to this bill, which has come strongly from the left-wing opposition parties, but also from many working artists in Greece, and also from institutions like the Hotel Federation of Greece, who have warned that if this bill passes, they might take music out of their hotels entirely. 

K: That's quite a strong reaction. 

D: Yeah, it is. And they're not the only ones. The Audiovisual Producers’ Association of Greece also came out strongly against the bill because the bill not only affects radio stations, hotels, shops, and places in public space who play music, but it also creates restrictions for what music Greek filmmakers can use if they are accepting public money for the financing of their films.

K: Oh, so like a film that is partly funded by Greek public funding would have to have, like a certain percentage of the soundtrack has to be in Greek?

D: Yeah, apparently 70% of the music they use in their films would have to be Greek-language songs, or orchestral pieces based on Greek-language songs. 

K: Wow. 

D: And the Audiovisual Producers’ Association put out a very strong statement on Facebook accusing the bill of censorship and as being against freedom of expression. They said, ‘We are confident that the Ministry of Culture will realise the inappropriate, irrational and unconstitutional dimension of the proposed provision and will withdraw it from the final text of the bill.’

K: I mean, how would they even police this policy? Like, if ay hotel decided to play wall-to-wall Beyoncé instead of bouzouki, are they going to get busted for that?

D: Yeah, potentially they would be. Apparently there's an idea to fine venues between 2000 and 20,000 euros, which seems like a lot of money to me. It's important to note that music venues and bars and nightclubs are excluded from the law, which is logical, but I really don't know how on earth they would enforce this in the case of hotels and shops. Like, imagine being that enforcement officer that goes to sit in the hotel lobby with Shazam in one hand all day, noting down all the songs and then working out if 45% of them contained only Greek lyrics. 

K: That's quite a good job. I want that job. 

D: Yeah, maybe I do too. But yeah, this is one of the many criticisms of the law, that it is unenforceable. But on the other hand, yes it will help promote some Greek musicians. aAd quick sidebar, I've been really enjoying a Greek song with Greek lyrics. That is the Greek entry for Eurovision this year, up there with Italy as one of my top songs in the competition. And it’s… 

K: Oh my god,  we actually agree for once. We normally completely disagree. I'm also quite fond of Italy's entry.

D: What's going on? Anyway, the Greek song is called Zari, and it's by Marina Satti. Do you wanna listen to a bit of it?

K: Yeah, let’s do it. 

[SOUND CLIP]

K: Oh, I like it.

D: I like it too. And I actually really love the sound of the Greek language in song.

K: Presumably, there are quite a few musicians who are really happy about this, who are maybe gonna get more airtime than they would have done previously. 

D@ Yeah, I'm sure there are. And as I said, at the beginning, the idea of promoting music in languages other than English, which so dominates so much of the pop industry, it's not a bad idea in general. It's mainly that lots of people are unhappy with how this bill has been designed. Because of course, some songwriters and singers will be thrilled if this bill passes, or at least a version of this bill passes. It's really not easy being a musician in this day and age when you make hardly anything from having your music played on one of the streaming services. And I'm really sympathetic to the idea of celebrating local culture. And I do want to live in a world where there's a huge diversity in the kind of music we can experience during our local traditions and historical traditions. And we really don't need to have a global music industry where everything sounds the same and everything is in English. So maybe this law will evolve into something that more people can embrace. I should point out that this law is at this stage merely a draft piece of legislation and the Greek culture ministry, led by centre-right politician Lina Mendoni, have said they will listen to feedback and adjust the bill if necessary. She also defended the bill by citing statistics that show that Greek music amounts to only 30% of what is heard in Greece. 70% of the music around is foreign music. Also, it's not the first time a bill like this has emerged, aiming to protect local artists and local language. And with that in mind, I actually wanted to ask you about a somewhat similar law that's been around for quite a long time in France, Katy? 

K: Yeah.

D: Some of the defenders of this Greek law have been saying, hey, well, France has a law like this, that actually goes a bit further in some ways than the Greek one. So do you know anything about it? And do you know if it was also controversial, or if it still is?

K: Yeah, so glad you asked. It was brought in in the 90s by this guy called Jacques Toubon. He was the culture minister at the time. And he was really one of these people who felt very strongly that the French language needed protecting from the creeping anglicisation of the world, which was a fairly new threat at the time in the 90s. He hated the fact that brands were starting to sprinkle English words into their advertising and that people were starting to do this in everyday life as well. So he brought in a package of policies to protect the French language. One of them was his policy where the government isn't allowed to use widely used English words like ‘email’ in their official communications, they had to say ‘courriel’. And Toubon was mocked a fair bit for that at the time. But yeah, he also put in these music quotas for the radio, most stations have to play, I think it's about 40%, French language music. There's also a second rule that says that at least 20% of the music has to be new, which I think is really good, that allows new artists a bigger chance to get heard. And every few years, it feels like politicians start debating this idea again, like, should we have these quotas at all? If we have them, should we change the percentages? I don't know. I feel kind of mixed about it. Part of me thinks people should just be able to listen to whatever they like. And the other part of me, as you've been saying, you know, the other part of me thinks if I wasn't a native English speaker, and I was trying to become a successful musician, I might feel like the odds are stacked against me globally. Which, by the way, is something that makes Aya Nakamura extra cool, I think. She could have decided that she had more of a chance of conquering a global audience as she sang in English, but she wants to sing in French. That's her language. So she sings in French. But she is a rarity, you know? Like for lots of international artists trying to make a success in themselves, it just makes business sense to sing in English. And that's a bit sad. 

D: Yeah, that is sad. And that's also why, yeah, I feel a little bit conflicted about giving Bad Week to the Greek culture ministry. But we have a very binary system here at The Europeans podcast. One person gets Good Week and one person gets Bad Week! But also, the bill does seem to be designed pretty badly. So I think I'm okay with sticking with that. This bill also reminds me of an EU-wide law in a different creative industry. in the TV and film industry, that we discussed a long time ago on this podcast. There's this EU law that mandates that film and TV streaming services that offer their platforms in the EU have to produce at least 30% of their content within the EU.

K: Yeah.

D: That's something that's done a huge amount for the European film and TV industry. So these bills can really help. There's actually a new bill in the Netherlands that came in at the beginning of this year that takes it a bit further, meaning the streaming companies who offer their services in the Netherlands have to invest at least 5% of their Dutch turnover into productions that have some kind of connection to the Netherlands specifically. And according to the Ministry of Culture in the Netherlands, that bill is expected to reap around 40 million euros of investment in the Dutch film and TV industry. There are, of course, criticisms of this bill as well, especially that it doesn't go far enough. But it's yet another example of European countries trying to stimulate the making of art and entertainment in their own countries, which has become harder and harder now that we live in this increasingly globalised world of streaming, dominated by just a handful of big streaming giants, with a handful of people making profit and making decisions at the top of that, across the whole world. Anyway, I'm sure this is an issue we're going to keep coming back to, partly because I find it really fascinating, but for this week, I’m giving Bad Week to the Greek culture ministry for all the criticism they've got for this proposed bill.

* * *

K: Sometimes I worry that the better we get at making this podcast, the less people think that we need money. Because we've gotten quite good over the years at making it sound like we're just having a chat, like a quite nerdy, well informed chat about Europe, but a chat nonetheless. But actually, listeners, just let you in on a secret, a huge amount of research goes into making this show every week. And then we disguise it as a fun chat, because it makes the delivery of information more fun for everyone. So, making this show is a lot of work. And the only reason that we can still do it, seven years in, is because of the brilliant people who fund this operation.

D: Yes. Thank you all so much for deciding to voluntarily give us a little bit of your money to help keep this show going. If you'd like to join them, if you've been leaning towards maybe wanting to support us, why don't you do it this week and head over to patreon.com/europeans, where you can find out what benefits we have to offer to people who support this little independent podcast of ours. This week, we have a few lovely people to thank for joining our club of Patreon supporters. Thank you to Anne, João, and Sven. 

[KATY COUGHS]

D: Oh, you poor thing.

K: I might also buy myself some cough sweets out of this Patreon funding.

INTERVIEW WITH ZIA WEISE - 22’38”

K: Every so often, the EU comes out with a bit of legislation and I think to myself, ‘This seems important, when I have a bit more time I will look into this properly and figure out what it's all about.’ And then I don't do it because I’m busy. And the EU law on nature restoration is really one of those bits of legislation. I don't know about you, Dominic, but I kept seeing headlines about it being this increasingly ambitious piece of environmental legislation, I mean, it includes plans to plant 3 billion trees, open up 25,000 kilometres of dammed waterways, it would set targets for restoring damaged ecosystems and all kinds of ways. So it seemed important. And then I just kind of wouldn't get round to looking at it more closely. 

D: Yeah, it did sound really increasingly impressive, until it started sounding decreasingly impressive.

K: Well, that's the thing, before I knew it, about a week ago, I started seeing headlines saying that this entire law was at serious risk of total collapse, because several European member states were refusing to support it. What happened? You might not be surprised to hear that this has something to do with the farmer protests that have been sweeping this continent. There have been accusations from farming lobbies for a while now that this legislation is going to damage farmers income. And because of that pressure, the plans have actually already been significantly watered down. Now, it turns out that this law might not happen at all. So I thought it was about time, before it dies completely, that I finally paid a little bit more attention to this whole thing. And I thought I'd pull you all along for the ride with me. I can't be the only person who's had getting to grips with this big important law on my to do list. And it was one very obvious person to speak to about the nature of restoration law. Zia Weise, senior climate reporter at Politico. We gave her a ring in Brussels.

Z: Hi Zia, thanks so much for joining us today.

ZIA WEISE: Hi!

K: Yay, hi Zia.

Z: Thanks for having me.

D: I'd like to start by taking us back to some of the basics. Why is an EU-wide nature restoration bill necessary?

Z: So, that's because nature in the EU is in a pretty bad state. The European Environment Agency found about 80% of the EU’s ecosystems are considered degraded. So the idea of having some legislation to respond to that came from that, I would assume.

K: I mean, And when we look at the law that's currently on the table, which is in doubt anyway, what we have right now has already been watered down from the original version right to placate farmers and politicians on the right. To what extent is the bill that we currently have still something for environmentally minded people to get excited about?

Z: Right. It still has those big flashy targets, and like it mandates that Europe should restore 20% of its damaged land by the end of this decade, and all of it by 2050. So for those targets, I think that's why a lot of the law’s proponents are still fighting for it. But as you said, yeah, it's been really watered down in a lot of other aspects, like, a lot of details, a lot of sub-targets, and a lot of more stringent targets, especially for agricultural areas, have been scrapped entirely.

D: And what is it about these laws that has been creating so much opposition from farmers specifically? Do they still have justifiable concerns about this set of bills, even after all the changes that have already been made?

Z: I think there's a few things going on here. In some ways, this law has become a symbol of the Green Deal and what some people object to with the Green Deal. So it's kind of become larger than life. It depends on also which farmers you ask, right? I think a lot of farmers protesting have real issues with EU bureaucracy, a lot of them saying it's basically a job in itself, and so much red tape, and so many regulations, and now you're adding all of these green regulations. Then there's people that instrumentalise farmers’ concerns and say, you know, we shouldn't have these targets at all. So I think it's important to make a distinction there. But as far as farms are concerned, like the rules in that law have been made voluntary for them. So there's not really any reason why that specific law should bring people out on the streets. And it is, in a way, not that specific law. It's just what that law stands for.

K: Is it possible to argue, though, that EU lawmakers have failed really in designing a bill in a way that makes farmers feel like they've been part of this process and brought along with it and, and have had their needs listened to?

Z: Yeah, I think that's possible. I think the EU very late in the process realised that dialogue is important. It started a series of dialogues only after that general backlash started. 

K: That's not great! 

Z: No! And given that a lot of the perception here that is they’re, like, top-down rules being imposed by Brussels, which in a way they are, you know, you can say this wasn't handled in the best way. But again, this law was also blown out of proportion in a way by various factions.

D: And what do you think the chances are currently that this bill will actually be able to pass before the parliamentary term is up? 

Z: That's a really good question. In EU law-making, a law passes several stages, right? It's passed in Parliament, and Parliament's last session is in mid April. So if the Council, which are the EU member states, want to change anything about this at all, they technically have to put it back through Parliament again. That makes things really complicated. So I think right now, there’s just this hope that they can just convince one of these countries that’s against it, to still vote for the current version, so you don't have to reopen all of these negotiations. Which probably would mean that it can't be done before the end of this term. So it really hinges on if they can convince one of these handful of countries that's either planning to abstain or vote against – because an abstention in EU law counts as a vote against – to change their minds. 

D: I think it's very unlikely that my country of residence, the Netherlands, is going to be convinced to change their mind, seeing as the Dutch parliament voted pretty strongly to ask the Dutch representative to vote against this bill. But are there other countries where it's maybe more likely that they could turn this around? 

Z: Maybe. So in a really strange way a lot of hope rests on Hungary, which is not really a country you want to bet a Green deal on. But some countries will have to vote against, in air quotes, the law because their parliament told them so, right? It's the Netherlands, and Belgium and Austria, their coalitions or their respective regions don't agree. So the government can't unilaterally go forward. There’s Sweden and Finland who are like normally actually quite ambitious when it comes to climate, but they really don't want the EU to meddle with their forests. So they probably can't be convinced. It’s kind of Poland and Hungary. Especially Hungary basically did a last minute u-turn and was actually going to vote in favour of the law. And then a couple of weeks ago said actually no, for no real reason that anyone knows. So there are some people speculating that okay, what can we give Hungary? But then again, no one knows what they actually want. 

K: Without knowing the details, it does sound like Viktor Orbán doing his usual thing of using the EU as a way to play strategic games and get what he wants.

Z: Yeah, that's what a lot of people say behind closed doors. 

K: Oh, Viktor. If this law doesn't pass before the end of April, and it’s looking unlikely with my pessimist hat on, that it will – is there any chance that might be taken up maybe in a different form by the next EU Commission after the elections? 

Z: Yeah, I mean, in theory, the member states could just keep negotiating in a new term as well, or they could try to reopen as legislation with the parliament and find some new deal between the two institutions. It's also possible that the Commission could withdraw the law if they don't think it's gonna get a majority. But there's been no signals that that's happening so far. Yeah, right now, it's just sort of in limbo. 

D: And if it does have to go back to the parliament in any kind of adjusted form, it's a bit scary if it happens after the elections, because if the polls are anything to go by, it looks like the green-minded political party groupings are going to have less of a presence and less of a clear majority anyway, in the next parliament. So that's a bit scary, isn't it? 

Z: Yeah. And in Parliament, this law has just about scraped through. So we did run like a very rough calculation of, had the law been voted on in the next parliament, as the polls currently stand, a more right-wing Parliament, would it have passed? And the answer's no, it wouldn't have. That's true, that's also an additional factor.

K: I mean, how much does the political wrangling over these laws right now, How much has that got to do with the fact that elections are coming up?

Z: A huge amount. To me, that started about a year ago with the Dutch municipal elections, actually, because that's when the conservatives started getting really nervous about the rural vote, because they lost a huge amount to this upstart party in the Netherlands that was like a farmer citizen movement, thus upstart populist movement claiming to represent farmers. Because the Netherlands had this issue already, where a lot of farmers were really angry at environmental regulations about farm emissions. And really, just after that, you started seeing the main EU Conservative Party, the European People's Party, objects to more and more elements of the Green Deal that's especially targeting agriculture or like nature, or would affect farmers. And that's only ramped up really over the last few months in combination with these farmers protests, and as we get closer and closer to the EU elections.

D: A couple of years ago, it really felt like the EU was kind of leading the world on fighting climate change with these big policy initiatives, like the Green Deal. As a journalist covering this day in day out, does it still feel like that to you?

Z: I mean, to be fair, the EU does have some really ambitious laws in place now. I think, it’s entirely fair to say that, you know, if you look sort of at the rest of the world, there's no economy of a comparable size that has such ambitious rules in place. And a lot of deals were put in place over the last few years by a centre-right led Commission right, by the Commission led by Ursula von der Leyen. I think where things are looking a bit less certain is really anything to do with nature, because I think we now have a situation where across the political spectrum, there's this acceptance that like, you know, renewables are good, because they make us more independent from Russia, for example, you don't have to import gas, you know, it's good for our planet. So a lot of the energy and industry case for climate laws is there in the minds of people also on the conservative side. And that's not yet, at least, the case with nature and agriculture. I think in a lot of groups that's seen as a bit of, like, a ‘nice to have’ aspect of environmental lawmaking, rather than something that might be essential to our well-being. So I think that's looking a lot less certain, if the EU can meet, for example, biodiversity targets that it’s set itself.

* * *

D: I find that distinction that Zia just put, between the nature side of climate change laws and the renewable energy transition side as being two completely different strands with different groups of supporters, I found that really interesting. I hadn't heard it so clearly put before.

K: Super interesting. Yeah, it's something that's actually come up in my other work recently, but I didn't really appreciate until quite recently that you can have a policy that is good for the climate, but not good for nature, like things like, you know, a hydroelectric power station, for example, that's something that might produce a bunch of low carbon energy, but to build it, you might have to divert a river and disrupt nature in all kinds of ways. Tricky. 

D: Yeah, it is tricky.

K: If you are interested in environmental policy at an EU level, there is no better person to follow online than Zia. You will find a link to her Twitter in the show notes.

THE INSPIRATION STATION - 35’15”

K: It's time to chug into the inspiration station. What have you been enjoying this week Dominic?

D: I recently became obsessed with a Norwegian musician… who sings in English. Susanne Sundfør. Various people have recommended her music to me over the past years, and I ignored them all until now, so apologies for ignoring my friends. Because her voice is so haunting and beautiful. And I'm so glad I've now finally got into her. She's been releasing albums since 2007, so I'm very late to the party. One thing that's really interesting about her is in 2017, she released an album that was kind of a response to the anxiety she felt around climate change, called ‘Music for People In Trouble.’

K: Great title. 

D: Yeah, she said to the Daily Telegraph at the time that the album was about trying to find a way to stay sane and calm. And her music does make me feel sane and calm. And the song I'm most obsessed with is actually from an earlier album. It's kind of an electro folky song called White Foxes.

[SOUND CLIP]

D: I recommend it as a soundtrack to your walk to the bus stop. It gives it a nice like cinematic epic boost.

K: I love doing that, trying to make a sort of film soundtrack for all the boring things I'm seeing out of the bus window.

D: It's great, isn't it? She's called Susanne Sundfør and she grew up in Haugesund in Norway. What have you been enjoying, Katy, from your sick bed?

K: From my sick bed… Well, actually nothing, I've just been lying down and coughing. So I'm going to steal my recommendation from our listeners this week. A couple of you have recommended a beautiful Estonian film called ‘Smoke Sauna Sisterhood’. And it's a documentary following a group of women over about a year, I think, going to this one smoke sauna. I have to say I don't know too much about Estonia's smoke sauna culture. It's predominantly a tradition in the southeast of the country. And it's different from other saunas you might have been to and that there is no chimney. So the smoke from the burning word circulates in the room, which doesn't seem like something that would be very good for my lungs right now.

D: That sounds like it's gonna be so unhealthy!

K: Estonians, please write in and tell us more about how this works. I'm intrigued. But the whole ritual involves some of the more familiar parts of sauna tradition, like plunging into icy water, as well as sitting in this really intense steam. Anyway, everyone who has watched this film says that it is gorgeous. It is a celebration of the intimacy between the women visiting this sauna. Francesca wrote in to say, ‘I found it beautiful, delicate touching, and the photography was a work of art.’ She also said that if you can't find this film in your local cinema, have a look and see if there's any community groups doing screenings. Because where she is, the feminist association bought the rights to it and gave people a chance to see it. I can't wait to watch this one.

D: Neither can I. I want to go and see it.

HAPPY ENDING - 38’43”

D: For my happy ending this week, I wanted to tell you about a project to help migrating fish in the Dutch city of Utrecht. And it made me so happy. As we've discussed on the show before, dams and locks can block the necessary passage of migrating fishes in rivers and canals who need to travel along the stream freely to get to spawning grounds. It's a big problem. And there are lots of locks and dams in my country, the Netherlands. So it's something that really has to be dealt with here. There are some already existing solutions like fish ladders which work but are very expensive to install… 

K: Fish ladders!

D: Fish ladders.

K: Sorry, I'm sure that's a very serious innovation, but I'm just imagining fish trying to climb a ladder and it's making me giggle.

D: They actually look really cool. Didn't I once post a video of a fish ladder in Erfurt?

K: It sounds familiar, now that you mention it.

D: Maybe it's one of those things I like took a video of for Instagram and then was too embarrassed to post, because that's what always happens. Anyway, back to Utrecht, there are solutions like fish ladders, but in the city of Utrecht, they've come up with a very novel idea, a charmingly ingenious solution that is making people across the world very happy. They have installed a doorbell for the fish. 

K: That's even sillier than a fish ladder. How do the fishies press the doorbell?

D: Well, when the fishes get to the doorbell…

K: Why do we keep calling them fishies? Are we four years old?

D: I don't know, because I feel like fish in plural sounds like really boring and dry to me. 

K: Fishes. 

D: Anyway, when the fish arrive at the closed doors of the lock, there's a camera watching. And people are watching a live stream of the lock all across the world. And if someone sees a fish passing, they press the doorbell for that fish. 

K: That’s so cool. So I can do this from here, right now?

D: You can do this now, if the website isn't full, because it's incredibly popular. I've actually had the live stream open in a tab on the side of my computer for the whole of this recording session just in case a fish would come by. So far, no fish have come by. But if it did, I would have pressed that bell which would send a photo to the ecologists who would then decide whether or not to open the lock for the waiting fishies.

K: This is so cool. I'm on the website now and it says, ‘See a fish, ring the bell.’

D: The fish doorbell has actually been around since 2021. But this year, it's really taken off. Two ecologists behind this project now release a weekly fish doorbell news report during migration season, which is now. You can find that on YouTube, and they show you some of the fish that have been seen in the past week. In last week's report, there were lots of fresh water bream spotted they're very busy migrating right now. They saw whole schools of the common roach. And they've seen a surprising number of eels pass by this year. 

K: Oh, cool.

D: Sounds like you're really excited.

K: No, sorry. I'm just distracted because I'm looking at the live stream. I'm just squinting at it. And what I hadn't quite appreciated before we started talking about this is that most of the time, it just looks like a solid screen of murky green water.

D: Yeah, it does. That's true. But I find it strangely calming, having it open like alongside my work on the side of my computer.

K: It’s very nice. 

D: You might just see a fish. Yeah, and as I said, it's become so popular that sometimes you can't get onto the website because too many people are trying to access it. Last year, 1.2 million people visited the website over the whole year, which they already thought was huge. But this year, 1.2 million people visited it just in the first month that it was up and running.

K: Wow! 

D: Anyway, it made me really happy. So go and check out the fish doorbell in Utrecht and don't do what one guy did, which was, he swam down to be seen to have his face on camera. Yeah, really don't do that. It's not good for the fish. It's dangerous for you. Not recommended.

* * * 

K: That's it for this week. I need to stop talking for a while. But maybe I'll carry on this conversation by writing some social media posts instead. We're on Instagram, Twitter Threads and Mastodon – all over the place. The links are in the show notes. 

D: This week's episode was produced by Katy Lee and Wojciech Oleksiak. Thank you both. We'll be back next week with a talk about the transfer of generational wealth across six centuries. It's a really interesting issue. Catch us in your feed on Thursday, as usual. 

K: See you then. 

D: Bye!

K: Tschüss!