What is Europe up to on Africa's borders?

Once upon a time, European powers drew up borders in Africa as part of their colonisation of the continent. These days the EU is increasingly interested in those borders again — including the idea of placing its own agents there to stop migrants heading towards Europe. This week we hear from investigative journalist Andrei Popoviciu about how EU funds are being used to police West African borders, often with a disturbing lack of scrutiny. We're also talking about Italy's #10secondi outrage, France's plan to subsidise clothing repairs, and artistic revenge in the 16th century.

This is our last episode of the summer but we'll be hard at work until our return in September, preparing episodes for the autumn. If you enjoy our podcast and would like to help us keep making it, 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. 

You can read Andrei's investigation here in In These Times, and we'll post a link to the French version in Le Monde as soon as it's out. You can follow Andrei on Twitter here.  

The episode we made with Andrei last year about EU border agency Frontex can be found here. The graphics Katy mentioned on how Europeans dispose of unwanted clothes can be found here, and the Guardian's exclusive report about Dürer's sassy revenge on his boss is here. 

And if you have a few minutes to spare, we'd be really grateful if you could fill in a quick survey to help us improve the podcast. You can find it here.

00:22 Go away, Heatwave Charon

03:41 Bad Week: Italy's 10-second assault case

08:11 Good Week: France's discounts for clothes repairs

18:43 Interview: Andrei Popoviciu on the EU's migration policy in Africa

32:37 Isolation Inspiration: Maro's Tiny Desk Concert and Afropop

36:32 Happy Ending: Revenge on bad bosses, 16th century-style

Producers: Katy Lee and Wojciech Oleksiak

Mixing and mastering: Wojciech Oleksiak

Music: Jim Barne and Mariska Martina

Twitter | Instagram | hello@europeanspodcast.com

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

INTRODUCTION - 00’22”

DOMINIC: Hi, Katy.

KATY: Bonjour, bonjour.

D: Did you drag yourself away from the pool?

K: I'm having a terrible time, Dominic, I'm tragically recording this week's episode from the south of France. The show’s on a bit of a summer holiday as of next week, but I thought I'd kick things off early and come down on the train to the beautiful Var region. And I did consider recording this from the swimming pool, but I thought that would be taking the piss. And I also didn't want to get the microphone wet.

D: There’d be quite some acoustical challenges with that as well.

K: Well, there are already, so apologies, I'm in a very tile-y room.

D: I kind of feel really envious. And there's another part of me that’s like, ‘Oh, God, you're in the south of France.’ Are you okay? It's so hot.

K: Yeah, not gonna lie, I am spending a lot of time inside the house looking out at the swimming pool, because it is indeed going to be pushing 40 degrees most of this week. Maybe not the best time to come down here. But I'm here with my British family who haven't quite got the memo yet about not coming to Southern Europe at this time of the year. 

D: It's pretty bleak, isn't it? 

K: Yeah, I hope everyone's staying cool out there. It's just looking really crazy across an entire swathe of southern Europe right now. So, wishing everyone luck.

D: Yeah, stay safe everyone, and come and hang out in rainy old London where I am. 

K: Sounds great. 

D: People have never been so envious of rainy London as they are these weeks. I'm sorry, I shouldn't be rubbing it in people's faces. I hope everyone's okay. As Katy mentioned, this is our last episode of the season. We're very sorry to be abandoning you for a bit. But yeah, we need a holiday.

K: I've got to get to my swimming pool!

D: Exactly.

K: So what are we actually talking about for this last episode of the summer?

D: So for this final episode of the season, we're calling up a longtime friend of the show, Andrei Popoviciu, a Romanian reporter, who you might remember from a few episodes we've done in the past where you've heard his voice,.But most recently, we did an episode with him about Frontex, the EU's border agency. He's back. And again, he's been doing a lot of investigating into how borders are managed, a topic that's actually been in the news a lot over the past week. I mean, in general, it's been in the news a lot over the last few years. But we're not going to be talking about the deal, the controversial deal that the EU signed with Tunisia so much this week. Instead, we're going to be talking about the internal borders on the continent of Africa. They're not European borders. But it's worth pointing out that a lot of the borders in Africa were created when European colonial powers were dividing up Africa between themselves. And guess what, in a rather awkward turn of events, Europe is back, sticking its nose in the management of some borders within Africa, all with the aim of stopping Africans progressing through the continent, potentially towards Europe. We'll be hearing from Andrei about how the EU is getting involved in these borders and the consequences of that involvement. That's coming up later. But first, it's time for Good Week, Bad Week.

BAD WEEK - 03’41”

K: Who has had a bad week?

D: I am giving a bad week to a judge in Italy for clearing a school caretaker accused of sexually assaulting a teenage student because it ‘didn't last long enough’. The grope of a 17-year-old girl at school lasted between five and 10 seconds. And apparently, according to this judge, that's not long enough to count as sexual assault.

K: This is one of those cases that just absolutely made my blood boil as soon as I heard about it. But just to be clear, the judge has accepted that the groping did happen, right? There's no question that it happened?

D: Yeah, he said he found the girl’s account credible and the whole thing was witnessed by other students. But the grope was, according to the judge, not long enough to be considered a crime, and he believed that the grope was not a sign of sexual desire. He said that it was ‘an awkward manoeuvre without lust’. So the incident, which happened in Rome last year, took place on a staircase at the school. The girl describes walking up the stairs, noticing her trousers were falling down and then feeling a hand on her buttocks grabbing her underwear and then lifting her up. When she turned around, he said, ‘Love, you know, I was joking.’ 

K: And this happened at a school of all places, where a 17-year-old should feel safe.

D: Absolutely. And actually the caretaker doesn't even deny the girl’s account. He admits to groping the teenager without consent. His defence was merely that it was a joke. 

K: Great joke. 

D: Yeah. The public prosecutor in Rome had asked for a three-and-a-half year prison sentence, but due to the judge's ruling, the caretaker is free to go without any punishment. The girl has since been interviewed by a newspaper, the Corriere della Sera, and I think I should just read you what she said because it's more powerful than anything I could say about it. She said: “The judges ruled that he was joking. Well, it was no joke to me. The caretaker came up from behind me without saying anything. He put his hands down my trousers and inside my underwear. He groped my bottom, then he pulled me up, hurting my private parts. For me, this is not a joke. This is not how an old man should joke with a teenager. That handful of seconds was more than enough for the caretaker to make me feel his hands on me.’ She goes on to say that she is worried that the judge's ruling will deter other Italian women from coming forward with cases of sexual assault. And that is already a problem in Italy. According to a study from the Fundamental Rights Agency of the EU, 70% of Italian women who suffered harassment between 2016 and 2021 did not report the incident.

K: Well, that's depressing.

D: It is. But before you all disappear into a pit of anger and depression – because yeah, this is quite a depressing case – there has been a rather powerful reaction from Italians online after the news of this ruling broke under the hashtag ‘dieci secondi’, or 10 seconds. Italians have been posting videos on Tiktok and Instagram in which they hold on to a body part for 10 seconds as a timer counts down on the screen. And it's just such a clear illustration of how long 10 seconds can feel like, when a body part is being touched by someone you don't want touching it. It's actually quite uncomfortable watching some of these videos. The trend was actually started by an Italian actor called Paolo Camilli, who you might know from the second season of hit HBO series, the White Lotus. His video is definitely not an easy one to watch. But the hashtag quickly went viral and some of Italy's biggest influencers have also been posting their own dieci secondi videos, bringing huge international attention to the injustice this girl feels after the judge's ruling. So it's a bad week for the Italian judge in Rome. But hopefully this viral campaign has highlighted the injustice and ridiculousness of this case.

K: Sometimes you think progress is being made and then something like this happens. But as you say, it's cool to see people coming out against it and in such a powerful way.

GOOD WEEK - 8’11”

D: It is. Who’s had a good week? Cheer us up.

K: Yeah, I'm gonna give Good Week to a policy initiative from France that caught our eye this week. And this is this new initiative to subsidise clothes repairs, to try to encourage us to fix the clothes that we have rather than just going out and buying a new shirt or a new pair of jeans. So if you're lucky enough to live in France like me, you will get somewhere between 10 and 25 euros off if you go to a tailor to get a ripped lining fixed on a jacket or a skirt or something, 15 euros for a big zip repair, seven euros off for a small zip repair, seven euros to get a hole patched up, and seven euros off getting a heel replaced on a shoe if you take it to a shoe repair place. You're not allowed to take underwear, I'm not quite sure why. And it is limited to clothes for now – like, you can't take a bedsheet or a tablecloth to the tailor’s and get this discount applied for fixing a hole in it. But yeah, the general idea, according to Bérangère Couillard, who's the junior environment minister, she said the idea was to make repairing an item of clothing cost less than a third of what it would cost to buy a new one. Which feels like a decent incentive to actually take yourself to the tailor.

D: It sounds like such a good idea!

K: Yeah, I like it too!

D: And actually, I was at the cobblers not too long ago trying to get a pair of shoes re-heeled, and they tried to charge me… I think it was 50 euros.

K: Which for lots of people is the price of a new pair of shoes, right?

D: Absolutely. Also, it was like the third time I'd re-heeled them. So yeah, I have to say that time, I decided to get rid of those shoes. But maybe I wouldn't have if they'd been subsidised.

K: Ta-da! You need a discount like this, Dominic. 

D: But how are the government gonna afford this? Isn't it gonna cost them loads of money to subsidise these repairs.

K: Well, that's what some rightwing commentators have been complaining about. But I don't think they've really got that good a case. This scheme is having 154 million euros pumped into it, but that's over six years. And something that's not been spelled out in a lot of the reporting, is that at least some of the funding for this – I haven't been able to find out yet what proportion exactly – but it's being funded, at least in part by the textiles industry, by this little mini tax called the eco-contribution that was brought in a few years ago. It's a ‘polluter pays' kind of initiative, under which textiles producers have to contribute to the costs of managing the waste that gets created by the products that they make. So there has been some grumbling from the right that this is a big waste of public cash. But it works out as 30 million a year, and some proportion of that is coming from private companies. I don't know – I just feel like we’ve spent money on worse initiatives. Certain groups from the fashion industry have expressed concern that these kinds of policies stigmatise their sector by making the fashion world seem like a big evil polluter –

D: It is! 

K: Well, firstly, it is – we'll get to that in a second. But it also seems like a bit of a silly argument. Like, this policy has no chance of stopping people from buying new clothes in general. And it's not trying to. Its goal is a lot more modest than that, its goal is to boost the percentage of clothes in France that get repaired rather than chucked out by 35%. So you could also argue that this is a nice way of boosting work for small tailoring businesses and bringing down their prices. So that seems like a nice thing.

D: And tell me about the admin involved with this kind of thing. So if I went to get my shoes re-heeled, would I then have to fill in a form and send a receipt off? Because that does sound like a bit of a faff.

K: Yeah, absolutely. And I definitely could not be bothered to fill in a bunch of forms for an hour just to get maybe seven euros back. But unusually for France, this seems to have been designed in a way that will minimise the paperwork, on the consumer’s end, at least. So the idea is that you will go to your local tailor or shoe repair place, they will have the price displayed for what it would have been without the subsidy and what it is now. So for example, it'll say like, ‘Patching up of knee hole! Was 14 euros. Now only seven euros!’ And then you, the consumer, immediately just pay the discounted price. 

D: This just gets better and better. 

K: And then the tailor can then claim the seven euros back from this organisation called Re-fashion, which is a nonprofit body that works in the French fashion industry as a kind of liaison between manufacturers and the government and waste managers. They're going to be in charge of managing this whole scheme. And it's going to go live as soon as they've got 500 tailors and cobblers signed up for it across the country, which they hope will be by mid-October.

D: And as you mentioned earlier, presumably this is all happening because the government is wanting to target the fashion industry because it's such a polluting industry.

K: Yeah, for sure. This does actually follow on from an existing scheme in France where you can get money off for repairing electrical items like toasters and dishwashers. So a really similar model. And that scheme has already been quite successful. It only launched in December and tens of thousands of people have used it already to get money off repairing their toasters. But you're absolutely right, the textiles industry is a horrible polluter. As a global industry, it is responsible for more carbon emissions than aviation. And there's some quite depressing statistics on the European Parliament website about how Europeans get rid of their unwanted clothes, I'll put a link to it in the show notes. But less than half of our clothes are given away for reuse and recycling. And only 1% get turned into new clothes. So the vast, vast majority of the clothes that we wear on this continent, get thrown into landfill or burned. In France, something like 700,000 tonnes of clothes get disposed of like this every single year. And – sorry, I'm nearly done with a depressing bit – and that's before you've even thought about the resources that go into producing clothes in the first place, which among other things, involves huge amounts of water. And of course, all of these problems have got worse with the rise of fast fashion, which has made the clothes industry more democratic in some ways, but also horribly, horribly wasteful.

D: So I think this is a really imaginative policy. I quite like it. And actually, it's quite unusual to hear of such imaginative policies coming out of France, no offence. But is this part of like a bigger plan to help make the fashion industry and textiles industry greener? Or is just – is this their one offer? 

K: Yeah, and I'm gonna push back against that, Dominic, and say that it's very rude of you to say that we don't come up with good policy ideas here in France. Maybe it's not Spain but we can do a thing or do! Yeah, it's not the only thing that the French government is trying to do when it comes to trying to make the clothing industry a little bit more sustainable and introduce more of a circular economy when it comes to textiles and consumer goods in general. Fashion is a really important sector in France, we are famous for it. But apart from this thing with the discounts for going to the tailor, and forcing textiles producers to pay the eco contribution thing that I mentioned earlier, there are also new rules coming in next year, under which clothing manufacturers in France are going to have to put a bunch of environmental information on the labels of clothes, like how much water it took to make it, what percentage of the garment is recycled, how high the risk is that the item is going to cause microplastics to be released. So yeah, I don't know. I don't think that offering a seven-euro discount for you to go to the tailor is the most impactful policy in the world. It's obviously not going to stop climate change. And there will be plenty of naysayers out there who say, like, ‘What's the point? This is too small.’ Or that these kinds of things, that focus on the small things that individuals can do, are a distraction from our efforts to force people with power to do the big things that really make a difference. But you know, why not bring in policies like these if they're easy to introduce? So I'm going to side with you and the rest of the optimists and say that I like this policy, and that it makes a very nice change to give good week to France for a change.

D: Congratulations. Enjoy it.

K: Thank you!

* * * 

K: We may be off on a bit of a summer break next week. But there is no rest for the wicked, because we're actually going to be spending a fair amount of the break working on some upcoming special episodes, and pre-recording some interviews for the autumn. So if you're enjoying the show over July or August, maybe catching up on some missed episodes, please know that we are hard at work and, as always, badly in need of funds so that we can keep this podcast alive into 2024. So if you've got any spare cash laying around, all amounts, big and small, are hugely, hugely appreciated. Donating only takes a couple of minutes and you can do so at patreon.com/europeanspodcast.

D: Will we ever get a real holiday?

K: We’re very un-European in that respect, it's terrible. People say that Europe is all about great work-life balance. I don't think we've nailed it yet.

D: Neither do I. One of the things we're going to do over the break is record lots of voicemails for people who have donated five euros per month or up. They are all personally made by Katy and myself and they will be delivered to your inboxes sometime over the summer. So if you really miss us over the summer, then join up to be a five-euro supporter and you will get your own little personal podcast in your inbox.

K: This week we would like to thank our newest supporter, Karin. Thank you so much, Karin. And we also wanted to wish a very happy birthday to super-fan of the show Lilly for the 29th from Jan, who donated to the podcast in your honour, Lilly. What a lovely thing to do!

D: It's so nice.

K: Alles Gute zum Geburtstag, Lilly, we hope it’s a wonderful one. 

D: Yes, we do. If you can't support us now for financial reasons. we totally understand. You could also do something for free and tell your friends about us, write a post on Facebook, Twitter, Threads or Instagram. or even write an old school review on Apple Podcasts. I'm feeling needy, apparently, today. So please validate me on the internet.

K: Give Dominic some love, everyone.

INTERVIEW WITH ANDREI POPOVICIU - 18’43”

K: You might have seen in the news this week that the EU has signed a billion-euro deal with Tunisia that is essentially aimed at boosting the country's economy in exchange for helping to stop the flow of migrants to Europe. And depending on who you ask about this pretty controversial policy, it's either a humanitarian victory that is going to help stop the people smugglers who profit from people making the horrendously dangerous journey across the Mediterranean, or it's an extremely dangerous deal that is going to help trap migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa in a country where they’ve faced horrific discrimination and abuses, including essentially pogroms in the city of Sfax over the past couple of weeks. Either way, Tunisia isn't the only country where the EU has been pursuing this policy of basically trying to throw money at an African government in exchange for stopping migration. And it's not the only country where there are concerns over what that money – European taxpayers’ money – is going to be used for and whether it might even be used in really, really unethical ways against migrants who are simply moving around in search of work and a better life. So we're quite interested in zooming out a little and taking a broader look at how the EU's migration policy is unfolding in Africa itself. And it just so happens that a friend of the show has been investigating how EU funds are being used in West Africa. Andrei Popoviciu will be a familiar name to those of you who've been listening to The Europeans for a long time, he used to work with us as a producer. And when he was based here in Europe, he did a lot of work on migration policy, including that special episode that Dominic mentioned, that we made with Andrei about the EU border agency, Frontex. These days Andrei is an independent investigative journalist based in Senegal, where he has spent months looking into the impact of the EU's migration policy on the ground in Africa. His findings have just been published in the US magazine In These Times, and they're due to be published in French in Le Monde very soon. It's a really troubling investigation about the impact of decisions that get made in Europe far beyond the borders of this continent. We gave him a ring to find out more.

* * * 

K: Your investigation opens at a Senegalese border crossing where authorities are using this incredibly powerful electronic equipment capable of spying on migrants' WhatsApp messages, their photos, their locations. First of all, why might authorities want this kind of super invasive information on migrants?

ANDREI POPOVICIU: This personal data they're collecting through these technologies aims at helping them stem the flows of migration of people through the borders of Senegal and eventually towards Europe. Through these information and data, they want to track down the people who facilitated the groups’ migration across the borders, so that they can convict them criminally for facilitating movements within the region and eventually towards Europe. So it's a way for authorities to be able to track down where people have left from, where are they going and who's helping them cross and get to their final destination. Which could be Europe, but often, it can be just regional. 

D: This border crossing is one of several that has been jointly funded by the EU in recent years, with the aim of stopping migrants from getting to Europe. Do we know for sure whether this kind of equipment is being paid for with EU money and used with their blessing? Or is it not 100% clear?

A: It's incredibly hard to track down EU funds, especially the further they are from Europe, the more difficult it is to really draw a connection between a piece of equipment, a gadget, directly to a huge huge fund that are notoriously untransparent and hard to track down. However these ones, I managed to obtain confirmation from the border officers but also from the MEPs that have visited the border crossing, in order to link this funding from a huge budget dedicated to Africa with the stated goal of addressing the root causes of migration. So specifically, this gadget I've managed to track down, that it's funded by an EU financial instrument.

K: There was literally a resolution in the European Parliament last month in which MEPs called the kind of spyware that is being used at this border crossing a threat to democracy. And they called for much tighter rules and how it gets used – in Europe. Presumably if governments like Senegal's are obtaining this equipment for use in, quote unquote, managing migration, could they also use it to spy on – I don't know, like human rights activists and other people who criticise them?

A: Well, yeah, that's the big issue here. In and of itself, these tools and these capabilities are really providing the Senegalese authorities and the government with incredible powers and a huge overreach into people's private lives, be it migrants or citizens. And the big issue with EU funding for migration projects in Africa, or migration policies in Africa, is that they don't come with human rights assessments. So there's no impact assessment of what would be the effects on local populations of these technologies. And Senegal, lately, has been going through a tumultuous period with protests. The main opposition leader has been arrested and has been charged twice on two separate legal cases. A lot of opposition politicians have also been jailed for criticising the government under the guise of spreading fake news or other charges that are seen as thin, that they don't have any base. So there's a huge risk of these technologies being used not just on migrants – which in itself is a violation of their rights – but also on other people such as political activists or human rights defenders. Journalists have been jailed as well for reporting on government affairs and controversies within the government. So I think this is the crux of the issue and the most important thing: what could be the unintended consequences of these technologies and how they're used?

D: It all sounds really concerning. Have the EU Commission responded to your reporting? And did you get the impression that they were already aware of these potential serious human rights risks, or was this news after they read your reporting?

A: I think there's definitely an awareness within the EU of how these technologies can be misused. However, in response to my questions, after I put forward my findings, a Commission spokesperson made it very clear that everything they do is in line with European human rights standards and so on. But this often doesn't happen. So if there's no legal obligation for these projects to have human rights impact assessments, there's no way for the Commission to know what could be the negative impact of these technologies. A few months ago, there was a hearing within the European Parliament in the Human Rights Committee, in which NGO representatives, activists, and researchers, they went to the Human Rights Committee and they testified of the human rights impact these investments can have in West Africa. But throughout this meeting, there was a general sense that the Commission representatives were brushing off these risks. They were justifying these investments just by saying that they do take into account, you know, the negative impact that could have on human rights. But in the end, there's no evidence that they do. And what I found is that there's a serious and high risk of these having a negative impact on the human rights of Senegalese. But also, it's not just Senegal, it’s the whole region. We know very well, for example, in Libya, where the EU has also been sending a lot of funding for the Libyan coast guard – time and time again it has been proven that this funding has ended up being used to facilitate human rights violations of migrants and asylum seekers. So we already have cases in which this funding has been clearly connected to human rights violations being in Tunisia or Libya, or Sudan even – which is now engulfed by war and has received EU funding for migration. There's a bigger interest in stopping migration than in protecting the civil liberties of citizens in Africa.

K: So building on what the EU is already doing in West Africa, there's now this tentative plan to send agents from the EU border agency Frontex to patrol borders directly in Mauritania and Senegal. It seems kind of instinctively weird for Europeans to be patrolling African borders – you know, almost like olden days. But given how many allegations there’ve been of Frontex behaving badly within Europe, presumably there's also even bigger worries that they might misbehave when they're operating further from home with less scrutiny.

A: Yeah, completely. If you look, one of the early drafts of the agreement with Senegal was that Frontex officers that would be deployed to patrol the coast, but also potentially land borders, in that early agreement there was a line there hidden saying that the Frontex officers should receive immunity from criminal prosecution. Having that detail being stipulated that people can’t be prosecuted, that officers can’t be prosecuted, brings huge concerns about, what are the checks and balances these officers can face? Are there any assurances that these officers won’t make the situation worse for the human rights of people in these countries? In the case of Senegal, I think the Senegalese officials, the border officials in the government, have really realised that this can be a big issue, and they've stopped any sort of negotiations. However, if you look across the border just next to Senegal, you have Mauritania, which has been really keen to receive Frontex officers on the ground.

D: Why would a country like Mauritania want Frontex officers to help them patrol their borders?

A: This is not confirmed, but this is, you know, what I've been hearing – that there's obviously an exchange being done, in exchange for Mauritania, for example, becoming the border guard of European borders, the government is getting something in return. They're getting access to visas for certain kinds of sections of society. And obviously, it's the huge amount of money they receive, it's millions and millions of euros across, you know, many years. A sustained funding with the stated aim of addressing the root causes of migration, but you know, it ends up being used to prop up security forces, it ends up being used to kind of flout development projects.

K: Yeah, I wondered if we could talk a little bit more about that – this idea that, beyond apparently trying to police these borders with high-tech equipment, and maybe even boots on the ground, the EU has been pursuing this idea in recent years of trying to prevent migrants from heading to Europe, from sub-Saharan Africa, by trying to boost African economies, to give people less of a reason to leave. You've been able to observe these efforts up close in Senegal. To what extent does that policy appear to be working?

A: This idea is fundamentally flawed. That has been shown in a lot of studies. And beyond these studies, we can just see with our eyes, the numbers are not decreasing to the extent that they want. Or,  we can't be sure that even a decrease in these numbers can be assigned to the fact that the EU or the Commission has funded the project, for example, to give business grants to potential migrants or returning migrants. There's this idea that if people earn more money, they will not leave. However, people who leave there are people who have money. And there can be unintended consequences and effects that if you boost up the income of people, they will end up having money to do the trip. Because the trip is expensive. It's thousands and thousands of euros. It's not anyone that can afford that trip. Or, the people who can't afford it, you know, they work along the route for years and years until they get there. And even beyond that, if you look, for example, at the impact of these projects locally, you know, I've looked in Senegal, which is a big receiver of development funding. In the end, these projects end up being bogus, for lack of a better word, because one of the people I've spoken to who's received a business grant, her name is Binta, from a region with the highest number of people who leave. She has received this funding to start a printing and laminating business. She's waited a year, received the equipment, but she received the printer, they received the laminating device, but they didn't receive a computer to be able to use those tools. The small mistake of not receiving a computer makes this funding totally useless. These development projects are often not really reaching their stated goal of addressing the root cause of a migration. In the end, whether you agree with protecting the rights of people, you know, that are not in the EU, or whether you agree with facilitating safe ways for people to go to the EU, legal ways to get to the EU – even if you're against people coming to Europe, the idea of wasting so much money, that should concern everyone, on top of the fact that there's violations happening often with this money.

K: If you are listening to this from the US, I really recommend that you get your hands on a print copy of the latest edition of In These Times magazine and check out Andrei’s excellent reporting. His investigation is going to be going online on In These Times’s website a few days after this podcast goes out. As soon as it's up, we will post the link in the show notes to this episode. And the same is true for the French version of his reporting, which will be out on Le Monde’s website very, very soon.

ISOLATION INSPIRATION - 32’27”

K: What have you been enjoying this week?

D: Well, in general I'm a big fan of NPR’s Tiny Desk series, I think I've talked about it on the show before. It's those 20-minute-ish gigs that they post on YouTube, filmed behind a not-so-Tiny Desk in their office.

K: With really cramped shelves. We talked about it before, but I always get really stressed about how dusty those shelves must be because there's loads of stuff on them.

D: Your shelves in your house aren't that minimalist, are they?

K: Okay, I feel attacked.

D: Anyway, this week, NPR released a video from my favourite Portuguese artist of this moment. She's called Maro, M-A-R-O. And I actually first discovered her after she was Portugal's excellent entrant to Eurovision in 2022. I was so pleased to see that she had been offered a slot on Tiny Desk because I think she's writing such beautiful songs and has the most gorgeous quality to her voice. She's performing on Tiny Desk with two guitarists, two Portuguese guitarists, and she also plays herself. And I, as well as loving the sound of her voice, I also love the sound of these three acoustic guitars playing together. It's such a beautiful and changing texture, sometimes sounding percussive, other times sounding incredibly smooth with their lush harmonies.

K: Ooh. 

D: So go check out this Tiny Desk gig and also check out her newish album ‘hortelã’, if you want some new Portuguese music in your lives.

K: Nice.

D: I also want to interview her on the show. So watch this space!

K: If you're listening, Maro, come on the show please!

D: What have you been enjoying, Katy?

K: Also musical entry for you. Given that I am on holiday, kind of, already here in the south of France, I am, I have to confess, lazily relying on a listener for my Isolation Inspiration this week. Thank you Britta in Lisbon. But yeah, it's a show that on her recommendation I have been enjoying over the last couple of weeks. Afropop, which is a great US public radio show about African diaspora music. It's been on US public radio since the late 80s apparently, so there's an amazing archive. It's not technically European and I am conscious that we're giving two US public radio show recommendations this week, but – but but but – 

D: Awkward.

K: – there’s loads of great francophone African stuff on there, if that's your jam, and there are two particularly great Europe-related episodes of the show that I wanted to give a particular shout out to because I loved them. One is a very beautiful one in tribute to the Cameroonian musician Manu Dibango, who spent a lot of his life in France and sadly died here of COVID a couple of years ago. So I wanted to recommend that one. And also another episode about the Afro music scene in Sweden,

CLIP: Sousou Cissoko: We sing in five different languages: Swedish, English and French, Wollof and Mandinka.

Host: Here's a track from their fourth and latest album. ‘Made of Music.’

K: It's a really great show, I'm super glad that it's on my radar now. Thank you, Britta, for sending it in. And please, please do send in your tips for things that we should be enjoying over the summer because I'm on the lookout for things to put in my ears. And my eyes.

D: But not your nose. 

K: But not my nose. Things in my mouth, yeah, sure. Food, I should clarify.

HAPPY ENDING - 36’32”

D: Time for one last happy ending of the season. And this week, I wanted to share a story of a rather charming example of revenge against a horrible employer who doesn't pay you what you deserve. We've all been there, or – well, I hope not everyone has been there. But I guess a lot of us have been there. 

K: Lots of us have.

D: This story was a Guardian exclusive. Breaking news, but breaking news from the early 16th century, as it's based on historical analysis of some letters. That's been done by Ulinka Rublack at Cambridge University. This tale of charming revenge comes from the Frankfurt area, where back in the early 16th century, the great Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer was commissioned to produce an altarpiece by a wealthy Frankfurt merchant. But according to the analysis of these letters, Dürer was not paid enough by this Frankfurt merchant. In fact, he claimed that he was barely covering the costs. Buying pigment was incredibly expensive for such a big painting. And of course, he had to pay his assistants to help with the side wings of the altarpiece. All in all, it was a very unhappy experience for Dürer and he said in one letter to the man who commissioned his work, ‘I am losing time and money and earning your ingratitude.’ And he said in another letter, ‘What do you imagine my living costs are?’ I mean, it could have been written today by an artist, frankly.

K: I was gonna say this is such a story of modern creativity. It still seems so fresh.

D: Yeah, it's been a problem since time began. But he got his revenge in quite a charming way. According to Ulinka Rublack's new research, she has deduced that as a form of subtle revenge, he plonked a painting of himself in the middle of the altar painting. So right below Mary and Joseph, just left of centre, you see a tall, slim figure, holding up a sign with Dürer’s name on it. And it's him. 

K: I love that! 

D: It's so nice, isn't it? Really like the kind of revenge that’s not hurting anyone, but it's really making your point. Even if nobody noticed until 2023. No, they probably did notice at the time.

K: It feels kind of secretly sassy. 

D: It does, doesn't it. Rublack says that nobody ever did anything like this again, in this era. So she thinks it’s really astonishing. And I frankly love it. And it serves as a nice, friendly reminder to everyone to please pay your artists properly.

K: Here, here.

* * * 

K: A big, big thank you to those of you who've completed our listener survey, which we're going to be using to shape the show over the months to come. We've got loads of responses already with some really valuable feedback. One of the questions is about whether there are things that we talk about too much. And I just wanted to voice my appreciation for the two people who replied to that question that we've been talking too much, Dominic, about my heat rag.

D: I approve of that feedback. Definitely. And I promise it wasn't me who filled in those two answers.

K: Shout out to those two people, you did make me laugh. We're running this survey for another week, so there's still time to give your thoughts on what you'd like to hear about more on the show, what you think could do with changing. We would love to hear from you. The link is in the show notes.

D: Thank you to Katy Lee and Wojciech Oleksiak for producing this episode. Thank you for producing all the episodes this season along with our other wonderful producer, Katz Laszlo, who's been very hard at work doing lots of behind the scenes work on some very exciting but more labour intensive episodes that you will hear before the year is out. I think it's been a really lovely season – maybe our loveliest yet, if I say so myself. We won some awards, we made a lot of episodes, we had a feature about us in The Guardian, we had a fifth birthday. So thank you to everyone who has collaborated with us over the past season, thank you to Are We Europe, the Allianz Foundation, the European Cultural Foundation, the Journalism Fund, De Balie and to all the guests who took the time to speak to us and explain sometimes very complex things in a way that Katy and I can understand.

K: With our little brains. And thank you to the people who make our amazing music as well, Jim Barne and Mariska Martina. If you miss us over the break, there is a huge five-year-plus back-catalogue of episodes that you can make your way through. We’ve been making this podcast for far too long, Dominic. And we will also be around over the summer on various social media channels, Instagram@europeans podcast, Twitter @europeanspod. And in theory, we're on Threads even though it's banned in the EU, but I've actually been shut out of our account for the past couple of days. I think the internet police are onto us, Dominic, I told you this would happen if we talked about it on the show.

D: Oh dear.

K: Anyway, if I managed to get back in you will find us at @europeanspodcast.

D: A final thank you to all the amazing Patreon supporters who've kept this show on the road this season. And to all of you for listening, whether or not you've been able to give us money or not. We still love that you are listening. We hope you have a lovely summer, and Katy, good luck with the final weeks of your pregnancy. I hope you have a good break and a good holiday and a good end of the pregnancy.

K: Thank you, Dominic. Yeah, looking forward to introducing our newest team member after the break.

D: No more calm conversations just between the two of us ever again.

K: Can’t wait!

D: Bye! 

K: Doviđenja!