The Portuguese Constitution Is Delicious

Scandal-hit Socialists, a surging far-right, and winners that no one can get excited about —  Portugal has just delivered some of this year's trickiest European election results. This week, we ring Politico reporter Aitor Hernández-Morales to untangle the situation. We're also talking about how ChatGPT could speed up Albania's EU membership bid, and Denmark's attempt to fix its horrible gender inequality (when it comes to statues at least). 

You can follow Aitor on Twitter here. 

This week's Inspiration Station picks: 'Europapa' by Joost Klein; 'Don't Drink the Milk' 

Other resources for this episode: 

'People in Albania are tired of Brussels' lip service' https://respublica.edu.mk/blog-en/politics/people-in-albania-are-tired-of-brussels-lip-service/?lang=en

'Albania to speed up EU accession using ChatGPT'
https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/albania-to-speed-up-eu-accession-using-chatgpt/

'Irish voters reject bid to rewrite constitution’s view of women and family' https://www.politico.eu/article/irish-voters-reject-bid-to-rewrite-constitutions-view-women-family/

'Five reasons why the Yes side failed and the No campaign won the day' https://www.irishtimes.com/politics/2024/03/09/how-the-government-lost-and-the-no-side-won-the-care-and-family-referendums/

00:22 Fresh and fruity

01:56 Bad Week: Human translators

11:00 Good Week: Denmark steps up on statues

35:28 The Inspiration Station: 'Europapa' and 'Don't Drink The Milk'

40:24 Happy Ending: A blast from the seedy past

Producers: Katy Lee and Wojciech Oleksiak

Mixing and mastering: Wojciech Oleksiak

Music: Jim Barne and Mariska Martina

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

INTRODUCTION – 00’22”

KATY: Welcome back to The Europeans, the podcast of choice for people who either live on this continent or are just sort of vaguely interested in it. Dominic, how're you doing? You still alive over there?

DOMINIC: I am actually, I'm doing fine. Fresh and fruity, as we say in the Netherlands.

K: I think we talked about this phrase before. how do you say it in Dutch?

D: Fris en fruitig.

K: Lovely. Fresh and fruity. Good for you.

D: Thank you. How are you? Are you… how do you say that in French? Are you frais and, er…

K: Fruité!

D: Fruité! 

K: Frais et fruité. Yeah, I think I am. I'm going to try and make that catch on, it sounds pretty good to my non-native French-speaking ear. But anyway, what's coming up this week? Is it going to leave everyone else feeling fresh and fruity?

D: I don't know if I can promise that. But we do have a very diverse show coming up, as always – your weekly audio melange of European things that you might or might not have missed. Last weekend, one of the big things that happened in Europe was a general election in Portugal. And the results delivered a level of political uncertainty that we've kind of become used to in Europe, and here at The Europeans podcast. So we're going to be joined by someone who's going to help us unpick those results, the wonderful Aitor Hernández-Morales, with his razor-sharp analysis. But first, it’s that time in the show when we discuss who's had a good week, and who's had a bad week in Europe.

BAD WEEK - 1’56”

D: Who has had a bad week, Katy? 

K: Well, I was quite tempted to give Bad Week to the Irish government after Friday's referendum results. If you heard last week's podcast, you might have expected a very different result in the two referendums that Ireland held on Friday on changing the constitution. The government had proposed changing it to recognise families with non-married parents, and to remove a clause suggesting that a woman's place is in the home. But that's not what happened, is it? 

D: No, it's not. And actually, I was surprised quite how badly those two proposals lost, the ‘No’ vote was really large.

K: It was. And if you're like me, your initial reaction might have been to think, ‘Oh, wow, that's a very conservative result.’ Because our guest last week, Cait Beaumont, had made a very eloquent case for why the suggested changes to the constitution were imperfect, but would have been a step forward nonetheless. It turns out that the government made a much less eloquent case. And it would certainly be wrong to assume that everyone who voted against these changes did so out of conservatism. Anyway, some of our listeners very kindly sent me some really interesting takes on why the vote went the way it did. So I'll put those in the show notes.

D: But who are you giving Bad Week to, if not the Irish government?

K: I am going to Albania for Bad Week, and I'm gonna say it's been a bad week for humans who work as translators and lawyers, because it looks like you're gonna have a big, lucrative job taken away from you. Sorry, guys. And that is because the Albanian government has announced that it's going to use the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT to translate a really big chunk of the legal documents needed for its application to join the EU. 

D: I guess we shouldn't be surprised that this is happening now. But I do feel really sorry for the translators and interpreters.

K: Yeah, it's a serious amount of work they've just lost out on.

D: And Albania has been trying to join the EU for a long time, right?

K: A really long time. So they first applied for membership in 2009, 15 years ago now. And they were officially allowed to be an EU candidate country in 2014. And then there were years of delays, not really through any fault of Albania's. They made pretty good progress on all the kinds of reforms that the EU insists on countries making before they're allowed to get further down the path towards membership. So, strengthening the independence of the courts, protecting media freedom, fighting organised crime. The government's critics would say there is still a lot of progress that needs to be made on corruption and organised crime. But the EU generally seems to have been pretty happy with how much has changed in Albania over the past decade or so. But even so, throughout all of these years of waiting, the EU basically said to Albania, listen, we're going to look at your application at the same time as the application of your neighbours, North Macedonia. And because that one is being held up over this completely separate fight that they're having with Bulgaria, your application isn't going anywhere. Sorry! 

D: That must be quite frustrating for Albania. 

K: Super frustrating. It's kind of amazing how pro-EU people in Albania still are, given how much their EU membership bid has been delayed over stuff that's really not got much to do with them at all. There was a Euronews survey in 2022 that suggested that 96% of Albanians considered EU membership to be very important for their country, although I'm going to post an article in the show notes about how disillusionment with the whole process has been growing, and how more and more people have been getting tired of empty talk from EU officials like Ursula von der Leyen, talking about their commitment to this process, and then not really doing anything to speed it up. At any rate, in 2022, Albania finally began formal membership talks with the EU. Hooray! But if you thought that that was the exhausting part of the process over, you would be wrong, because there is an insane amount of paperwork involved in this next stage.

D: Yeah, and what is this next stage? Like, what's involved in it?

K: What you basically have to do is incorporate all existing EU law into your national law. So that on that beautiful day, when you finally get let in, you're already, like, legally aligned with all of the existing EU members on everything from, like, trade, to pollution, to like food standards. All kinds of things. 

D: Okay, so I guess that's where ChatGPT comes in, aligning the laws. That does sound like a lot of paperwork.

K: Yeah, this is where it goes from being one of those stories where you're like, ‘I can't believe they want to use AI to do this!’ to then being a story where you're like, ‘Oh, I can absolutely see why they would want to use AI to do this.’ Because this task involves translating about 280,000 pages of dense legal documents and incorporating it into Albania's own legal system. It's gonna take a while. And if you're like me, you might have imagined some official in an office in Tirana taking each page and copy-pasting it into ChatGPT, the way that we would use it at home. But it sounds like actually the government is going to be able to work out something a little bit more sophisticated, and that is because the Albanian government has a useful contact. It turns out that the chief technology Oofficer of ChatGPT’s parent company is an Albanian. Her name is Mira Murati,she's 35, and she is maybe one of the most powerful people you've never heard of, given that AI is changing the world in all kinds of ways right now. Murati grew up in Albania and then moved to Canada as a teenager, and she has been at ChatGPT’s parent company, OpenAI, since just a few years after it was founded. She also briefly stepped up to be CEO during all the drama at the company last year. And it's funny actually, that the story involves translation, because she's actually spoken about the moment when she realised that ChatGPT had learned to speak Italian without being taught. Like a lot of Albanians, Murati speaks Italian as well as Albanian. And one day she decided to just feed ChatGPT some pairs of prompts in English and Italian to see what happened. And then, tada! It could suddenly speak Italian. It must have been very freaky. 

D: That is freaky. 

K: So Murati is someone who understands the translation power of ChatGPT. But even so, she was pretty surprised when she got a call from Albania’s prime minister Edi Rama, asking if she could help out with Albania's EU membership application. Rama told Euractiv in an interview that Murati just laughed at him. She thought he was joking. But she must have taken him seriously eventually, because it was reported last week that a joint team has been set up between OpenAI and Albania's technology agency, and that Rama, the prime minister, has said he's going to present the results of a test of this use of AI at an EU summit in Brussels in December.

D: Presumably some real humans would have to read through all these translations. I really hope so.

K: I would hope so too. I mean, most people listening would have seen headlines about ChatGPT like sometimes going completely off-script and just making stuff up. The law is no exception. There have been lawyers busted in numerous countries for using ChatGPT to prepare their court documents, which cite cases that never happened. And if you think about how boring a lot of EU documents are to read, like, how easy would it be for ChatGPT to sneak in a piece of regulation that doesn't exist, and then accidentally becomes part of Albanian law? 

D: Yeah, I wonder whether it actually will be more efficient to do this. And whether just paying a real human being to do this would make it less likely that mistakes like that would slip in?

K: Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, Rama has said that he hopes that this will eliminate an army of translators and a battalion of lawyers, costing millions of euros. But I very much hope that this process is going to involve the robots, like, doing the first chunk of the work and then having it checked over by humans. 

D: Yeah.

K: What they’ve said ChatGPT is going to do is translate all of the documents and then provide an overview of where Albanian legislation needs to be changed to make it align with EU law. And, I quote, ‘it will also provide an analysis of the impact of all measures and changes, which usually require many experts and a lot of time.’ But again, this is the sort of thing where you would hope humans are at least going to check ChatGPT's work, rather than just letting it do its thing. Because changing the laws of your country is one of those things that probably isn't best just left to the robots. Before I wrap up, I wanted to add that just as we started recording this, the European Commission actually just announced that it wants to start the negotiations with another EU candidate country, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and we actually reposted a very interesting thread about why that might make strategic sense from the EU's point of view. The thread is from a former guest of ours, Aleksandar Brezar, and you will find that on our Twitter feed. So yeah, if this whole ChatGPT thing works out well for Albania getting through all of this horrible EU paperwork, maybe Bosnia will be doing it next.

D: Maybe. 

GOOD WEEK – 11’00”

K: Who's had a good week? 

D: I'm gonna give Good Week to Denmark, for trying to correct a terrible gender imbalance in the statues found in Denmark’s cities. Of the 321 statues and busts in Denmark’s cities, guess how many are of women? 

K: 321… One would hope it would be at least 150… I'm gonna guess 50.

D: It's 31. 

K: Oh. Rubbish. 

D: And of the 101 statues in Copenhagen, only five are of women. 70 are of men and 26 are of animals or mythical creatures. There are in fact more statues of mythical creatures in Copenhagen than there are women. I'm laughing, but it's not really funny. 

K: That is actually crazy. 

D: Yeah, and you're not the only one who thinks that. The Danish culture minister also described it as, quote, ‘totally crazy’. And I know this might not sound like the most important thing to worry about in terms of gender inequality – there are much more important problems. But statues are there as public symbols of our shared history, as reminders of our achievements, or memories of past tragedies. The Danish culture minister Jakob Engel-Schmidt said, ‘Is this really the mirror image that the next generation will grow up in? Especially when you consider how many crucial achievements in society are due to wome., We all need role models that we can look up to, and that give us an understanding of our shared past.’ Engel-Schmidt recently had a daughter himself and says that having a daughter made it feel even more urgent for him that something had to be done about the representation of women in Danish society.

K: So what's he going to do, this guy? Is he just going to make loads of statues of women and plant them all over Copenhagen? 

D: Kind of, yeah. He's announced that the government will spend, to begin with, 50 million Danish kroner, which is about 6.7 million euros, to commission new statutes of women and chip away at that gender imbalance.

K: Quite a lot of money.

D: It is. There's obviously going to be quite a task deciding which women to celebrate with statues, and for that job, he's looking for some input from the public on Twitter, he asked people who they think should be honoured. But he's also going to create a commission of experts who are going to make the final decisions. Some of the names that the culture minister has put forward himself are a famous pastry chef called Karen Volf, and the country's first female ambassador, Bodil Begtrup. 

K: They should also put one of… What's the name of the star of Borgen? Sidse Babett Knudsen.

D: I had exactly the same thought, Katy. 

K: Question. 

D: Yeah.

K: I've never been to Copenhagen. 

D: Neither have I! 

K: But I do know that there's a famous statue there of the Little Mermaid, right? 

D: Yes, there is. 

K: Did they count her as a human, or one of the mythical creatures? 

D: No, the Little Mermaid is not one of the women counted in the five statues in Copenhagen. She is a mythical creature. The Little Mermaid is indeed the most famous statue in Copenhagen. I think there are actually a few statues of the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen because Hans Christian Andersen, who wrote The Little Mermaid, was, of course, Danish. And of course, I have nothing against the Little Mermaid being celebrated in statue form. But I do have a problem with the Little Mermaid being celebrated in the place of real-life women who have done important things in Danish history.

K: I also don't feel like, if the Little Mermaid is going to be one of the few female statues that are seen around the place… She's not that good a feminist role model.

D: Continue.

K: I’m thinking out loud here! Cos doesn't she… doesn't she give up her voice so that she can get a man? 

D: Oh…

K: I felt like I need to develop this theory a lot better. Please go on. 

D: We'll come back to that. But it's a good point. And she is definitely not a real woman, that's for sure. So I think it's good that she's not counted asone of the five real women who have a statue – 

K: Agreed!


D: – in Copenhagen.

K: Statues aside, how does Denmark do when it comes to, sort of, measures of gender equality? I always think of Scandinavia generally as been pretty decent, but I don't know the specifics. 

D: Yeah, I looked this up. And it does seem like things are relatively decent there compared to other countries in the EU. There's actually this gender equality index that the EU publishes each year, and Denmark was, in the most recent one, ranked third in gender equality after Sweden and the Netherlands. That said, there is, of course, still lots of room for improvement, not only in the allocation of statues. For example, Danish men still earn 12.7% more than women on average, which is a big pay gap. And of course, that is not going to be fixed by some new statues of women. But I still think we should celebrate that this decision had been made by the culture minister, though I should also make sure I don't give all the praise for this Good Week to the culture minister, who is a man. Because of course, though he is making the final decision here, there were swathes of women who have paved the way for this decision to be made and argued for it for years and years, women who've been fighting for greater representation for women in Denmark. One project which brought this statue inequality to light back in 2022, and gave the issue much more public awareness, was a project called 50 Queens from the architecture firm BIG in Copenhagen. It was a project to celebrate Queen Margrethe’s 50th year on the throne. They temporarily erected a ring of 50 empty pedestals in the centre of Copenhagen. It was a statement about how women are missing from art in public space. The empty pedestals each had QR codes on them, that took you to a link about 50 different overlooked women in Denmark's history. And the woman who was behind that project was Giulia Frittoli, a designer. And she said to Bloomberg at the time: ‘By digging out figures in the past that we don't think have been represented or heard from enough, it's almost as if we are rewriting Danish history in a way. But at the same time we are looking forward, we are waiting for the statues to come.’ And her dream seems like it's going to be coming true. So, Good Week goes to Denmark. 

* * * 

D: It's that moment in the show where we beg you for money, apologies if you experience that as unbecoming. But we will continue to do it every week nonetheless. It's the only way we can keep nurturing this podcast baby we birthed back in 2017.

K: That’s some lovely imagery. Now I'm wondering whether it was more painful to birth this podcast or my human child.

D: Hey, that's a question only you can answer Katy.

K: I'm gonna say my human child. This process has been a delight.

D: I'm glad to hear that. You can donate as little as two euros a month to help with the upkeep of this show. Head to Patreon.com/europeanspodcast if you value what we do and are able to part ways with a little bit of hard-earned cash.

K: We're super grateful to everyone who does that. And this week, we are especially grateful to our newest supporters, Mikal, Bartosz Bartosh, and to Connor and Daniel for increasing their donations.

D: Thank you all!

INTERVIEW WITH AITOR HERNÁNDEZ-MORALES - 18’25” 

K: We love chaotic elections on this podcast. I shouldn't say that, should I? that's an irresponsible thing to say. Obviously, political stability is a good thing. 

D: And this is real people's lives, Katy, who are affected by the policies of incoming governments.

K: I know…

D: It's serious. It's not just a game. 

K: However, as election nerds, I think it's fair to say that we're always very interested to see what happens when a country delivers a complicated election result. And Sunday's elections in Portugal were no exception. At one point as the results were coming in, it was actually reported that the outgoing Socialists had won the vote. But that didn't turn out to be the case, and a narrow victory was claimed by the centre-right Democratic Alliance coalition. The final results aren't actually in yet, so I won't give the numbers, but the centre-right looks to be just ahead of the Socialists by a very slim margin. So they're the best placed to form a government. And in third place, having made really significant gains, you guessed it, it's a far right party. 

D. Yippee.

K: So it's a complicated picture, and one that taps into some wider political trends that we're seeing across Europe at the moment. Who better to de-complicate this very complicated situation in Portugal for us than Aitor Hernández-Morales. He's a reporter for Politico covering the Iberian Peninsula. You might have heard him on the show back in November talking about Spain's new government. He's back! Dominic was very busy singing and sadly wasn't free to join us for this chat, but I was very happy to give him a call in Lisbon.

Aitor, thanks so much for joining us.

AITOR HERNÁNDEZ-MORALES: Happy to do it. 

K: I feel like you've become our, sort of, Messy Iberian Elections Correspondent.

A: Basically, yeah. After last year’s fun in Spain, yeah, it's been interesting to come back down here to Lisbon and to cover these elections, which in the end have been just as much of a nightmare in a lot of ways as the Spanish ones. 

K: Yeah. 

A: We knew that the outcome was going to be interesting, but I don't think anyone expected what happened on Sunday.

K: I mean, it's super messy, especially compared to the last time Portugal held a general election, right? I mean, just over two years ago, the Socialists got an absolute majority. What has changed since then?

A: Two years ago, we had snap elections here because the incumbent prime minister, Socialist António Costa, who has been in power since 2015, he had been governing with a series of minority governments backed by far-left parties in the parliament. These parties had progressively, with every passing year, kind of complained that the Socialists were ignoring them, that they weren't really being as progressive as they promised to be. In 2021, they were negotiating the budget, and the far-left decided to put its foot down and say, ‘You're not going far enough. And if you're not going to go far enough, we're not going back your budget.’ So because the budget wasn’t passed, the President of the Republic dissolved Parliament, called new elections. What we got was an absolute majority for António Costa. It was a surprise at the time. But when you look at the voting trends in Portugal, the Portuguese electorate generally enjoys stability. And I think that at that time in 2022, they had had seven years of António Costa, and they were kind of like, you know, this guy's not too bad. He's doing pretty well. Let's just let him do what he needs to do. And let's give him the seats that he can do that. What happens is, he didn't do much with it. That's really one of the shocking things. And it's one of the things that I've heard a lot in Lisbon during the past few weeks. People were profoundly upset with the Costa government, because with that absolute majority, nothing was done. None of the structural reforms that the country desperately needs. 

So one of the big issues here, for example, is housing. That's an issue all over Europe, but it's just one of those where it really would have been the moment for the Socialists to tackle it to come up with an ambitious housing policy. None of that was done. And one of the reasons that none of that progress was happening was that Costa’s government was affected by constant scandals. So in the two years that it was in office, this last time around, something like over a dozen high ranking officials resigned, and resigned for different reasons, some of them because they were being investigated for corruption, others simply because they had questionable family interests in the sectors that they were supposed to be legislating over. The impression was that things just weren't really working out and that possibly, the Socialist Party had become too comfortable in power. And that then leads us to November when we have this explosive raid on the prime minister's official residence in Lisbon, and we find out that he and members of his cabinet are involved in this larger influence peddling probe. Now, Costas is not accused of anything formally, but he is being investigated by the country's Supreme Court. And meanwhile, you have members of his government who are being formally investigated for these questionable actions. Probably most problematically, you have Costa’s chief of staff arrested. And when they arrested him, they found like 75,000 euros just stashed in his office that he wasn't quite able to explain. He claims that it has nothing to do with his government activities. But, you know, it leads everyone to wonder, what is this man doing with 75,000 euros in

Cash?

K: It's never a good sign, is it, to have large amounts of cash in a political office?

A: It’s not a good look, undeclared cash. He now claims that he made the money giving seminars in Angola in like 2016. But none of it really makes sense. And then the other person who is arrested that same day when these raids take place, is Lacerda Machado, who is a lawyer, who's Costa’s self-described best friend. And Costa for years had been kind of bringing him into the government to solve problems. He initially did this on a pro bono basis, which meant he had no oversight. Then they kind of had this symbolic contract with the government. But it definitely was one of those where it raised a lot of eyebrows. And in this particular circumstance, he's being investigated, because there's suspicion that he was representing a private company at the same time that he was assisting the government in crafting legislation that would have affected this company. You know, it's a series of bad looks. When we go to these elections now, I think what you're seeing is a reaction across the board of people who are just tired, who have decided, man, we really gave these politicians and the ruling Socialist Party a lot of slack. They haven't done anything with it. I guess it's time for a change. So that brings us up to the election. Now, where you kind of throw a grenade into it is that this process coincides with the pretty spectacular growth of the far-right Chega party. I think that's important to keep in mind because had that not happened, what we would be talking about is simply a kind of changing of the guard, which is usually what happens in Portugal. The Socialists govern some years, and then you have the centre-right conservatives governing some years, and they kind of go back and forth. In this case, what you have for the first time since the 1980s is a very strong third party, which happens to be a far-right party. And that's just, you know, kind of thrown everything into chaos.

K: And who are Chega? What do they stand for?

A: Chega appears in 2019. It's a party that's founded by this ex-sports commentator named André Ventura, he had actually served as either an alderman or a mayor in a city called Loures. And he got some headlines in 2017, because on the campaign trail, he started to say these really horrible things about the Roma community. He becomes a social pariah within his party. And rather than disappear into the shadows, he decides to create Chega, which initially is kind of a dumpster fire of a party. Chega first runs in the 2019 European elections, and they get no seats. And that's partially because Ventura does insane things like not show up to the debates, and instead go on these chat shows to discuss football. Most people start thinking that it's kind of a stunt party. But later that year, he does get into Parliament here. And he uses that position to rail within the parliament against the mainstream parties, which he says are corrupt and terrible, they don't represent the will of the people. In the 2022 elections, his party increases, and they end up getting 12 seats in the parliament. And now what we saw on Sunday was Chega multiplying its holding the parliament fourfold. So they will now have at least 48 seats, which is crazy, given that it's a parliament of only 230 lawmakers.

K: And do you think that is just a reaction to people being tired of the Socialists, or is there also some element of, ‘what they're offering is attractive to us in itself’?

A: I think Chega is the expression of popular discontent, like many other far-right parties across Europe. Portugal is, I believe, the poorest country in Western Europe. The difference here between the minimum wage and the median wage is minimal, we're talking about a couple of hundred euros. So people are upset because the economic growth that we've had in Portugal since 2015, which has coincided with this tourism boom, it's been great for the country's GDP, there are more jobs, but the jobs are very low-quality jobs. And that influx of foreign tourists, of digital nomads, has made the cost of living extremely expensive here, especially in cities like Lisbon and Porto. What you have are people who are deeply frustrated. Certainly Chega concentrates an older generation, the people who are on the forefront of being impacted by these changes. So there, we could talk about taxi drivers, we could talk about people who have been really hit by the gig economy, but it is a party that's getting support from really unexpected sectors of the population who feel cheated by the system. But to your point, is this a reaction against the Socialist Party? I would argue this is a reaction against late-stage capitalism. And the only thing here is that Chega is providing an easy response to it. Chega claims that all of Portugal's problems are being caused by corrupt politicians and by immigrants coming here and taking people's jobs. And when you actually look at the numbers, none of this is true. It doesn't hold up. But it is a perfect excuse for someone who's very upset and who doesn't want to admit that they're being left behind by society and left behind by our economic models.

K: The centre-right winners of this election have said that they won't work with the far-right. But it's quite difficult for them to pass legislation without Chega’s support, no?

A: Yeah, so this is something that we're going to see over the next few months, presumably Luís Montenegro, who's the head of the centre-right coalition, he'll be asked to form a government. He will then form that government at some point in April. In the immediate term, we'll have to see if he's willing to keep the budget passed by Costa’s Socialists at the end of last year. This was one of the conditions that the President of the Republic put for accepting Costa’s resignation – he said, ‘I'll accept it, but you have to stay on at least three weeks to pass a budget, because we can't just leave the country without one. And then you have to stay on until the election.’ So the Costa phenomenon is incredible, because that man resigned in November and he is still the prime minister. I think he's very tired and he would like to move on. 

K: I know the feeling.

A: Yeah, if nothing else, I hope this election finally leads Costa to, you know, go on holiday and just disconnect from all of this. But the real question will be whether Montenegro can pull off a budget in October. By Portuguese law, they have to present it and it gets voted on at that point. We'll have to see if the President of the Republic dissolves the parliament if they can't pass it. I think the centre-right’s strategy will be to actually flip this on the Socialists, which is to say I think one of the arguments we'll be hearing from Montenegro is, ‘The Socialists are allying themselves to the far-right by not backing our budget, by not backing our proposals, you know? I wonder if that might actually be a winning strategy, if Montenegro is able to cast himself as a guy who really wants to work and really wants to get things done for the Portuguese people, and does not want to make deals with the far-right, but it's being stopped by Socialists who are just saying, ‘No, no, no, we're not going to do anything, even if it's good for the Portuguese people’. That might actually work in his favour. We'll have to see how that evolves. And then we'll also have to see if the Socialists let the budget by. It's possible that they'll say, ‘You know what, we're going to let this guy get one budget’, in part because that will give the party time to reorganise itself.

K: And has there been any suggestion that Montenegro, the centre-right leader might break his promise and end up collaborating in some formal or less formal way with Chega, just to get stuff done?

A: We haven't seen that. And Montenegro has been pretty insistent that he will not enter into deals with Chega. One thing that we should look out for is obviously Montenegro can't control how Chegaotes. So we should look at the appearance that might come if Chega decides to support some of his legislation anyway. It could be actually quite awkward for him in a lot of ways, because he will certainly then be accused of leading a far-right coalition, even if it's unofficial. Look, I think Portugal was in a tough spot. And we saw this in the 2022 elections. In the 2022 elections, Costa very effectively made the case that it was either him or it was the far-right. And he got people to turn out in droves and to give him that absolute majority. That scenario, a scenario where the centre-right cannot conceivably govern without the far-right, I think is dangerous in the long-term for democracy, because whether one likes it or not, there are a lot of conservative voters in Portugal. And if those people feel like mathematically, they have no shot at ever having a prime minister, those people are only going to get radicalised because they're going to feel that their voices are being heard. But to your point, in terms of whether Montenegro could pact with Chega, at a personal level, it would be incredibly stupid for him, because he's been on the record so many times saying that he wouldn't do it. And I think it would probably be very dangerous for his party.

K: Has there ever been any suggestion of having like a formal centre-right, centre-left, grand coalition? Or did the two major forces just say, no way, we're not doing that?

A: No. To my knowledge, it's only happened once in Portugal, in the 80s. And it was a very extreme situation where there was pressure from, I believe, the IMF. But no, it's something that just isn't a thing in the Iberian Peninsula, I mean, in the same way that it would be unthinkable in the UK outside of wartime, we would never contemplate that the Tories and Labour getting together and forming a grand coalition for the good of the country. And that's more or less the same here, I think, because these are very centrist parties in the end. So I think their calculation is, if they were ever to come together, they would alienate their most stalwart loyalists. At the same time, they would leave moderates wondering what the difference was between one or the other. And that probably wouldn't favour them in the long term. 

K: How likely do you think it is this whole thing ends in fresh elections?

A: We can't have fresh elections, at least for six months. The Portuguese constitution is delicious, because it's just series of like, blocks of time. It's very fun whenever you cover stuff here, because you basically have to be doing math all the time. So by law, you cannot hold the elections within six months of the previous elections. And then those elections can only be held 55 days after the parliament is dissolved, and then the President calls them. So at the very soonest we would have elections in November. Then we start getting into more complex things. If for example, Montenegro manages to get his budget passed, and he makes it into next year, I think it's in 2026, we have to pick a new president of the republic, because he’ll be out. And there too, you can't hold elections within six months before or after. So that basically locks it in. So there is a timeline where Montenegro could presumably either be out in nine months, or he will be stuck in office for two years because they won't be able to hold elections before. So it's gonna be interesting to see. My bet is that he will get his first budget passed. I think the Socialists will opt for that pragmatic solution, and then we'll see where it goes.

* * * 

D: Why does Aitor always end up coming on the show the weeks that I'm not available? Is he avoiding me?

K: I think so. Aitor, explain yourself. Thank you so much to Aitor for joining us. We – we always love talking to him, I do anyway. Although at this time I would say that speaking to Aitor both put a smile on my face and made me more worried than I already was about what the European election results are going to look like in June. Mixed emotions. You can find Aitor on Twitter, he is a great person to follow for political news in English from Portugal and Spain. You'll find the link in the show notes.

THE INSPIRATION STATION - 35’28”

K: What have you been enjoying this week, Dominic?

D: Well, this week I've decided to mention Eurovision, so please skip forward 30 seconds if you are allergic to Eurovision chat. I know some people are, although you may want to stay and hear my ridiculous hot take even if you hate the contest. 

K: Go on. 

D: I want to talk about the Dutch entrant. I'm sorry for talking about the entrant from my country of residence – 

K: Biased much?!

D: Yeah, right. But it is creating waves online. It's the most watched Eurovision video on YouTube this year, by quite some way I think. The song is called Europapa. And the reason why I want to talk about it today is because I think it might be one of the most explicitly pro-EU songs in the history of Eurovision. It's essentially a celebration of the joys of freedom of movement within the EU. 

[SOUND CLIP]

Joost Klein, the artist behind this hit, is dressed in some of the music video in a costume that's essentially the EU flag. Now I will say now, I personally hate the song. I think it's horrible to listen to. But I do love the concept behind it. And I understand why it's become a bit of a viral hit online.

K: Didn't you say it's like really beautiful in Dutch, but you might not be able to understand that if you don't speak Dutch?

D: Yeah, the words are really beautiful because it's both about freedom of movement and celebrating the EU and being able to cross borders, and it's also about his father who died when he was, I think 12, and about how his father encouraged him to look out and experience the world beyond the borders of his own country. So he's celebrating his father, his Europapa, and the European Union all at the same time. And here's my ridiculous hot take. We are in a moment when the far-right and Euroscepticism in Europe is rising with seemingly no end in sight. But I think Joost Klein’s song might be a light at the end of the tunnel, a reminder to all of us that those European values that so many of us take for granted, seemingly boring values, are amazing, are worth singing about in a stupid, catchy song, and that people are actually open to that messaging. I honestly think it's one of the best examples I've seen of positive communication about the European Union since we started making this podcast all those years ago. It's exactly the kind of storytelling that is so difficult to do about the European Union, but that is so necessary and has been missing, particularly from pop culture. And even though I personally can't really listen to the song because I find it so annoying, I also think it's come just at the right time, with Eurovision taking place a month before the European Parliamentary elections, when we need to make sure as many people vote as possible, and that people will remember why the European Union is worth defending, even if it's this messy, imperfect union that doesn't quite live up to what we all want it to be. So tere. I don't know if Joost will win. I think he could, momentum is building. And I think he should then be the Spitzenkandidat for the Social Democrats. No, okay, I’ve gone too far. 

K: I was with you till there. 

D: Joost Klein for European Commissioner! Yeah, I definitely took it too far. But I did find it a really interesting moment. And like, hearing kids around Amsterdam singing this song. I was like, wow, Joost Klein is creating like a generation of pro-European kids with this

song. 

K: Are kids really singing this song in the street?

D: Yeah! Oh, I think kids more than adults, because it's so annoying. 

K: When you think about it, this is actually a very beautiful metaphor, this song, for the entire European project, in that it has a lovely message, but like several super annoying and ugly elements.

D: It's true. You're right, the dramaturgy of this Eurovision entry is just beyond. What have you been enjoying this week, Katy?

K: I've also got a listening recommendation, a podcast this time. I have been very much enjoying a podcast series from our friends at Deutsche Welle. It's called Don't Drink The Milk, and each episode is an unexpected history of something. There are stories that take us all around Europe and beyond, but mostly Europe, and I particularly enjoyed the episode about the history of homoeopathy and how it was exported from Germany across the world. I also really liked the episode about passports, and it's funny that you mentioned freedom of movement, because this podcast episode, it really blew my mind in teaching me just how different mainstream opinions were about freedom of movement like a century ago. Passports were really quite widely seen as an annoying restriction on people's ability to go about as we pleased. Oh, how things changed. But yeah, there's episodes about the surprising history of all kinds of things, like bagels and IPA beer.

D: And milk?

K: And milk, you'll be pleased to hear. Yeah, I'm really enjoying this series, it is called Don't Drink The Milk?

HAPPY ENDING - 40’24”

D: For this week's happy ending, I'd like to start with a blast from the past for you, Katy. Do you remember this voice? 

[SOUND CLIP: Even if nuclear bombs should hit Svalbard, the seeds are so deep, stored inside the mountain, so they will be safe.]

K: Oh my god, that is a vintage episode of The Europeans. When was that?

D: It was back in 2018, March 2018, a long time ago. And that voice is the voice of Åsmund Asdal who is the coordinator of Norway's Global Seed Vault, the incredible Arctic vault in a permafrost cave on the archipelago of Svalbard, halfway between Europe and the North Pole. And Katy spoke to Åsmund back in 2018 about this seed vault, which is a place where they keep duplicates of seeds from gene banks all over the world to ensure that there is a backup of all the seeds in case seeds are lost due to war, disaster, mismanagement, etc. And the reason why I'm bringing this up again, is because six years after you interviewed Åsmund, Katy, the seed vault announced some very good news last week. At the end of February, they opened up the vault to put in some new seeds, as they do a few times a year. And this time, they had a record delivery of seeds to place in the vault. 23 seed banks had sent more than 12,000 seeds, including from nine countries who had never contributed to the seed vault before.

K: That's great. That's gonna increase the diversity of all of the seeds in the collection.

D: Yeah, it's really good news. There were seeds from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cameroon, Indonesia and Kazakhstan, sending seeds for things including rice, maize, cowpea…

K: Cow pee?

D: Cowpea.

K: As in cow urine? 

D: No, it’s a legume, silly.

K: Cowpea. Need to try that one.

D: The bank now contains 1,255,332 seed samples from 99 different gene banks around the world. 

K: That's amazing. That's more than the number of pages needed to join the EU. 

D: It's true. And the reason why this makes me happy is because it shows how we can cooperate internationally to try and protect long term global food security, in a time when it feels like international cooperation around a lot of things was a thing of the past. So I was really cheered to hear that the Global Seed Vault is thriving. The director of the crop trust, who helps manage the vault, he put it really well, he said, ‘The seed vault represents a shared commitment to global peace, where nations unite to safeguard a common resource vital for sustaining life worldwide.’ So there we go. A blast from the past. Some happy news from a permafrost cave.

* * *

K: We are taking a break next week, listeners, we thought we'd give everyone a chance to catch up on the many great episodes that have come out so far this year. And also Dominic is filling pretty much every waking hour with singing right now.

D: It's true. For some reason, early March is always my bottleneck period in my operatic singing career over here. But we'll be back the week after in your feed on Thursday. Hope you don't miss us too much. Actually, I hope you do miss us a lot. 

K: Hope you miss us loads. And if you do miss us, don't worry, we will not be remaining silent. You will find us on Twitter enjoying all of the Kate Middleton memes, Instagram, Mastodon and Threads just type in The Europeans podcast, you should find us. 

D: This week's episode was produced by Katy Lee and Wojciech Oleksiak. Thank you both.

K: See you in two weeks everyone. 

D: Bye. 

K: Tchau tchau.