Wolfgang Münchau is a former co-editor of Financial Times Deutschland and director of Eurointelligence.
The first smear campaign against AstraZeneca, when Emmanuel Macron falsely claimed at the start of the year that the jab was ‘quasi–ineffective’ in over-65s, did serious damage to public confidence in the Oxford vaccine across Europe. The latest concerted action by the leaders of Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands may have destroyed it
40 min listen
On this week’s episode, we talk vaccine passports (1:10), Nord Stream 2 (14:55) and the appeal of chess (30:50). With entrepreneur Louis-James Davis, journalist James Ball, analyst Wolfgang Münchau, academic Kadri Liik, chess columnist Luke McShane and chess streamer Fiona Steil-Antoni.
Two months ago, a Russian pipe-laying ship called the Akademik Cherskiy left the Baltic island of Rügen to finish the last few miles of the most controversial gas pipeline in the world. Germany hopes that Nord Stream 2 will improve its access to Russia’s vast reserves of natural gas. In America, however, the project is
Markus Söder is the one to watch in German politics. The ascent of the Bavarian Minister-President and leader of the Bavarian Christian Social Union is probably the closest modern Germany has come to Macron-style disruption. The situation is less dramatic than France in 2017 — there is no great disaffection with Chancellor Angela Merkel or
Will the recovery be shaped like a V or a U, some other letter or perhaps the Nike swoosh? This is a much-discussed question among economists right now — but it is not the most important question. We’re familiar with the idea of an up-and-down financial crisis where things return to their starting point: we
Looking back at the 1960s and 1970s, when I grew up in Germany, one of the most striking things was that everyone talked about work and money. The country was infuriatingly materialistic. The old West Germany felt more like an economy than a country. It used to have a proper currency, the Deutschmark, but it