Is Bardella too toxic for Le Pen’s campaign?

0:00Today's episode is presented by Reju. Europe discards about 9 million tons of polyester textiles every year. Is there a way to turn textile waste into a valuable resource for the EU? Look in your feed for a special podcast episode produced by Politico Studio. Good morning, it's Wednesday, September 30, and this is the Russell's Playbook podcast. The violin Brussels today is charged as Ursula Von der Leyen heads to the Balkans and the EU promises an autumn of enlargement. Also on the pod, bombshell allegations of anti-Semitism threatened to undermine marine-lipense presidential campaign. And as promised, we take you inside Brussels's surprisingly political sauna circuit. Oh, that's a hard one to say. I'm Zoja Follvich and with me today is our senior EU politics editor and sauna-oficionado Ian Wushart. Morning Ian. Good morning, Zoja, how are you?

1:00I'm well, I just ate a slice of Dionysus' most spectacular plum cake and I am buzzing. What a funny breakfast. It was a very good breakfast and I think cake for breakfast is the best breakfast there is. Do you want to thank you? You bring us joy. Alright, let's get straight to our first day today, Ian. It's about EU enlargement because Ursula Von der Leyen, the European Commission president, is often her annual tour of the Western Balkans from today. She does this every year, doesn't she? She does, yeah. So she visits the six EU wannabees from the Western Balkans, although this time around she's actually not visiting a couple because of elections. So Bosnia and Serbia, she said she's not going to go to because of the elections there. Okay, so that leaves what Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia? North Macedonia, exactly. So she's starting first up in Albania today and then tomorrow she'll be in Kosovo, then Montenegro and then North Macedonia. What does she hope to achieve, do you think? Well, this is all part of this whole EU embrace of the Western Balkans. The EU wants to show these countries which are in the EU's waiting room

2:03and have been for a really long time. There is progress. We want you to feel like you're making moves towards the EU. And there's a few things that she's bringing with her, some goodies in her bag in terms of various announcements that she'll be making about money for these regions and so forth. But the thing that she is not bringing for some of these countries is... Guaranteed membership. Indeed. And in fact, there's no guarantees of membership at all. So she's going to be telling a few of these countries that they will have a timetable about when they're going to be joining the European Union and some of them are not going to find out at all. Is she just stringing them along? I think... Because it takes a huge effort for the EU to approve countries to join. Every country, every member state has to agree it. They have to go through all these hoops. All these countries have been waiting for many, many years. So when is it going to happen? Well, that's the question she's going to be asked, isn't it? It is the question she's going to be asked.

3:03And for four of those countries, it's looking a little more promising, particularly for Montenegro, which is very much ahead when it comes to the race to join the EU. They keep closing chapter after chapter of their negotiating texts. And there is some pretty real prospects that Montenegro might conclude their negotiations this year. I mean, it won't be immediate. The membership itself won't be immediate, but they are striving to become the 28th member by 2028. Yeah. Two of the Western Balkans countries, Montenegro and Albania, as seen as the front runners aren't they for for membership. Yeah. Ukraine and more dover also within that sort of front running for some. Exactly. Those countries are expected to get what the European Commission is going to refer to as sort of a road map. Now, this will be unveiled later. I think it's on the 28th of October that we'll actually see these road maps. But this is quite a new thing. And the idea is basically to give them dates and times and sort of be more tangible. Make it all much more tangible. Yeah.

4:03And it's because of these delays and because they've been getting very disappointed about the lack of progress, some of them and the many years they've spent negotiating. So I think it's part of this idea of like showing them we do have a plan, we do have timing in mind and that sort of thing. But then you've got some countries specifically, Kosovo is one of them, but also North Macedonia, whose progress is pretty stuck. And I've actually spoken with Jettons or Farge whose Kosovo's chief negotiator with the EU. And I asked him, what does it do to morale for people in Kosovo when they've had this real deadlock in their application for the past four years and things seem to be moving at all? It certainly does not help. Behavior of the EU does have an impact on the people. If we are forgotten and left behind, that will certainly have an effect in the citizens. But most importantly, I think it is leaving us vulnerable to malign actors. I have been asking that the narrative should change.

5:06Now it's becoming four years and we should start talking about the kind of they say to us. Now those who want to join and they do the homework, they should be able to move forward. I know that they are listening daily to your podcast, Zoya. They will hear this as a good message to start pushing for this. Because the people in Kosovo need and deserve to move forward. And speaking of being left behind and being vulnerable to malign actors, you can see how that's happened to another Western-Balken country, Serbia, which technically is also in the queue to join. And this is one of the countries that is not visiting extensively because it's got an election. But actually we should remember that we have spoken about another podcast, this funeral for a convicted war criminal, Mladic. In response to that, the EU's enlargement commission on Marter Koss announced that she would be canceling a visit to Serbia.

6:14And there's been a cacophony of voices speaking out and saying this is absolutely unacceptable and that Serbia is moving further away from the EU path. And indeed there have been significant instances of influence operations which are assumed to be run by Russia in Serbia. And Serbia's former president, Vychitch, was known to be quite close to the Kremlin and he's just resigned but he's going to be running for Prime Minister. Well, thanks. So I will be keeping tabs then on, I should have undilions, trip and if we get any news, we'll bring it to you. Okay, so yes, so we move from countries on the fringes to one of the, a country that beating harder than EU. France, France again. Founding member. Indeed, but having some troubles going into this April-May period when it's going to have the next presidential election. Yeah, we want to talk about problems that Marie Le Pen frontrunner for the presidency that election has been having with her running mate basically Jordan Badela, who has expected to be the Prime Minister if she were to win.

7:20And he was in, while she was kind of her future was under a question mark, he was the presumed presidential candidate. So they're very close and they've done a little switcheroo. But now allegations of anti-Semitism has cropped up and we've written about this for political. That's right. Our colleagues in Paris, Marion Claire and Victor have a story out this morning, basically looking at whether Badela might be turning from one of Le Pen's biggest assets to one of her biggest liabilities. And the reason why he was an asset is because he was sort of this clean, fresh, faced new. Young, telegenic. Yeah, like you. Sorry, telegenic. Telegenic and young. Thank you. 31 years old and he's a kind of an MP leader of the Patriots group in the European Parliament. But this whole image has come crashing down now seemingly because of this reportage from media part, a media organization in France. Now we should say he's vehemently denied any of these allegations. He has. Saying that and he's threatened to sue media part, I believe as well.

8:21And Le Pen has stuck by him for the time being at least and sort of used that means of communication that politicians often do and say this is basically a war on their party. Yeah, and we should say so what the allegations refer to is that around about when Badela was 17. So this would have been about 14 years ago because he's 31 now back in 2013 when he just recently joined the party. He had been exchanging text messages with people in which he referred to some pretty nasty anti-Semitic tropes. Yeah, apparently according to media part, he wrote that all banks are held by the Jews. And in another exchange, he allegedly claimed top French government jobs went to people who put Israel and banking interest ahead of French interests. Some of the politicians he targeted, Laurie on Fabius, Manuel Vals, but also Pierre Moscavici who people in Brussels would know as the former economic commissioner.

9:21So Moscavici actually spoke with our colleagues and he told them that National Rally would really have to vigorously show that this is false. I think what's really interesting about this, so is that Marine Le Pen has dedicated sort of two decades of her career to try and clean up the image of the National Rally. Change his name from National Front to National Rally. Try to get rid of that stain of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia and try to portray themselves as a mainstream party. Yeah, and she went so far as to expel her father Jean Marine Le Pen from the party back in 2015. And this was seen as this big gesture to show the party has changed. She has changed. And despite the fact that she shares a surname with him, she does not share his anti-Semitic views. So I think as we enter into the last few months before the French election, I think what will be most notable is if some of these, this old reputation that the party has, can stick or whether it's something that they've successfully got rid of.

10:22Yeah, and this is key because this party is leading in polls and is very much becoming more palatable to a broader range of the French electorate. And even with Jewish people in France, they have sort of given indications and they've been courting the Jewish vote as well. They've been trying to say we've changed, we're not the same, we'll protect you. So I think there's been a concerted effort to try to get new voters on board and this might undermine that. Because we've seen Marine Le Pen get to the last two in presidential elections before. Every time it's been the case where people have actually voted against her when it came to the crunch. People hesitating, I think, actually, can I do this? Can I make this giant leap? The receive wisdom is perhaps this year that will happen now and she will become president, but it doesn't have to take too many of these allegations to make people start thinking actually, is this still the party of old? But of course, it depends on who it is that she's up against in that runoff election. Because for instance, we know from the polling that Jean-Luc Melanchon, the far left contender for that presidency, if up against Marine Le Pen, he loses convincingly and she wins convincingly.

11:27He's even more divisive indeed. Ian, we promised folks we'd be speaking about Saunas today and I'll tell you why. Yeah. It's because when we were speaking last week with Sarah. I just put that towel a bit round you a bit tighter, please. I could say the same thing about you Ian. Well, it's because last week we were talking about exercise levels in Europe because it was European week of sports. The Finns, the Finns are very sporty folk and I was joking with Sarah. I was wondering whether Saunas might count because that might up my exercise levels. And we've had some people write in saying that they did think that they should count. You harb one of our Finnish listeners wrote in and said that the free outdoor gyms and public Saunas in Finland contribute to their sportiness and they get to use them even in winter. You do get a massive sweat on, don't you? You do. And I've been thinking about that because it's just so happened that on the very same day that we were speaking about Finns and Saunas, I was invited to a kind of event at the Estonian Embassy.

12:29In a sauna? In a sauna. Because the Estonians are big Saunas as well. Did you know? I did. So, I got to talking and it turns out that it's not the only sauna in Brussels where you can go and meet some diplomats. No. In fact, I have been to the sauna in a Finnish Embassy many, many times. I remember one incident in particular where a long time ago, very height of the Eurozone crisis. And I was in there with about five journalists and a quite a senior finance diplomat. And I had to get this one piece of information off him. And I knew it would be an amazing scoop if he told me this information. The sauna was very, very hot. How hot? It was so hot it was sending us all delirious. And one by one, every other reporter couldn't take it any more and left. I was like, I'm going to have to stay in here. I'm going to have to stay in here to find out what this piece of information is going to be an amazing scoop in the morning. And it was getting hotter and hotter and hotter. Finally, it was just me in the diplomat and I said the question I needed to ask.

13:31And he was, you know, how Finnish people speak very slowly. Musical. Well, let me think about the answer I would, and I was getting hot. I could literally hear one line of this and then I'm just going to dash out. He gave me one sentence and I dashed out, but that was enough. But, yeah, it's a very, it's a very hardcore way to do reporting. It is, well, I got into the sauna and, you know, actually, I'm away in. I spotted a very hilarious and suggestive cactus. The Estonians have a good sense of humor. They can be prickly, can't they? Anyway, we wouldn't necessarily recommend it as a thing where you want to go with all your colleagues and journalists. There's only so many journalists, spinesses you can see in one night, isn't there? What's Ben running our overlord? Gonna say about this one, guys. This one's for you, Ben. This one's for you. Yes, look, it's true. The sauna that I went to in the Estonian perm rep, you could wear your swimmers in that one at least.

14:35So, there is that. Did you know there's a sauna also in the Burlamont? I did. In the basement? Have you been in that one? I haven't I'm afraid, no. Well, you know, I was speaking with a Finnish person who shall remain unnamed, but I think they might listen to this podcast. And they were telling me that the Finnish sauna in the Finnish perm rep is the absolute bees knees, but it's closed for innovations at the moment. In the meantime, you can go, there's a Finnish semen sauna. I hear. There is. Yeah, in the Finnish semen's mission in Brussels. So, that's for you folks, listeners. Everyone else would just have to go to Adamo and Asperger to sweat it out. I think that's about all we've got time for today folks. I don't know what just happened. It's a fever dreamy and I feel like I'm in a sauna right now. It's wetting the floor. You did a low down. Folks, thank you so much for listening. Leave us a review. Send us a message on our WhatsApp line. Tell us if you've ever been in a political sauna. You know, getting briefed. God, I don't know what's happening here. Folks, feed you. I can't take this enough.

15:35I'm not afraid. Oh, do you honestly? Oh, Dionys and Saga. Sabas. Sabas from Asperger. We're done. We're done. A message from Reju. Europe currently discards about 9 million tons of polyester textiles every year. That's the weight of about 900 Eiffel Towers. It is so much material in terms of oil, which is such a critical resource going forward. That is a missed opportunity if we just burn it or throw it into the ground. Post-consumer textiles could be a valuable resource for the EU. The technology is there. The circular economy act is peeking over the horizon. Can the EU rise to the challenge? Look in your feed for a special podcast episode produced by Politico Studio. You