What challenges and threats do European democracies face today? How actually democratic are they? What is an illiberal democracy? Will democracy in Europe resist the stress-test of the Covid-19 pandemic? Was “Brexit” a vaccine against Euroscepticism? To answer this questions, Pedro Pinto interviews Catherine de Vries in this episode of “It’s Not That Simple” a podcast by the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation. 

A political scientist and an expert on European politics, Catherine de Vries is a Dean of Diversity & Inclusion and Professor of Political Science at Bocconi University, and has published several books on the economic, political, and social reality of the European Union. A columnist of Het Financieele Dagblad (the “Dutch Financial Times”), de Vries is also a member of European Integration Committee of the Dutch Advisory Council on Foreign Affairs, and in 2013, she was selected a Young Global Leader in the World Economic Forum for her societal impact. 

 In this episode, de Vries discusses the impasse the European Union has found itself in since the Treaty of Lisbon, the opportunities the current crisis might present to the EU, the impact national elections such as the April 2022 French elections might have on the EU’s future, or the challenges of the energy transition, in a conversation worth listening to. 

More on this topic

• Euroscepticism and the Future of European Integration, Catherine de Vries, 2018 

• On Euroscepticism and the future of European integration, Catherine de Vries, 2017 

• Catherine de Vries and historian Timothy Garton Ash on the challenges faced by European leaders 

• On why it is so hard to reach a consensus within European institutions

• Conference on “What Democracy?” of the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation, 2016  

• On the “illiberal democracies” of Hungary and Poland, by historian Anne Applebaum 

Other references in Portuguese

• Essays of the Foundation:

“A democracia na Europa”, by Catherine Moury; 

“Qualidade da democracia em Portugal” by Conceição Pequito Teixeira; 

“Instituições e qualidade da democracia: cultura política na Europa do Sul”, a study coordinated by Tiago Fernandes. 

• [IN] Pertinente podcast, “Estará a democracia ameaçada?”, with Raquel Vaz-Pinto and Pedro Vieira