Press

Brexit: 'Frosty the no man' to turn heat up on EU in Lisbon

Sam Lowe
12 October 2021
City A.M
Sam Lowe, senior research fellow at The Centre for European Reform think tank, said Frost’s expected statements on the ECJ’s role overseeing the treaty have come from left field.
“The fear is that Frost is just adding things to his list of things to be upset about so as to ensure the EU can never properly satisfy the UK’s demands so he can keep this argument rolling on,” he said.

EU unity faces fresh test in Northern Ireland Brexit row

10 October 2021
Politico
“The root of the problem, in a way, is the very bad state of the British-French relationship,” said Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform think-tank. “It is so bad that it makes the French quite unwilling to help the British at all on Brexit issues. And the French of course are very influential on the EU institutions.” Grant argued that if the UK “started to get serious about diplomacy” and tried to “behave better and make some friends in Europe, then there would be a threat to unity because not everybody would want to follow the hard line that the French are taking.”

It was jam tomorrow at the Tory party conference, at least according to Liz Truss

09 October 2021
The Telegraph
Over at a fringe meeting held by the Centre for European Reform, business minister Greg Hands proffered an interesting theory on why we will probably never rejoin the EU. By the time of the next election, he argued, we will have joined the Pacific free trade zone CPTPP and have trade deals with Australia, New Zealand and potentially India and maybe even the US (keep dreaming). “It’s very difficult to see how either rejoining the EU, the customs union or the single market would be compatible,” he said. This assumes, of course, that all of the deals will result in large new trade flows.

Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson lost je ne sais quoi over Brexit and Biden

09 October 2021
The Times
French sources say that even if Macron wins in April he is in no rush to try and build fences with London and will expect the overture to come from Johnson. This a view shared by Charles Grant, the head of the centre for European Reform, who hosted Macron in London when his presidential ambition was still in its infancy.

Smart reads: Transatlantic blues

Sophia Besch, Luigi Scazzieri
08 October 2021
Financial Times
The withdrawal from Afghanistan and US’s surprise defence deal with Australia and the UK show that the tensions in transatlantic relations raised during the Trump presidency essentially remain the same under Joe Biden, writes the Centre for European Reform.

Laschet diz que CDU precisa de “novo começo”

Christian Odendahl
07 October 2021
Publico
O economista do Centre for European Reform Christian Odendahl fazia uma comparação entre os caminhos dos conservadores, por um lado, e dos participantes nas conversações para uma coligação, por outro. “As conversações ‘semáforo’ entre o SPD, Verdes e FDP estão a correr sem percalços, embora ainda haja grandes diferenças a colmatar.

Brexit's no quick fix for higher wages and better skills

06 October 2021
The Independent
"It’s also not necessarily low skilled. It can be about soft skills, knowing how to engage with someone in emotional distress, being a good communicator,” says John Springford, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform, a think-tank. “Having a lot of low skilled migrants coming into a sector like social might depress wages slightly but it might also dramatically improve older people’s experience of care.”

Merkel continuity leaves the European project as unworkable as ever

Christian Odendahl
30 September 2021
The Telegraph
Christian Odendahl from the Centre for European Reform says a "traffic light" coalition of Greens and Liberals under Mr Scholz could agree on a “€500bn climate transition fund” for public and private investment that finesses German debt curbs and is anchored on Mittelstand family firms. This in turn could be the model for softer EU rules exempting green investment from spending caps.

Brexit briefing: The opposition realised this week it cannot upset voters with talk

30 September 2021
Financial Times
Which leads to the third reason for Labour’s reticence on Brexit — that it still doesn’t have any clear ideas about how it wants, as Starmer put it, to “fix the holes” in the TCA.  This much was clear at a fringe event held by the Centre for European Reform featuring Lisa Nandy, the shadow foreign secretary, Jenny Chapman who shadows Frost in the Lords and Hilary Benn, the former Brexit select committee chair.

Judy Asks: Can Germany provide leadership to Europe?

Christian Odendahl
30 September 2021
Carnegie Europe
Yes, it can. The last decade of crises has left Europe with a long to-do list, and two major issues have started to overshadow the German policy debate: climate change and the new - for Berlin, anyway - geopolitical challenges.

Ask CER - Episode 1: EU integration, democratic backsliding & UK financial services regulation

Charles Grant, Zach Meyers, Camino Mortera-Martinez, Rosie Giorgi
29 September 2021
You asked, we answered: introducing the first episode of our new ‘Ask CER’ podcast series.

Labour thinks Boris Johnson might trigger article 16 to distract from fuel and food shortages

28 September 2021
Politics Home
Baroness Jenny Chapman, who leads on Brexit for Labour in the House of Lords, said she worried the government will be tempted to suspend parts of the protocol, triggering a new diplomatic row with Brussels and plunging Northern Ireland into greater uncertainty, to divert attention from ongoing reports of labour shortages and everyday items like food and petrol running out. "The government is in a really sticky situation at the moment and it’s not enjoying the headlines about people queueing at petrol stations," she told a fringe event hosted by the Centre for European Reform at Labour's conference in Brighton.

DW News: Post-Merkel foreign policy

Sophia Besch
28 September 2021
Sophie Besch, as senior research fellow at the CER spoke to DW news about Germany's role in the world, how Germany chooses to handle China, Russia and its relationship with the US is likely to vary from coalition to coalition.

After Merkel, the CDU surveys the wreckage

Christian Odendahl
27 September 2021
Financial Times
“It is smart and it shows the seriousness of those parties after the experience of 2017 when talks between the Greens and Free Democrats collapsed,” says Christian Odendahl of the Centre for European Reform in Berlin.

Europe sees fuel crisis as result of Brexit and has no plans to ‘help the UK out of the s**t they created’

Sam Lowe
27 September 2021
iNews
“Things happen for many reasons, often at the same time,” says Sam Lowe, a senior research fellow of the Centre for European Reform think tank in London. “But it would be weird if the UK putting up significant barriers to trade with its most important trading partner had no impact whatsoever. I mean, we’d have to rethink every single thing we think we know about the benefits of free trade.”

El adiós de Merkel deja a Alemania y a la UE ante un desafío inédito

Christian Odendahl
26 September 2021
El Pais
A la hora de evaluar el legado merkeliano, Christian Odendahl, economista jefe del Centre for European Reform, se detiene en la crisis del euro, con la que Alemania abrió profundas fisuras en la Unión enarbolando la bandera de una austeridad que regó de cadáveres laborales y sociales el continente y lastró a economías del sur como la española.

RTE: Merkel's tenure

Christian Odendahl
25 September 2021
Christian Odendahl spoke to RTE about how much of Angela Merkel's tenure has been characterised by crisis management, leaving little room at times to address other issues.

The cause of our food and petrol shortages is Brexit – yet no one dares name it

Sam Lowe
24 September 2021
The Guardian
As Sam Lowe, trade sage at the Centre for European Reform, puts it drily: “We did make a big decision to differentiate ourselves from our neighbours.”

El miedo a perder a Merkel

Camino Mortera-Martinez
24 September 2021
El Periodico
Ha sido la líder de Alemania durante unos años en los que los intereses de su país y los de la Unión Europea han sido prácticamente los mismos.

Bloomberg: CDU narrows gap ahead of election

Christian Odendahl
24 September 2021
Christian Odendahl argues that German discussions on fiscal rules will influence the European debate, particularly in terms of climate. He says the current gas crisis illustrates how carbon pricing alone isn’t enough to fight climate change - you need higher investment.