Press

Agata Gostynska-Jakubowska of the Centre for European Reform says the tools the bloc has to address rule of law issues aren’t working properly. “When a government violates European law and in the process goes against democratic values the commission can open an infringement procedure and bring the case in front of the Court of Justice. This procedure cannot be applied however when an EU government backtracks on democratic values but does not break any EU law. If the European Commission does not find any evidence that the EU law has been broken by government's reforms on higher education there is little it can do.”

“We have learned that Trump is not so isolationist as many Europeans feared he would be — he appears to care about victims of a gas attack in Syria,” said Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform in London. “We have learned that he understands that US influence had suffered from the perception — which grew under Obama — that it was a power weakened by its reluctance to use force.”...

Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform, a think-tank, notes that all three leading candidates in the French presidential election are promising to withdraw from this treaty, which is blamed in France for the migrant camps that have sprouted around Calais.

Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, noted that so far the Eurosceptic press was still highly supportive of Mrs May, encouraged by her resolute language on Brexit.

Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, says this was the week when it became clear that Mrs May was determined to reach a deal with the EU and was ready to compromise. Securing that goal could depend much on the relationship between Mr Davis and “Michel”, who at the age of 66 is also on the comeback trail.
“Like Barnier, Davis wants a deal,” Mr Grant says. “He’s building a relationship with Barnier and that’s to his credit. For both of them, it is one last hurrah.”
 

“The British want to get straight into the nitty-gritty of citizens’ rights and the future relationship between the two,” says Simon Tilford, deputy director of the London-based Centre for European Reform.
“Obviously they understand they need to negotiate the divorce settlement alongside that but they want to be doing it simultaneously.

John Springford, director of research at the Centre for European Reform (CER), said: “If no deal is struck in two years, the member-state departs — unless all 28 countries agree to extend the talks.” 
Theresa May has said that “no deal is better than a bad deal”and the UK could walk away from talks. But Mr Springford said: “This is not true...
...“Leaving the EU with no deal would mean tariffs on trade; legal chaos, with every British company selling to the EU unsure if they are doing so legally; and Britain’s alliances with other European countries in ruins.