Press

Domestic demand spurs growth in Germany

13 January 2011
Financial Times
"It is very hard to talk about a rebalancing of the German economy when growth has been driven almost exclusively by a recovery in business investment, stock building and net exports", said Simon Tilford at the Centre for European Reform, a London think-tank. "That is not to say that it is not going to happen, but I think people have got ahead of themselves."

Europe fears motives of Chinese super-creditor

13 January 2011
The Telegraph
Charles Grant, head of the Centre for European Reform and author of a book on EU-China relations, said China's top goal is to secure an end to the EU arms embargo, imposed after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. It rankles as humiliating treatment for a global superpower that has since changed profoundly. Mr Grant said Britain, France and Germany are all wary of giving ground, cleaving closely to US policy. Washington views China's growing military might as a strategic threat to the Pacific region.

German economy steams ahead

Philip Whyte
13 January 2011
Wall Street Journal
"It's hard to see how those markets are going to be particularly buoyant ones", says Philip Whyte, economist at the London-based Centre for European Reform. "There's an element of optical illusion about Germany's rebound."

Greece blasts EU 'hypocrisy' for opposing Turkey wall plans

10 January 2011
EU Observer
"Greece is the perfect example of what happens when you let a country in without it being fully prepared", Hugo Brady from the London-based Centre for European Reform told this website. Romania and Bulgaria were admitted in the EU too early, he said, with member states now wanting to make sure the same mistake is not repeated with the Schengen zone, especially since both countries are on key migration routes from Turkey and Ukraine.

EU aims to seal deal with Beijing

Katinka Barysch
07 January 2011
Wall Street Journal
"If Spain can no longer access the bond market, will the Chinese lend enough to Spain to get it out of this crisis? I very much doubt it", says Katinka Barysch, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform, a London-based think tank. "Nor would the EU want one of its members to become beholden to China." "They're doing it out of self-interest [the Sinopec deal] but dressing it up as a goodwill gesture towards a troubled continent", she says.

Absent Baroness Ashton leaves Britain without a voice

06 January 2011
The Telegraph
Hugo Brady, senior research fellow at the Centre European Reform, said the commission needed to change its rules to allow Lady Ashton to send a deputy to meetings. "If it doesn't work it will reflect badly on the commission as well", he said.

The EU rotating presidency shrinks

Katinka Barysch
04 January 2011
The Wall Street Journal
"In a way, the Germans had the presidency," says Katinka Barysch of the Centre for European Reform in London. - "The euro crisis accentuated the existing trend" of weaker and weaker presidencies, says Ms Barysch.

Save and secure?

Clara Marina O'Donnell
03 January 2011
E!Sharp
At a bilateral summit in London on November 2 last year, Britain and France embarked on what their leaders described as a "new chapter" in defence co-operation.

Britons want European Union to assert itself on the global stage

26 December 2010
The Guardian
Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, said institutions such as the European commission, the Council of Ministers and the European parliament had always been unpopular because they were "inherently unlovable. But it is encouraging that that the British people do appear to realise that one middle-sized European country can actually achieve more in many areas of policy if it acts with its neighbours than if it tries to go it alone", said Grant.

How Europe’s new goals will pay off

24 December 2010
Newsweek
"The problems are without precedent," says Centre for European Reform's Charles Grant, who predicts five years of "ghastly mess" for Europe, fraught with further political and financial tensions over debt, before the continent's economic renaissance emerges.

Election violence set to push Minsk back towards Moscow

Tomas Valasek
20 December 2010
The Moscow News
"He [Lukashenko] needs to pay close attention to someone, the Belarusian economy is something of a miracle when you compare it to its [former soviet republic] neighbours, such as Moldova. That’s all of foreign provenance", Tomas Valasek from the CER told The Moscow News. ..."The Belarusian economy has always survived on subsidies, so if Lukashenko is to maintain his social contract, which requires low levels of unemployment and relatively generous welfare, he will have to turn to someone." That someone looks likely to be Russia.

Closer fiscal union: a collective guarantee

Simon Tilford
17 December 2010
The Wall Street Journal
"This is a political crisis, not an economic one, because European governments could put this crisis to bed", says Simon Tilford, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform. "If you take the aggregate picture, the eurozone doesn't have a problem," he says.

The euro: a crisis that defies answers

Simon Tilford
16 December 2010
BBC
Others like Simon Tilford from the Centre for European Reform have long argued that the only true remedy is fiscal union. However, he concedes, the "political obstacles to such a union appear insurmountable". Ultimately he believes the euro is unlikely to crack. "EU leaders," he says "will do whatever it takes to save the euro, short of setting up a fiscal union".

Putin in the public glare

Katinka Barysch
14 December 2010
The Moscow News
Putin is shrewd at exploiting the power of the media and combines political grandstanding with more image conscious messages, says Katinka Barysch, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform in London. "You can either give a speech or strip your shirt off and stand in a river, he does both," she said. "He strikes me very much as the second leader of the media age, because Gorbachev was very media savvy as well. He also realised that images speak more than a thousand words," says Barysch.

Slovak remark renews eurozone break-up talk

Simon Tilford
14 December 2010
NPR
"Slovakia is an interesting case," said Simon Tilford, chief economist at the London-based Centre for European Reform. As a small economy that is not yet massively integrated with the rest of the eurozone, Slovakia could envision bringing back its koruna without massive disruption to the rest of the eurozone, he said. "If Spain was forced out, the eurozone would have a huge problem," he said, referring to the far-larger Spanish economy.

Berlusconi pleads for support ahead of confidence vote

Simon Tilford
14 December 2010
International Herald Tribune
"There is no doubt that Italy is now vulnerable to a deterioration of investor sentiment", said Simon Tilford, the chief economist at the CER in London. "If they were to have a period of instability and less prudent management of the country's public finances, that could well prompt more investors to look more askance." ..."Depending on what happens with Spain, Italy can make contagion more likely and more rapid by mismanaging its fiscal position." Indeed, whatever the political outcome here on Tuesday, Mr Tilford added, "Italy isn’t out of the woods."

The cuts that hurt the council will also scar the continent

12 December 2010
The Observer
But as Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform, a strong believer in the eurozone, puts it: "The German medicine for the eurozone crisis - austerity and structural reform - is not enough. The problem countries will not be able to grow their way out of debt deflation."

Tougher EU bank tests could ease crisis

Philip Whyte
10 December 2010
Bismarck Tribune
"The problem of the European responses since the start of the year has been that they have always been slightly behind the curve," said Philip Whyte, a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform.

Financial crisis roiled eurozone in 2010

Simon Tilford
07 December 2010
Voice of America
Simon Tilford is chief economist at the Centre for European Reform. He says the financial crisis has left that vision in tatters. "Unfortunately, the necessary solidarity has been eroded by the financial crisis. The electorates of countries that have been asked to guarantee loans to the other member states are strongly resentful of that because they think why should we do that. We're rewarding them for their profligacy, or what have you.

WikiLeaks cables reveal secret NATO plans to defend Baltics from Russia

06 December 2010
The Guardian
"Most of the information on this is not in the public domain. But the bottom line is that there is enough political will in NATO now to do defence plans for the Baltic states. The opposition has melted away over the past 18 months," said Tomas Valasek, defence analyst at the Centre for European Reform. … "The whole point is not to paint Russia as a threat. It is about reassuring those countries that are seriously worried. The debate is primarily about Poland and the Baltic. Geography has a lot to do with it," said Valasek.