Centre for European Reform

In the wake of last August’s Paris summit the Centre for European Reform (CER) released a policy brief entitled: Can Europe Save Ukraine – and itself- from Putin and Trump?In the document Ian Bond, deputy director of the CER, said that Europeans need to face up to four key facts.The first is that Trump favours Putin over Zelenskyy and that the US is now doing relatively little to help Ukraine.The second is that the Russians will not agree to Ukraine having any effective protection against future attacks. The security guarantee for Ukraine allegedly accepted by Putin in his meeting with Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff says Bond is a mirage, and the US is reluctant to provide an insurance policy for European forces in Ukraine.Thirdly, Putin remains determined to win, not compromise and his peace terms would reduce Ukraine to vassal status.

In a report published ahead of the summit by various think-tanks, including the Centre for European Reform, Redeker and colleagues Sander Tordoir and Lucas Guttenberg point to a different set of problems EU leaders should be trying to solve."Chinese car exports are surging, European producers are being squeezed out of global markets, US tariffs are rising, and domestic demand remains 20 per cent below pre-pandemic levels," they write.

The European Commission shouldn’t give in to temptation and calls to loosen competition policy to boost competitiveness, Zach Meyers, associate fellow at the Centre for European Reform, told Aude. “Competition policy has generally been kind of a force for good and a force for innovation in Europe,” he said.Still, there are areas where improvements are needed, certainly when looking at it from a single market perspective, he said. Meyers co-authored a policy paper last week laying down a reform agenda for the internal market, which includes some ideas on the competition side. While Europe likes to boast that there are more competitors on the markets than in the US, these competitors operate in smaller national markets. The more concentrated US markets are more dynamic, with companies that are either growing or shrinking. Meanwhile, Europe lacks this dynamism with “kind of pretty stagnant [companies] in terms of size,” Meyers said.

European countries, “cajoled into siding with America”, also fear for their own industries’ future, says Sander Tordoir of the Centre for European Reform, a think-tank. Yet displeasing China risks retaliation.