Press

Germany must stop admiring China’s success in the EU or it will sleepwalk into the kind of deindustrialisation the US experienced 25 years ago, a leading think-tank has said.With China’s surplus with Germany having doubled between 2024 and 2025 from $12bn (£9bn) to $25bn, creating a $94bn trade imbalance, the Centre for European Reform (CER) said Europe’s largest economy risked a repeat of what happened in the US in 2001 when a sudden surge in imports permanently hollowed out towns in the American midwest.

Die Misere der deutschen Industrie ist laut einer britischen Denkfabrik weitgehend die Folge einer aggressiven Wirtschafts- und Handelspolitik Pekings. Das geht aus einem Bericht des Centre for European Reform mit dem Titel „China-Schock 2.0: Die Kosten deutscher Nachlässigkeit“ hervor. 

Sollte Starmer den Aufstand gegen ihn überstehen, stünde er vor der Entscheidung, ob er eine umfassende Wiederanbindung versprechen will – mit dem Vorschlag, dass das Vereinigte Königreich als Schritt zur Reintegration wieder der Zollunion beitritt. ...Das, sagt Charles Grant vom Centre for European Reform, „hat größere Chancen, den Ausschlag zu verändern, weil die Europäer dieses Angebot viel ernster nehmen müssten“.

Zselyke Csaky at the Centre for European Reform think-tank suggests both Brussels and Budapest will have to tread carefully over hitting deadlines. While Magyar has a parliamentary majority to rewrite the constitution, rushing major changes would feel too much like the previous administration: “It is just not a good look if a constitutional amendment is pushed through without much consultation, so that’s basically the limiting factor in Hungary’s case.”

“Households are now seeing that they are only one Trump-ignited war away from very expensive tank refueling or heating bills,” said Elisabetta Cornago, an energy and climate policy expert at the Centre for European Reform.

Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform think tank, said that while the EU was keen on greater security and defence co-operation with the UK there were some countries, including France, that were “much less keen on extending economic co-operation”.He said: “They don’t really care if the UK has a thriving or a weak economy and are much more concerned about the old ideology of not allowing the UK to ‘cherry pick’ which parts of the single market it wants to be part of.

Centre for European Reformin pääekonomisti Sander Tordoir sanoo olevansa samaa mieltä.”Vain hyvin harva asia merkitsee Saksan ja EU:n päättäjille nyt enemmän kuin tulevaisuuteen suuntautuvan, eurooppalaisen puolustuskaluston hankinta ja puolustus järjestelmän rakentaminen”, hän kirjoittaa pikakommentissaan.