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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.

John Springford, associate fellow at the Centre for European Reform (CER), said that countries that rely on gas to set the electricity price will tend to import more electricity. “Countries in which gas is more often the marginal producer will be bigger net importers. As the price of gas is higher, and they use gas more often, these countries will find that they import more from lower-priced plants abroad,” he said.

As Sander Tordoir, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform, notes, most of its participants — the EU, Japan, Canada — have positive trade balances. In other words, they need buyers, not sellers. And the US, which accounted for nearly half of the global trade deficit, is effectively leaving the market. “Europe will have to stimulate domestic demand, or it risks stagnation,” Tordoir warns.

Sander Tordoir, the chief economist at the Centre for European Reform, a think tank, says Europe and Britain must try to boost their own deployment of robotics if they want to keep up with the pace of innovation in China – while also keeping their manufacturing industries alive.“Robotics, if deployed well, can lift the productivity of your economy greatly. And if China is extremely good at it, then we should try to catch up because, like China, a lot of Europe is ageing,” he says.

“This is not something the EU really wants to do, but political realities have compelled the Commission to put it forward,” Aslak Berg, a research fellow at the Centre for European Reform, told The Parliament....To Berg of the Centre for European Reform, the new regime is nonetheless "borderline." He added: “They’re stretching the letter of WTO law to the breaking point.”

 « Les constructeurs allemands ont surtout un problème de demande », renchérit Sander Tordoir, chef économiste au Centre for European Reform.

Along with the movement of goods and people, services – Britain’s biggest export category – are severely restricted by the time limit. Take Rolls-Royce: it doesn’t just sell engines, but services planes, too, sending engineers back and forth across the English Channel all the time, says John Springford of the Centre for European Reform. He lists consultants and accountants going back and forth to clients in the Schengen area, as well as UK events companies transporting performers and orchestras to venues around Europe. He says they are losing out massively to EU operators. Nothing can bring back lost trade except rejoining the customs union and the single market, he adds.