Centre for European Reform

"I think it [a US trade deal with the UK],will cause a certain amount of irritation in Brussels. And it's not because there's a direct conflict between the EU and the UK. It won't jeopardise the relationship between the EU and the UK. But it does set a bad precedent," says Aslak Berg, a researcher at the Centre for European Reform.

“The fact that Xi Jinping is snubbing Europe to attend a military parade in Moscow is a clear signal that a trade detente – let alone a European pivot from the US to China – is largely a dead end,” said Sander Tordoir, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform.

The most bulletproof method to invoke force majeure and defy lawsuits at court would be the approval of sanctions at the EU level, says Elisabetta Cornago, a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform (CER), who admitted the positions by Hungary and Slovakia make it virtually impossible."This new roadmap the Commission is putting forward today acknowledges that difficulty but tries to find new pathways to technically deliver a phase-out of Russian fossil fuel imports, such as providing paths out of contracts to European companies," Cornago told Euronews.

Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, placed Trump’s second presidency among seismic historical events, comparing it to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 9/11 attacks. He warned that tariffs increase inflation, restrict trade, hinder growth, and introduce significant uncertainty into the global economy. Yet he also identified unexpected benefits: Trump’s tariffs are inadvertently strengthening European unity, restoring Germany’s leadership role within the EU, and nudging post-Brexit Britain closer to the European continent.