Caught between China and the US, Europe stumbles towards its independence day

“Europe works poorly in slow-burn crises,” said Sander Tordoir, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform (CER), an independent think tank.

“The co-ordination between member-states is always hard, and it works best under acute pressure when minds are focused. In slow-burn crises, the narcissism of small differences wins out,” he said.

In a joint report by CER and the Jaques Delors Centre that was widely circulated last week, Tordoir and co-authors Nils Redeker and Lucas Guttenberg said “buy Europe” should be extended to electric vehicle industries.

“China is hammering European carmaking,” they wrote, urging a dramatic roll-out of subsidies for electric vehicle buyers, modelled on a French bonus scheme, to avoid the industry being swept up in a “perfect storm”.