Press

“On both sides there is some naked political opportunism at work,” said Ian Bond, director of foreign policy at the Centre for European Reform. “On Netanyahu’s side, the more he can find people fed up with the EU mainstream and get them tactically to back him, even if only to annoy other members of the Union, the better.”

“In terms of the countries exposed to Brexit, the Netherlands is one of the biggest,” John Springford, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform in London, said on Thursday by phone.“No-deal Brexit would be the largest hit, but all of the different scenarios are going to entail some sort of economic cost,” he added.

“There is a tradition in the E.U. of things being settled at the last minute,” said Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform. He noted that the Maastricht summit in 1991, for instance, came together at the last minute, and that the seven-year EU budget seems to be settled right before the deadline.

Franco-Italian friction From migration to the euro, Luigi Scazzieri at the Centre for European Reform charts the deterioration in Franco-Italian relations in the last year and why Rome will ultimately be the big loser: “Less frequent dialogue means relations are already damaged: in 2018, Italy and France did not hold an annual bilateral summit, as they usually do. And a planned ‘Quirinale Treaty’, an Italian-French pact modelled on the Élysée Treaty and designed to provide bilateral relations with more structure, is now frozen.”

European army expert and researcher for the Centre for European Reform Sophia Besch explained that French President Emmanuel Macron wishes to create a more unified Europe that does not rely so heavily on the US. During an interview with Express.co.uk, the researcher revealed Mr Macron wants Europe to be better prepared for European military threats and believes an EU army would allow him to achieve that. The EU army expert said: “I think for Emmanuel Macron the idea is meant to inspire, it is part of his pro-EU platform.

As well as being trapped by the ghosts of Ostpolitik, Nord Stream 2 is also beset by another German character trait: reverence for the letter of the law (or treaty), reckons Sophia Besch of the Centre for European Reform.

Christian Odendahl, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform think-tank, called for a comprehensive rewrite of the budgetary rules, which he argued amplified the booms and busts of the eurozone economy.“Europe’s fiscal rules do not allow enough stimulus in a recession, and allow too much spending during a boom,” he said. “An overhaul of the fiscal rules to protect investment spending and prescribe strongly counter-cyclical policies would help to counter the current slowdown.”