Press

Merkel is not ready to listen too much to German car manufacturers or other industries with a high rate of exports to the UK. Relations between big business in Germany and the chancellery are pretty dire. This sombre analysis is shared by Charles Grant, director of the CER, in his recent paper 'Why the 27 are taking a hard line on Brexit'.

A central problem for May's government is that Article 50 puts the country that is exiting the EU in a position of great weakness, says Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, a think tank in London. EU countries can simply hunker down while the two-year clock ticks away, raising pressure on the leaver. May, therefore, would be wise to avoid an approach that alienates the EU, Grant believes. Attempts from the British side to strengthen its negotiating position through veiled threats to slash corporate tax rates or veto European defence cooperation risk backfiring.

Poparcie dla Tuska ze strony starych państw Unii może też opierać się o pozytywne przesłanki. - Większość starych krajów Unii po prostu uważa, że Tusk sprawdził się jako przewodniczący RE – mówi Agata Gostyńska-Jakubowska z brytyjskiego think tanku Centre for European Reform. - Były obawy, że aktywny styl prowadzenia obrad RE, zupełnie inny niż za van Rompuy'a, nie przyjmie się. Tusk od początku nie ukrywał swojego zdania, nie był tylko moderatorem, często zabierał głos. Dziś wielu uczestników tych obrad taki styl uznaje za zaletę.

“Whereas some member-states may share Poland and Hungary’s reluctance about the current balance of power in the EU, they think that the current Polish-Hungarian rhetoric is not particularly helpful in addressing EU's challenges,” points out Agata Gostyńska-Jakubowska, a research fellow at the CER. “Member-states also fear that Kaczynski and Orban are interested in questioning the current system of Western liberalism rather than in the constructive debate about a better and more efficient EU.”

"Rem Korteweg, van het Centre for European Reform in Londen, vindt de inzakkende steun voor een Nexit, een Nederlandse uittreding uit de Europese Unie, een opmerkelijk gegeven uit het onderzoek. Vooral omdat de Brexit, die daar waarschijnlijk de oorzaak van is, nog helemaal niet heeft plaatsgevonden."

Britain is not seen as a credible negotiating partner," said Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, a London-based research institute.

Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, said that Irish officials feared that the return of customs posts would provoke terrorist attacks. “The British and Irish governments would certainly do everything possible to minimise physical customs checks on the border – perhaps through the use of advanced technology, or simply through checking lorries at towns near the border, rather than at the border itself,” he said.