Press

As Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, told me, "Poland has traditionally been a close ally of the US on security matters, but that alliance has become strained in recent years". "Poles were upset by President Obama's abrupt cancellation of the Bush administration's plans for missile defence, which would have stationed interceptors in Poland, and they are still arguing with the Obama administration about whether the Patriot missiles that Poland wants should be based there permanently or not," he added.

"There's no doubt that Canada is much better placed to take a higher profile and be listened to than it was a few years ago", said Simon Tilford, chief economist at the London-based Centre for European Reform... "The elephant in the room is the eurozone debt crisis."

"The French in particular have found Juncker lacking in his ability to provide leadership during the crisis," said Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform in London. "When he does talk it has added to the sense of disarray." But Grant, of the CER in London, says Juncker does not deserve all the blame for the mixed messages coming out of the eurozone, nor the stop-start response to the bloc's crisis. "You have the (eurozone) patient in its sick bed, but there is no agreement on the nature of the disease, let alone what medicine is required.

"Das müsste schon ein sehr, sehr starker Kandidat sein", sagt Simon Tilford, Chefökonom der Londoner Denkfabrik Centre for European Reform, im Gespräch mit der "Wiener Zeitung". ... "Er hat es ermöglicht, dass die Widerstände im IWF gegen ein Engagement in der Eurozone überwunden wurden", sagt Tilford. ... Der IWF zählte zwar einerseits zu den institutionellen Gewinnern der "Großen Rezession": Er konnte sich in der Krise seinen Ruf als Finanzfeuerwehr zurückerobern und kehrte dafür von alten, teilweise überholten Dogmen ab. Dieser Kurswandel sei nicht zuletzt mit Strauss-Kahn verbunden ...

"It's not something that will turn investor perception on Russia around," said Katinka Barysch, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform. "There's nobody who is blue-eyed about Russia these days, especially in the energy sector."

"The longer this goes on, the more you increase the likelihood of serious damage to the relationship between the member states, and the more you risk the erosion of what remains a fairly sturdy consensus in favour of membership," said Simon Tilford, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform.

Hugo Brady, a Brussels-based analyst for the think-tank Centre for European Reform, says French and Italian leaders who urged toughening Schengen are in a political bind - in part because of the rise of far-right, anti-immigration parties. But Brady doubts border-free travel in Europe will be scrapped. "The practicalities of the everyday won't allow for it ... People value the convenience of being able to travel around Europe without a passport. It's a significant achievement that I think very few people will want to roll back."

According to Phillip Whyte, a senior research fellow with the London-based Centre for European Reform, the bilateral agreement represents only the second best option for the two sides after multilateral trade talks between the World Trade Organisation and its member countries began to slow more than a decade ago. "The problem economists have with these regional trade agreements is they're becoming a replacement for multilateral agreements You're seeing a spaghetti bowl of individual bilateral agreements, much like this one, and they sort of cut across each other.