Press

Orbán pertenece a la “escuela de Putin” en la UE, según Camino Mortera, responsable de la oficina en Bruselas del Centre for European Reform. “Ambos usan el mismo juego: la desinformación, la corrupción, los sistemas de oligarcas que están dentro del Gobierno, y el toque nacional conservador identitario”.

“There are going to be some difficult decisions made in his second term about reducing the budget deficit,” said John Springford at the Centre for European Reform....“It has been OK overall when compared to growth in other countries in the eurozone,” said John Springford of the Centre for European Reform. “But growth rates don’t really indicate much because we are all bouncing back from a sharp shock. Most economies had very high growth rates in 2021.”

Christian Odendahl and John Springford from the Centre for European Reform argue for more public investment in climate-friendly technologies. “Climate investment has always been a matter of national security. Russia’s war on Ukraine has simply brought this to everyone’s attention,” they write, arguing for more taxes on polluters and on windfall profits, as well as for national and European borrowing.

Russia did not stop fighting after the annexation of Crimea in 2015, but actively supported the separatists in the Donbas, said Mr Ian Bond, a former British diplomat in Russia and head of foreign policy for the Center for European Reform. “I’m a skeptic about the Russians giving up on the war,” he said. “We’ve seen this movie before in 2014 and 2015. I view this as only a pause.”

Avoiding the issue of reducing consumption is doing Europeans a disservice, said Elisabetta Cornago, an energy policy researcher at the Centre for European Reform. “It's failing to actually help consumers make the link between their energy bills, the energy insecurity that we are potentially facing and the war in Ukraine.”
A mix of clear messaging and financial incentives could make voluntary energy-saving “palatable” to consumers, she added. “It might be better to do this than reach a point where you need to actually restrain consumption.” 

Camino Mortera-Martinez, head of the Brussels office of the Center for European Reform, said she worries that the Ukraine crisis will effectively grant Poland a “get out of jail free pass.”She believes the European Commission will unfreeze the money “not because Poland needs it, but because it does not want to risk the unity of the bloc at this moment.”

Sanctions are very much in vogue, so I asked Ian Bond of the Centre for European Reform, if the US should sanction China for its cyber provocations. He said it depends: “Intrusions for espionage purposes [commercial or against the state] are annoying, but part of the normal business of states.” Offensive action, on the other hand, such as “strikes that cripple critical national infrastructure, might rise to the level of an act of war if they cause casualties,” Bond added.

The interchange and scheme fee component is typically set by Visa and Mastercard, which compete with each other to offer the best revenue incentives for their customer banks. Hence, if the EPI succeeds, banks will likely lose revenue, said Zach Meyers, senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform. This set-up has created several challenges for the EPI, Meyers told VIXIO.