Press

«La réforme devrait directement aider à réduire la volatilité ayant caractérisé les prix de l’électricité, ce qui encouragera les investissements, tant dans les capacités industrielles que dans l’électricité bas-carbone, estime Elisabetta Cornago, chercheuse senior du Centre for European Reform.

"The increasing diplomatic costs associated with being perceived as being close to China, and at the same time the fact that the benefits – to the degree that they exist – are increasingly thin, given the broader trend towards de-risking between the West and China," said analyst Luigi Scazzieri of the Centre for European Reform, in a recent interview with VOA.

Analysts such as Camino Mortera-Martinez of the Centre for European Reform think-tank doubt this agreement will stick because Poland and Hungary opposed it. The EU’s first attempt at burden-sharing collapsed during the Syrian refugee crisis after several states boycotted it.

Sander Tordoir, from the Centre for European Reform, calculates that surging global interest rates mean that the IMF’s lending to debtor countries could be charged at rates as high as 8 per cent.“In some cases the burden of paying high interest rates to the IMF is worsening rather than alleviating countries’ budgetary woes and hampering their prospects of economic recovery,” Tordoir said. He thinks that the fund should introduce a temporary cap on its lending rates to avoid imposing punishing costs on the world’s poorest countries.

“To me, it is not only a question of what to do about the people that want to come in,” said Camino Mortera Martinez, who leads the Brussels office of the Centre for European Reform. “It is also what to do about the people who are in and not necessarily complying with rules.”

As Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform points out, this sort of thing is not going to undo much, if any, of the economic damage of the TCA. But I think it is obvious that the first step back to a better relationship with the EU is to be nice, ask politely and show willing.