Press

"It was an undoubted success," says Ian Bond of the Centre for European Reform (CER), a London-based think-tank. "It shows that forging a relationship with the EU still has a lot of attractions for its neighbours. Catherine Ashton's patient approach certainly paid off."

"Los votantes empiezan a buscar respuestas fuera de ese bipartidismo, porque las que les han dado hasta ahora no son convincentes. Y los más confundidos pueden encontrar atractivos los mensajes simplistas de las fuerzas populistas", cierra Katinka Barysch, del Centre for European Reform.

Charles Grant, of the CER, said the combination of economic crisis and bad governance by EU leaders had created the ideal climate in which populism could grow. He said: "We have a weak economy, weak leadership and a very badly run EU.

"Relying less on exports, and more on domestic demand, would also be good for Germany as it’s starting to feel recessionary effects from the south," said John Springford of the CER. But, he acknowledged, "those steps would be very difficult politically for the government in Berlin to take."

A depression isn't a precise term, but it generally means "a long period of exceptionally weak activity—a big recession that an economy takes years to recover from," says Simon Tilford, of the CER.
It is the longevity of Europe's slump that is leading some analysts to talk of a depression. "Europe is now in a depression if one considers that output is still considerably short of where it was in 2007," Mr Tilford says.

Hugo Brady of the Centre for European Reform said such voices would inevitably influence thinking over time, but warned there was unlikely to be much change in Germany's stance before elections due in September.

"La France n'est pas l'Italie", convient Philip Whyte, du CER. Il n'en reste pas moins que la "perception que la France est en train de devenir un nid à problèmes économiques" grandit en Europe, notamment en Grande-Bretagne et en Allemagne, poursuit l'expert britannique.

Simon Tilford of the CER says investors are more likely to reward a government that stimulates growth and punish one that cuts: "All investors worry whether they are going to get their money back," says Tilford. "If they think they are not going to get their money back because an economy is performing so poorly that it’s not going to be able to pay its debts, then they are going to charge more to lend to that country."