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John Springford, a trade economist at the Centre for European Reform think-tank, said a £2bn uplift would be “a nice to have” but still relatively meagre when set against total UK exports to the EU of more than £150bn a year.

Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, who talks to European governments regularly, says the EU will extract its price for rebuilding links beyond security and defence cooperation. “EU leaders will tell him [Starmer] that if he wants things out of the EU – such as a deal on veterinary standards to reduce border checks on food, animals and plants – he will have to accept some of their asks. For example, the EU wants a deal on youth mobility, to make it easier for young people in the EU and the UK to spend more time on the other side of the Channel.

Christina Kessler, an analyst at the Centre for European Reform (CER), agrees that a defence industry commissioner would be appropriate in the next mandate, "not just because there is obviously work to be done in this area, but also because it would signal that the EU is taking this seriously and is willing to step up its game".   

“He will have to convince Europe’s heads of state and heads of government by force of argument,” said Sander Tordoir, who is chief economist at the Centre for European Reform and previously worked at the ECB during Draghi’s tenure as its head. “I think that’s fundamentally the reason he was asked.”

The EU should reform its regional spending — known as ‘cohesion policy’ — to tackle the divergences that services trade promotes, according to a report from the Centre of European Reform. Given that living standards in newer member states are converging with those in western European, “more regional funds should be directed towards city-regions with high growth potential, complementing existing allocations based on relative poverty,’’ researchers John Springford, Sander Tordoir and Lucas Resende Carvalho said.

Une société européenne multiethnique serait de nature à mieux préserver la prospérité de l'Europe, selon le think tank indépendant, Centre for European Reform.Selon le think tank britannique, Centre for European Reform (CER), il apparait de manière de plus en plus évidente que "de nombreux politiciens de centre-droit ont désormais choisi d'accepter les prémisses de cette rhétorique civilisationnelle, plutôt que de s'y confronter".

Aslak Berg, research fellow at the Centre for European Reform, said the European Union was moving towards the U.S. position, but not to the same extent and that it was still using its traditional tools."It's more politically sensitive, but it's not legally different from cases of steel tariffs," he said, referring to Wednesday's action on EVs.

Sander Tordoir, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform, shared his view, saying: “We are responding. We are not the aggressor; we are merely levelling the playing field.” The problem of China’s government subsidies, he said, is exacerbated by low domestic consumption in the country, which makes its companies ever more dependent on exports.