Press

The EU will face a backlash from its citizens, fuelled by populist politicians, for persisting with green policies, predicts Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform think-tank.He points to the gilets jaunes protests in France, which took off after rises in fuel taxes intended to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and the rise of the AFD in Germany. “The AFD is fuelled partly by climate scepticism. Populists are keen to promote anti-greenery, as they listen to voters,” he says.

Ian Bond of the Centre for European Reform offers six pointers to western leaders on how to deal with Vladimir “master of gaslighting” Putin: “Western leaders should not forget history, ancient or recent, or ignore the reality of Putin’s Russia, but nor should they be its prisoners. The disappointed hopes of their predecessors may be buried all round the Kremlin; but the West’s relations with Russia do not always have to be as bad as they are now.”

"2016 was in some ways a missed opportunity," says Luigi Scazzieri from the Centre for European Reform, based in Brussels. "After the agreement, steps were not taken to make the relationship sustainable over time. There was then not much effort made to stop the cause of these problems - the war in Syria."

Sam Lowe, a senior research fellow at the the Centre for European Reform think tank, told me that, at its core, the EU did not accept that its negotiation with Britain was one between equals. He said the EU was “trying to use its economic weight to impose conditions on the U.K. it wouldn't normally ask of others.”

Sam Lowe, of the Centre for European Reform think-ank, said the tight UK-US objectives suggested the government was "clearly in no rush" to conclude a deal with the US and would have to make concessions, probably on agriculture.