The UK-EU summit last month was an important step towards closer co-operation and a strategic partnership. Both sides now need to turn that ambition into detailed sectoral negotiations with a clear timescale.
Europe's car industry faces an acute demand shock from Chinese overcapacity & US tariffs. Instead of bailouts & regulatory rollbacks, member-states should co-ordinate buy-European EV subsidies & revive internal demand.
Last year, the Draghi report laid bare the need for reform to drive growth. Practical steps on energy, services, competition, finance and simplification can operationalise this agenda into meaningful change.
The EU should reinforce the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to stave off a destabilising financing crunch for many emerging and developing economies.
Both elections tested democratic resilience and, while confirming the status quo on most EU policies, showed that anti-establishment sentiment is here to stay.
Integrating EU candidate countries into the EU ETS would incentivise them to decarbonise their emissions-intensive electricity mix and heavy industries. Gradual integration would soften the economic impact of a high carbon price.
Enlarging the energy union to include EU candidate countries would benefit both current and future EU member-states. Expanding the EU energy market would support energy decarbonisation, security and affordability.
China’s trade and industrial policy, its monopoly on many critical technologies and its geopolitical ambitions make it a genuinely systemic rival to the EU and the UK. They need to work together to defend their interests.
Trump is not on Ukraine’s side, or Europe’s, but he cannot deliver peace on Putin’s terms. Rather than taking their lead from Trump, European leaders should act urgently to stop Russia’s advances and guarantee Ukraine’s security.
China’s trade and industrial policy, its monopoly on many critical technologies and its geopolitical ambitions make it a genuinely systemic rival to the EU and the UK. They need to work together to defend their interests.
The Helsinki Final Act played a key role in ending the Cold War, but the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), to which it gave birth, has progressively been sidelined in Europe’s security architecture.
