Press

Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform, a think-tank, says several countries are keener to enforce a level playing-field on regulation than they are to keep untrammelled free movement of people. So some limits may be acceptable.

The Centre for European Reform’s (CER) John Springford has taken the Born-led model a step further. The CER approach uses not just GDP, but also other attributes of 22 advanced economies — including the inflation rate, openness to trade, investment ratio and how well-educated the population is — to create a doppelganger UK that most closely matches the country’s economy before the referendum. Based on that methodology, the CER puts the cost of Brexit at 2.5% of GDP.

In London vermutet man hinter Fosters lauter Ablehnung derweil Kalkül. „Meint sie ihr Nein ernst? Anfangs hatte die DUP auch eine Unterstützung der Minderheitsregierung abgelehnt und sich dann doch darauf eingelassen“, erinnert Sam Lowe daran, dass May Nordirland nach der Wahl kurzfristig umgerechnet 1,2 Milliarden Euro Sonderhilfen zusagte. „Nordirland ist in vielerlei Hinsicht nicht in Großbritannien integriert. Etwa in seiner kategorischen Ablehnung der rechtlich verbindlichen Homo-Ehe oder des Abtreibungsrechts. Das Beharren auf die Integrität des Territoriums birgt aber hohe Symbolik, und die ist wichtig für die DUP“, sagt der Handelsexperte vom Centre for European Reform.

Partie populistyczne wyciągnęły wnioski z przeszłości i nie obiecują już wyprowadzenia swoich państw z UE. Szczególnie po decyzji Wielkiej Brytanii o brexicie wiedzą, że to nie jest postulat popierany przez wyborców – zauważa Agata Gostyńska-Jakubowska z Centre for European Reform (CER) w Londynie.

Leaving the EU is “a car crash waiting to happen” and “the worst thing to happen to the UK since the Second World War”, he said, citing an estimated cost of £500 million a week that was provided last month by the Centre for European Reform think-tank.

“The member states and the EU institutions want the UK out before the European Parliament elections in late May 2019 and the nomination of a new commission afterwards, or Britain would be obliged to take part. The EU has already agreed to redistribute 27 of Britain’s 73 seats in the European Parliament to other member states. France — one of the hardliners in the Brexit talks — is among the countries that are due to benefit from this redistribution. It is hard to imagine that Paris will be eager to give the UK more leeway.” (Agata Gostyńska-Jakubowska, senior research fellow and Beth Oppenheim, researcher at the Centre for European Reform).

The £500m cost is the conclusion of the Centre for European Reform which warned the UK economy was already 2.5 per cent smaller than it would have been Britain had voted to remain in the EU.