Press

Um interessante estudo do Centre for European Reform, um think-tank com sede em Londres, sobre o estado da defesa europeia consegue dar-nos um retrato amplo e convincente sobre as (poucas) forças e as (muitas) fraquezas de uma realidade que passou a estar no topo das preocupações dos governos europeus desde a invasão russa da Ucrânia, a 24 de Fevereiro de 2022. Da autoria de Luigi Scazzieri, parte de uma pergunta simples: “Can European defence take off?”

“The underlying question is: what does Orbán really want?” said Sander Tordoir of the Centre for European Reform. “Does he want money? Or does he have bigger political goals to disrupt the EU, for example to please Putin?”

Taken together, said John Springford of the Centre for European Reform think-tank, the missed growth in goods and services trade account for "about a £23 billion quarterly hit" to UK exports,  which is consistent with a GDP reduction of 4%-5% compared to a Britain that had remained.

“I don’t believe Article 7, with the current conversation that we have, is actually realistic,” said Camino Mortera-Martinez, who leads the Brussels office at the Centre for European Reform.
“You have to be very careful with the kind of things that you do to one member state,” she added, “(a) because of the backlash, and (b) because it has to be effective.”

The EU financial assistance is vital for Kyiv, said Luigi Scazzieri with the Centre for European Reform. “That’s essentially budget support that Ukraine needs to stay in the war and to stay solvent. But it doesn’t aim to increase its military capacity. There is a separate budget line for that — that is also being held up by Hungary — and that will be discussed, as well. And that is a 5 billion [euro] top-up to a common fund that the EU has to supply weapons to Ukraine,” he told VOA.

John Springford of the Centre for European Reform solves two paradoxes about how the UK’s trade performance apparently hasn’t suffered from Brexit the way you might have predicted.

In this article for the Centre for European Reform think-tank, Ian Bond sets out some fairly drastic options for Europe if Trump were to pull the plug on Ukraine: "Nato and EU members that take defence seriously should be war-gaming not only how to save Ukraine, but how to respond to an attack on an EU or Nato member in the event that the US decided to remain aloof.

Die drei Ökonomen Shahin Vallee, Sebastian de Quant und Sander Tordoir fordern in einem Aufsatz noch etwas anderes: Dass Europa auch wegen eines unter Trump drohenden US-chinesischen Handelskriegs noch schneller wirtschaftlich unabhängiger von China werden müsse.

Sander Tordoir, a senior economist at the Centre for European Reform, similarly praised the package’s general sentiment but criticised it for proposing “too much of the same soft coordination that has failed us so far”.“I think directionally, it makes sense what they’re doing,” Tordoir told Euractiv. “They’re focussed on the right fault lines in the toolkit, like export controls and FDI screening, where Europe has been most vulnerable, fragmented.”