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“The root of the problem, in a way, is the very bad state of the British-French relationship,” said Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform think-tank. “It is so bad that it makes the French quite unwilling to help the British at all on Brexit issues. And the French of course are very influential on the EU institutions.” Grant argued that if the UK “started to get serious about diplomacy” and tried to “behave better and make some friends in Europe, then there would be a threat to unity because not everybody would want to follow the hard line that the French are taking.”

French sources say that even if Macron wins in April he is in no rush to try and build fences with London and will expect the overture to come from Johnson. This a view shared by Charles Grant, the head of the centre for European Reform, who hosted Macron in London when his presidential ambition was still in its infancy.

O economista do Centre for European Reform Christian Odendahl fazia uma comparação entre os caminhos dos conservadores, por um lado, e dos participantes nas conversações para uma coligação, por outro. “As conversações ‘semáforo’ entre o SPD, Verdes e FDP estão a correr sem percalços, embora ainda haja grandes diferenças a colmatar.

Christian Odendahl from the Centre for European Reform says a "traffic light" coalition of Greens and Liberals under Mr Scholz could agree on a “€500bn climate transition fund” for public and private investment that finesses German debt curbs and is anchored on Mittelstand family firms. This in turn could be the model for softer EU rules exempting green investment from spending caps.

Baroness Jenny Chapman, who leads on Brexit for Labour in the House of Lords, said she worried the government will be tempted to suspend parts of the protocol, triggering a new diplomatic row with Brussels and plunging Northern Ireland into greater uncertainty, to divert attention from ongoing reports of labour shortages and everyday items like food and petrol running out. "The government is in a really sticky situation at the moment and it’s not enjoying the headlines about people queueing at petrol stations," she told a fringe event hosted by the Centre for European Reform at Labour's conference in Brighton.

“It is smart and it shows the seriousness of those parties after the experience of 2017 when talks between the Greens and Free Democrats collapsed,” says Christian Odendahl of the Centre for European Reform in Berlin.

A la hora de evaluar el legado merkeliano, Christian Odendahl, economista jefe del Centre for European Reform, se detiene en la crisis del euro, con la que Alemania abrió profundas fisuras en la Unión enarbolando la bandera de una austeridad que regó de cadáveres laborales y sociales el continente y lastró a economías del sur como la española.