Press

“Every German chancellor of any coalition would say, ‘let’s fix this Brexit and trade issue and come to a stable and trustworthy relationship and then we can talk,’" said Christian Odendahl, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform think tank. "So the best the UK can do to improve the relationship with Germany is to fix the conflict with the EU over the Northern Ireland protocol.”“If anything, Brexit has reinforced the tendency of German parties to agree on the EU, because Britain’s exit has meant that Germany is even more in the position of compromise seeker,” he added.

“Everything that makes a bilateral agreement difficult makes U.S.M.C.A. difficult,” said Sam Lowe, an expert on trade at the Centre for European Reform, a research institute in London. “We’d still be talking about chlorinated chicken,” he added, referring to disputes over access for chemically treated American food.

“The perception that public debt is an issue has changed quite a bit in the past five years,” said Christian Odendahl, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform in Berlin. “The orthodox view of the eurozone debt crisis is shifting and now there is a more progressive approach to climate change.”

Sam Lowe, a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform, said he was baffled as to why people in the government thought they were winning concessions through hardball tactics. “I find that a really fascinating argument because I know that trade and cooperation agreement quite well, and the UK did not get much of what it wanted at all,” he said

Christian Odendahl, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform think-tank, said: "He’s [Scholz] easily the most experienced, sober and Merkel-like candidate."

Sam Lowe, a trade specialist at the Centre for European Reform, said the list contained a mix of “things that don’t matter at all, things that might matter, and things that do matter”. But, he added, the test would be whether “divergence from EU rules delivers material economic benefits or just divergence for divergence’s sake”.

Luigi Scazzieri, a European security expert at the Centre for European Reform, said that any co-operation between Brussels and Ankara would be tense. He said Turkey may try to push migrants towards the EU to satisfy domestic calls for a tough line on refugees.

Sam Lowe, trade expert from the Centre for European Reform, added: "While there have been increased calls for the UK to make its foreign trade agreements (FTAs) conditional on partner countries meeting stringent environmental and climate targets, this confirms that such an approach has been deemed too tricky by DIT.
"It also clarifies that the UK is willing to liberalise trade in environmentally questionable goods if necessary to get an FTA over the line.