Press

"My impression is that member states are looking at prices and quantities in isolation and that's difficult because of economics," said Elisabetta Cornago, a senior energy researcher at the Centre for European Reform."It's hard to picture such a level of market intervention This is uncharted territory."

Foreign policy expert Ian Bond, from the Centre for European Reform think-tank, says the West needs to stop being - and sounding - afraid.This is what he told the Doomsday Watch podcast:"Nothing is as provocative to Putin as weakness, so the more the West says 'we are afraid that Russia might use nuclear weapons', the more likely it Putin is to continue making the threat of using nuclear weapons - and perhaps even use one or two to demonstrate he really means it."

Ian Bond, director of foreign policy at the Centre for European Reform, a think-tank, said on Twitter the cuts to the World Service — alongside those to the British Council, the cultural organisation, and the foreign aid budget — meant “the UK is eroding its soft power in every way possible”.

“It’s a shocking moment,” Luigi Scazzieri, a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform, said of the party’s meteoric rise. “It’s the reflection of the electorate that feels like it has tried everything else now turning to the solution that is more radical and new.” “It’s this huge contrast with Draghi that makes it very hard for people to understand,” Scazzieri added, saying that it reflects “a country that really feels that things are going in the wrong direction” after two decades of economic stagnation.

Director of the Centre for European Reform think-tank, Charles Grant, said that French officials had told him that the British participation in the Prague summit would help UK-France relations.He said: “Macron thinks this is really important for discussing strategic issues and he wants the British to take part. The French say that the Brits can help to shape how the EPC emerges.”

For Ian Bond, director of foreign policy at the Centre for European Reform, Vučić is an opportunist above all else.“There is a cynical calculation going on about how he can extract the maximum benefit from both sides. He is a Serb nationalist and it plays well with his voters if he can also be shown to be standing up for ethnic Serbs in Bosnia. Does he want to annex the Republika Srpska? I suspect not because that would actually bring down the wrath of the EU on his head in a way that would not suit his interests. But he’ll be quite happy to cause a certain amount of trouble.”