Single market, competition & trade
What Eastern Europe can learn from the crisis
11 November 2009
It is 20 years since the Berlin Wall crumbled and political and economic freedom started spreading through Eastern Europe. Today, however, the region is mired in deep recession.
Rebalancing the Chinese economy
02 November 2009
China's economy and society are undergoing an extraordinary transformation, with hundreds of millions of people escaping poverty in record time. But the country's development model is not sustainable economically or politically.
Greece: Nowhere to hide
08 October 2009
The Greek economy is on a very dangerous course. Unless the government takes steps to boost productivity and strengthen public finances, Greece faces a bleak future.
Europe's imbalanced response to the financial crisis
01 October 2009
Since last year, politicians and regulators across the G20 have been hard at work trying to place the international financial system on a more stable long-term footing. Many critics believe they are not doing enough.
Issue 68 - 2009
25 September 2009
- Europe leaves behind the era of treaty change, Charles Grant
- Europe's imbalanced response to the financial crisis, Philip Whyte
- Britain must pool defence capabilities, Clara Marina O'Donnell
Talk of 'exit' is premature
22 September 2009
The governor of the Bank of England (BoE), Mervyn King, has had a mixed financial crisis. He assumed that financial stability flowed from monetary stability – which we now know is not the case – and was very slow to recognise the extent of the crisis.
Anglo-Saxons and hedge funds: Culprits or scapegoats?
07 August 2009
Disasters often provoke unseemly bouts of finger-pointing. This has certainly been true of the global financial crisis. In the Anglo-Saxon world, libertarians have blamed it on governments, and governments on ‘bankers’.
Britain and the EU: The cost of leaving
03 August 2009
Britain’s media and political class have a right to be sceptical about the EU, even hostile to it. But they also have an obligation to be honest about the economic implications of a retreat from full membership of the Union.
Britain’s eurosceptics need to come clean
25 June 2009
Britain’s media and political class have a right to be sceptical about the EU, even hostile to it. But they also have an obligation to be honest about the economic implications of a retreat from full membership of the Union. Their failure to do so is dishonest and poses a serious risk to Britain’s prosperity.
Protectionism and the economic crisis: So far, so good?
01 June 2009
For much of the year, the spectre of the 1930s has loomed large over the global economy.
Are the British the new French?
05 May 2009
The British tend to deride France as a hopelessly statist, anti-entrepreneurial country full of bolshie workers intent on extracting disproportionate rewards for their labour and a state too weak to resist them. This characterisation is not wholly inaccurate.
Choices for Europe
01 May 2009
CER - University of Birmingham
Sluggish economic growth, high unemployment, ageing populations, climate change and security challenges on the borders of Europe have been some of the top priorities on the European agenda since the early 1990s. The EU has tried to tackle these issues, notably through its commitments to reduce greenhouse gases and its Lisbon strategy for economic growth.
Narrowing the Atlantic: The way forward for EU-US trade and investment
29 April 2009
The financial crisis has provoked a dramatic contraction in world trade. With economic activity declining and job losses rising, protectionist pressures are mounting.
The G20 summit – a distraction?
03 April 2009
The good news first. The summit delivered more than expected. The trebling of the funds available to the IMF goes well beyond anything expected and is very welcome.
Europe's flagging response to the financial crisis
01 April 2009
Since the 1980s, many of the largest economies in the EU have developed unenviable reputations for protracted economic downturns followed by sluggish recoveries.
In the name of EU solidarity
01 April 2009
Is a new iron curtain threatening to divide the European Union? Hungary’s prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsany, raised the spectre last month, when he warned that the eastern members were descending into economic mayhem while the richer EU countries were looking on unsympathetically.
What the economic crisis means for the EU's eastern policy
01 April 2009
The EU's new 'eastern partnership' risks being undermined by the economic crisis. The initiative offers countries like Armenia and Ukraine fresh incentives, such as free-trade agreements and easier visa regimes, to adopt European norms of democracy and open markets.
The Europeans at the London summit
01 April 2009
Christine Lagarde, the French finance minister, threatens to walk out of the London G20 summit unless France gets its way on tougher financial regulation. The toppled Czech Prime Minister, Mirek Topolanek, who happens to hold the EU presidency, describes the US fiscal stimulus as “the road to hell”. Not one EU leader deems it necessary to support Gordon Brown publicly when he tries to drum up support for a more concerted international effort to revive the global economy.
Issue 65 - 2009
27 March 2009
- Europe's flagging response to the financial crisis , Philip Whyte
- Carbon price collapse threatens the EU's climate agenda, Simon Tilford
- In the name of EU solidarity, Katinka Barysch
What if the eurozone broke up?
23 March 2009
The future of the euro may not be secure, warned the CER’s Simon Tilford in a January 2009 essay. The current economic crisis threatens to exacerbate the tensions within the eurozone, and an insolvent member-state... could default and leave the eurozone. Since January, the economic crisis has deepened further, and the eurozone’s weakest economies have come under even greater strain.