Research

Simon Tilford, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform, a thinktank, said he believed the IMF and eurozone would find a compromise, whereby the fund signed up to the 3.5% target for a limited period of time, as the price of stabilising the eurozone in an election year. “My feeling is they will largely settle for a fig leaf. It will be made to look as if the pace of austerity has been eased, ie that the eurozone will agree that the size of the primary budget surplus will be reassessed at some specified point in the future.”

Tradycyjnie w sprawie ściślejszej współpracy w strefie euro istniał spór między Niemcami a południem Europy. – Ściślejsza integracja miała prowadzić do unii transferowej, czego Niemcy nigdy nie chciały – zauważa Agata Gostyńska, ekspertka Center for European Reform w Londynie.

Not just hard, but difficult, Theresa May will trigger Article 50 and begin talks on leaving the EU in a few weeks. With many of the details still uncertain, Charles Grant analyses the options still open to the UK as it forges a new relationship with the EU.

Still, security and immigration are clearly priorities for her government. Questions over whether that comes from the number of Home Office imports are aired in a paper by Charles Grant, director of the CER. “People in the inner circle may become overstretched so that important decisions are delayed, and centralisation may discourage the tapping of outside expertise,” he writes.

»Europæerne er opmærksomme på det britiske bidrag til sikkerheden i Europa, så det vil spille en rolle i forhandlingerne. Det vil kunne hjælpe briterne, men det vil også kunne skade briterne. De vil kunne miste en hel del goodwill, hvis de spiller deres kort forkert,« siger Sophia Besch, ekspert i NATO og europæisk sikkerhed ved tænketanken Center for European Reform i London.

“The British may over-estimate the strength of the cards they hold,” Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, said in a note. “That means that May and her ministers should conduct the talks in a sober, courteous and modest manner.”

In a new report for the CER, Alex Barker of the Financial Times, puts the figure at anything between €24.5bn ($26.1bn) and €72.8bn. The bill comprises three main elements. Mr Barker reckons Britain’s share could amount to €17.4bn. The government will struggle to explain why voters should be on the hook for payments made after Brexit. But the European Commission will argue that Britain’s approval of the current budget, which runs until 2020, obliges it to cough up.

Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, says Sir Keir has “half a point” and that if the vote was held early enough Mrs May might come under pressure from business and the City to go back and try again.

Charles Grant, the director of the Centre for European Reform, believes that rather than choosing a “hard” – the Prime Minister prefers “clean” – Brexit, May should have tilted more towards those who voted Remain. She should have pursued what he calls “an economically optimal deal, something like Norway but a bit different, where we would more or less have been in the single market with a little bit of restriction on free movement”.