Research
Harper in strong position for G8 meet: Economist
25 May 2011
Montreal Gazette
"There's no doubt that Canada is much better placed to take a higher profile and be listened to than it was a few years ago", said Simon Tilford, chief economist at the London-based Centre for European Reform... "The elephant in the room is the eurozone debt crisis."
In Britain, pomp for Obama but serious business too
24 May 2011
New York Times
"The British are disappointed that the US seems only to be half-committed to this battle," said Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform in London. "The view goes that even if the US felt it had to make withdrawals, to say so in public would allow Gaddafi to relax and think that the US didn't really want to get rid of him."
Eurogroup chief vexes partners as crisis rages
24 May 2011
Reuters
"The French in particular have found Juncker lacking in his ability to provide leadership during the crisis," said Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform in London. "When he does talk it has added to the sense of disarray." But Grant, of the CER in London, says Juncker does not deserve all the blame for the mixed messages coming out of the eurozone, nor the stop-start response to the bloc's crisis. "You have the (eurozone) patient in its sick bed, but there is no agreement on the nature of the disease, let alone what medicine is required.
Europa sucht eine Integrationsfigur
19 May 2011
Wiener Zeitung
"Das müsste schon ein sehr, sehr starker Kandidat sein", sagt Simon Tilford, Chefökonom der Londoner Denkfabrik Centre for European Reform, im Gespräch mit der "Wiener Zeitung". ... "Er hat es ermöglicht, dass die Widerstände im IWF gegen ein Engagement in der Eurozone überwunden wurden", sagt Tilford. ... Der IWF zählte zwar einerseits zu den institutionellen Gewinnern der "Großen Rezession": Er konnte sich in der Krise seinen Ruf als Finanzfeuerwehr zurückerobern und kehrte dafür von alten, teilweise überholten Dogmen ab. Dieser Kurswandel sei nicht zuletzt mit Strauss-Kahn verbunden ...
Lagarde may stake claim as first female IMF chief
19 May 2011
Bloomberg
Lagarde, 55, has the negotiating skills and an understanding of Europe's sovereign debt crisis needed for the post, say analysts including Charles Grant at the Centre for European Reform. "We should choose the best candidate, whether European, Antarctican or Uruguayan," said Grant, executive director of the London-based research group. "The French have a record of strong candidates and the obvious one now would be Lagarde."
Belarus turns to Russia for bailout
18 May 2011
The Moscow News
Lukashenko's economic model and social contract with the Belarusian people is based on hand-outs, mostly from Europe and Russia, Tomas Valasek from the Centre for European Reform told The Moscow News, after election violence and brutal police crack downs on opposition protestors put a new crack in Lukashenko's relations with the European Union.
$32Bln not enough for TNK partners
18 May 2011
The Moscow Times
"It's not something that will turn investor perception on Russia around," said Katinka Barysch, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform. "There's nobody who is blue-eyed about Russia these days, especially in the energy sector."
Dissecting three aspects of the eurozone drama
16 May 2011
The Wall Street Journal
Simon Tilford, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform, has done some interesting arithmetic that suggests that even after a default relieves Greece of interest burdens, its stagnant economy cannot produce sufficient revenues to reduce its still-huge deficits.
Greece's islands will not be offered as loan collateral, warns prime minister
15 May 2011
The Guardian
"The longer this goes on, the more you increase the likelihood of serious damage to the relationship between the member states, and the more you risk the erosion of what remains a fairly sturdy consensus in favour of membership," said Simon Tilford, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform.
Greece is the word
15 May 2011
The Sunday Business Post
"The politics look formidably difficult," wrote Simon Tilford of the London-based Centre for European Reform in a research note last week.
Greece and Portugal should both go gracefully
12 May 2011
Financial Times
Even as the ink is drying on Portugal's European Union and International Monetary Fund bail-out agreement, evidence is mounting that last year's bail-outs of Greece and Ireland have failed. Far from improving their access to the financial markets, Greece and Ireland face record borrowing costs.
EU ministers discuss influx of migrants
12 May 2011
Voice of America
Hugo Brady, a Brussels-based analyst for the think-tank Centre for European Reform, says French and Italian leaders who urged toughening Schengen are in a political bind - in part because of the rise of far-right, anti-immigration parties. But Brady doubts border-free travel in Europe will be scrapped. "The practicalities of the everyday won't allow for it ... People value the convenience of being able to travel around Europe without a passport. It's a significant achievement that I think very few people will want to roll back."
EU and South Korea open trade
11 May 2011
The Prague Post
According to Phillip Whyte, a senior research fellow with the London-based Centre for European Reform, the bilateral agreement represents only the second best option for the two sides after multilateral trade talks between the World Trade Organisation and its member countries began to slow more than a decade ago. "The problem economists have with these regional trade agreements is they're becoming a replacement for multilateral agreements You're seeing a spaghetti bowl of individual bilateral agreements, much like this one, and they sort of cut across each other.
NATO, EU defend record of saving African migrants
10 May 2011
Voice of America
Analyst Hugo Brady, of the London-based Centre for European Reform, says the sea migration from Africa to Europe has been going on for years. But the numbers have spiked with the recent Arab uprisings. "The reason why the Arab Spring has created so much instability in migration terms is ... obviously people are escaping a very difficult situation," said Brady. Brady says the turmoil in Tunisia, Libya and elsewhere also means these countries no longer patrol their coastlines to prevent migrants from heading to Europe.
Analysis: Effort aside, Europe fails to staunch debt crisis
09 May 2011
Reuters
"From the start they have misdiagnosed the problem -- they haven't come clean about what the problem is and hence the medicine is all wrong," said Simon Tilford, chief economist of the Centre for European Reform in London. "Quite clearly, the problem in the case of Greece, Ireland and Portugal is that investors have justified doubts about the ability of those countries to grow sufficiently quickly to service their debts," said Tilford. "In Portugal, the EU sees this as a liquidity crisis, but it's really a solvency crisis.
The EU's balancing act on open borders
04 May 2011
International Herald Tribune
"In Europe, we are surrounded by poorer but increasingly internationally mobile peoples who want in to societies boasting the highest quality of life in the world," said Hugo Brady, senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform. "It is hard to see how we can deter that desire indefinitely. ... The politics of Schengen are such that no one wants to give up control of their own frontiers but everyone wants some control over other countries' borders," said Mr Brady, the research fellow.
France challenges Italy with border checks
01 May 2011
Financial Times
"The rules of the Schengen club are premised on all countries behaving in a way that takes into account the effect of their actions on their neighbours,” says Hugo Brady, senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform think-tank. "When that stops happening – as we saw in this latest episode – the response from other member states will be to push for tighter borders." Despite the distrust between EU governments, however, Mr Brady argued that the closer monitoring did not mean the end to passport-free travel for most Europeans.
The eurozone has little to smile about
01 May 2011
The Wall Street Journal
Germany's finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, was the earliest to recognise Greece's insolvency. More recently, Clemens Fuest, president of the German finance ministry's advisory committee, declared that restructuring, the polite word for default, is inevitable. To which the widely respected director of London-based Centre for European Reform, Charles Grant, adds, "Most intelligent people know there has to be a significant restructuring to ease the burden on Greece, and we're not talking about a painless extension of maturities, but wiping away a large portion of the debt."
NATO airstrikes raise questions over motives
01 May 2011
Reuters
One answer could be that Western powers are simply hoping to terrify Gaddafi into giving up. "It appears pretty clear the alliance is using real political and physical pressure on Gaddafi," said Tomas Valasek of the Centre for European Reform think-tank. "It is clear they want him to feel unsafe and that his own future is at stake," he said.
Sarkozy-Berlusconi: A border control farce
29 April 2011
The Guardian
When Nicolas Sarkozy and Silvio Berlusconi announced plans to weaken passport-free travel in Europe this week, many onlookers concluded that the EU's most tangible achievement, the Schengen zone, was going the way of the single currency.
This is unlikely. Like the euro, the Schengen area, where passport checks were abolished in...
This is unlikely. Like the euro, the Schengen area, where passport checks were abolished in...