Press

„Es scheint, dass wir ein bisschen zu sehr schwarzmalen“, sagt Wirtschaftswissenschaftler Sander Tordoir. Aber er sieht auch die Gefahr, dass China und die USA ihre Vormachtstellung ausnutzen, um Europa zu spalten.

"Ce n’est pas tant l’Etat de droit comme condition pour rejoindre l’UE qui a été sous-estimé, mais le risque que les pays fassent marche arrière après être entrés", dit Ian Bond, deputy director, CER.

Sander Tordoir, a senior economist at the Centre for European Reform, told Euractiv that the data suggests that the supply shocks triggered by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 “are really well and truly behind us”.“There is some life left in the European economy,” he said. However, he warned that growth in the bloc’s two largest economies, Germany and France, which both expanded by just 0.2%, remains concerning: “Germany remains weak; France is also not great,” he said.

According to Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, an influential think-tank: “Von der Leyen is by a long way the most powerful president since Jacques Delors”, who was the scourge of British Eurosceptics when he headed the commission for a decade from 1985.

Analysis last year by the Centre for European Reform think-tank noted concerns among European policy-makers about Moscow's use of hybrid attacks and the threats they pose to critical infrastructure. These fears have increased following reports of Russian surveillance of energy infrastructure in Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium, the think-tank said.

Mais la France ne sera pas pour autant épargnée d’ici là, explique Sander Tordoir, du Centre for European Reform : « Cette exclusion va probablement donner un relatif répit jusqu’à ce qu’Emmanuel Macron quitte ses fonctions, mais il sera bien requis de Paris de réduire son déficit structurel graduellement à compter de 2025 », résume cet expert de la politique budgétaire en Europe.

Russia is still the "primary pathway" to World War Three, Dr Luigi Scazzieri, of the Centre for European Reform think-tank, told Sky News. If it prevails in Ukraine, an emboldened Putin may be tempted to strike a Nato nation, which would demand a coordinated response. The likelihood increases if Donald Trump wins the US presidential election and further undermines the alliance.

Fair Play asked Sander Tordoir, a senior economist at the Centre for European Reform, how the EU can find its own recipe for economic success.“The European model may very well be a model in which you pursue certain industrial policy goals and responses to trade tensions in a way that’s more subtle and that you use environmental goals to achieve that aim,” he said. One example: the French payments to help consumers buy electric vehicles made in an “environmentally sustainable” way. “In essence, this is a European clause,” but it is “more subtle” than US green subsidies, he said.