Press

"The agreement called into question the sustainability and relevance of the EU's security and defence policy," said Clara Marina O'Donnell, defence expert at the Centre for European Reform in London.

"It still slightly worries me that Erdogan portrays himself as the natural long-term leader of Turkey," Katinka Barysch, deputy director at the Centre for European Reform, said in an interview. "A country too centralised, too focussed on one personality usually leads to very bad decision-making because if one leader is in power for too long he’s usually surrounded by yes-sayers."

Katinka Barysch of the London-based Centre for European Reform points out that some 50-60 journalists are now in jail, most of them accused of plotting to overthrow the government; around 10,000 lawsuits are pending against writers and broadcasters; and Turkey has dropped to 138th place in the press-freedom ranking of Reporters Without Borders, a lobby group, behind Iraq and only just ahead of Russia.

As Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, told me, "Poland has traditionally been a close ally of the US on security matters, but that alliance has become strained in recent years". "Poles were upset by President Obama's abrupt cancellation of the Bush administration's plans for missile defence, which would have stationed interceptors in Poland, and they are still arguing with the Obama administration about whether the Patriot missiles that Poland wants should be based there permanently or not," he added.

"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."

"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.

"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 ...

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.