Press

Still, the element of fear can’t be underestimated in the voters’ decision, said Simon Tilford, deputy-director at the London-based Centre for European Reform. “Of all the candidates, Le Pen is the one most likely to benefit,” he said. “The fear is this will heighten concern about Islamic terrorism and enable Le Pen to tap into fears over migration and refugees.”

“It would show that liberal, pro-EU centrists may yet have a future in European politics,” says Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform. “Macron wants reforms to pep up France’s economy and strengthen its position in Europe.” A Macron win could also suggest that, after Britain’s decision to leave and the shock election of Donald Trump in the US, “the demise of liberalism, internationalism and the EU ... may not be inevitable,” Grant added.

"The approval of the constitutional changes makes the prospect of Turkey's accession to the EU recede even further," Luigi Scazzieri, research fellow at the Centre for European Reform, said in an emailed statement. "Many European leaders are already calling into question the future of the accession process."

Agata Gostynska-Jakubowska of the Centre for European Reform says the tools the bloc has to address rule of law issues aren’t working properly. “When a government violates European law and in the process goes against democratic values the commission can open an infringement procedure and bring the case in front of the Court of Justice. This procedure cannot be applied however when an EU government backtracks on democratic values but does not break any EU law. If the European Commission does not find any evidence that the EU law has been broken by government's reforms on higher education there is little it can do.”

“We have learned that Trump is not so isolationist as many Europeans feared he would be — he appears to care about victims of a gas attack in Syria,” said Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform in London. “We have learned that he understands that US influence had suffered from the perception — which grew under Obama — that it was a power weakened by its reluctance to use force.”...

Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform, a think-tank, notes that all three leading candidates in the French presidential election are promising to withdraw from this treaty, which is blamed in France for the migrant camps that have sprouted around Calais.

Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, noted that so far the Eurosceptic press was still highly supportive of Mrs May, encouraged by her resolute language on Brexit.