Press quotes

  • Europe fears Obama reverse will hurt ties with US
    Khaleej Times, 03 November 2010

    Ahead of his White House victory two years ago, "people sort of idealistically believed Obama will get in and all will be fine, that there'd be progress on issues such as climate, tensions, trade," said Hugo Brady at the Centre for European Reform. "None of these hopes have been fulfilled...Apart from moral underpinnings, there hasn't been a great deal of improvement."

  • Shift in Washington stirs economic jitters abroad
    New York Times, 03 November 2010

    From the perspective of those outside the United States, "Republican claims to fiscal probity are a little difficult to buy into," said Simon Tilford, the chief economist at the Centre for European Reform in London. "What they're advocating would probably increase the deficit rather than effect the dramatic reduction which they claim they want to bring about."

  • EU sets sights on treaty change
    Reuters, 29 October 2010

    "If the biggest country in the EU wants something, it's probably not unrealistic to say that it's going to get it," said Hugo Brady, a political analyst at the Centre for European Reform think-tank.

  • Cameron's EU austerity drive: Mixed results
    Time, 29 October 2010

    All this leaves Cameron's campaign looking more like a symbolic gesture to bolster the austerity drive in the UK, says Philip Whyte, Senior Research Fellow at the London-based think-tank the Centre for European Reform. "The size of the EU budget is peanuts. But whatever the reasons—good or otherwise—to raise the EU budget, it is a difficult sell back home ... Unfortunately, the substance in this issue is often overlooked in Britain, where political debates on Europe are generally reduced to an 'us and them' approach."

  • Germany makes its power felt on treaty change
    Reuters, 29 October 2010

    "To achieve that sort of reversal, especially when almost every other member state except France was fuming about how this was being carried out, is a clear diplomatic victory for the Germans," said Hugo Brady, a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform, a think-tank. … "It shows that if the biggest country in the European Union wants something, it's probably not unrealistic to think that it's going to get it. … There was a very simple strategy deployed by Germany," said Brady, referring to its brinkmanship.

  • Russia's WTO conundrum
    Financial Times, 27 October 2010

    Katinka Barysch, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform agrees, but takes a glass-half-full approach: "[Russia's] elite benefits so handsomely from the current structure that I'm not even sure thorough economic reform is possible. But in an economy that is as inefficient as Russia's, even small changes can make a big difference."

  • Paris and Berlin at odds over default system
    Financial Times, 25 October 2010

    "For the French, sovereignty is absolute, so a state cannot go bankrupt," said Katinka Barysch, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform, a think-tank. "They do, of course. There are plenty of history precedents. But to plan for it may seem harder for the French than for Germany's legalistic minds."

  • Euro-fighter phalanx is crumbling
    wiwo.de, 25 October 2010

    Almost half a year after the dramatic crisis meetings in Brussels, many EU capitals are tempted to move on to business as usual. "There is a risk that complacency sets in before a sustainable new framework has been created," says Katinka Barysch from the CER think-tank in London.

  • French support means attempt at alteration of Lisbon Treaty possible
    New York Times, 22 October 2010

    Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, said that if there was a treaty change "there is a danger that other countries will jump on the bandwagon and introduce their pet likes and dislikes. ...Hopefully the French and Germans and the EU institutions will insist on this being a very narrow and specific treaty change on eurozone governance that would allow Cameron to face down the Conservative Eurosceptics," Mr Grant said.

  • Merkel cedes ground in pact on debt rules
    The Wall Street Journal, 21 October 2010

    "Germany has had to acknowledge political reality: There was no chance of getting what they wanted past France, Italy or Spain," says Simon Tilford, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform, a non-partisan think-tank in London.