Press quotes

  • EU faces threat to migration principle
    Financial Times, 28 September 2010

    "Free movement is a bit like the euro," warns Hugo Brady, a fellow at the Centre for European Reform, a think tank, recalling the single currency's recent troubles. "It's a thing the EU created and then forgot about, thinking it would never be problematic thereafter. … Free movement is such an accepted part of Europe today that Brussels policymakers don't even think of people relocating from one EU country to another as migration ... But to the man in the street, what the EU calls 'free movement' is in fact intercontinental migration."

  • Britain: Back from the dead
    Newsweek, 25 September 2010

    "One thing you won't find in Britain is European jingoism, the idea that Europe has all the answers," says Simon Tilford, economist at the Centre for European Reform in London.

  • To cut or not to cut?
    The Wall Street Journal, 22 September 2010

    "They're [the European Commission] acknowledging reality," said Simon Tilford, an economist at the CER. "This really does lend a lie to these claims that somehow fiscal retrenchment will be growth-positive." Mr Tilford and other economists say the commission's argument for austerity is in fact an exercise in magical thinking. Cutting deficits at a time when the economy is expanding strongly and demand for credit is high could help growth, because lower deficits will prevent the government from crowding out private investment.

  • Why the single currency has dropped off the Lib Dem's agenda
    The Guardian, 20 September 2010

    Simon Tilford, the chief economist at the CER, thinks similarly [current policy and regime in the eurozone is unsustainable]. Another supporter of the idea of a single currency, Tilford published a scathing critique last week of the current state of the eurozone, warning that it could easily break up. Like Flassbeck, Tilford is concerned about the deflationary bias of policy. "The eurozone can only avoid permanent crisis by convincing investors that growth will be strong enough for the hard-hit members of the currency union to service their debts," he said.

  • Brand new constitution a must for Turkey's EU membership
    Today's Zaman, 19 September 2010

    Deputy Director of the CER, Katinka Barysch, said although the constitutional amendments were mostly an improvement, they were not enough to turn Turkey into a fully functioning democracy. "For that Turkey will indeed need a new constitution, one that rests on a broad social and political consensus.

  • Dispute grows over France's removal of Roma camps
    New York Times, 16 September 2010

    When the laws on free movement were conceived, "it was assumed that this would be about highly qualified, multi-lingual, economically mobile work force moving across borders — not about Roma," said Hugo Brady, senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform. It is tempting for politicians like Mr Sarkozy, whose fortunes are flagging, to play the immigrant card, but that also risks raising public passions, Mr Brady said, possibly undercutting support for European institutions among a public that is already skeptical about integration.

  • Ministers seek to amplify Europe's voice on global stage
    New York Times, 15 September 2010

    "We have to recognise that we have less credibility than we did a few years ago as a global player," said Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, a research institute in London. "Nobody sees us as a rising power. The eurozone crisis damaged us as a soft power, as has our over-representation in international bodies. Military spending cuts reduce our credibility."...Mr Grant argues that the Union's influence is partly dependent on its economic health and that resolving the eurozone crisis is an essential.

  • Demanding value from universities
    New York Times, 13 September 2010

    A 2006 report [The future of European universities] by the Centre for European Reform, encouraged European universities to become more competitive, more entrepreneurial and, although it did not say so explicitly, more American. The authors stated that tuition in Europe is a must, but they also recommended paying faculty on the basis of merit; lobbying aggressively with state and private funding sources, like alumni; and developing alliances with corporate benefactors.

  • A weakened Russia seeks European ties
    The Wall Street Journal, 10 September 2010

    "Russia's world view focuses more on power than on rules," which largely guide the EU's behaviour, Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform said.

  • Can Russia be great?
    Project Syndicate, 08 September 2010

    But, as Katinka Barysch of the Centre for European Reform argues, Russian leaders' concept of modernisation is overly statist, particularly given that public institutions function so badly. "An innovative economy needs open markets, venture capital, free thinking entrepreneurs, fast bankruptcy courts and solid protection of intellectual property," she argues.