Hugo Brady, senior research fellow at the Centre European Reform, said the commission needed to change its rules to allow Lady Ashton to send a deputy to meetings. "If it doesn't work it will reflect badly on the commission as well", he said.
"In a way, the Germans had the presidency," says Katinka Barysch of the Centre for European Reform in London. - "The euro crisis accentuated the existing trend" of weaker and weaker presidencies, says Ms Barysch.
Pour Charles Grant, du Centre for European Reform, à Londres, "l'Allemagne est le grand problème" de la politique européenne de sécurité, car soit elle reste soit neutre, soit elle défend ses propres intérêts.
The missing bit of the narrative is the role played by allies of the UK. The latter-day Bluchers vital to the defeat of a Tobin tax were German industrialists, according to Simon Tilford of the Centre for European Reform.
"However the Germans vote on 22 September, Berlin's attitude to the EU is not going to change much," Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, wrote this week. Most analysts agree.
"It could potentially be very significant," said Simon Tilford, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform in London. "Political instability in Italy is more of a concern than in Spain, Portugal or Greece."
The vote in Parliament "could turn out to be the signal for a strategic shift in favor of insularity," said Ian Bond, a foreign policy specialist at the CER. British lawmakers risked "sending the message that in the future the UK will be content to stay on the sidelines, regardless of what is happening in distant lands."
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