Press quotes

  • Viewpoints: Experts comment on EU's Nobel award
    BBC News, 12 October 2012

    Charles Grant: The EU merits the peace prize. Its role in history is unique and positive, and much more important than the inability of the current bunch of leaders to resolve the eurozone's travails. One only has to travel to Asia to understand the EU's value.

  • Nobel Peace Prize: And the winner is Europe!
    Marketplace, 12 October 2012

    Simon Tilford, of the Centre for European Reform, says that's exactly why they're giving the EU the Nobel Prize for Peace. "The region is in crisis," he says, "it's very difficult to see a way out of it because of political differences between the member-states."

  • Nobel peace prize leads EU to question its raison d'être
    The Guardian, 12 October 2012

    Charles Grant director of the CER, initially laughed off the award but then decided it was a significant moment."My first reaction was to think it was a joke," he said. "But the more I thought about it the more I realised that these Nobel guys were seeing the broad sweep of history that some of us."

  • European Union awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
    Channel 4 News, 12 October 2012

    Philip Whyte of the CER, said the timing of the award could be seen as "ironic". Many EU countries have committed to austerity measures and stringent loan agreements, which they have very little power to resist and the terms of the eurozone bailout agreements could be seen as "undermining democracy in southern Europe", he said.

  • EADS-BAE failure shows road to united EU ends in Berlin
    Bloomberg, 11 October 2012

    "The German government, compared to the French and the British governments, is always unco-ordinated," said Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform.

  • Merger's demise perpetuates Europe's defence bloat
    The Wall Street Journal, 11 October 2012

    "Consolidation is good for European value amid defence cuts," said Charles Grant, director of the CER in London. ..."Ninety-nine per cent of European politicians only see things in terms of their national interests," said Mr. Grant.

  • Nudging Britain towards the exit: The rise of Tory euroscepticism
    RTE News, 11 October 2012

    Hugo Brady of the CER has conducted a major study of the block opt-out. He argues that while exercising the block opt-out en masse will boost Cameron's eurosceptic credentials, it could leave Britain badly exposed in terms of security, while further alienating key allies.

  • Leaders’ lack of enthusiasm hits BAE-EADS
    Financial Times, 10 October 2012

    "Pushing this deal to a successful conclusion required strategy and vision and none of the three leaders is a strategic thinker," says Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform, a think-tank. "BAE and EADS came along at a moment when there was too much else preoccupying them."

  • Death of BAE-EADS merger kills hope of unified European defence sector
    The Globe and Mail, 10 October 2012

    "This highlights the real challenges for Europeans in their attempt to create an integrated defence industry and market," said Clara Marina O’Donnell, a research fellow with the CER think tank. "We had three countries with three different approaches to defence that were impossible to reconcile."

  • Britain rethinks its opposition to a two-tier Europe
    International Herald Tribune, 08 October 2012

    "Ever since it joined, British policy has been based on the imperative of being in the room when important matters are discussed, so that Britain could either stop things happening or shape outcomes that suit Britain," said Charles Grant of the CER.