Press quotes

  • Police clash with strikers as EU seeks more cuts in budget crisis
    The Times, 25 February 2010

    "The majority of Greek people support the Government in its effort to introduce reforms because there is a feeling that enough is enough and politicians should get to grips with reform and end corruption," said Charles Grant, the director of the Centre for European Reform. "I fear that by the summer, people will stop feeling as they do now that reform is necessary."

  • Five NATO states to urge removal of US nuclear arms in Europe
    The Guardian, 23 February 2010

    "Denied the protection of NATO's nuclear weapons in Europe, Turkey would have additional reasons to worry about Iran's nuclear programme – and perhaps to develop nuclear weapons of its own. Newer NATO members in central Europe, who see in the nuclear weapons a symbol of US commitment to defend them, would be left feeling vulnerable," George Robertson, a former defence secretary and NATO secretary general, argued in an article he co-authored this month for the Centre for European Reform.

  • Eyeing Israel, EU condemns identity theft in Dubai assassination
    Christian Science Monitor, 22 February 2010

    "I think that this is going to be an easy one for EU states to address when it comes to speaking with one voice," says Clara Marina O'Donnell, an analyst at the Centre for European Reform think-tank in London. "The big member states still tend to have more strength and if you have a consensus you won't see the European states trying to split it. But more to the point, nation states are all quite sensitive when it comes to the idea of their passports’ integrity."

  • Lisbon pact failing to lift the EU on global stage
    New York Times, 22 February 2010

    Supporters of the treaty argue that it was never going to deliver instant results. "It is difficult," said Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, "to write off what has not been built," referring the new European diplomatic corps. "Turf wars are a characteristic of bureaucracies since 10,000 years BC," he said. "Bureaucracies fight other bureaucracies. Everyone knew this would happen."

  • Conspiracy and the euro
    BBC News, 16 February 2010

    As Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform points out, "people take bets on currencies - if they overreach themselves they go bust". ...Charles Grant says, however, he is certain that in the end Germany would act to prevent Greece defaulting. After all, it has signed up to a statement to "defend the stability of the euro". He says it is "understandable" at this stage that Germany wouldn't want to be too "explicit" about its plans, but who exactly will do the bail-out remains unclear.

  • Greece pressed to take action on economic woes
    International Herald Tribune, 15 February 2010

    Simon Tilford, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform in London, said that for the eurozone countries the Eurostat proposals constituted "a significant erosion of sovereignty. "But when they signed up to the eurozone, they effectively agreed to cede sovereignty over time", Mr Tilford said. "There was always going to have to be a greater measure of integration." Although the Greek situation was "the most egregious example," he added, "it is not as if there have been no other examples of governments massaging public finances."

  • Germany is part of Greece's woe, not just its remedy
    The Times, 15 February 2010

    "It's very puzzling. They really seem to think that they’re in a great position," said Simon Tilford, chief economist for the Centre for European Reform, one of the most pointed commentators on the contradictions of the German position. "They're not, and it isn’t a model that others can all follow."

  • Greek statistician is caught in limelight
    International Herald Tribune, 13 February 2010

    Mr Kontopirakis "alone is not guilty, but he should have spotted the discrepancy and spoken up at the time," said Simon Tilford, chief economist at the London-based Centre for European Reform. He continued: "No doubt, there was political interference at the statistics office, but his argument is indefensible. This is the most egregious example of budgetary data that we have ever seen in the EU, and his position is extremely weak."

  • How Greece exposed the slippery slopes of Europe
    The Telegraph, 13 February 2010

    Charles Grant, of the Centre for European Reform think-tank, said: "I think there will be a bail-out of some sort soon, with very strict controls on Greece." The cradle of civilisation will become effectively a colony of Brussels, or the International Monetary Fund, with massive public-sector cuts imposed on a resentful, and resistant, population.

  • Contemplating the future of the European Union
    New York Times, 12 February 2010

    "Now is the time when Europe needs to speak as one voice," said Simon Tilford, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform in London. "The crisis should lead to political unity, but it could just as easily lead to a divided Europe."