Opinion pieces

  • Why free markets have little to do with inequality, by Philip Whyte
    Financial Times, 02 June 2008

    Many Europeans believe liberal economic reforms are incompatible with social justice. The US and the UK, they point out, have more liberal markets for products and labour than in continental Europe - but also higher levels of poverty and income inequality.

  • Russia-China: Axis of Convenience, by Bobo Lo
    Open democracy, 20 May 2008

    The China threat looms large in the Russian imagination, but is not justified by the facts suggests Bobo Lo, writing for openDemocracy's new collaboration on Russia and the world.

  • Turkey: The constitutional frontline, by Katinka Barysch
    Open democracy, 14 April 2008

    A legal case against Turkey's ruling party reopens the secular-Islamist argument over the country's future. It's time for wise leadership, says Katinka Barysch.

  • Sarkozy's bold European defence initiative, by Charles Grant,
    Financial Times, 24 March 2008

    Gordon Brown will welcome Nicolas Sarkozy to London on March 27. Almost 10 years ago, their predecessors as British prime minister and French president, Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac, launched the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) at St Malo. At this week's Franco-British summit, defence co-operation will once again be on the agenda.

  • Wanted: An EU migration policy, by Hugo Brady
    E!Sharp, 04 January 2008

    With the European Commission pushing its blue card work permit scheme and France calling for an EU pact on migration, Hugo Brady of the Centre for European Reform asks whether the Union is - at last - about to move beyond rhetoric to action.

  • Global Perspectives 2008, by Katinka Barysch
    International Affairs Forum, 01 January 2008

    Insisting that the EU must unblock accession talks with Ankara in the energy area if it is serious about diversifying its supply, the December 2007 paper by Katinka Barysch from the Centre for European Reform (CER) claims that Turkey can make a "substantial contribution" to Europe's energy security.

  • Could the euro rule supreme? It's not worth it, by Simon Tilford
    Financial Times, 27 November 2007

    In the 1970s, John Connally, President Richard Nixon's treasury secretary, famously quipped to a group of visiting Europeans that "the dollar may be our currency, but it's your problem".

  • More than just a debate about the headscarf, by Katinka Barysch
    Financial Times, 07 November 2007

    Turkey is about to give itself a new constitution. That is good because the current one was written by the army in 1982, after the last military coup. But the constitutional debate so far has been divisive. Attention has focused on the government's suggestion to scrap the ban on girls wearing headscarves in universities.