Press

One way of trying to screen out the effects of Covid-19 and other factors is to measure UK trade against a ‘doppelgänger’ UK that had not exited the EU, built around modelling the trade performance of other advanced economies such as the US, Germany, Greece, New Zealand and Sweden. This is what has generated the below chart from John Springford at the Centre for European Reform (CER) whose work was referenced by the OBR in its October update.

Christian Odendahl, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform says the “political calculus changes quite a bit” for state leaders facing election. He argues politicians dodged the Covid issue in German elections in September, making a backlash more likely at the ballot box in state votes next year.
But, adds Odendahl, Austria’s mandatory move “will set a precedent for Germany, because Germany and Austria follow each other's politics and country relatively closely”.

Charles Grant, of the Centre for European Reform, suggests it is worse than that. “There is another reason why they are they refusing to allow NGOs and journalists to visit, why they don’t want Frontex. They don’t want people monitoring their behaviour on the frontline.” 
The government is using the border crisis for political advantage, Grant adds. Poland has refused to take in migrants under EU quota schemes devised after the great wave that arrived in Germany in 2015. It is the classic political wedge, to play up against a “soft” opposition. “Liberals are in a mess about it.”

According to the Centre for European Reform think-tank, between early August and mid-October, there were more than 15,000 attempts to cross the border illegally.

The Centre for European Reform is making the case for why the bloc’s post-pandemic recovery fund based on mutual debt should be a permanent EU outfit. One argument: if the bloc is serious about its climate ambitions, the current fund is nowhere near sufficient for the green transition investments needed.

An analysis by the Centre for European Reform suggests Brexit so far has reduced UK goods trade by 15.8 per cent compared with what might have been expected if Britain was still in the EU.

Warsaw also does not want the oversight of its actions that Frontex might provide, said Luigi Scazzieri, a research fellow in London who is also at the Centre for European Reform.