China & Russia

Angela Merkel can be content with the outcome of the G8 summit in Heiligendamm which she chaired with her by now characteristic mix of modesty, determination and pragmatism.

In his book ‘Testimony’, Nicolas Sarkozy, the newly elected French president, wrote that his finest hour as finance minister of France was the government’s rescue of Alstom, a French maker of high-speed trains and telecoms equipment. The company’s banks had refused to extend further credit, and with Siemens – a...

On Friday 18 May 2007, EU leaders meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Samara. The summit will have few tangible results, partly because the Union is internally divided.

The Arab Reform Initiative held its annual conference in Amman, Jordan, on 18th April. Founded in 2005, ARI is a consortium of a dozen research centres that advocate peaceful and gradual political, economic and social reform in the region. A few non-Arab think-tanks are also involved, including the Centre for European Reform, but it is very much led and managed by Arab research centres. The CER is part of ARI because it believes that ARI offers an excellent opportunity to encourage reform in a region that is deeply suspicious of outside influence.

Taiwanese domestic politics is nasty and messy. The two main political forces – the KMT, which believes in ‘one China’, and the DPP, which leans towards an independent Taiwan – hate each other with venom that is unmatched in most other functioning democracies.

By 2020, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, the Chinese economy could overtake the US to become the largest in the world, at least when measured using purchasing power parity (PPP) exchange rates. India is expected to grow rapidly to become the third biggest economy. Alongside these Asian giants, a series of smaller powers – such as Iran and Russia – will increasingly be able to exploit their nuclear weapons and energy to increase their say in world affairs.Mark Leonard was director of foreign policy at the CER (2005-2007).

When Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, announced yesterday’s increase in eurozone interest rates, he did not even mention the threat a weaker dollar could pose to the outlook for the eurozone economy.

We Europeans are proud pioneers in combating climate change. But what we do at home is almost irrelevant unless we persuade and help China and India to limit emissions.

When the first CER bulletin was published, almost a decade ago, the emphasis was firmly on the word ‘reform’. The EU had fulfilled its original purpose. Western Europe was an area of security, peace and, in the main, prosperity.