For centuries, Europe has been politically fragmented. Counterintuitively, this fragmentation was a blessing, not a curse. The reason was that, unlike other absolute monarchs, such as Chinese...

Important policy shifts are sometimes buried deep in the weeds of academic and technocratic reports. Just some weeks ago, the European Commission published a new study of Third Party Litigation...

There are different ways to think about the economy. Economic reality will routinely present any policymaker with challenges that require actions in the short term: crises that motivate cyclical...

On May 19 the UK and EU started a new phase in their turbulent history. By agreeing a future program of work including negotiating alignment on food and drink regulations (SPS) and emissions trading...

Trade talk has gone mainstream as a result of President Trump’s actions. On top of reporting costs and uncertainty to business this has meant numerous bold statements like the world never being the...

A question that is haunting the EU and other key trading partners of the United States is whether they should retaliate against Trump’s tariff assault. So far, the EU’s response to the Trump...

This blog post is based on an article published in El País on the 13th of April 2025. The original article can be found here. Julia Roberts won an Oscar for her leading role in Erin Brockovich,...

“There are weeks when decades happen”, Lenin famously said. The first two weeks of April this year have been such an event: major foundations of the global economic order have been shaken. The...

The EU should act – now – to offer and call for a zero-tariff agreement with the United States. It should put the proposal on the table unilaterally, without waiting for permission from...

On April 2nd – sorry, Liberation Day – President Trump revealed his new package of “reciprocal tariffs”. There has already been a lot of commentary and analysis by economists and others, and...