By Philippe Legrain Britain’s international trade minister, Liam Fox, was in Washington DC this week crowing about prospects for a post-Brexit trade deal with the US. Cue much clucking about whether this would entail the UK having to accept “chlorinated chicken”. Fox insisted that there wasn’t even a nugget of truth to fears that American poultry was unsafe to eat. But feathers flew when another leading Brexiteer, environment minister …
Continue readingBrexit: A solution in search of a problem
Philippe’s newsletter last week included the quote “Brexit matters to voters not because of what it is, but what it brings”. The past week only brought more uncertainty about purpose. Why did we just have an election? And whatever the voters once thought leaving the EU would bring, many voters now think of Brexit as a solution in search of a problem. And some find the most contrived arguments to find a problem: the right-wing tabloids …
Continue readingThe DSM strategy at half-time
Today, the European Commission has published its “half-time results” on the Digital Single Market project. Any exercise in self-assessment ought to be taken with a pinch of salt, and this is no exception. As expected, the Commission’s half-time report is a mixed bag of nuts. Brussels hails DSM as a success even in areas where it didn’t do enough – like audiovisuals; it calls for more action on areas where Europe …
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Protecting competition, or competitors?
— Europe’s pursuit of Silicon Valley
It’s getting harder to escape the suspicion that the EU is sometimes acting in the interest of European firms who struggle to compete with a new breed of rivals like Apple, Amazon and Google. President Obama has said that the recent scrutiny by the EU competition authorities of US tech firms was driven by “commercial interests”. But the suspicions of Brussels using competition policy for protectionism are hardly anything new. In …
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