The “highlights” of 2017 are mostly lowlights. The year began with the inauguration of a racist US president who pledged to build a border wall to keep out Mexican “killers and rapists”, ban Muslims from entering America and tear up the liberal international order in favour of an America First strategy of nationalism, protectionism and xenophobia. While many of Trump’s actions have been symbolic, his clampdown on refugees and immigrants is very real. 2017 was …
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 …
Continue readingOpen Up quoted in Project Syndicate
To be sure, the European Commission promised to create a single digital market two years ago, estimating that it could boost the EU economy by €415 billion ($448.5 billion) annually. But Hosuk Lee-Makiyama and Philippe Legrain of the Open Political Economy Network recently delivered a scathing assessment of the results. Europe’s “single digital market,” they argue, currently amounts “to a jumble of outdated, corporatist, counterproductive industrial policies that favor producers over consumers, …
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