Insights

Frustrated by the lack of progress in its attempt to reach a voluntary agreement with BT Group about the future of its Openreach subsidiary, UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom, this week raised the stakes. Chief Executive, Sharon White, notified the European Commission of its intention to impose legal separation between BT and Openreach, its infrastructure network. This…

The EU-Ukraine summit in Brussels on Thursday just ended on an unusual note - and not just because Donald Tusk delivered some of his closing remarks in Ukrainian. He also officially said that the EU now bears the entire responsibility for successful completion of the visa facilitation process and the Association Agreement implementation impeded by the results of the Dutch…

"I am tackling the longstanding problem of our fastest growing technology firms being snapped up". So said UK Chancellor Philip Hammond this week. Yet the very next day it was announced that Skyscanner, one of the UK’s leading tech companies, had been “snapped up” up by Ctrip.com, the Chinese online travel company for £1.4 billion. Should we see this as an example of the…

The Spanish parliament’s vote earlier this week to raise the minimum wage from 655 to 800 euros a month - despite the opposition of the governing People’s Party (PP) - highlights the unusual situation that the PP finds itself in, of having to govern in a parliament where a hostile opposition has a majority. 

GC has just published a report with colleagues from Herbert Smith Freehills and The Boston Consulting Group looking at some of the implications of a ‘hard Brexit’ for traders between the EU and the UK. Media coverage of the report has focused on the headline issue of tariffs being re-imposed on EU-UK trade. But, among many other things, the report flags the important…

Russia woke up this morning to news unprecedented in its modern history – a serving minister has been arrested for an alleged $2 million cash bribe over the 50% privatisation of Bashneft oil company by the powerful Rosneft. An operation led by the Investigative Committee and the Federal Security Service reminded some of infamous high-profile night-time arrests in the…

In Delhi last week I had the opportunity to hear how Indians see Britain and what they make of Prime Minister Theresa May.

This week the Americans elected a new president who is portrayed by some as an agent of change for US-Russian relations and a potential advocate of large US businesses operating in Russia. Donald Trump was quickly congratulated by President Putin, who publicly sought to restore severed links with Washington. What happened within the next 36 hours to two large US tech…

Discussing Italy’s constitutional referendum with people in Milan this week, I was struck by the parallels with the UK, and the ways Matteo Renzi risks falling into the same traps as former UK Prime Minister David Cameron. Though a victory for the ‘Yes’ side led by Matteo Renzi cannot be ruled out given the large number of undecided and abstaining voters, Renzi now seems…

It is an interesting week to be in Delhi. While everyone is trying to work out the implications of Donald Trump’s shock victory, Indians are also coming to terms with their own domestic political earthquake.

Following the result of the US presidential election, we ask thirteen of our policy specialists for a first take on a Trump administration and its implications for policy and politics.

UK commentators have spent recent weeks debating the opportunities offered by the EU’s ‘equivalence’ regime for companies outside the single market. The concept was significantly expanded by Michel Barnier to encourage global adoption of EU rules and simply commits the EU to go beyond its formal WTO commitments for countries that meet its regulatory standards. In the…

Ed Vaizey made a splash at Global Counsel’s breakfast “Digital Tech: Bridge or Barrier to Social Mobility?” when he suggested that self-employed platform workers should receive the minimum wage. The former Minister of Culture and the Digital Economy was responding to a succession of controversies over working conditions in the so-called “gig economy”: Deliveroo riders…

Germany’s EU Commissioner, Günther Oettinger, is no diplomat. He has been accused of racism, homophobia and sexism following a speech he gave last week in which described Chinese diplomats as “slitty-eyed rascals”, joked that gay marriage might soon be made compulsory in Germany, and implied women only get jobs through quotas. It is not the first time he has been accused…

A British think tank rather definitively announced last week that it had added up the potential tariff bill for EU-UK trade in a ‘hard Brexit’ scenario – and declared the EU the bigger loser by some margin. Applying the EU’s existing tariffs by tariff line to existing trade flows gave them a ‘bill’ for EU exports of around £13bn. The implied tax on UK exports to the EU…

After a rough week in Namur, Wallonia’s capital, EU member states and EU trade policymakers will be reflecting on what CETA's near death brush with elected politicians means for future trade deals. So what are they likely to conclude?

In the months since Brexit there have been murmurings about whether, post-Brexit, Britain could adopt a ‘Singapore model’. A number of Brexiteers in the financial sector have suggested that Britain could become a “super-duper Singapore” through deregulation and focusing on new markets in Asia.

According to one major newspaper, the UK Government is developing a “nuclear” Brexit negotiating threat in the form of a corporation tax cut to 10%. The logic goes that the prospect of an aggressively low-tax “offshore” UK on the doorstep would scare the EU into accommodating British preferences for the future UK-EU relationship. But as with all nuclear deterrents, the…