From the Centre for European Reform, this is the CER podcast.

It is a critical moment.

If we do not act with urgency, we would then severely undermine the liberal order.

Brexit means Brexit, and we're going to make a success of it.

The wind is back in Europe's sales.

We have now a window of opportunity, but it will not stay open forever.

Hello and welcome to the CER Bulletin podcast.

My name is Beth Oppenheim and I'm a researcher here at the CER.

And today in the podcast studio I have with me John Springford, deputy director here at the CERR and Ian Bond,

director of foreign policy. And I have Luigi Scatsieri, a research fellow on the line from Brussels.

Hello, everyone. Hi, Beth. Hello. So this week is a bulletin

podcast and every two months a CEO publishes the bulletin on three important European topics. As ever,

each researcher is going to get asked three quickfire questions on their piece and we'll have

five minutes each to brief you on their argument. It's a challenge, I know. So in this episode, we're going to explore EU fears of the UK deregulating to become a so-called

Singapore-on-Thames after Brexit.

We're going to be looking at the redrawing of borders in the Balkans and at Italy's latest

confrontations with the EU.

So let's start with you, John, and your piece, the EU should worry less about

Singapore on Thames. So we had the summit at Salzburg last week. A lot of people in the UK

were actually quite surprised at how strongly the EU came out against the Checker's proposals.

Why did the 27 reject the proposals? I mean, I think the real reason why they rejected them was political.

They have been pretty clear internally, although they've been a bit less willing to say this in public,

...