From the Centre for European Reform, this is the CEO 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 annual end of year CER podcast and I'm very pleased to say that I have with me today, Charles Grant, the CEO's director, John Springford, the CEO's deputy director and Ian Bond, the foreign policy director. Hi, everybody.

Hi.

And as 2019 draws to a close, we're going to review the state of affairs in Europe over the past year before

turning our attention towards the next year and what it might bring.

So I'm going to kick off with you, Ian.

The first question really is going to be about foreign policy after Brexit in the UK.

So how much do you think it's going to change and whether you think that the UK is going to ultimately

end up prioritising the need for trade

agreements above human rights and sensitive issues like that.

Yeah, I think the first part of the year we'll probably find that the bandwidth for any foreign

policy initiatives is going to be quite limited. I think Brexit is still going to be the big

issue for the British government,

especially if Dominic Raab is reappointed as Foreign Secretary. He is likely to be focused

more than anything else on getting the next stage of Brexit underway. After that, the question is,

can the UK be more ambitious and set different foreign policy goals from the rest of the EU?

And I think the signs are not really.

There are not many issues on which the UK has disagreed with EU policy.

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