Giles Merritt

Giles Merritt has reported from Brussels on European public policy questions since 1978. He was a Financial Times staff correspondent from 1968-84, and an op-ed commentator on Europe for the International Herald Tribune from 1986 to 2010.

He also founded a number of EU-related projects and publications. Forum Europe, a conference organiser, in 1990; the think-tanks Friends of Europe and the Security & Defence Agenda, in 1999 and 2003 respectively;  Humanitarian Affairs Review in 2001and the policy journal Europe's World in 2005.

He is the author of five books on European policy challenges. 'World out of Work', on unemployment (1982); 'The Challenge of Freedom' on the Soviet bloc's collapse (1991); 'Slippery Slope: Europe's Troubled Future'(2016); 'People Power: Why We Need More Migrants' (2020); 'Timebomb: When Ageing Explodes' (2025). He is currently working on a forthcoming book exploring options for radical reform of the European Union.