In less than two weeks the commissioners in-waiting nominated by president Ursula von der Leyen will start being heard by members of the European Parliament in view of their confirmation votes next month.
Based on the various statements sent to committees ahead of the hearings, there is one major change in tone in the commission in trade policy compared to five years ago: a quest for international “partnerships”, deals and dialogue, not least to boost the EU’s “economic security”.
This appetite for openness however will remain challenging to satisfy ahead of expected further plans to buttress clean tech and digital sovereignty in the EU and with no apparent or sufficiently articulated China or Trump 2.0 strategy.
Maroš Šefčovič, who is vying for the trade commissioner job and whose key messages were already reported on by Rob Francis this morning, set the tone for the trade community: he will want to conclude on going international trade negotiations and launch new ones, including new formats.
Mainstreaming the external dimension
Most incoming commissioners emphasise one way or another that they have learned a lesson from the last five years of policy, where the rapid and indiscriminate roll-out of environmental regulations that ride roughshod on other country’s own regulatory sovereignty can backfire on the EU.
The postponement of the implementation of the EU’s deforestation regulation this autumn was the new starting shot of the ‘Von der Leyen 2.0’.
“By the end of my mandate (…), I want the EU to have strengthened long-term and mutually beneficial partnerships across the globe – from Latin America and the Caribbean to the Indo-Pacific, including with a new Strategic EU-India Agenda, and from Central Asia to Africa,” the expected future foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas states in her reply to MEPs.
“I want to emphasise the importance of the “partnering” component of the EU’s approach to economic security policy”, Kallas adds, referring to the 3 Ps of the EU’s still-fresh 2023 strategy where “protecting” and “promoting” are the two other priorities.
Kallas’ collegue Stéphane Séjourné, the French incoming commission vice-president, who will oversee industrial and competition policy and who will also putitatively be Šefčovič’s boss, adopts a similar tone.
Séjourné too echoes the commission’s confrontation with international reputation-damaging effects of policies such as the Carbon Border Adjustement Measure, which hit so-called least-developed countries disproportionately.
“For some LDCs, exports to the EU can provide important foreign exchange earnings and represent a significant share of their gross national income. Together with other commissioners, I will ensure that the commission continues to work closely with these countries and support them to adjust and prepare during the transitional period of the CBAM,” Séjourné announces in his replies to MEPs.
All nominees are careful in not giving ground to demands for trade protection or distortions of the EU’s green trade agenda such as precisely the CBAM and its domestic counterpart the Emissions Trading Scheme – or to domestic farmer pressure.
There is no mention in any statement of looking into export support for companies in the sectors covered by CBAM – which would likely run afoul of World Trade Organization norms, whose importance is underlined even by Kaja Kallas.
The coming revision and possible extension for CBAM to new areas is looked into carefully. “[A]ny possible extension of the CBAM needs to be based on clear criteria and proportional to the objectives of the mechanism,” writes Séjourné.
The word “mirror clauses” is nowhere to be found in the replies on trade and farm trade, for example from Christophe Hansen, who is due to oversee agriculture trade policy.
All nominees, emphasise that “the external dimension” of domestic rule and policy-making will be “mainstreamed” across the commission.
Turbo-charing green tech industrial policy
This will certainly matter as the commission also appears to want to gear up a big notch on its new industrial policies.
The commission is announcing a new Clean Industrial Deal within the first three months of its new operation. One can expect it to expand the path-breaking 2023 Net Zero Industry Act’s reach to other industrial areas. This in turn could bring new challenges such as more wide-spread recourse to local content requirements in public procurement.
Speaking of public procurement: Stéphane Séjourné will oversee a revision of the current public procurement directive of the EU, which dates back to 2014. Séjourné promises more “non price criteria” in guiding government purchasing practices and sees them as “a first step in creating lead markets for clean tech”.
Séjourné also says that the new directive would look into “the EU added value of public procurement for our citizens through the security of supply for strategic technologies, products and services, including in case of emergency”.
The EU’s coming tech policies will be interesting to watch. The next regulatory focus – after using the last five years to regulate digital services, will be artificial intelligence. This includes plans for a new AI Factories Act and more industrial policy for cloud services in the EU. The various relevant commission nominees mention cybersecurity in all this as well as strategic autonomy in areas – linked of course to digital and high tech – such as satellites.
This will be all a fascinating area to watch should the EU want to go it alone on tech by excluding Chinese operators while at the same time fighting back on a second Trump presidency, which promises to be even more combative than the first one in 2026-2020 vis-à-vis the EU as trade and security partner.
It is also striking that the commissioners statements say little that is very concrete that is new on developing a comprehensive United States and China strategy, beyond continuing on the current path: fighting Chinese overcapacities and betting on a not very effective transatlantic Trade and Technology Council.
That might come back to haunt them the very moment they start their new jobs.
