News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Saturday, April 26, 2025
A series of papers published by the think tank Europe Jacques Delors puts forward proposals that aim to strengthen environmental protection within an open international trading system. Borderlex’s Iana Dreyer exchanged views with one of the papers’ co-authors Geneviève Pons.
The European Union brought its first dispute under a bilateral free trade agreement against Korea. The EU alleges that Korea’s failure to ratify several International Labour Organisation core conventions, in particular Convention 87 on freedom of association of workers, is a breach of its terms under their 2010 trade pact. …
A subset of 23 World Trade Organization members formally launched an initiative on ‘trade and environment’ that could lead to concrete proposals to the institution at its next ministerial conference. Another initiative announced during this week’s WTO ‘Trade and Environment Week’ is a Chinese-led plastic waste “informal dialogue”.
The United Kingdom is slowly gearing up its activities as a non-European Union member of the World Trade Organization and revealing its own ‘colours’ in various trade files.
The European Union is considering launching unilaterally investigations into breaches of environment and labour or ‘sustainable development ‘ commitments – of its trading partners.
The European Union’s political establishment is relieved that the Democratic candidate to the White House Joe Biden has won the United States elections this month. While improvement of political relationships is in the offing, a there will be no miraculous return to close and harmonious relationships across the Atlantic. And …
The three European Union institutions finalised negotiations to expand the scope of its dual-use export control regime to cybersurveillance technology with the aim of protecting human rights.
This week’s Week in Brussels column focuses on EU trade defence.
Whoever ends up winning the election in the United States, the European Union now urgently needs to put serious security and geostrategic thinking first and avoid using its trade policy as an easy ‘ersatz’ for genuine security and international diplomacy, argues Borderlex’s founder Iana Dreyer.
Hong Kong contests US ‘China’ label for its goods exports Hong Kong has filed a dispute against a new United States rule that obliges goods exports from Hong Kong to be labelled as coming from ‘China’. Hong Kong, a WTO member, is a separate customs territory and nominally a different …
