Perhaps the many behind-the-scenes meetings held by officials, experts and lawyers on the sides of the World Trade Organization’s Public Forum this week in Geneva will have been worth the time, energy and travel expenses. One cannot exclude some movement in the coming weeks over the organisation’s Appellate Body impasse, …
Author: Iana Dreyer
Appellate Body crisis: Chronicle of death foretold meets anger, indifference
The impending disappearance of the appeals mechanism for resolving disputes is rattling the World Trade Organization community as some WTO members are now focusing on alternative mechanisms to enable appeals in trade disputes. But perhaps more disturbingly: Are the majority of WTO members in fact quite indifferent to the fate …
Week in Brussels: Vietnam deals, cultural exception in e-commerce, Moldova DCFTA, Women in Trade
Yes, we all know, this was transatlantic week and Airbus week. It was also Phil Hogan week. It was also international trade committee week – with MEPs discussing the US-EU beef quota and the ongoing EU-Australia negotiations. Below other interesting news. Parliament gears up for EU Vietnam FTA and IPA ratification …
Perception of measured US Airbus tariffs shifts EU focus on settlement talks
The perception in Brussels is that the approach taken in the choice and level of tariffs by the US Trade Representative to hit the European Union following yesterday’s WTO arbitrator’s green light in the Airbus affair is relatively measured. Accordingly, the EU’s own response to the tariffs, too, is expected …
Will the US-EU beef quota deal be victim of Airbus tariff feud?
So what happens now? Airbus tariffs authorised Today, as expected a World Trade Organization arbitrator authorised the United States to remove concessions offered to the European Union under two WTO treaties amounting to an equivalent of almost US $ 7.5 billion worth of exports. “These countermeasures may take the form …
Hogan hearing: geostrategic pitch meets sustinability and farming questions
The questions Phil Hogan was least comfortable with were those around digital trade and European plans to establish a multilateral investment court. The more than two hour hearing with MEPs from the international trade committe was uneventful and dry – addressing at times the minutiae of ‘rules of origin’ in …
Week Ahead: Airbus, Hogan hearing, ESA, Indonesia
This is set to be an intense week in EU trade policy. The Airbus tariff war, DSB meeting The World Trade Organization’s Dispute Settlement Body is meeting today in Geneva. On the agenda: the Airbus case and authorisation by the WTO for the United States to imposed duties on EU …
After Japan: EU last man standing in Washington’s tariff sniping with allies
Has the time for a full-scale trade war between the European Union and the United States now arrived? Clearly the two sides are on the brink of a nasty and damaging process. With the US now largely having achieved its objectives in the sniping war it launched against some of …
Week in Brussels: New York Airbus, Slovakia okays CETA, Korea ILO
This week, EU leaders were out in New York for a UN General Assembly meeting dominated by ‘Greta’, i.e. the climate change issue. The gathering in the Great Apple was also a good opportunity to meet other leaders from across the world. Cecilia Malmströmmet among others with counterparts from Brazil …
European Chamber in China calls on EU to flex muscles on shipping rights
The annual European Chamber’s Executive Position Paper on China released this week was drafted in a particularly punchy tone. Its former president Jörg Wuttke is back in charge after many months of absence. Wuttke is advocating a tough European Union line on trade and investment relationships with China. The 30-page …
