News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Saturday, May 3, 2025
The overarching question shaping European trade policy outcomes this year will be: what role for international trade and investment law for global business and the work of trade diplomats? This issue will be central in the four major files with which European trade policy will grapple: the future of the …
The first full working week of the new year will see the EU focus on World Trade Organization issues. Trilateral US Japan EU Trade commissioner Cecilia Malmström will be in Washington tomorrow to meet her US and Japanese counterparts and discuss topics of joint interest in relation to WTO rules …
It’s mainly been a WTO-intensive week for the EU with a revised intellectual property dispute filed against China, and the US having yet another gripe about the Appellate Body. London clinched a short bye-bye deal with Norway, Iceland and Liecthenstein, while the country is realising little is actually in place in …
Remember when the European Union filed a dispute at the World Trade Organization last spring targeting Chinese intellectual property violations and forced technology transfers? In fact, the preliminary consultations foreseen by WTO rules before legal proceedings begin never actually took place. Instead, the EU went back to the drawing board …
Britain and Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein agreed on the terms of their ‘separation’. Members of the European Economic Area and the European Free Trade Area largely replicate EU single market rules. As an EU member, Britain is also an EEA member – hence the need to strike an agreement with …
Both Brussels and London have started to prepare contingency plans as the possibility that Britain ‘crashes out’ of the EU next March is becoming a genuine possibility. The aim is to avoid the most severe of disruptions. In Britain hardly anything is yet ready to salvage existing trade arrangements and …
The European Commission is stepping up pressure on the Trump administration to fully comply with the 2016 Privacy Shield, a framework agreement that allows certified US companies to transfer personal data from EU-based citizens to the United States. The move follows on an annual review process held this autumn (see …
Formally it’s a quiet week for European trade policy, with a limited number of scheduled official meetings. But one can expect movement on a variety of trade files before everyone goes on holiday for Christmas.
A milestone was reached this week in Britain’s quest to secure trading continuity with most European Union trading partners after Brexit. Switzerland has been one of the UK’s priorities in its bid to ‘roll over’ EU FTAs with third countries. In case of a ‘no deal’ exit, only a few …
The ratification of the EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement by the European Parliament on Wednesday boosted morale at a time when relationships with the United States remain ‘complicated’ and the WTO is sinking into crisis as the US rejected the EU’s WTO reform proposals during meetings in Geneva this week. But …
