News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Sunday, May 4, 2025
Insiders don’t believe the EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement signed this summer faces a serious risk of being voted down in the European Parliament at the end of the year. But as the assembly enters its last months of functioning, a vocal group of left-of-centre MEPs is making a last big …
The world’s top agriculture exporters raised deep concerns during a meeting in Geneva about the approach the European Union and the United Kingdom are taking over the split of their common ‘tariff rate quotas’ as a result of Brexit. The two need to divide close to 100 TRQs, mainly in …
New Zealand FTA round 2 This week the EU and New Zealand are holding their second round of free trade agreement negotiations Down Under. The talks were kick-started in July and appear to be on a fast lane as the parties aim to work on text-based negotiations pretty swiftly. Please …
This week has been heavy on World Trade Organization issues (EU’s WTO reform pitch, services domestic regulation talks, US engagement with WTO reforms), the fallout from the new NAFTA,with bits on what’s happening (not) on Britain’s fabulous post- Brexit trade deals. Member states met in Innsbruck today – and there …
Is small beautiful? And is not having the United States on board a trade negotiation even more so? That could well be, as shown by the state of very below-the-radar discussions on ‘services domestic regulation’ unfolding in the World Trade Organization. A group of about 30 WTO members have been …
The trade policy of the Trump administration is casting a big shadow over the annual World Trade Organization Public Forum this week in Geneva. Formally, the forum is a harmless exercise in putting together panel discussions aimed at brainstorming about the future of trade and an opportunity for the global …
There will be little this week in terms of formal EU FTA negotiation rounds nor intense legislative activity: much more in the coming weeks! Lots of internal wrangling, of course, not least at the informal meeting of trade ministers in Innsbruck, Austria, on Friday. Hot topics of the moment: investment …
Below some highlights of this week’s trade committee meeting in Brussels, and a little update on the EU-Australia FTA talks. In case you missed them, check out our other articles this week on no-deal Brexit here and here, the EU’s food export bonanza, trilateral EU-Japan-US discussions on China and WTO, CETA, and the …
Canada and the EU hosted their first CETA Joint Committee meeting. The committee’s role is to oversee the implementation of the trade agreement. In fact, the meeting mainly dealt with demands made on it which are not in the treaty.
A trilateral meeting among the trade chiefs of the United States, Japan and the EU held in New York committed the three World Trade Organization members to launch common initiatives to overhaul the Geneva-based institution. This trilateral format of meetings started with the aim to address common concerns on – …
