News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Sunday, June 22, 2025
Two big countries dominated the agenda on trade in Brussels this week: the United States and China. Both topics are not unrelated. In this regard, a lot happened in the WTO – see Jennifer’s stories here, here and here. Another topic that has kept EU leaders busy is the bloc’s …
This week, the European Parliament’s international trade committee debated the 474 amendments tabled by MEPs on the EU’s investment screening legislation. Our analysis of the amendments and of the debate reveals there are eight key dividing lines in the EU over the proposal tabled by the European Commission last autumn. …
There are only a few days to go before the EU learns whether it will manage to sidestep US duties on steel and aluminium. In March, the Trump administration granted the bloc and five countries temporary exemptions from tariffs adopted on national security grounds until 1 May, hoping to extract …
There is intense lobbying in Brussels on beef, sugar and ethanol this week as dormant trade talks resume with Mercosur, the South American bloc.
The European Commission has released an 18-page document on the EU-Mexico free trade deal that was concluded over the weekend. Here are the distilled contents of the modernisation exercise, with yours truly’s knee-jerk reactions and annotations. Negotiators will work over the coming months on a final pact ready to …
The EU and Mexico have decided it’s time to declare the deal done. In a joint statement released on Saturday night, the EU’s trade and agriculture commissioners and Mexico’s economy minister said that “after several months of intense negotiations, this afternoon we reached an agreement in principle on trade …
It was another packed week in trade, with the trans-Atlantic relationship on top of everyone’s mind. We’ve covered some of it here, as well as developments in the run-up to the launch of EU-Australia and EU-New Zealand free trade talks. There’s been a lot of movement between the EU and …
The EU is struggling to find a consistent, coherent and efficient strategy approach to the US administration’s choking off of the World Trade Organization’s Appellate Body and to its unilateral tariffs on steel and aluminium. There is a lot of back-and-forth in the background – both in Brussels and …
The EU and Oceania are edging towards an economic rapprochement. Long-awaited free trade agreement talks between the EU and Australia and New Zealand are expected to receive the green light from member states next month. The move comes as the two Oceanian countries seek to diversify their security ties …
The European Commission today initiated the ratification process of the EU’s trade agreements with Japan and Singapore. The Singapore pact, concluded in 2014, was subject to a lengthy judicial process that resulted in a May 2017 ruling by the Court of Justice of the EU identifying where the bloc …
