News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Tuesday, May 6, 2025
Praise for any aspect of an EU free trade agreements is sparse in the NGO world. But among the flood of overall predictable press statements from business circles and anti trade campaign groups we have received on the EU Japan free trade pact concluded ‘politically’ in Brussels on Thursday (6 July 2017), one stands …
A first piece of commentary on the deal that was agreed today in Brussels.
The EU and Japan are expected to announce they have concluded four-year-old free trade negotiations at a summit in Brussels attended by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday (6 June 2017) in Brussels. They also plan to make a bigger point about free trade. The draft joint declaration, which …
The European Parliament endorsed a package of unilateral trade preferences granted to Ukraine on top of those contained in its Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with the EU. The scope of the extra market openings to the EU’s eastern neighbour was scaled down after MEPs voted down last month a first series …
A short comment by Iana Dreyer. EU member state guidelines on trade relations between the EU and Britain on the date of withdrawal from the EU released on Thuresday (29 June 2017) are still rudimentary. They explicitly focus on elementary issues: market surveillance of agriculture products, and the very basics …
Bernd Lange, the social-democratic German MEP who chairs the trade committee of the European Parliament, has tabled concrete legal proposals for the inclusion of sanctions mechanisms for breaches to labour rules in EU free trade agreements. The Commission is still hesitant. The proposals were drawn up with the help of the German …
In a new report, the Commission singled out Russia, India and Switzerland as sources of new barriers to European traders and investors in 2017, while it claimed success in contributing to the removal of various barriers, notably in South Korea and China. The report is the seventh of such nature based on the Commission’s Market …
Updated on 26 June 2017 13:11 CET European and Japanese negotiators have worked the whole week-end in Tokyo to try and clinch what they call a “broad agreement”, in other words the general outline of a free trade agreement the technicalities of which would be left for negotiators to finalise …
On Saturday (24 June 2017), the British government announced its intention to maintain current trade preferences granted by the European Union to developing countries after it leaves the bloc. The Department for International Trade’s announcement remains very general in nature. It announces the continuation of the “Everything but Arms’ …
The EU is adding a new dimension to its trade policy: empowering women. That involves pioneering a gender chapter in the coming new EU-Chile free trade agreement.
