News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
Welcome back to Borderlex after its small team took a much needed summer break ahead of a packed autumn of trade news to expect in Brussels, London and at the World Trade Organization in Geneva. The most notable news thus far in this scorching-hot European summer is the reignition of …
This week it became clear that the European Commission is trying to wrap up a range of trade policy files before the EU institutions wind down for elections in the spring 2024. Another deadline is looming with the United States too over a deal on critical raw materials and on …
Almost two years ago, the EU launched its first Indo-Pacific strategy in which, among others, it vowed to press ahead with trade agreements in the region and to deepen its digital and supply chain resilience conversations with a range of Asian countries. Taiwan also featured in the strategy.
The EU and Japan vowed to finalise ongoing bilateral negotiations on data flows as part of their bilateral trade agreement known as EPA and to facilitate the conclusion of plurilateral negotiations on an agreement on e-commerce in the World Trade Organization. They also adopted ‘digital principles’ that will guide their …
The European Commission will not stop applying its import safeguard on steel just this year, despite having investigated the matter. Instead, the overall volume that is allowed into the EU market under the steel safeguard will increase by 4% next month – and a slew of country-specific quotas for developing …
Like so many other European Commission ‘communications’, the economic security strategy is mainly a means to spell out and join up already existing economic policies the EU has adopted to respond to growing global geopolitical turbulence. So what’s new about the new document unveiled today?
Plans by Japan and China to go to arbitration under the alternative appeals mechanism MPIA in the World Trade Organization, announced last March, were quietly shelved as the panel report on a steel anti-dumping case brought by Tokyo was simply published on Monday.
So the media were alerted last night. The move came – seemingly – out of the blue: the European Commission is getting ready to launch an anti-dumping case against electric vehicles imported from China. Boom! Scoop! The digestive systems of some media are simple: they spew out very quickly what …
The European Commission released the draft negotiating mandate it is seeking from EU member states to formally start negotiations with the United States on a critical minerals trade agreement.
Think tanks in Europe this week have been busy scrutinising the EU’s recently very active subsidy-industrial policy nexus.
