News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
It’s that time of the year when the OECD, the ‘rich-world think tank’ and occasional international treaty negotiation forum hosts its ministers in Paris. Overarching themes this year: supply chain resilience, sustainability, trade multilateralism Ukraine and the Indo-Pacific.
The Council, the European Commission and the European Parliament have agreed on the final details of the EU’s anti-coercion instrument, whose contours were agreed in principle last March. The legislation is now due to come into force in the autumn 2023. So what’s the final deal?
The fourth meeting of the EU-US mega-talk shop called the Trade and Technology Council in Sweden has, in the eyes of most observers, been the most productive of them all so far. Although it hasn’t delivered on some big-ticket items, a slew of small deals and initiatives start revealing its …
The recent launch of United Kingdom-Switzerland negotiations to upgrade a bilateral agreement inherited from the former’s time as EU member and elections in 2024 are instilling a sense of urgency in Brussels about the need to get stalled bilateral negotiations with its Helvetic neighbour back on track.
G7 leaders issued an exceptionally lengthy joint statement at a summit hosted by Japan in the city of Hiroshima that covers a range of topics from the war in Ukraine, to Taiwan, healthcare, food security and climate mitigation – to name some of the most important ones. One of the …
“This is the most ambitious and comprehensive reform that we proposed since the customs union was introduced in 1968,” said the European Commission’s Paolo Gentiloni on presenting new rules it is tabling to streamline EU customs to the press in Brussels.
Emergency Europe, a term forged during the eurozone crisis reached the EU’s trade policy during the pandemic. There are now-established patterns for many areas of trade policy affected by global and regional turmoil. Let’s brace for a more unpredictable EU.
It had become abundantly clear that there would be no ad hoc ministerial conference in April this year as originally envisaged by the Energy Charter Treaty ministers last November when a decision to adopt a renegotiated treaty text was postponed.
A country known for being a poster child of free market economics and open trade is questioning its model amidst social disquiet at home and challenging geopolitics abroad. Iana Dreyer shares her insights into the trade policy of a resource-rich South American country with which the EU has upgraded an …
The European Commission is requesting a formal mandate from EU member states to start negotiations to upgrade existing free trade agreements with Korea and Singapore by including legally binding new rules on digital trade.
