News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Wednesday, April 30, 2025
The European Commission is seeking immediate semiconductor supply shortage crisis management powers ahead of the imminent announcement of a new industrial policy regulation that seeks to ensure that one fifth of world production happens in the European Union by the end of the decade: the EU Chips Act. The Commission …
The new director-general of the World Trade Organization is serious about her desire to see change in the way things get done in Geneva. Her ambitions have irked some diplomats and also created a furore over a slew of resignations in the WTO secretariat that have come to light in …
The European Commission wants the EU to “take back control” of technical standardisation as it rolls out its new industrial policy and seeks to reduce the influence of large Chinese and United States companies in standard-setting bodies in the EU whilst promoting European standards internationally.
The anti-coercion instrument that the European Commission is proposing for adoption this year coinciding with a crisis with China over its economic bullying of Lithuania is not only a risky institutional power transfer – it might end up being a damp squib.
These are quite some impressive days in WTO dispute settlement in Geneva with China and the EU stirring up a storm, but Brazil too!
The EU has moved faster than expected in launching a legal dispute at the World Trade Organization in relation to Chinese restrictions on exports from Lithuania following a political row with the country related to the opening of a representative office for Taiwan in Vilnius last year. The move is …
The European Commission is on a mission to calm down the European Parliament’s urge to complicate its proposed foreign subsidies regulation.
The Council and the European Parliament are confident that the new regulation on an International Procurement Instrument can be wrapped up politically in the coming months, with some people close to the file even hoping there could be a breakthrough in ‘trilogue’ as early as March – although the few …
There was much less of a void at or around the WTO this week. Here a round-up of developments around the world trade instirution this week. Today trade ministers are holding their annual Swiss-hosted informal WTO ministerial not, as usual, on the sidelines of Davos but online.
Plans towards a European Chips Act are maturing. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen announced a new regulation mirroring similarly named recent United States legislation will be tabled as soon as early February. Brussels’ move in the semiconductor sector heralds a much more politically controlled approach to supply chain …
