News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Friday, April 25, 2025
European business is pressing for an early solution for trading arrangements for the Brexit cut-off date set for 29 March 2019. The EU and the UK have made it official that they were formally launching the latter’s membership withdrawal negotiations on Monday 19 June 2017, as initially planned. Both sides …
The ‘Council (Art 50)’ – how the configuration of the remaining twenty-seven member states is called – has formally adopted negotiating directives for Britain’s withdrawal process from the EU. The Council maintains that any future relationship, including trade, will be negotiated once Britain is out of the EU, a …
The last days have been filled with bits and bobs of information on EU trade worth sharing:
The EU formally set out its negotiating principles today. Trading conditions for goods placed on the market feature among the top priorities for the bloc. The EU’s main priorities for what it terms the ‘first phase’ of the UK’s withdrawal from the bloc in 2019 following its triggering of the …
The European Union’s latest version of its draft directives for the Brexit negotiations are shaping up. New elements to the negotiating directives include: an arrangement on goods placed on the UK and EU market before the UK’s withdrawal date from the EU (set for 29 March 2019), the mutual …
‘Leaks’ to the press tend to be part of some negotiation and bargaining process, where journalists are used as little pawns in a wider power game, be it internal bureaucratic power tussles or grand international games. Rarely do leaks actually reveal any new substance to, for example, a trade negotiation. This is …
The twenty seven member states of the European Union have shown an unusual level of unity in their general approach to how Brexit negotiations are to be led. As a result, they are already setting the terms of the UK’s EU withdrawal process, which formally began when the UK notified …
The UK could end up being grateful to the EU for refusing to talk about their future trade deal just now. This gives Britain some time to start thinking about a real economic and trade policy strategy. By Iana Dreyer.
The Guidelines 27 EU member states are giving the European Commission towards the negotiations of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU give little clues at this stage of the process as to where they see future bilateral trade relationship. However, the text, issued two days after Britain formally notified the …
Major continental business groups reacting to the UK’s formal triggering of its Article 50 withdrawal process from the EU consider maintaining the integrity of the EU’s single market and general unity among the 27 remaining member states as a key priority. The group Business Europe listed a few priorities in a …
