News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Saturday, April 26, 2025
The US trade representative formally notified Congress of its intention to launch free trade agreement negotiations with the UK as it leaves the European Union. “An ambitious trade agreement between our two countries could further expand this relationship by removing existing goods and services tariff and non-tariff barriers and by …
This week’s top focus in EU trade policy will be Asia. Brussels is hosting the Asia Europe Meeting on Thursday and Friday. ASEM has a very broad membership and lose structure and is mostly seen as a meeting, mingling and talking shop. But in the era of Trump the gathering …
The British government and the European Commission have been holding intense discussions over customs and border arrangements in recent days as crunch time beckons for a UK withdrawal agreement. There’s been plenty of noise around the pivotal file in the deal: border arrangements in Northern Ireland. Now we start to …
The world’s top agriculture exporters raised deep concerns during a meeting in Geneva about the approach the European Union and the United Kingdom are taking over the split of their common ‘tariff rate quotas’ as a result of Brexit. The two need to divide close to 100 TRQs, mainly in …
Is small beautiful? And is not having the United States on board a trade negotiation even more so? That could well be, as shown by the state of very below-the-radar discussions on ‘services domestic regulation’ unfolding in the World Trade Organization. A group of about 30 WTO members have been …
The UK government has released a third batch of technical ‘notices’ in which it sets out to businesses trading across the Irish Sea or English Channel the type and extent of paperwork it will face should Britain leave the European Union next March without an agreement that includes a transitional …
The British government will continue to recognise most manufactured goods released by European Union-based conformity assessment bodies and release them for circulation in the UK market after Brexit date. More restrictions will apply to autos and some other products. “This is intended to be for a time-limited period,” the Department …
A quick Friday blog post for the Brexit-obsessed among our readers before heading into the week-end. Britain’s House of Commons Exiting the EU Committee’s released the transcript of a meeting with the EU’s lead negotiator Michel Barnier and his number two, Sabine Weyand. The text offers some interesting insights into the …
The United Kingdom is expected to finalise legislation in the coming months that would give the government a legal basis for its coming independent trade policy. While practically all areas of legislation will affect trade and trade policy in some way, we concentrate on two crucial texts: the ‘Taxation (Cross-border …
The Department for International trade is working hard behind the scenes to try to ‘roll over’ as many EU free trade agreements as possible for Brexit date. Several months ago, DIT officials were often heard making optimistic statements about the likelihood of having these agreements ready by next March. How …
