News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Monday, April 28, 2025
Two of the biggest trade issues hanging over the EU will be on various agendas this week: the draft Brexit withdrawal and transition agreement, and the bloc’s ongoing efforts to avoid pending US steel and aluminium tariffs. European leaders are set to accept the draft agreement, but it’s anyone’s guess …
Japanese business groups want the EU and the UK to start working on rolling over the yet-to-be ratified EU-Japan free trade accord so that it also applies to Britain after Brexit. They also set out specific demands for the future EU-UK trade agreement. These demands echo origin rule requests by Britain’s …
British government proposals to find a solution to the UK-Ireland border after Brexit are “imaginative” but largely unrealistic and there is “no evidence” that a soft border is feasible, a House of Commons committee has found.
Germany is leaving behind a period of six months of wait-and-see on major policy areas and has finally installed a new coalition government. For Berlin, Brexit is now starting to be one of the country’s top European priorities. The trade aspect of the UK’s withdrawal, transition period and future …
Statements by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier and the European Parliament’s Brexit leader, Guy Verhofstadt, today in the parliament in Strasbourg revealed nothing new about the EU’s position on everything related to Brexit (details in this blog series). So what’s new on the Brexit-and-trade …
Anyone with a backlog of work should try to catch up on it this week, as the trade agenda is rather thin and next week is packed. The top news out of Brussels in the next few days may well focus on the Brexit draft guidelines, which are the subject …
Parts of the UK business community are getting impatient at the way Brexit negotiations are being conducted. Positions are hardening and the disagreement reaching a new dimension over Northern Ireland. Will the British government survive this standoff? Business anger There was a real sense of anger at the …
The EU is soon to formally release its draft guidelines for the future EU-UK trading relationship. The proposal it makes is as expected: a ‘plain vanilla’ free trade agreement. The text is a rebuff of May’s speech last Friday. The European Parliament presented today its own draft resolution on the …
Trade news in the EU in recent days was dominated by the bloc’s trade spat with the United States. In Britain on Friday, everyone was obsessing about Brexit and Prime Minister Theresa May’s speech on what her government wants to achieve for the country’s future relationship with the EU27 – …
With things suspiciously quiet on both the Mercosur and Mexico trade talk fronts, the biggest news concerning Brussels this week may be coming from Luxembourg, where the Court of Justice rules on the legality of intra-EU bilateral investment treaties. The week’s headlines will most likely be dominated by the looming …
