News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Saturday, April 26, 2025
Sabine Weyand is to become next Director General for Trade, replacing the Frenchman Jean-Luc Demarty. Ms Weyand will lead the European Union’s trade bureaucracy after almost three years in a strategic post as deputy to the European Commission’s Article 50 Task force, the team that negotiated a ‘withdrawal agreement’ with …
This column was written with input from Chris Horseman. This has been an eventful week, with EU-US trade frictions, e-commerce, Mercosur, the Energy Charter Treaty, Australia and New Zealand, and WTO fish talks featuring high on the agenda. Below are other notable developments. Andean countries safeguard commodities exports to UK …
Diplomats of more than 75 countries met in Geneva this week to formally start negotiations to set rules for trade in the 21st century in the World Trade Organization. The aim is to achieve a so-called ‘plurilateral’ agreement among a subset of organisation members which others could join later.
After European elections later this month, the challenge in Europe will be to keep our nations’ own Trumpian instincts at bay and position ourselves as a safe haven in a turbulent world, writes Iana Dreyer.
This will perhaps be the quietest of all three holiday-heavy weeks spanning Easter in late April to Europe Day this coming Thursday. But it is only the quiet before the storm. Next week will be manic – so let’s use this one to recharge batteries ahead of a second half …
The two main meetings to look for this week in EU trade are an EU-Japan summit and the next meeting of the WTO’s dispute settlement body. Japan’s premier Shinzo Abe will be in Brussels on Thursday (25 April). EU leaders are set to “take stock of the implementation of the …
April could see a slowdown in decision-making in trade policy in Brussels. But this does not mean there will be less anxiety over two major files: EU-US trade relations and Brexit. In April we will also see new developments on EU-Chile and EU-Tunisia trade negotiations and on e-commerce. Continued EU-US, …
Britain’s upper house has approved motions calling for the United Kingdom to remain within a customs union with the European Union, and for enhanced parliamentary scrutiny of future UK free trade agreement negotiations.
Geneva officials are busy with meetings at the World Trade Organization. Ahead of Friday’s General Council meeting where we can expect a big showdown on all things Appellate Body and WTO ‘reform’, here a short update on some other committee meetings held so far this week. The focus was Brexit …
Tired of gloomy trade news? Let’s have some fun today. Here four numbers worth playing around with this week. 750 000 000 That’s the number of US $ worth of economic output Italy alone could lose should the United States close off its market to German autos and parts. The …
