News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Thursday, May 1, 2025
The usually low-key, technocratic Export Control Forum, a big bash organised by the European Commission with allies and business and civil society stakeholders each year in Brussels was unusually well attended this time round. It reveals the new salience of the EU’s export control regime in times of war on …
The European Union requested the establishment of dispute panels in two geopolitically salient cases regarding China related to intellectual property protection and what the EU considers coercive trade measures affecting its member state Lithuania.
A bit of sarcasm can’t do any harm, right?
The amount of energy going into the EU US Trade and Technology Council in the Brussels bubble is astounding. It’s at times as if nothing else counted: everyone is obsessed with it. Will the TTC have delivered more on what happened outside its formal framework than within?
Nobody will have missed the news of European Council president Charles Michel’s solo trip to China on Thursday. The trip revealed the EU’s entrenched internal rifts over China. It can be read as the post-pandemic restart of a very difficult domestic European conversation about China.
Germany is the first among the ‘big’ EU member states to be on track to ratify the trade agreement with Canada commonly known as CETA. The country’s parliament’s ratification approval today comes after years of domestic debate and many misgivings in Germany about the trade agreement – in particular its …
The EU won single-handedly its legal case brought against Indonesia’s export ban on nickel in a panel ruling released today. But Indonesia is expected to ignore the ruling and appeal the case to a non-existing appellate body at the WTO in Geneva.
It’s been long in coming, but the EU Republic of Korea Digital Partnership was finally announced today at a bilateral leaders’ meeting between European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and Korea’s president Yoon Suk Yeol.
We shall see if more concrete trade news emerge of today’s trade ministers’ meeting in Brussels. In any case, here some other notable news for EU trade aficionados that emerged this week.
The trade ministers of the European Union are converging on Brussels on Friday (25 November) for their bi-annual formal meeting. Tomorrow’s gathering will deliver very little in terms of formal decisions, but it might help bring a few ongoing trade files forward.
