News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Tuesday, May 6, 2025
This week a tenth free trade agreement negotiation round between the EU and Australia continues into its second week. The European Commission will also launch two legal proceedings against the United Kingdom for breaching the terms of the Northern Ireland Protocol (see here). The International Trade Committee of the European …
As widely anticipated, the European Union extended on Thursday its export authorisation scheme for COVID-19 vaccines produced by firms with a procurement contract from the EU until the end of June 2021. The move comes amidst controversies over who among the continental EU and the ‘Anglos’ are greater vaccine nationalists. …
The countdown to a negotiated transatlantic Airbus-Boeing subsidy solution has begun today. Last Friday US President Joe Biden and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a mutual four-month temporary suspension of tariffs imposed in 2020 following a 16-year old legal dispute at the World Trade Organization: these tariff …
The European Parliament is taking a stand on what it wants from EU-wide ‘corporate due diligence’ ahead of legislation that the European Commission is yet to table in a report drafted by Lara Wolters, a Dutch MEP from the S&D group. The report is 79 pages long, has a record …
The European Parliament voted by a large majority on a report on a coming European Union ‘carbon border adjustment measure’ at a time when the United States and the EU are pulling out feelers to gauge the scope for joint global climate cooperation. The message rapporteur from the Greens group …
The announcement comes only days after the US announced it was suspending tariffs on UK imports linked to the long-running Airbus-Boeing subsidy saga. The UK had unilaterally suspended those tariffs when it left the EU customs union and single market in January this year. “The suspension allows both sides to …
Drift. That’s the best way to describe the week in European Union trade policy. European Parliament threatens EU UK TCA walkout A perpetual crisis over border checks in Northern Ireland is now a possibility, with this week’s UK decision to unilaterally extend a grace period for intra-UK border checks until …
A very different scenario is shaping up between the European Union’s export authorisation scheme developed in March 2020 covering exports of personal protective equipment and the vaccine export authorisation scheme introduced in late January 2021 for exports of COVID-19 vaccines.
The Bertelsmann Foundation’s Christian Bluth argues that the EU’s trade policy focus will need to shift to managing risks. Bluth puts forward a few bold ideas to that end in an exchange of views with our editor Iana Dreyer.
France is holding the key cards among European Union member states in having the long-awaited EU Mercosur trade pact ratified – perhaps one day – in Europe.
