News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Tuesday, May 6, 2025
Whether it is a mere coincidence or whether there is a correlation between the two new items that came out this morning is somewhat early to ascertain, but both signal that matters are in great flux at the World Trade Organization. Bloomberg reported in the early hours of today that …
And the winner is…. the EU’s measurement instrument industry, perhaps. The European Commission recently published the final outcome of negotiations in the public procurement area agreed with Mexico as part of an upgrade of the EU Mexico Global Agreement. It took the two parties less than two years to upgrade …
Trade media have been abuzz this week with a new paper that is being circulated by the French and Dutch government on how they want to see labour and environment issues addressed in the European Union’s trade policy. The frenzy has been centered around the fact that the Netherlands and …
European Union trade commissioner Phil Hogan announced he wanted a reset of trade relations with the United States during an interactive session with an e-audience of hundreds of listeners convened by the Irish think tank Institute on International and Economic Affairs on Wednesday. The two have plenty to talk about …
There is continued movement around the issue of restrictions on exports of medical products in the World Trade Organization. LDCs call on WTO members not to restrict medical, food exports Benin, on behalf of the group of Least Developed Countries in the World Trade Organization, requested that other members of …
Which way will the already battered trading system go? The COVID-19 pandemic has seen trade restrictions on medical products spread like wildfire as governments seek to maximise availability of scarce goods to their peoples and their medical teams in a beggar-thy-neighbour fashion. As of early May, a group of researchers …
The official countdown has now started for a new alternative appeals mechanism to start functioning among a subset of World Trade Organization members who decided they’d stand up for their right to enjoy two-level adjudication of disputes. The MPIA, the acronym for the new ‘arrangement’, was announced one month ago …
It took almost two years. In the summer 2018, the EU and Mexico announced they had concluded a wide-ranging renegotiation of a now twenty-year-old trade pact, pending a risky major negotiation ahead: market access in the area of public procurement. So much happened in the meantime, including an election in …
The European Union is restricting the scope of its current export prohibition of personal protective equipment to third countries – but not as much as the European Commission initially desired. The measure introduced last March for a period of six weeks required business to seek export authorisations from their national …
EU-South Africa frozen chicken dispute notched up one level further After 18 months of consultations the EU decided to request a formal panel in its long-standing dispute with the Southern African Developing Community over the latter’s safeguard on imports of frozen bone-in chicken. The EU criticises the data and the …
