News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Monday, May 5, 2025
The European Union is still waiting for some form of official announcement on whether the White House will order import duties to be applied to autos and auto parts – or whether it will, as anticipated by most observers on both sides of the Pond – postpone the decision and …
This will be less a week of action on trade in the EU than a week of deadlines. Watch out for a possible first ever decision in the EU to recommend suspending Everything-But-Arms trade preferences following months of wrangling with Cambodia’s ruler Hun Sen. US auto tariff deadline The main …
The Pacific Islands Economic Partnership Agreement is now in the hands of French MEP André Rougé, a member of France’s far right Rassemblement National and the European Parliament’s Identity and Democracy group that includes far right parties from eight other European countries. A file that would have sailed quietly through …
This week China hosted a small ministerial conference with around thirty members of the World Trade Organization in Shanghai. Little has been reported about this low-key meeting. But it appears to have brought some movement in specific WTO files. The gathering in Shanghai offered the opportunity for the EU to …
Welcome back to our Monday morning Week Ahead columns! In these gloomy and rainy early days of November in Brussels we are looking to a packed agenda that could distract us from the bad weather. Shanghai WTO mini ministerial Commission and member state officials will be in Shanghai on Tuesday …
It’s a short week in most of the EU with many countries on holidays on Allsaints day on 1 November. This explains why our Week in Brussels column is coming out on Thursday instead of Friday. This week we had news on the end of intra-EU bilateral investment treaties and …
The European Commission has published a lot of material about the free trade agreement concluded with Mercosur last summer. But the most interesting parts of the agreement – the market access offers in goods and services – were still missing. Whether it’s the effect of last Sunday’s elections in Argentina …
The process of ending intra-European Union bilateral investment treaties has created much bitterness and resentment between the European Commission and member states as well as among EU capitals. It is now coming to an end although a big battle still lies in an Energy Charter Treaty context. The long-standing internal …
November deadlines missed Europeans and Britons were spared Brexit for Halloween this Friday as the United Kingdom seeks a way out of its political impasse through elections later this year. There are also signs that the United States will seek a way to avoid slapping tariffs on EU autos in …
The week so far has been about much more than the new Brexit deal… Singapore FTA on track for member state approval EU Ambassadors gave cleared the way for capitals to approve the EU Singapore free trade agreement on Wednesday (23 October 2019). The ratification process for this agreement is …
