News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Friday, May 2, 2025
This week was all about transatlantic trade, biodiesel (here and here), the CETA investment court, Brexit preparedness and UK FTA rollovers. Below other important news. EU-Japan FTA comes into force Business and governments in the EU and Japan are cheering. The largest-ever trade agreement so far came into force today. Here, our …
The EU and Argentina ended six years of disagreements over the South American country’s exports of biodiesel to the bloc with a compromise that averts years of litigation in courts.
The European Commission released a report on the state of play in ongoing talks with Washington to ease trade restrictions. Entitled EU-US Relations: Interim Report on the work of the Executive Working Group, the document offers details on the state of discussions on regulatory work, but not much else. But …
The ongoing trade ‘negotiations’ between the European Union and the United States are a good opportunity to try to resolve old gripes that the US holds against the EU’s import regime. One of the irritants the European Commission has tried to defuse under the shadow of a US threat to …
There will be three main items to watch this week in EU trade: a European Court of Justice preliminary assessment of the EU’s Investment Court System, the direction of travel for Brexit, and WTO disputes. The fate of the European Union’s plans to set up bilateral an multilateral investment tribunals …
Four dozen World Trade Organization members including the EU, China and the US will kick off negotiations on digital trade in March in a move designed to reinvigorate the beleaguered trade body. Meanwhile, a group of ‘like-minded’ members led by Canada warned that risks to the multilateral trading system – …
It’s been an intense week! The EU was involved in the launch of plurilateral negotiations on e-commerce (Jennifer will have more) in Switzerland. That will be a boost to the World Trade Organization. Southeast Asia also featured highly on the agenda as a ministerial meeting was held this week amid rows …
There have been media reports that EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmström, speaking at Davos today, appeared to be confident that the United States would not slap tariffs on imports of European autos on national security grounds. The US is preparing a report on the national security implications of car imports …
The European Commission’s director-general for trade thinks a partial deal on auto tariffs is feasible with the United States. Jean-Luc Demarty does not expect any tariff liberalisation accord with the US to be finalised before this year’s European elections. The EU and the US are expected to launch trade negotiations …
Seeing that the World bTrade Organization survives, and that its dispute settlement function survives, remains independent and keeps is ‘bite’, is one of the EU’s current strategic priorities. In practice, the WTO dispute settlement system will weaken regardless of EU efforts to amend it, and the bloc will increasingly take …
