News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Friday, April 25, 2025
The coming months will be a challenge for advocates of international trade agreements in Brussels and the wider European Union. Post-Trump, post-Brexit and post-pandemic trade policies are bound to focus on files that respond to a sense of existential threat emanating from its member states.
Despite its diplomatic isolation, Taiwan’s geostrategic significance has only increased with the pandemic and the geopolitical rivalry between the United States and China, writes Zsuzsa Anna Ferenc. But is Taiwan’s diplomatic isolation sustainable in a world paralysed by COVID-19 and torn by a race for critical technologies?
The Energy Charter Treaty needs to make a success of its ongoing modernisation process in the coming five years, writes Urban Rusnák.
The British government has proudly unveiled its blueprint for a chain of ‘freeports’ as a feature of the country’s post-Brexit trade landscape. But translating the “big idea” to reality on the ground will be a lot more complicated, writes Edward Farmer.
The brand-new EU-UK trade agreement in many ways epitomises a defensive turn in EU trade policy in a world where its geostrategic certainties – not least the comfort of the US security umbrella – have been shaken and the global pandemic exposed its vulnerabilities. But turning defensive is not enough. …
This opinion piece reacts to and debates four key criticisms expressed in various media outlets in recent days of the EU-China investment agreement currently seen as in the final stages of negotiations.
Photo credit: WTO. EU Commissioner Phil Hogan, who met WTO DG Roberto Azevedo, a few days before taking office as trade commissioner in November oast year, will be in charge of devising a new EU strategy to revive the WTO and put the Appellate Body mechanism back to work. A …
Trade policy will be an instrument of choice for the new European Commission’s ambitious foreign and climate policy. But the von der Leyen programme also reveals many blind spots – not least on how to succeed in overhauling the World Treade Organization and in the EU’s immediate neighbourhood, opines Iana …
Will the EU make its trade policy greener in the coming years? If anything, the politics of green trade will become messier, reckons Iana Dreyer.
After European elections later this month, the challenge in Europe will be to keep our nations’ own Trumpian instincts at bay and position ourselves as a safe haven in a turbulent world, writes Iana Dreyer.
