News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Friday, April 25, 2025
The European Commission is suddenly rolling out on a grand scale a new regulation seeking to clamp down on distortions created in the European Union single market by foreign companies investing in Europe. The Foreign Subsidies Regulation started operating in October 2023. Six months on, the action the regulation’s unofficial …
It’s been a big week for the big supply chain sustainability pieces of legislation of the soon-ending von der Leyen European Commission. A trilogue deal on forced labour was inked, and Coreper might well also endorse a watered-down version of the CSDDD corporate sustainability due diligence legislation today. It’s also …
The World Trade Organization released the panel report in one of the two cases brought by two world leading producers of palm oil against a European Union directive that excludes the oil produced in their countries from its future biofuels mix. The lengthy 348-page report does not settle for good …
European Council president Charles Michel and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen have put the bilateral trade relationship with China front and centre of their conversations with China’s president Xi Jinping at a summit in Beijing today. The conversations also covered questions of war and peace including the war …
The EU has made meaningful concessions to Japan in its negotiation on a cross-border data flow chapter that is to be annexed to the EU Japan Economic Partnership Agreement, a trade accord that has been in operation since early 2021. The result is a quirky mixture of approaches to the …
Here is a roundup of what trade think tanks have been up to this week.
The European Commission initiated four new trade defence investigations only this week, two of them targeting Chinese products. This brings the total number of new anti-dumping cases initiated this year to seven, two more than Brussels launched in 2022.
The latest iteration of the annual report of the China Chamber of Commerce to the European Union has rarely been so critical of what it sees as the EU’s inward looking drive and its growing focus on security in its relationships with China. It takes aim specifically at a policy …
The European Commission released ‘digital trade agreement’ text it intends to negotiate with Singapore and with South Korea. It ignores some of these countries’ key priorities for digital trade.
Due to the All Saints holiday, activity has been fairly subdued on the trade beat in Brussels. Such holiday weeks are generally a good opportunity for leaders to travel. European Commission executive vice-president Valdis Dombrovskis has been touring Asia, whereas the international trade committee of the European Parliament was in …
