News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Friday, April 25, 2025
Costa Rica, Iceland, New Zealand and Switzerland concluded an agreement on Climate Change, Trade and Sustainability that breaks new ground in the area of services and which bans fossil fuel subsidies. This is a first-in-kind legally binding international trade agreement with a primary focus on pursuing environmental policy objectives. The …
Bern is bent on avoiding that Switzerland’s steel exporters continue to be negatively affected by the European Union’s steel safeguard introduced in 2018 ahead of the measure’s expected extension.
The recent launch of United Kingdom-Switzerland negotiations to upgrade a bilateral agreement inherited from the former’s time as EU member and elections in 2024 are instilling a sense of urgency in Brussels about the need to get stalled bilateral negotiations with its Helvetic neighbour back on track.
The four countries of the European Free Trade Area are entering the new Singapore-led digital trade agreement bandwagon.
We shall see if more concrete trade news emerge of today’s trade ministers’ meeting in Brussels. In any case, here some other notable news for EU trade aficionados that emerged this week.
The European Union’s quest to upgrade its bilateral relationship with Switzerland to an all-encompassing deal with a common dispute settlement framework has failed.
Simplifying rules of origin for the hub-and-spoke preferential trade arrangements in the European Union’s neighbourhood is anything but a simple exercise. The renegotiation of the Regional Convention on pan-Euro-Mediterranean preferential rules of origin – the PEM convention – has been going on for a decade. It aims at introducing a …
It’s been a horrible week for trade aficionados. The US said no to proposed WTO Appellate Body reforms, US tariffs on EU exports are kicking in, and one had to follow the UK-EU Withdrawal Agreement negotiations. The final Brexit deal implies customs contortions in Northern Ireland which many policy wonks …
European Union relations with Switzerland are not exactly the easiest at the moment. Following significant political pressure on Bern, the two sides concluded a new agreement last December setting up an overarching framework to their complex maze of bilateral agreements that cover areas ranging from trade to judicial cooperation. But …
It’s been an intense week on the Brexit front as European Union free trade agreements start being rolled over and gradually transformed by exiting Britain, and ‘No Deal’ Brexit is keeping EU agribusiness awake at night. Loads in our Brexit section here. Transatlantic, Vietnam and the EU’s own sneaky protections …
