News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Saturday, April 26, 2025
EU member states are gradually accepting to exercise greater transparency in their joint trade policy making. The Council today released the negotiating mandate it gave the European Commission towards the modernisation of the 2002 EU-Chile Association Agreement, a very early move by member-state standards. The mandate itself reveals high EU …
The EU and Chile are launching formal talks to upgrade their 2002 Association Agreement this week in Santiago. For both parties, the initiative has greater ‘geostrategic’ than actual economic significance, although for Chile in particular, economics also matter. Diversification and geostrategy Chile is traditionally the leading free …
Welcome back to our A week in Brussels Friday column! Happy New Year! The first week of the year is generally quiet when it comes to policy and trade in Brussels and elsewhere. This week hasn’t been different. But here, a few useful things garnered over the break for …
Happy New Year, dear subscribers! The year 2018 will offer a very narrow window of opportunity to bring key EU trade policy files forward. On the EU’s plate this year: finalise trade negotiations with Mexico and Mercosur, get key trade agreements with Singapore, Vietnam and Japan through the European …
The last moments of a trade negotiation are always highly uncertain. Bluff and brinkmanship are part of the game. Sometimes, someone pulls a rabbit out of the hat and everything falls into place. Yet the petering out of the EU-Mercosur free trade negotiation in Buenos Aires on the sidelines …
This is a big week for EU trade negotiators, who will be putting their collective noses to the grindstone as they work toward a year-end goal to clinch agreements with Mexico and Mercosur. Momentum is building for the parties to be able to announce at the World Trade Organization’s December …
EU and Mercosur negotiators agreed to prolong for another seven days a marathon two-week round of negotiations scheduled to start on 27 November. This means there will be a three-week stretch to get close to a deal before the World Trade Organization ministerial meeting in Buenos Aires, on the sidelines …
“Both sides are doing their homework at the moment,” a Mercosur official told Borderlex. The European Union and the South American bloc are preparing a final exchange of politically highly sensitive market-access offers in free trade negotiations that the European Commission wants to declare concluded by year-end. Confidence that …
Updated on 13 November 2017 at 14.45 CET. The EU is preparing to launch negotiations with Chile to update their 2002 Association Agreement and include new topics such as services trade, procurement, agriculture and new rules on sustainable development, gender equality, possibly protection of indigenous peoples. Member states …
Today EU member states gathered around the Commission to take stock of various free trade agreement files. Here a run through what we have gathered at the foreign affairs Council and during the past week in Brussels. EU Mercosur and EU Mexico free trade negotiations “We are now entering …
