News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Wednesday, April 30, 2025
It’s been a long journey for Uzbekistan. The Central Asian country remains one of the world’s most closed and politically repressive countries, but it embarked on a new journey in 2016 after the passing away of Islam Karimov, a particularly cruel dictator. The five-year reform process might lead the country …
Around 450 NGOs, labour unions, civil rights organisations on both sides of the Atlantic have launched a common campaign aiming to bring down the EU Mercosur Association Agreement which the Commission and South American governments are preparing to ratify, pending further negotiations of a protocol that would involve cooperation in …
As widely anticipated, the European Union extended on Thursday its export authorisation scheme for COVID-19 vaccines produced by firms with a procurement contract from the EU until the end of June 2021. The move comes amidst controversies over who among the continental EU and the ‘Anglos’ are greater vaccine nationalists. …
The countdown to a negotiated transatlantic Airbus-Boeing subsidy solution has begun today. Last Friday US President Joe Biden and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a mutual four-month temporary suspension of tariffs imposed in 2020 following a 16-year old legal dispute at the World Trade Organization: these tariff …
The announcement comes only days after the US announced it was suspending tariffs on UK imports linked to the long-running Airbus-Boeing subsidy saga. The UK had unilaterally suspended those tariffs when it left the EU customs union and single market in January this year. “The suspension allows both sides to …
Drift. That’s the best way to describe the week in European Union trade policy. European Parliament threatens EU UK TCA walkout A perpetual crisis over border checks in Northern Ireland is now a possibility, with this week’s UK decision to unilaterally extend a grace period for intra-UK border checks until …
France is holding the key cards among European Union member states in having the long-awaited EU Mercosur trade pact ratified – perhaps one day – in Europe.
Dombrovskis sees potential in EU-US supply chain resilience collaboration President Biden this week made headlines by announcing a review of the United States’ supply chains. Strategic dependencies on – namely but not only – China and other supply chain disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic have had the US government focus …
During her confirmation hearing in the Senate the nominee to become the next United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai offered a general direction of travel for the Biden administration’s trade policy but hardly gave answers on specifics. Katherine Tai said she was pursuing a “worker-centred” trade policy – that also …
The international trade committee debated the EU China Comprehensive Investment Agreement – also known as CAI – for the first time since its conclusion last December. A cross-political group consensus is emerging: the EU needs to move first in other areas of policy affecting its China economic and political relationship …
