News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Saturday, May 3, 2025
Seeing that the World bTrade Organization survives, and that its dispute settlement function survives, remains independent and keeps is ‘bite’, is one of the EU’s current strategic priorities. In practice, the WTO dispute settlement system will weaken regardless of EU efforts to amend it, and the bloc will increasingly take …
The EU and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations announced plans yesterday to upgrade their relationship to a ‘strategic partnership’. But palm oil and human rights disagreements continue to put sand in the wheels of the bilateral cooperation machinery. Strategic partner status tends to mean little in practice. For the …
The European Commission tabled draft mandates to member states today to allow it to start trade negotiations with the United States. The move comes following the trade truce between the White House and the commission reached last July and following a meeting between trade commissioner Cecilia Malmström and US Trade Representative …
European Union quotas on imports of 26 steel product categories that have been in place provisionally since July will become definitive after member states gave the green light to the move today in Brussels. The European Commission also decided to go ahead with imposing safeguards on Indica rice from Cambodia …
Revived in 2016, he decades-old EU-Mercosur free trade talks were not concluded last year as hoped by proponents. The new Bolsonaro government in Brazil, Mercosur’s biggest player, has cast a shadow over the future of the negotiations. “Meetings will resume under the Argentinian pro-tempore presidency of Mercosur in the first quarter …
The United States Trade Representative’ s trade negotiating objectives with the European Union indicate bilateral talks ahead between Washington and Brussels will be difficult, if not outright impossible, to conclude.
Venezuela struck back this week against US sanctions targeting the government of President Nicolás Maduro, filing a World Trade Organization complaint that accuses Washington of imposing “coercive trade-restrictive measures on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in the context of attempts to isolate Venezuela economically”. The dispute is the latest touching …
This week has mainly been about everyone getting back to work. The EU’s top priority is the transatlantic relationship. Trade chief Cecilia Malmström, visiting Washington in the early days of January, signals just that. But were there actually any new developments this week on the planned trade deals? Not really, as …
Despite their prime importance for Europe, Britain and the United States, there’s been little deep thinking about the future of transatlantic relations post-Brexit, both at the geostrategic level and at the more mundane economic level. But that is bound to change. In Britain, the focus after the 2016 referendum has mainly …
The European Commission is expected to table two negotiation mandate proposals for EU member states to greenlight in the coming weeks following a bilateral meeting between trade commissioner Cecilia Malmström and her counterpart Robert Lighthizer in Washington. The bilateral gathering was a follow-up to a summit between US President Donald …
