News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Sunday, May 4, 2025
The EU and the South American trade bloc Mercosur have vowed to conclude their ongoing free trade negotiations by the end of the year 2017. Though to many the goal seems highly ambitious, both sides are trying to get there at a time when Argentina tries to take the lead …
Members of the OECD which gathered in Paris on 7 and 8 June 2017 failed to bring the US on board a joint statement that sheds a positive light on trade and the Paris Agreement on climate change. The United States Trade Representative decided to issue a separate statement. “The …
What’s happening on TTIP? Noise, that’s what’s happening. No action. There’s a lot of hoo-haa about Germany’s Angela Merkel’s recent comments in which she states she remains open to the idea of relaunching the transatlantic TTIP negotiations that were shelved around the time Donald Trump was elected president of …
EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmström is making a point of having friendly meetings in Paris at the OECD and WTO meeting being held in Paris this week. She just got over a first meeting with her brand new United States counterpart USTR Robert Lighthizer. At the time of writing …
A new paper by the Polish international affairs think tank PISM criticises the EU’s inconsistent way of dealing with the consequences of a recent Court of Justice ruling on a 2012 agriculture trade agreement with Morocco that it applied to products from Western Sahara. The EU should come clean on this issue …
The article was updated on 05/06/2017 8.25 CET. Council president Donald Tusk hailed the 19th EU China summit in Brussels this week as “the most promising summit” with China he ever attended. EU leaders held the press waiting for more than three hours before announcing little concrete steps …
After having brought the Transpacific Partnership to bed in early 2016 as lead negotiator for Tokyo, Ambassador Koji Tsuruoka was sent to London to be Japan’s top representative in Britain. At a recent conference of trade lawyers at the prestigious university King’s College, the Japanese envoy spoke his mind on …
Council members met on Wednesday (31 May 2017) to discuss various trade files. Among the files was the long-awaited mandate to the Commission to launch negotiations to modernise the EU’s more than twenty year old customs union with Turkey. Though there is a general interest in pursuing the modernisation process, the file is …
“Long nurtured relationships as between the United States and Germany never only rely on individual persons or sharp statements”, warned Mark Wansleben, head of the German business organization DIHK after the G7 meeting in Taormina, Italy on 26 & 27 May 2017. The statements made to Handelsblatt, the leading German …
The Dutch Senate put its final seal of approval on the EU Ukraine Association Agreement on Tuesday (30 May 2017). The path is now clear for the political parts of the agreement, which encompasses a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement, to come into force in the summer 2017. The …
