News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
Japan’s prime minister Shinzo Abe reaffirmed his country’s commitment to multilateralism during a summit with European Union leaders ahead of a visit to Washington on Friday. He is also enlisting the EU in his government’s new digital initiatives. Japan is chairing the G20 this year – and is enrolling Europeans …
This week more than half the World Trade Organization’s membership formally kick-started negotiations towards a ‘plurilateral’ agreement on e-commerce.
Four dozen World Trade Organization members including the EU, China and the US will kick off negotiations on digital trade in March in a move designed to reinvigorate the beleaguered trade body. Meanwhile, a group of ‘like-minded’ members led by Canada warned that risks to the multilateral trading system – …
Globalisation and robotics will eventually improve the world, but they are creating competition for services jobs that is coming quickly and in ways that will seem very unfair, Richard Baldwin tells Borderlex. Workers and governments must prepare for the advance of ‘globotics’.
Remember when the European Union filed a dispute at the World Trade Organization last spring targeting Chinese intellectual property violations and forced technology transfers? In fact, the preliminary consultations foreseen by WTO rules before legal proceedings begin never actually took place. Instead, the EU went back to the drawing board …
The European Commission is stepping up pressure on the Trump administration to fully comply with the 2016 Privacy Shield, a framework agreement that allows certified US companies to transfer personal data from EU-based citizens to the United States. The move follows on an annual review process held this autumn (see …
There were unpleasant noises from US commerce secretary Wilbur Ross and US ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland on Wednesday night following Ross’ meeting with EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmström in Brussels. Some media outlets called it the end of the trade ‘truce’ with the United States reached last summer. It …
The EU and Japan signed their long-awaited economic partnership agreement in Tokyo today. The deal was flanked by announcements that both sides had finalised work to recognise each other’s data privacy regimes – also called ‘adequacy decisions’ – to complement the trade agreement. The moves were well received in policy …
The European Commission is expected to table its first text on data flows in a bilateral free trade negotiation on Friday. The commission will submit a text to the Indonesian government as part of ongoing trade talks. The move comes even though most EU member states are unhappy with the …
Theresa May’s government has started articulating proposals for the future relationship between the United Kingdom and the EU, which both sides are discussing this week in Brussels. Among them is the idea that data issues merit more than a ‘plain vanilla’ EU adequacy decision to guarantee safe and secure cross-border …
