News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Saturday, April 26, 2025
The trade week in the EU was significant, with new orientiations for policy spelt out as part of the bloc’s post-corona recovery plan. WTO: But the week in not entirely over as members of the WTO General Council meet today and next Tuesday online to confer about the next steps …
It should have been a formality. The EU Vietnam free trade agreement was due to be adopted at a meeting of trade ministers that was cancelled last week. This move followed on a decision by the Council not to hold ‘non essential’ Council meetings in Brussels in order to contain …
It’s been a pretty packed week. Here other low-key but important developments in EU trade policy. EU Mexico FTA stirrings The EU and Mexico had concluded negotiations towards the modernisation of a twenty year old free trade agreement in April 2018. But that agreement ‘in principle’ left the parties with …
The European Commission has circulated initial proposals to an ‘expert group’ on the extent of suspensions of duty-free-quota-free export rights it currently grants to Cambodia. Apparel, footwear, travel goods and sugar from the fast-growing South East Asian country are among the products that will face the reintroduction of duties and …
E-commerce negotiators gear up for intense first half of 2020 After a stock-taking meeting in Geneva early this week, negotiators involved in the plurilateral negotiations on e-commerce decided there would be a ministerial meeting on the talks in January 2020 at the annual global elite meeting in Davos. The Davos …
The arrest of a Saigon-based trade agreement critic and independent journalist complicates the European Parliament’s final preparations to ratify a landmark trade agrement and an accompanying investment protection accord with Vietnam.
The EU is threatening to suspend imports from Cambodia due to human and labour right violations. But the products under discussion for suspension are precisely those where the EU has a track record of entrenched protectionism. This looks like a clear case of double standards, opines Iana Dreyer.
It’s mainly been a WTO-intensive week for the EU with a revised intellectual property dispute filed against China, and the US having yet another gripe about the Appellate Body. London clinched a short bye-bye deal with Norway, Iceland and Liecthenstein, while the country is realising little is actually in place in …
Members of the European Parliament’s international trade committee gave the green light today to the EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement. The landmark deal is expected to cover a third of global output and is among the most commercially ambitious trade accords in the world. It substantially liberalises trade in goods and …
Insiders don’t believe the EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement signed this summer faces a serious risk of being voted down in the European Parliament at the end of the year. But as the assembly enters its last months of functioning, a vocal group of left-of-centre MEPs is making a last big …
