News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Saturday, April 26, 2025
A series of papers published by the think tank Europe Jacques Delors puts forward proposals that aim to strengthen environmental protection within an open international trading system. Borderlex’s Iana Dreyer exchanged views with one of the papers’ co-authors Geneviève Pons.
The European Union brought its first dispute under a bilateral free trade agreement against Korea. The EU alleges that Korea’s failure to ratify several International Labour Organisation core conventions, in particular Convention 87 on freedom of association of workers, is a breach of its terms under their 2010 trade pact. …
The European Union is considering launching unilaterally investigations into breaches of environment and labour or ‘sustainable development ‘ commitments – of its trading partners.
The three European Union institutions finalised negotiations to expand the scope of its dual-use export control regime to cybersurveillance technology with the aim of protecting human rights.
The European Commission circulated a paper to European Union member states on how it wants to approach ‘trade and sustainability’ in the World Trade Organization ahead of a member state meeting on the topic held on Monday. The key message: let’s go slow on trade and environment in the world …
European institutions hope they can soon finalise long drawn-out negotiations to expand the scope of the European Union’s 2009 dual-use item export control regulation to cover cyber-surveillance and human rights abuses. The latest version of the regulation foresees room to introduce restrictions on exports in emerging technologies.
Protecting the steel industry, what to do with the EU Mercosur trade pact and finding common ground in the WTO director-general selection process were among the main topics discussed by trade ministers in Berlin today at an informal meeting hosted by the German presidency of the Council.
Trade policy will now be used as leverage for EU’s Green Deal raw materials strategy. Accessing raw materials that are critical to its industry has been a long-standing goal of the European Union’s trade policy. But Brussels it is now moving up another gear in its quest for supply chain …
The European Parliament can’t wait to shape European Union-wide legislation on supply chain resilience and sustainability post COVID-19. Public opinion pressure on politicians has led France to introduce legislation obliging its multinational companies to observe due diligence in the area of human rights. About ten countries in the EU, including …
In many ways this has been a week full of trade defence news: the first European Court of Auditors report on EU trade defence policy was released this week, and Turkey decided to go to court in Geneva over the EU’s steel safeguard. There is also the ever-simmering tariff guerilla …
