The Council’s negotiating directives to the European Commission aim to ease the way towards negotiations with the United States on elimination of tariffs on goods and on conformity assessment. But will they make life easier for transatlantic negotiators? Not really. Member states mainly made amendments to the mandate on elimination …
EU Climate, Environment, Labour, Human Rights
Week in Brussels: Trump trouble, Korea labour dispute, Turkey, palm oil fight
It’s been an eventful week, with the EU coming up with new initiatives vis-a-vis China, the European Parliament voting down the EU’s United States trade strategy, a beef deal with Washington, and negotiations going on with Indonesia and Mercosur to try and achieve a free trade agreement with them. In …
Palm oil growers mull WTO action on EU RED II
Palm oil growers have signalled they could take the European Union to the World Trade Organization’s dispute settlement body over its new biofuels regulation. The EU is preparing a definitive version of a ‘delegated act’ pertaining to its new Renewable Energy Directive that sets the environmental criteria required for biofuels …
Week in Brussels: Trade Valentine, US auto tariffs, low-risk ILUC
There’s been loads of trade love going on in the twittosphere this week…. Alas, trade is largely a loveless type of environment…. A former European Commission negotiator once said that trade negotiations are “as unsentimental as war”. He said this from his experience in office in the middle of the …
Cambodia: Is the EU serious about human rights or is it just fending off a new competitor?
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.
EU and Argentina bury hatchet over biodiesel duties
The EU and Argentina ended six years of disagreements over the South American country’s exports of biodiesel to the bloc with a compromise that averts years of litigation in courts.
Commission decision on US soy comes in handy for biodiesel producers
The ongoing trade ‘negotiations’ between the European Union and the United States are a good opportunity to try to resolve old gripes that the US holds against the EU’s import regime. One of the irritants the European Commission has tried to defuse under the shadow of a US threat to …
EU, ASEAN seek to settle palm oil and human rights quarrel, upgrade relationship
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 …
A week in Brussels: Korea labour, antiques trade, UK in transit convention
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 …
MEPs set EU-Japan EPA on track for December ratification
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 …
