News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
Good afternoon, an overview of interesting trade policy developments in Brussels this week. 35% of EU exports to be covered by trade agreements in 2024 and other strategic objectives The European Commission’s trade directorate released its 2020 ‘Strategic Plan’ this week. The document spells out how the body will approach …
The European Union will very soon have a revamped ‘enforcement regulation’, a hitherto hardly known legal instrument that allows the bloc to retaliate against countries contravening international trade norms and not cooperating in legal disputes and thus protect itself against ‘appeals into the void’ at the World Trade Organization. The …
A vote on a low-key European Parliament report this week turned into a major battle over the direction of trade policy in a post COVID-19 world. It worked as a catalyst, revealing growing rifts reaching right into the political centre-ground on European trade politics in a turbulent time. Green goals …
If you think that, because Valdis Dombrovski’s nomination to become the next trade commissioner of the EU was relatively smooth sailing in the European Parliament, MEPs will make life easy for him, you are mistaken. A group of MEPs had amendments successfully adopted in a plenary vote on Tuesday (6 …
Spokespeople for the largest political groups in the European Parliament’s international trade committee are signalling endorsement for the ‘lobster for lighters’ deal inked by former European Union trade commissioner Phil Hogan and United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.
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 …
In a conversation with Borderlex’s Iana Dreyer, MEP Marie-Pierre Vedrenne explains her thinking behind her widely-endorsed report that could turn the EU’s trade retaliatory ‘bazooka’ into something even bigger.
Today the international trade committee met for a somewhat longer session than the one held at the end of April at the height of Europe’s lockdown. Here some highlights of what’s been said. Pharma intellectual property The pharmaceutical intellectual property space is one to watch very closely post COVID-19. It …
The chair of the European Parliament’s international trade committee is asking the European Union to look into some intellectual property rules in its trade policies and agreements with the view of making any future COVID-19 vaccine accessible to the largest numbers in the shortest possible period of time. In a …
On Wednesday the European Parliament held a snap debate on the EU-Mercosur trade agreement and whether it was compatible with the Green Deal announced by Commission von der Leyen. The Mercosur text’s examination and ratification process have not yet started. Said text is not yet even entirely consolidated. Yet the …
