News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
Photo credit: WTO. EU Commissioner Phil Hogan, who met WTO DG Roberto Azevedo, a few days before taking office as trade commissioner in November oast year, will be in charge of devising a new EU strategy to revive the WTO and put the Appellate Body mechanism back to work. 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 …
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.
Trade policy will be an instrument of choice for the new European Commission’s ambitious foreign and climate policy. But the von der Leyen programme also reveals many blind spots – not least on how to succeed in overhauling the World Treade Organization and in the EU’s immediate neighbourhood, opines Iana …
All good things happen on a Friday afternoon when everyone wants to head off into the week-end: the EU just released its offer to the United States towards the conformity assessment agreement they are currently negotiating. If you were wondering what to read over the week-end, here it is! High …
The Pacific Islands Economic Partnership Agreement is now in the hands of French MEP André Rougé, a member of France’s far right Rassemblement National and the European Parliament’s Identity and Democracy group that includes far right parties from eight other European countries. A file that would have sailed quietly through …
The questions Phil Hogan was least comfortable with were those around digital trade and European plans to establish a multilateral investment court. The more than two hour hearing with MEPs from the international trade committe was uneventful and dry – addressing at times the minutiae of ‘rules of origin’ in …
Phil Hogan might come to regret having been the one to have made the the EU-Mercosur trade agreement possible earlier this summer by brokering difficult last-minute compromises. The outgoing agriculture commissioner will be among the first nominees for the new European Commission to be heard by MEPs as he bids …
The ritual early September rentrée week in Brussels was all about who will get which jobs in the incoming European Commission. There is a sense that the European Union is at a historically critical juncture. Preoccupations centre on transatlantic relations, China, US-China, Brexit and populism. This is set to have …
The incoming European Commission plans to put the fight against climate change front and centre in its next five-year tenure. But signs are the EU’s executive arm will be squeezed in between capitals – many of which might want to go slow on controversial files such as a carbon border …
