News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Friday, April 25, 2025
The European Commission has expressed concern over the United States’ Department of Commerce decision to restrict exports of advanced artificial intelligence technology and related semiconductors. A concrete response from Brussels will need to wait, if it materialises at all.
Better late than never, some might think. The European Commission released long-promised guidelines to stakeholders and governments on how to apply provisions on cyber-surveillance products introduced into its dual use export controls Regulation, three years after the latter’s coming into force.
The European Commission is asking member states to “conduct collective risk assessments” in the areas of advanced semiconductor technologies, artificial intelligence, quantum and biotechnologies by the end of 2023. The recommendation, which, as its name indicates is not a piece of hard law, is the first attempt at rolling out …
Like so many other European Commission ‘communications’, the economic security strategy is mainly a means to spell out and join up already existing economic policies the EU has adopted to respond to growing global geopolitical turbulence. So what’s new about the new document unveiled today?
After a May holiday hiatus, think tanks are coming back on stream with new reports. Here a selection of two notable reports on US export controls and the EU’s green trade agenda.
Foreign policy think tanks, usually absent from the trade policy conversations, are now busy working with trade. Weaponisation of trade, export controls, and European tech sovereignty are the themes addressed by two Berlin-based think tanks in recent days: the European Council on Foreign Relations and the German Council on Foreign …
The world where export controls in the European Union were a highly technical affair focused on keeping dangerous items out of the hands of a few so-called ‘rogue’ states in a United States-led post Cold War order is now dead. In comes a world harking back to Cold War export …
Below, a few key developments in EU trade this week as we await the outcome of a jumbo-trilogue on the EU’s climate package that will decide on the final shape of the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism. By Rob Francis and Iana Dreyer.
The usually low-key, technocratic Export Control Forum, a big bash organised by the European Commission with allies and business and civil society stakeholders each year in Brussels was unusually well attended this time round. It reveals the new salience of the EU’s export control regime in times of war on …
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.
