News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Saturday, April 26, 2025
Everything that has to do with climate-and-trade policy cooperation among the great powers, especially the European Union and the United States remains vague, woolly and hard to fathom. Nonetheless, a further step towards a certain degree of clarity was taken at Elmau at the G7 leaders’ summit hosted by Germany. …
The legislative saga of the coming anti-coercion instrument has now begun. The regulation was tabled in December last year. The EU’s member states will likely take their time in defining their response to the European Commission’s regulatory proposal for what is termed the ‘ACI’ in the jargon. But the European …
The European Parliament is on a path to making the EU’s planned anti-coercion instrument even tougher than envisaged by the European Commission – and putting it most likely at loggerheads with the Council.
The details of the trade restrictions announced last Friday on Russia as part of a fourth round of sanctions adopted by Brussels in response to Moscow’s military attack on Ukraine were finally released on Tuesday evening. These involve a ban on steel imports and export restrictions on luxury items. They …
The anti-coercion instrument that the European Commission is proposing for adoption this year coinciding with a crisis with China over its economic bullying of Lithuania is not only a risky institutional power transfer – it might end up being a damp squib.
Given a range of other immediately dangerous security crises looming around the EU, not least with next-door Russia over Ukraine, EU member states have been slow in coming together to discuss in depth the lingering crisis over China’s unofficial embargo on exports from Lithuania. But it’s now happened. What the …
A festering crisis over trade with Lithuania is helping proponents of the EU’s recently announced anti-coercion instrument make their case in Brussels.
The European Commission tabled a long-awaited ‘anti-coercion’ instrument for the Council and European Parliament to assess and adopt. The unprecedented EU move is welcomed in foreign policy expert circles yet raises a range of new questions for the EU’s institutional setup and the global trading system.
Direct investments into the EU from China are on the retreat and the trend could persist, finds the European Commission in its first official report on foreign direct investment and member state screening activities. The report is part of an annual exercise foreseen under a new EU-level screening regulation. The …
The European Union is preparing two legislative measures to respond to what is perceived as a growing trend by other big powers to exert economic coercion on its firms and governments. The Commission is lining its ducks in a row over this matter, so as to ensure that the separate …
