News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
It’s been an intense week again for EU trade. While trade agreements with far away countries like those in the Mercosur bloc have taken a hit, the trade focus is now clearly shifting closer to home, namely to Brexit. Brexit: Habemus Phase II It was widely expected. Member …
It’s been an eventful week in Brussels. EU-Japan FTA – on track The EU and Japan finalised their free trade agreement negotiations this morning. The full text of the deal will be available in a few days. These FTA negotiations were politically concluded this summer. Negotiators worked …
Despite what World Trade Organization head Roberto Azevêdo calls “substantial risks that threaten the world economy”, WTO members including the EU introduced fewer trade-restricting measures in the 12 months through mid-October. Governments imposed measures such as new or higher tariffs, customs procedures, quotas and local content requirements an average of …
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson visited Brussels yesterday, and trade was a formal talking point on the agenda for his meetings with Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy chief. But nothing came out on that meeting on this topic. While trans-Atlantic cooperation on trade is largely off the …
The 2013 plans to overhaul the EU’s trade defence legislation are coming to fruition. The EU’s new legislation aims to modernise the EU’s trade defence instruments. Revived in 2016, the package of new measures comprises greater transparency, efforts at greater predictability of measures for traders and EU importers, and …
The EU is set to introduce ‘future’ costs of compliance with environmental and labour treaties in its calculation of injury margins in trade-defence cases. The bloc is now making systematic its consideration of a trading partner’s compliance with International Labour Organization and ‘multilateral environmental’ conventions, including the 2015 Paris Agreement …
This week could seal the fate of quite a few EU trade policy files: the overhaul of the EU’s dumping regulation, the EU Mercosur trade deal and the Brexit talks. TDI reform agreement? Expectations are high that the EU will announce a deal tomorrow on the overhaul of …
This week’s trade highlights of the week have been: Latin America, the EU-Vietnam free trade agreement, trade defence and the EU’s multilateral investment court plans. Deal or no deal in Mercosur, that is the question The EU has been negotiating hard with both Mercosur and Mexico this week …
Don’t expect the World Trade Organization to rule any time soon on China’s challenge of the EU’s free-market rules. Well over four months have passed since the three panellists who will adjudicate the case were appointed, but the panel is only holding its first meeting next week. That meeting is …
The European Parliament endorsed by an overwhelming majority a new piece of trade defence legislation that amends EU methods to determine the normal value of a product and injury to domestic industry from dumping. The legislation comes as the EU prepares to drop countries like China and Vietnam from …
