News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Friday, April 25, 2025
The European Commission has announced the provisional levels of countervailing duties it will be levying on electric vehicles produced in China and signalled that it is ready to negotiate a “mutually agreed solution” with Beijing. The case is a snapshot in the subsidy and industrial battle the EU is waging …
The European Commission’s first merger-related foreign subsidies investigation targets a Middle Eastern operator buying shares into a Czech-owned investment firm specialised in funding European telecommunication companies.
Bern is bent on avoiding that Switzerland’s steel exporters continue to be negatively affected by the European Union’s steel safeguard introduced in 2018 ahead of the measure’s expected extension.
In its first formal in-depth investigation into a non-European Union bidder on a public tender under a new foreign subsidies regulation, the European Commission has chosen to focus on what it conceives as a disproportionate amount of government funds received by the companies back home compared to the size of …
The European Commission is suddenly rolling out on a grand scale a new regulation seeking to clamp down on distortions created in the European Union single market by foreign companies investing in Europe. The Foreign Subsidies Regulation started operating in October 2023. Six months on, the action the regulation’s unofficial …
The European Commission initiated a new anti-subsidy investigation into Chinese exports to the European Union of ‘mobile access equipment’ – in other words, articulated boom lifts, telescopic boom lifts, scissor lifts, vertical masts and sections of and related parts and components.
The high-profile anti-subsidy investigation against imports of electric vehicles from China launched by the EU last autumn is proceeding at pace. On Tuesday the European Commission said it would have car imports subject to registration, with a view to potentially imposing duties retroactively on the registered cars. Preliminary duties could …
The European Commission is preparing to extend a steel import safeguard it introduced in 2018 to allay fears that metal destined to the United States would be diverted to Europe in the aftermath of president Trump’s Section 232 steel tariffs. The safeguard, initially introduced for a duration of three years …
As the current European Commission finishes its term in the coming months, a range of pending decisions in this will tell us what the new face of EU trade defence policy really is.
The European Commission launched its tenth initial trade defence investigation for 2023, of which eight target China and one is an anti-subsidy investigation. This doubles the number of new cases compared to 2022. And it will allow the commission to surgically target biodiesel imports from China.
