News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
This has been overall quiet and very cold week on the Brussels trade beat. Trade negotiators appear to have taken a bit of a breather after their Christmas break was upended due to historic trade and investment agreements with the United Kingdom and China being concluded at the very last …
This week’s Week in Brussels column focuses on EU trade defence.
The European Court of Auditors released its first report on the European Union’s trade defence policies in July. While overall ECA gave the Commission a clean slate on how trade defence cases are handled, it pointed to a variety of shortcomings in the decision-making process. Among those shortcomings, issues with …
On Friday a World Trade Organization dispute settlement panel established at the behest of Russia ruled that the European Union’s ‘cost adjustment methodology’ relating to how it accounts for raw material input costs on exports of products it deems ‘dumped’ was not compliant with the global trade rule-book. The ruling …
In many ways this has been a week full of trade defence news: the first European Court of Auditors report on EU trade defence policy was released this week, and Turkey decided to go to court in Geneva over the EU’s steel safeguard. There is also the ever-simmering tariff guerilla …
The first ever ECA report on trade defence policy in the EU gives the Commission a clean slate in the way it handles its cases. But one most read the fine print and in between the lines : and then one cannot but be confronted with some disturbing questions. By …
Turkey has decided to litigate. Earlier this year, Ankara requested consultations with the European Union as Brussels revised for the second time a contentious safeguard on steel imports introduced initially in 2018. The measures were taken in response to the United States’ decision back then to restrict imports of steel …
“We will continue to use our trade defence instruments in a robust fashion to ensure that our economic recovery takes place in a level playing field,” said Sabine Weyand in a recent meeting with MEPs last week. Discussing the revised EU steel safeguard, which is coming into force tomorrow, Weyand …
With new fire added to the brewing tensions in EU-US trade relations as new tariffs on the EU were announced in Washington, the EU mulling new retaliatory measures against US trade ‘coercion”, and Brussels infighting over the issue of who – if at all – it will put forward as …
It’s been quite a week in terms of trade news, with the launch of an EU healthcare initiative with the WTO’s Ottawa Group meeting and new plans to control foreign subsidies of companies operating in Europe. Below some other notable news. UK talks: European Parliament talks tough on LPF and …
