News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Monday, June 16, 2025
The Commission unveiled long-awaited plans to weed out foreign companies investing in Europe that benefit from subsidies from their home government which could distort competition in the European Union’s single market. The fundamental aim is to have foreign operators broadly comply with the EU’s stringent state aid regime. The move …
The European Union is revising for the second time a steel safeguard it applies to 26 product categories since February 2019. Differentiated approach to quota volumes In an approach that raises interesting World Trade Organization compatibility questions, the EU is not announcing an expansion. In fact the EU is reducing …
The trade week in the EU was significant, with new orientiations for policy spelt out as part of the bloc’s post-corona recovery plan. WTO: But the week in not entirely over as members of the WTO General Council meet today and next Tuesday online to confer about the next steps …
It’s been quite a week, with the World Trade Organization’s chief resigning on Thursday, adding another twist to the ongoing drama in the world trading system. But other news have been drowned in the process. A selection below. Hogan wants to move fast to replace WTO’s Azevêdo The European Union’s …
If this were not the COVID-19 lockdown period, the EU’s new trade defence duties on glass fibre fabrics – decided upon last week and published on Monday in the Official Journal – would have received much more media attention.
The European Union is revising for a second time its steel import safeguard which it formally introduced in February 2019. Turkey is now potentially complicating the process. Imports of steel from across the world were restricted following the United States’ decision to introduce high tariffs on steel imports on national …
The European Commission is drowning media with new policy announcements. Those announcements are in turn drowned by the whole corona virus situation. Which is leading to cancelled meetings, and not least to disgraceful export restrictions of medical products within the EU. But back to traditional trade policy. We had more …
The European Commission plans to roll out anti-dumping and anti-subsidy tools to tackle a whole range of new global challenges, not least in the digital sphere. Arnoud Willems discusses trends, challenges and accountability issues in EU trade defence policy with Borderlex’s Iana Dreyer.
Safeguards, anti-subsidy investigations, case re-openings, China, Egyptian glass fibre. What has really driven European Union trade defence policy in 2019?
The Finnish presidency of the European Council has tried to bring forward discussions among member states on how to bring forward a piece of legislation on public procurement aimed at creating ‘leverage’ vis-à-vis third countries with procurement markets that exclude European firms. The talks have started again, but the Council …
