News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Wednesday, April 30, 2025
There has been a flurry of activity in the World Trade Organization this week in attempts to make progress on some form of deal for the coming ministerial meeting in Buenos Aires. The EU is proving particularly proactive in this regard, though it faces significant opposition from developing countries in …
The EU and China are overtly wrangling over how to handle trade defence cases under World Trade Organization rules. The WTO released working documents today that have been circulating among members of the body’s working group on rules that showcase how intense the disagreements currently run in the organisation over subsidy …
There’s been a frenzy of EU trade related activity this week. It looks like it’s a big rush before the summer lull. Here a curation of what we found interesting. EU and WTO round-up The EU is pressing its fellow WTO members on fisheries subsidies ahead of the Buenos Aires …
Diplomats at the G20 summit in Hamburg hosted by Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel managed to cobble together a compromise text promising not to resort to trade protectionism. Whether their joint statement will eliminate the threat of trade wars or, possibly, the tearing apart of the World Trade Organization, remains to be …
The Council meeting on agriculture and fisheries held in Brussels on Monday (12 June 2017) lay bare a deep divide over ongoing trade policy between a group of countries made up of Southern European countries, Ireland, and Central and Eastern European countries, and the rest of the EU. Eleven countries called on the EU to take a cautious …
The EU and the South American trade bloc Mercosur have vowed to conclude their ongoing free trade negotiations by the end of the year 2017. Though to many the goal seems highly ambitious, both sides are trying to get there at a time when Argentina tries to take the lead …
Updated at 19:30 CET. A WTO compliance ruling released on 9 June 2017 has induced both Brussels and Washington to claim victory over a dispute involving subsidies to US aerospace company Boeing. Some experts reached by Borderlex see this latest development as being only one episode in an already twelve-year-old “proxy war” …
Members of the OECD which gathered in Paris on 7 and 8 June 2017 failed to bring the US on board a joint statement that sheds a positive light on trade and the Paris Agreement on climate change. The United States Trade Representative decided to issue a separate statement. “The …
G20 members agreed to a common agenda on digital trade at a meeting in Düsseldorf on Friday (7 April 2017). European business wants more ambition from the G20 ahead of the next WTO ministerial meeting. The main achievements of the German-hosted ministerial meeting that gathered countries as wide apart in development …
If you believed the fate of the EU’s biodiesel antidumping duties was sealed after the WTO appellate body’s ruling on a case brought by Argentina and a European Court of Justice ruling annulling these measures in the autumn 2016, stand corrected. The saga goes on. This week, Indonesia filed a complaint in …
