News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Friday, April 25, 2025
“It is important not to be purely obsessed with China as being the only factor that plays a role in World Trade Organization reform,” said Ignacio García-Bercero at a recent event in London. The European Commission’s former man in charge of handling EU-US trade relations is tabling some new ideas …
Whether it is a mere coincidence or whether there is a correlation between the two new items that came out this morning is somewhat early to ascertain, but both signal that matters are in great flux at the World Trade Organization. Bloomberg reported in the early hours of today that …
Which way will the already battered trading system go? The COVID-19 pandemic has seen trade restrictions on medical products spread like wildfire as governments seek to maximise availability of scarce goods to their peoples and their medical teams in a beggar-thy-neighbour fashion. As of early May, a group of researchers …
The official countdown has now started for a new alternative appeals mechanism to start functioning among a subset of World Trade Organization members who decided they’d stand up for their right to enjoy two-level adjudication of disputes. The MPIA, the acronym for the new ‘arrangement’, was announced one month ago …
Less than four months after the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization ceased to function sixteen members of the Geneva-based organisation announced they had agreed to an alternative mechanism to settle legal disputes at appellate level.
We announced it last Thursday and things went according to plan: Coreper said yes last night. The EU’s revised ‘enforcement regulation’ is thus going ahead and only needs to clear a final hurdle at ministerial and European Parliament level, where one can expect smooth sailing. The EU is amending rarely-used …
Council members agreed to temporarily bury the hatchet on a regulatory proposal tabled by the European Commission that aims to empower it to take ‘retaliatory’ trade measures should a World Trade Organization counterpart block litigation proceedings. The EU is bent on making sure it can continue to use a two-tier …
This week was ‘virtual summit’ week, with a focus on the global coronavirus pandemic and its dramatic economic fallout. G20 leaders gathered virtually on Thursday and European Union heads of government had very long meeting online last night that almost failed. But capitals still managed a joint statement. There were …
World Trade Organization members took a series of small decisions at a still-ongoing General Council meeting in Geneva this week. Ambassadors also heard new proposals for change in the WTO by or under the leadership of the United States. Wide gaps among WTO countries remain on fundamental issues ahead of …
If you expected a rapid-reaction ‘big bazooka’ coming out of the European Commission to respond to the current Appellate Body impasse and allow the EU to ‘defend its interests’ as soon as this year – then you forgot that you were in the EU. When the capitals are divided – …
