Unrivalled coverage of European trade policy
Friday, September 21, 2018
It’s been a big-ticket week in trade, kicked off by a meeting between the USTR and the EU’s trade commissioner on a possible ‘deal’, and two big reports adopted by the European Parliament on relations with the United States and with China. There was also some action on the Brexit …
The African Continental Free Trade Area promises to be a boon for African nations and their trade partners, but the road to the successful implementation of the AfCFTA remains long, argue Kholofelo Kugler and Hanna Deringer. Schedules of commitments on tariff reductions and services remain unfinished, they say, and accommodating …
On Monday, seven World Trade Organization members raised concerns about the EU’s new Renewable Energy Directive during a goods committee meeting. In January, the European Parliament voted to ban palm oil from the bloc’s targets for consumption of renewable energy for transport by 2021, in a shift away from earlier …
Leaders of the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific countries group gathered in Brussels on Friday (20 October 2017) in a ministerial meeting with the European Union attended by the World Trade Organization’s chief, Roberto Azevêdo, and Argentina’s representative for the WTO’s upcoming 11th ministerial conference, Susana Malcorra. The gathering comes …
From Brexit to trade defence, an overview of the trade policy churn in the EU this week. Brexit transition The beginning of week in Brussels will be dominated by the whole Brexit affair. European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker will meet British Prime Minister Theresa May, her number …
ACP countries met in Brussels this week to discuss ways to better coordinate their coming relationships with the European Union. Signs are the disparate group of 79 countries – all former colonies of EU member states – has found some common ground as a successor agreement to the 2020 Cotonou …
Economic Partnership Agreements with ACP countries have less elaborate mechanisms to deal with violations of human rights and the rule of law than the Cotonou Agreement. So what happens when Cotonou expires in 2020? A new report sheds some light on this complex matter. The EU and the group …
It has been a tough battle to get the European Parliament ready to ratify the EU Ghana interim Economic Partnership Agreement. In one of his regular colums with Borderlex, Christopher Fjellner explains why it is important for the European Parliament to go ahead and ratify a deal that helps Ghanian …
The EU is looking after its alcoholic beverages industry in the WTO, the latest WTO meeting on technical barriers to trade reveals. The Commission is putting pressure on Colombia with a pending case on its domestic laws on alcoholic beverage marketing arrangements and taxes. Is it now setting its sights on Mexico and …
The European Parliament agreed to the EU’s Economic Partnership Agreement with the Southern African Development Community. The region-to-region trade deal was adopted in June 2016, after more than a decade of negotiations. The EPA introduces reciprocal preferential market access between the EU on the one hand, and Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, and South …
