Unrivalled coverage of European trade policy
Wednesday, June 26, 2019
Compared to the ongoing free trade agreement negotiation process with New Zealand, the European Union’s trade talks with Australia are advancing slowly. It’s clear Brussels and Canberra are taking the time they need to bridge wide gaps in the way they conceive some international trade and investment issues. One of …
Will the EU make its trade policy greener in the coming years? If anything, the politics of green trade will become messier, reckons Iana Dreyer.
Having obtained the green light from the European Court of Justice for the CETA investment court, the European Commission has wasted no time in proceeding to reform the Energy Charter Treaty. The reform push also covers oil and gas pipeline transit – which will grate with Russia.
On Thursday (2 May) Germany’s Peter Altmaier, France’s Bruno Le Maire and European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic formally launched the European Battery Alliance in Paris. The plan has been in the works in Brussels for almost two years and is the new face of European industrial policy. The aim …
It’s a case of three interests coming together in the United States: geopolitics, mercantile endeavours and Trumpian electioneering. This time around, the EU had it relatively easy in prompting a significant shift in US domestic regulation. When the European Union and the United States were negotiating the Transatlantic Trade and …
The Council’s negotiating directives to the European Commission aim to ease the way towards negotiations with the United States on elimination of tariffs on goods and on conformity assessment. But will they make life easier for transatlantic negotiators? Not really. Member states mainly made amendments to the mandate on elimination …
Europe’s efforts towards sustainable trade is a paradox. While it successfully works with sticks and carrots for sustainable fisheries, the EU imposes rules on biofuels that cannot be complied with, writes Hosuk Lee-Makiyama.
It’s been an eventful week, with the EU coming up with new initiatives vis-a-vis China, the European Parliament voting down the EU’s United States trade strategy, a beef deal with Washington, and negotiations going on with Indonesia and Mercosur to try and achieve a free trade agreement with them. In …
Palm oil growers have signalled they could take the European Union to the World Trade Organization’s dispute settlement body over its new biofuels regulation. The EU is preparing a definitive version of a ‘delegated act’ pertaining to its new Renewable Energy Directive that sets the environmental criteria required for biofuels …
There’s been loads of trade love going on in the twittosphere this week…. Alas, trade is largely a loveless type of environment…. A former European Commission negotiator once said that trade negotiations are “as unsentimental as war”. He said this from his experience in office in the middle of the …
