News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Thursday, December 8, 2022
The amount of energy going into the EU US Trade and Technology Council in the Brussels bubble is astounding. It’s at times as if nothing else counted: everyone is obsessed with it. Will the TTC have delivered more on what happened outside its formal framework than within?
The main arguments against the recently renegotiated Energy Charter Treaty don’t stand up to scrutiny. Pulling out of the treaty as some countries have announced will not foster much-needed investments in renewable energies. Only a predictable investment framework will. By Urban Rusnák.
Expansion has been baked into the DNA of the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership. But the ongoing United Kingdom accession has revealed how challenging the process is in practice for the members as other countries have joined the queue.
Poland, Spain and The Netherlands announced their intention to withdraw from the Energy Charter Treaty. The real reason for these announcements is a wish to escape recent investor-state arbitration awards. Withdrawing from the treaty would still mean that member states are liable to investor-state dispute cases for twenty years. Agreeing …
Countries in the Asia-Pacific are trailblazing innovative and flexible digital trade rules at a time when negotiations in the World Trade Organization advance at snail’s pace – at the risk of creating a confusing new set of overlapping rules.
Perhaps in the triumph of hope over experience, the EU and Indonesia have recently announced their intention to accelerate progress on their stalled free trade agreement. But political factors and deep-rooted disagreements over the EU’s sustainability and deforestation policies mean that finalising a deal will remain a tall order.
Participants in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework are holding their first ministerial meeting this week in the United States. Deborah Elms explains what IPEF is all about – and what it isn’t.
Is this the European Union’s approach to ‘digital partnerships’ in the Indo-Pacific just fluff? At the very least one can say it is much too timid.
The EU’s climate and human rights ambitions have long been thwarted by its free trade policies. The European Commission is now showing signs of rectifying this, but it has some way to go – write eight leading NGOs.
The current French presidential contest is tight and tense. The outcome of the run-off vote in ten days that will oppose incumbent Emmanuel Macron and the national-populist Marine Le Pen will determine whether the European Union as we know it has a future. Speaking of trade policy in this context …
