News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Friday, June 2, 2023
The recent launch of United Kingdom-Switzerland negotiations to upgrade a bilateral agreement inherited from the former’s time as EU member and elections in 2024 are instilling a sense of urgency in Brussels about the need to get stalled bilateral negotiations with its Helvetic neighbour back on track.
There could be new developments in the EU-Switzerland bilateral negotiations. And Austria throws spanners into the wheels of Mercosur. Below, an overview of what’s happened in the background on trade policy in the EU this week. That comes on top of the launch of FTA talks with Thailand and new …
The four countries of the European Free Trade Area are entering the new Singapore-led digital trade agreement bandwagon.
We shall see if more concrete trade news emerge of today’s trade ministers’ meeting in Brussels. In any case, here some other notable news for EU trade aficionados that emerged this week.
The desire of an invaded Ukraine to join the EU has reawakened debate on an enlargement process that was largely stuck. The varied global responses to Russia’s aggression demand a similar reconsideration of the EU’s trade narrative.
The EU and Switzerland today decided to work on a roadmap to mend their faltering relationship, with Brussels emphasising that it needs an unambiguous signal from Bern that it is ready to engage.
The European Union’s quest to upgrade its bilateral relationship with Switzerland to an all-encompassing deal with a common dispute settlement framework has failed.
Simplifying rules of origin for the hub-and-spoke preferential trade arrangements in the European Union’s neighbourhood is anything but a simple exercise. The renegotiation of the Regional Convention on pan-Euro-Mediterranean preferential rules of origin – the PEM convention – has been going on for a decade. It aims at introducing a …
It’s been a horrible week for trade aficionados. The US said no to proposed WTO Appellate Body reforms, US tariffs on EU exports are kicking in, and one had to follow the UK-EU Withdrawal Agreement negotiations. The final Brexit deal implies customs contortions in Northern Ireland which many policy wonks …
European Union relations with Switzerland are not exactly the easiest at the moment. Following significant political pressure on Bern, the two sides concluded a new agreement last December setting up an overarching framework to their complex maze of bilateral agreements that cover areas ranging from trade to judicial cooperation. But …
