News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Wednesday, April 21, 2021
The new director-general of the World Trade Organization Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala convened a brainstorming meeting on Wednesday (14 April 2021) aiming to find solutions to ramp up global production of vaccines and health products to help combat the still-raging global COVID-19 pandemic.
The WTO currently comes across as being in a transition. This is predictable at a time of leadership change and renewal at its secretariat. The new director-geneal is interviewing candidates for the post of deputy DG, is pushing the fish-subsidies agenda and potentially steering the WTO institution into a new …
Borderlex is pleased to partner with the Geneva-based Trade Policy Exchange for a fascinating conversation: how to make trade rules and the fight against climate change better compatible at the World Trade Organization. The event will feature Jim Bacchus from the Centre for Global Economic and Environmental Opportunity at the …
Updated on 1 April 2021. G7 pledges work on WTO overhaul The United Kingdom hosted its first trade ministers meeting as post-Brexit G7 host online today. To the host, WTO reform was a major item it wanted to see addressed at the meeting. “Our like-minded democracies need to win the …
The United Kingdom has stepped into the complex world of WTO politics with the announcement that it is set to join the Ottawa Group – a loose coalition of nations seeking reform of the Organization – after months of working behind the scenes making its post-Brexit mark in Geneva. London’s …
There is clearly more activity at the World Trade Organization than last year – probably even than the year before last. With a new director-general now in office, a date for the next ministerial meeting all set and hope for a more cooperative US administration, this is the time when …
The countdown to a negotiated transatlantic Airbus-Boeing subsidy solution has begun today. Last Friday US President Joe Biden and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a mutual four-month temporary suspension of tariffs imposed in 2020 following a 16-year old legal dispute at the World Trade Organization: these tariff …
The arrival of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala at the helm of the World Trade Organization on Monday gave members a cautious sense of optimism about the ability of the institution to deliver new outcomes.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala started off her first day in her role as director-general with an energetic speech on what she wanted the World Trade Organization to achieve in 2021. Members agreed today to hold the organization’s next ministerial meeting in the week of 29 November in Geneva.
Plurilateral or ‘Joint Statement’ initiatives launched in 2017 to modernise rules in the trading system start maturing. Now members face a battle over having them established in the World Trade Organization treaty framework. India and South Africa claim Joint Statement initiative deals are illegal In December 2017, a large group …
