News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Thursday, May 19, 2022
The number of commentaries proclaiming the end of globalisation will probably increase. The expected difficulties of finding consensus at the WTO’s 12th ministerial conference next June will add to these arguments. Cross-border business in fact remains healthy. But uncertainty around future policy choices may have a corrosive effect.
China has enhanced the prospects of an agreement at next month’s WTO ministerial meeting on a TRIPS waiver for COVID-19 vaccines, by stating that it will not be making use of any flexibilities offered to developing countries on access to patented medicines.
The World Trade Organization is pressing ahead with controversial plans to shake up the workings of its secretariat – even though many in Geneva remain nervous about the planned overhaul and what it will deliver. Management consultants McKinsey have been commissioned for a second time by the WTO’s Director-General, Ngozi …
WTO members had the opportunity to give their first detailed response to the ‘outcome document’ on waiving intellectual property rights for COVID vaccines at a meeting of the TRIPS Council in Geneva on Friday (6 May). Their response? An agreement to keep on talking.
Part Two of the recent Turkey-EU trade dispute settlement saga around pharmaceuticals and steel is ending today with a panel report that goes easy on Brussels in its handling of its 2018 steel safeguard measure. Even if the panel did not give the EU a clean slate in the way …
The MPIA will once again have to wait. But Turkey and the EU are setting a precedent by using an alternative World Trade Organization appeals mechanism to settle their legal scores as the appellate body continues to lie dormant.
The United States is “prepared for deepened engagement” with other WTO members on the role of the Appellate Body and other questions relating to the functioning of the Organization, according to the country’s recently-appointed ambassador to the WTO, María Luisa Pagán. But she has refused to lift the US’s long-standing …
The European Union’s ambassador to the World Trade Organization spoke to our deputy editor Chris Horseman about prospects for the institution and for the next ministerial conference in June. ***
Hopes of meaningful agreement on key issues at the upcoming World Trade Organization ministerial conference in Geneva in June have been dealt a serious blow by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, said the organisation’s director-general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.
The war in Ukraine is overshadowing work at the WTO – but is also not stopping deals from being reached, at least so far. By Chris Horseman and Iana Dreyer.
