Past Events

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is considered by many to be the most important multilateral organisations in the world for economic matters. Its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), spearheaded many rounds of trade negotiations that reduced barriers to trade and boosted globalisation and economic growth. Recently, the WTO has given an insurance against crisis-induced beggar-thy-neighbour tariff hikes and a replay of the escalating protectionism the world experienced in the 1930s.

The EU’s rural development policy – the second pillar of the CAP – will receive €14 billion in funding in 2010. Whereas the overall CAP budget will likely be cut after 2013, rural development funds stand to increase further. Just about everyone agrees that the CAP has to do more to tackle challenges such as biodiversity loss and climate change, and that this can be best achieved through targeted measures of rural development policy. But how effective is the EU’s rural development policy really?

While the dispute-settlement mechanism under the WTO has become increasingly a centre court for tensions between East and West, it has also highlighted the question of supra-national rules against sovereignty in international economic law.

The China-EU dialogue is about to enter a new phase after years of summitry and rhetorics. To follow up on past week's visit by Barroso's delegation to China and the upcoming re-start of the High Level Economic and Trade Dialogue, ECIPE invites you to a lunch seminar with a presentation by Dr Xiaotong Zhang , Deputy Director at the Mission of China to the EU.

Few trade issues are as politically charged as anti-dumping. A few years ago, the European Commission made an effort to reform Europe’s use of trade defence instrument, but the efforts led to little more than a deeper division between users of anti-dumping and sectors damaged by the same policy.

With a new Parliament, new Commission, and a new governing Treaty, the EU could hardly ask for a more interesting start of the New Year. This will also be a time to evaluate what worked and what didn’t during the last five years and to set out the core strategies for the next five years.