Background The political agreement on the EU-Indonesia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) in July was rushed by political optics, including Trump-era tariffs and pressure to compete...

In her State of the Union address, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen touched on nearly every aspect of European life, including the economy. She spoke about housing shortages, energy bills,...

Fortunately, recent times have seen senior European leaders giving more support to new trade agreements than we have been used to in the past decade. The ratification process of the EU-Mercosur...

At one year old, most babies begin to stand on their own feet. Some walk, others wobble, but all start exploring the world under their own strength. Today, the Draghi report turns one. Yet it remains...

Initiatives to dismantle/redesign/reform the WTO (delete whichever is inapplicable according to your preference) continue apace. Towards one end of the spectrum, USTR Jamieson Greer writes (in a...

A few days after the publication of a Joint Statement and the details of the EU-US trade deal, European leaders were taken by surprise by another tariff threat coming across the Atlantic. The EU...

Trump’s tariffs will fail in his objective of transforming trade, particularly if others remain open and resist retaliation. In this context the EU’s deal is fine in the short-term but should...

The European Commission’s latest budget proposal – including a new levy on large companies operating across the EU – is being spun as a contribution to “competitiveness” and “strategic...

The Internal Market began—and remains—a construct completed through dissension, rather than through an evolution of harmonious cooperation and compromises. Arguably, the Single Market was...

This blog post is based on an article published in El País on the 6th of July 2025. The original article can be found here. On 9 July – or maybe later who knows – Donald Trump is expected to...