G7 countries should work with China to put in place climate-aligned trade policies needed to accelerate global climate action, by harnessing the power of international trade to promote innovation, reduce costs, and stimulate demand for green goods, write Matt Piotrowski and Joseph Dellatte.
EU countries and European institutions must do much more to share and centralise sensitive data, to better apprehend economic security risks and more efficiently protect supply chains from increasingly predacious geopolitical actors, writes Mathieu Duchâtel.
After German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s visit to Beijing, France's Emmanuel Macron must make clear when President Xi visits Paris that de-risking is more than just 'made in Brussels', write Gesine Weber and Earl Wang.
It’s been 25 years since the four Mercosur nations and the EU vowed to sign a free-trade agreement. Twenty-five years of political to-ing and fro-ing, now compounded with pro-environmental imperatives pushing negotiations to the brink of collapse.
The ruling from the German constitutional court in Karlsruhe, declaring the transfer of 60 billion Euros in Covid-related debt to the Klima- und Transformationsfond (KTF) unlawful, has cast a shadow of uncertainty over Germany's economic security agenda, argues Tobias Gehrke.
As the negotiations on the EU–US Global Arrangement on Sustainable Steel and Aluminium (GSA) falter, the EU should steel itself ahead of the 2024 US elections, write Brandon Bohrn and Etienne Höra.
While negotiations for the EU-Mercosur agreement are currently taking place on a daily basis to speed up the conclusion of the additional protocol, more work needs to be done to match our commitments, writes a group of EU lawmakers.
Next week's EU-China Summit will not lead to grand changes in both superpowers' fraught relationship, and it is high time the EU starts thinking collectively on pushing back against China's bullying ways, Institut Montaigne's François Godement writes.
Countries’ carbon footprints are determined by what they buy and sell from each other, not just by their own production. So trade policy should play a role in countries’ efforts to decarbonise – alignment of the two is long overdue, write Laurence Tubiana and Richard Baron.
While the EU has so far failed to take appropriate action against the most invasive forms of spyware, the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) could offer a crucial opportunity for the EU to rein in the rampant human rights …
The EU should include financial markets in the scope of its Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) to help reorientate capital markets towards more sustainable investments while making European financial markets more consistent and reliable, argues Richard Gardiner.
The EU-LAC summit should present a "new era of cooperation", but for the partnership to be balanced, it must secure sufficient EU public financing, address material consumption in the EU, and support local economies and industrialisation in LAC, argues Maria …
The EU-Mercosur Trade Agreement is showing signs of aging. Re-opening it is the only way to ensure a better solution that benefits both sides as well as the environment, write Saskia Bricmont, Yannick Jadot, and Thomas Waitz.
If businesses are to take corporate sustainability seriously, they will need to add relevant sustainability expertise to their boards, argue Nicolas Sauviat and Sanjini Jain.
Strengthening European Union relations with Latin America is strategic for Europe, and strengthened EU-Brazil ties could be the key, writes Antoni Comín i Oliveres.
The EU-Mercosur trade deal will substantially increase the trade in agricultural products, including beef, soy and ethanol, commodities that are directly tied to deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions and human rights violations, writes Audrey Changoe.
With both the US and China embracing a high-subsidy model for strategic industries, the EU must similarly adopt a radical shift in policy when it comes to trade, writes Anna-Michelle Asimakopoulou.
As a response to the US Inflation Reduction Act, German economy minister Robert Habeck is calling for Europe's own 'local content rule', but in a 'WTO-compatible' manner. He argued that this was for climate protection reasons, but however green he may be, this is just plain and simple industrial policy.
Trade and Sustainable Development Chapters (TSD) must be a cornerstone of our free trade agreements, and the EU must be able to ensure and monitor their effective implementation, write Marie-Pierre Vedrenne and Samira Rafaela. Renew MEP Marie-Pierre Vedrenne is vice-chair of …
Pragmatism and multi-vector foreign policy have become Kazakhstan’s trademark, even more valuable in a world characterised by geopolitical tensions, writes Alberto Turkstra, who announces, upon his return from Nur-Sultan, upcoming Kazakhstan-EU high-level contacts.
Speaking at a private event we held a few years ago, the former President of the European Council, Mr. Herman Von Rompuy, made an insightful comment: “Europe only and always makes progress during crises.” It is undeniable that the world has just faced down the mother of all crises in form of the pandemic, while so many risks still abound, ranging from climate and conflicts to stagflation and supply chain disruptions.
A Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) waiver is neither useful nor effective in solving global vaccination issues, and comes with plenty of negative consequences, writes Pieter Cleppe.
Technologies to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the iron and steel industries already exists and are scalable. Policies and measures in the EU must therefore incentivise development in this direction and do so quickly, writes Henrik Henriksson.
2022 has seen deepening divisions between countries, driven in part by the war in Ukraine and skyrocketing fuel and food prices. As policymakers look to tackle the climate crisis, they should focus on global, harmonised measures rather than bilateral decisions that could deepen divides, writes Carne Ross.
