The Twenty-Seven drew their first lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, which was on the agenda of the informal meeting of trade ministers held by videoconference on Thursday 16 April. In this respect, the thorny question of European resilience was first and foremost in people’s minds.
Enhancing European resilience
The analysis of the impact of the Coronavirus crisis on trade is still in the early stages. However, among the first lessons to be learned, this crisis has taught the European Union about the vulnerability of European value chains and has revealed solidarity-related dilemmas through barriers to trade, including within the single market.
The COVID-19 crisis has therefore somewhat painfully raised the question of European resilience. While Trade Commissioner Phil Hogan emphasised that “an open trade policy will need to be part of any future economic recovery plan” in order for the EU to learn the lessons from the health crisis, EU leaders will also need to “think about how to ensure the EU's strategic autonomy”, starting with “an evidence-based discussion on what it means to be strategically autonomous”, he said.
Over the course of the exchanges, Member States have already agreed that any further diversification of sources in EU supply chains will be necessary to ensure their resilience.
While this does not exclusively imply that the EU should produce locally, it does therefore raise the question of increasing the Union's industrial capacity. These issues will have a significant impact on the economic recovery strategy, in particular with a view to strengthening the European industrial base in a sustainable manner.
On a related note was the issue of strategic storage, the European dimension of which must be factored in, “as it is patently clear that these goals can only be achieved if we act together”, explained Mr Hogan.
A shift in trade policy?
Several countries have nevertheless reminded the EU Council that the sustainability dimension of European trade policy goes beyond economic resilience; sustainability is also social, climatic and environmental, and must be at the heart of free trade agreements (FTA).
“It is now more obvious than ever that sustainable development must form part of the solution and we should therefore send a strong message in this respect to our trading partners”, said Luxembourg's Minister for European Affairs, Jean Asselborn.
“I personally think we cannot just go back to the way things were”, said Dutch Trade Minister Sigrid Kaag. “Trade is moving through the new lens of vulnerability, but also of opportunity”, she told a number of journalists, including EUROPE, after the meeting. “And I would like to use another EU Council meeting to see if the trade agreements that we have conducted and agreed so far are still the right format and how we can go about them, given also tremendous political discontent and opposition against what people see as the negative impact of globalisation”, she concluded.
Multilateral Initiative
While the European Chancelleries have reiterated their multilateral commitment, agreeing that the World Trade Organization (WTO) must retain a key role in responding to the crisis, the fact of maintaining an active multilateral agenda is particularly complicated in the absence of a physical WTO meeting.
However, Swedish and Dutch initiatives are circulating to promote a multilateral agreement based on essential health products, which would allow the removal of trade barriers in respect of these products. The Dutch Minister hopes to merge these proposals before taking them to both the WTO and the WHO.
SOS the steel industry
Among the sectors most weakened by the crisis, the state of health of the European steel industry was one of the topics in today's discussions, led mainly by Germany, Italy and Luxembourg. These countries have also welcomed the European Commission's initiative to revise the safeguard measures on steel, believing, like Mr Asselborn, that a “new opening of quotas is not appropriate in the present circumstances” (see EUROPE 12426/16). (Original version in French by Hermine Donceel)