The European Parliament and the Council of the European Union reached an agreement on Wednesday 28 October on the proposal for a regulation to strengthen the enforcement of trade rules.
The future European legislation responds to the current deadlock in the functioning of the WTO Appellate Body. It will also apply in the context of trade agreements – bilateral or regional – where a partner unilaterally imposes sanctions against the EU and blocks the dispute settlement procedure provided for in the agreements.
“If Europe needs to bulk up in order to be respected, let us give it the means to do so and be consistent”, said Marie-Pierre Vedrenne (Renew Europe, France), Parliament’s rapporteur on this issue, in a statement.
As requested by the European Parliament (see EUROPE 12522/24), the legislative review extends the EU’s ability to impose retaliatory measures such as tariffs, quantitative restrictions and in the field of public procurement to services and intellectual property.
Ms Vedrenne welcomed the European Commission’s commitment to “treat all violations of labour rights, climate change or human rights provisions at the same level as complaints relating to access to the markets of our trading partners“.
She also welcomes the Commission’s commitment to present “a new instrument to discourage and counter coercive measures by non-Member States” before the end of 2021, seeing this as “a real paradigm shift”.
The interinstitutional agreement still needs to be formally validated by Parliament and the EU Council. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)