News: Centre of Excellence
Reviving the EUs Free Trade commitments - let’s start with Australia!
Catharina Rinzema, Member of European Parliament (Renew Europe, The Netherlands), Morten Lokkegaard, Member of European Parliament (Renew Europe, Denmark), Professor Peter Draper, Executive Director of the Institute for International Trade.
The European Parliament this month sent a delegation to Australia to strengthen our ties with strategic Indo-Pacific partners. This op-ed argues that these democratic allies and trade partners have a good opportunity to promote common values and rule-of-law trade through the under-negotiation EU-Australia free trade agreement.
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The future of EU trade policy and strategies in a militarised environment
WORKING PAPER 11
China’s economic rise has transformed the international trade system. Furthermore, given its divergent economic model China is challenging the global economic order in ways that previous Asian competitors never did. In response to systemic rivalry and an increasingly tense international environment, the EU seeks to build more “strategic autonomy” from the United States, its main security benefactor. Economically, the EU policy of Open Strategic Autonomy seeks to maintain openness to trade, while developing tools for dealing with coercive and unfair trade practices. This paper identifies the key elements of this policy, as well as the risks it holds for European economic liberalism.
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CELIS Forum on Investment Screening (CFIS) 2022
1st - 3rd June 2022, IIT’s Dr Naoise McDonagh was invited to present at the 2022 CELIS Institute Annual Forum on Investment Screening. CFIS 22 is Europe's first and foremost forum to discuss questions on investment screening and security. It serves to enhance the Institute's analytical capacity and facilitate the shaping of common approaches. A marketplace of ideas, CFIS 22 brings together EU officials, national experts, diplomats, academics, business leaders, think tankers, and representatives of civil society and the media from across Europe and beyond.
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Improving border adjustment mechanisms
WORKING PAPER 09
Despite several attempts and significant progress, broad agreement on the most appropriate way to manage conflicts between international trade and environmental issues has yet to emerge. Consequently, this paper begins with a search for a set of principles to guide the use of border adjustment mechanisms to ameliorate global environmental problems or, as economists call them, global externalities.
Ten principles are developed, and then applied to the European Union's current CBAM design, and recommendations for improving that design are put forward. As this CBAM is rooted in the EU's Emissions Trading System, broad recommendations for aligning the ETS with the principles are also offered.
Policy Roundtable: Economic Coercion and International Trade: the nature of the challenge and policy response options
Wednesday 30th March, 2022. Arbitrary instances of economic coercion by state actors have become frequent in recent years, undermining multilateral norms and rules. Liberal democracies are increasingly concerned over the systemic quality of such coercion, and are debating and designing possible policy responses on how to respond while maintaining a stable international trading system. Event report by Dr Naoise McDonagh, Institute for International Trade.
Swedish Perspectives on the Green Transition
30 March 2022. Presented by Deputy Head of Mission Per Linnér. Hosted by Institute for International Trade, Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence. Deputy Head of Mission Per Linnér provided a presentation titled ‘Swedish Perspectives on the EU’s Green Transition’. The presentation first provided an overview of the key forces driving Sweden’s political positioning and policy-making on green economy development, noting the powerful societal and grassroots origins of Swedish environmentalism that is energised by a strong sense of urgency to resolve climate change.
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Economic Coercion & International Trade. Policy Roundtable
Wednesday 30 March, 2022. Policy Roundtable, ‘Economic Coercion and International Trade: the nature of the challenge and policy response options’. Hosted by Institute for International Trade, sponsored by Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence. Arbitrary instances of economic coercion by state actors have become frequent in recent years, undermining multilateral norms and rules. In Brussels and Canberra there is growing concern and debate over the systemic quality of such coercion, as well as how to respond while maintaining a stable international trading system. Swedish Deputy Head of Mission Per Linnér will provide an EU perspective on this critical issue, followed by a brief overview of geopolitical trends driving coercion from IIT’s Dr Naoise McDonagh.
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The EU’s ‘Chips Act’: A Rent-Seekers Paradise or a Feasible Industrial Policy?
Andreas Freytag, Professor and Chair of Economic Policy, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena and Visiting Professor with IIT.
Microchip shortages are high on the agenda of governments and businesses feeling the pinch of ongoing supply shortages. Not least for this reason, there is a broad political consensus in Europe that strong support is needed for the European chip industry in order to be independent of Asian manufacturers in the future.
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Improving Border Adjustment Mechanisms
Professor Mike Young, Institute for International Trade, The University of Adelaide. The European Union (EU) and a number of other countries including the USA, Canada, Malaysia and Japan are in the process of considering how best to prevent the flow of jobs and investment to countries that are making slower progress in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
Why Australia fails to understand the EU
Richard Pomfret, Jean Monnet Chair in the Economics of European Integration at the Institute for International Trade, 2017-2020. Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Adelaide. Australian political leaders have long held a simplistic and misleading understanding of the European Union, due to over-reliance on reports from London for coverage of EU affairs. This op-ed argues Canberra needs to develop a more diversified and modern understanding of the EU project, and its value to Australia.
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