EU AND THE CHALLENGES OF RISING GLOBAL PROTECTIONISM

Agnes Ghibuțiu ()
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Agnes Ghibuțiu: Institute for World Economy of the Romanian Academy

Romanian Economic Business Review, 2017, vol. 12, issue 1, 7-27

Abstract: The slowdown in global trade growth over the post-crisis period was accompanied by steadily rising protectionist tendencies and prevalence of economic nationalism, alongside increasing public sentiment against globalization and free trade. Moreover, the last years have seen an upswing in trade protectionism, with the EU and its Member States turning into outright targets of trade restrictive measures applied by countries worldwide. Against this backdrop, our paper reviews recent trade policy developments that bear upon EU’s external trade relations, and aims at discussing: (1) dynamics and characteristics of the new protectionist measures implemented by EU's trading partners; (2) the importance of accessing external markets, and the European strategy and related trade policy kit to cope with the protectionist phenomenon; and (3) the challenges facing the EU in the changing global environment. The paper concludes that the upsurge in new protectionist measures and limited rollback of the existing ones since 2008 call for strengthening the multilateral trade framework and resuming WTO negotiations, as the most effective means to address crisis-related protectionism. Hence, EU’s efforts to tackle protectionism should be backed up by similar endeavours globally. Since the multilateral trade agenda remains at the heart of EU's trade policy,the Union should act more convincingly toward relaunching global trade cooperation

Keywords: EU; G20; trade policy; trade protectionism; World Trade Organization (WTO); trade agreements (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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