Key diary dates
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Monday 14 April – EU foreign affairs ministers meet in Luxembourg, Ukraine and Middle East on agenda.
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Wednesday 16 April - European Commission to present third omnibus package to simplify rules for smaller and mid-cap companies.
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Wednesday 16 April – World Trade Organization will hold a press conference featuring Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Chief Economist Ralph Ossa for the release of "Global Trade Outlook and Statistics – April 2025".
In spotlight
With the US upending global trade by imposing blanket tariffs on its partners around the world, what use is there any more for that arbiter of trade rules, the World Trade Organization (WTO)?
That's the question that most reporters listening to a press briefing on Wednesday by its Director-General, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, will be asking, when she presents a global trade outlook for April 2025.
This month may be remembered as the moment the world stepped into a new dimension—one defined by a recalibration of global trade relations and a renewed emphasis on brute power, spearheaded by the return of US President Donald Trump and his subsequent wave of tariffs which have rippled across the globe.
On 3 April, Okonjo-Iweala said those tariffs could lead to a contraction of around 1% in global merchandise trade volumes in 2025.
After retaliating against total US tariffs of 145% US tariffs by bumping its own reciprocal tariffs against the US up to 125% tariffs, China announced on 11 April it will take its case to the WTO.
“Bringing a case before the WTO is one option the EU will certainly be keeping on the table,” Commission’s spokesperson Olof Gill also told Euronews.
The EU has been repeating since the beginning of the trade tensions with the US that it remained committed to a rules-based international economic order, which the WTO embodies.
The institution governs free trade and is the multilateral body where trade disputes between nations are settled. However its dispute settlement mechanisms have been mired by since the US refused to appoint members of the WTO’s Appellate Body.
The crisis affecting the smooth running of the institution was less noticed so long as the US continued to embody the spirit of free trade. But now that has changed, the WTO is looking existentially wounded.
Okonjo-Iweala was the first woman and the first African to head the institution when she was appointed in 2021. Many will now be wondering whether she might add to those historic benchmarks another - could she be the last ever?
Policy newsmakers
NGO opacity and the Commission
The European Commission’s funding of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) is “opaque” and exposes the executive to “reputational risk”, the European Court of Auditors (ECA) concluded last week following a lengthy probe. However the report was not the smoking gun that some critics were hoping for.“We did not find a single case during our audit of an NGO breaching EU values,” said the ECA member responsible for the report, Laima Andrikienė.“What they did find is a failure by the Commission and national governments to check who’s actually behind some so-called NGOs that don’t represent public interests,” said Ariel Brunner, the director of BirdLife Europe.
