Surveillance of national trade policies is a fundamentally important activity running throughout its work, according to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and all its members are examined in a rolling system of reviews.
This year, for the 15th time, it has been looking at the trade policies and practices of the European Union and highlighting that this is the first such review since the withdrawal of the United Kingdom in early 2020.
The WTO notes that, in 2021, the EU saw a strong recovery after the effects of the Covid pandemic with GDP growth reaching 5.4%. Despite another shock in early 2022 due to the war in Ukraine, GDP growth remained strong.
In terms of external trade, the Union remained the world's top trader, with €6.28 trillion traded in goods and services in 2021. International trade was the equivalent of 21.5% of EU GDP. However, the trade surplus in goods contracted significantly in 2021 to €56.8 billion on account of a significant increase in the value of imports — largely due to higher cost of energy imports.
As regardss regional and bilateral agreements, the European Union had, as of December 2022, the largest network of Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) in the world with 44 agreements in place.
During the period under review, the EU was also engaged in negotiations for new RTAs (with New Zealand, Australia, and Indonesia) and to update or deepen existing ones (including with Chile and Mexico).
Full details of the 198-page trade review can be found HERE.
Speaking at the presentation of the review, the UK’s Ambassador to the WTO, Simon Manley, said: “The trade relationship between the EU and UK is one of the world’s great economic partnerships. Total trade between the UK and the EU was worth more than £730 billion last year. Member States of the EU are still the largest overseas investors in the British economy, and Britain is one of the biggest investors in Member States of the EU.”
