Panel discussion “The EU’s Management of the Environment-Trade Nexus – from the European Green Deal to the Clean Industrial Deal” (2/04)
On 2 April 2025, the Department of EU International Relations and Diplomacy Studies organised a panel discussion on “The EU’s Management of the Environment-Trade Nexus – from the European Green Deal to the Clean Industrial Deal” at the College of Europe in Bruges.
Over the past decades, the European Union (EU) has increasingly used trade policy for the promotion of non-trade concerns, recently also for climate and environmental matters. With the adoption of the European Green Deal (EGD) in 2019, the EU signalled its intention to reinforce this trend. The EGD called for a socio-ecological transformation of the EU’s economic system, which included attention to mainstreaming climate and environmental objectives, in line with article 11 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU, into all internal and external policies. Hence, trade is expected to support the EU’s green transition, drawing on the leverage provided by the world’s largest single market. This is also reflected in the 2021 Trade Policy Review, which propagates a trade strategy promoting greater sustainability, contributing to the green and digital transformation and making global supply chains more sustainable.
This impetus has contributed to the EU increasingly raising environmental matters in multilateral contexts, notably at the World Trade Organization (WTO), to reinforced inclusion of sustainability concerns in bilateral Free Trade Agreements, and to the adoption of novel unilateral instruments, such as the 2023 Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which levies a carbon price on the imports of goods produced by energy-intensive industries (e.g. aluminium) from countries that have no stringent carbon-pricing policies in place, and the 2023 ‘Deforestation Regulation’, which intends to make supply chains for certain products (e.g. cacao) deforestation-free.
This panel, on the one hand, took stock of these measures aimed at a more effective EU environment-trade policy nexus management. On the other hand, it also looked into the future by discussing the expectations on how the environment-trade agenda might evolve during the second half of the 2020s, based on the Clean Industrial Deal proposed by the European Commission in early spring 2025. This latter foresees, inter alia, the conclusion of novel ‘Clean Trade and Investment Partnerships’ for more tailor-made and flexible forms of policy nexus management.
Programme
Welcome and Introduction
Sieglinde GSTÖHL, Director of Studies, Department of EU International Relations and Diplomacy Studies, College of Europe, Bruges
Taking stock of the EU’s management of the environment-trade nexus under the European Green Deal (2019-2024)
Simon SCHUNZ, Professor, Department of EU International Relations and Diplomacy Studies, College of Europe, Bruges
The EU’s unilateral turn in the management of the environment trade-nexus in its multilateral context
Ferdi DE VILLE, Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Ghent
Looking ahead – the ‘Clean Industrial Deal’ and the EU’s planned environment-trade nexus management during the second half of the 2020s
Dora CORREIA, Director, Trade relations with Africa, Caribbean and Pacific regions, South and South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand, Trade and Sustainable Development, the Green Deal, Directorate-General for Trade, European Commission, Brussels
Q&A and discussion
Photos
