EU trade policy

With a share of about 20% of the world's imports and exports of goods and services, the European Union is one of the key players in international trade. According to Article 133 of the EC Treaty, trade policy is one of the communitarized areas of policy. That means that decisions can only be made at Community level and not by individual EU member states. European trade policy is implemented on the basis of joint decisions by the European Commission.

One important objective of EU trade policy is to open up markets for European exports. This goal is pursued, on the one hand, at multilateral level within the World Trade Organization (WTO). On the other, the European Union has concluded numerous bilateral and biregional free trade agreements with third countries to this end, often as part of more comprehensive instruments, such as partnership and cooperation agreements.

Trade policy is also of great importance to the European Union's relations with developing countries. In particular, countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific are granted preferential access to the EU market under the Cotonou Agreement. Furthermore, all developing and transformation countries can use the customs advantages of the EU's Generalized System of Preferences (GSP). Part of the GSP is the "everything but arms" initiative, under which full exemption from duties without any quantitative limits has been granted for all exports except arms (with transitional regulations for bananas, sugar and rice) from the 50 least developed countries (LDC) since 2001. The EU is thus the most important market for agricultural products from the poorest developing countries.