The European Commission has proposed a new regulation that will provide it with tools to counteract economic coercion from third countries with measures such as tariffs and imports restrictions.
On 8 December 2021, the European Commission (the “Commission”) presented a proposal for a new regulation (available here) which, if implemented, will enable the EU to respond to economic coercion from third countries.
Economic coercion refers to circumstances where a country is threatening to apply, or is already applying, economic measures that affect trade to put pressure on another state into changing their policies. Examples of such measures are discriminatory import duties and selective border checks on, or boycotts of, goods from a certain country in response to a legislative initiative. With regard to the EU, this could for example be in order to bring about a change of policy in areas such as climate change, taxation or food safety. According to the Commission, the EU and its Member States have in recent years been subject such economic coercion on a number of occasions. […]
France, which takes over the Council Presidency in January, apparently supports the Commission’s proposal, but other Member States, such as Sweden, seem to be more reluctant, seeing risks of protectionism. Läs artikel