Chapter 2 analyses the evolution of the EU Trade Policy and how it reached the new focus on stronger enforcement of EU’s trade rights and ensuring a level playing field in trade, i.e. more assertively representing EU interests. Thus, it depicts how initially EU Trade Policy was mainly focused on multilateralism in the WTO context, then shifted to combining multilateralism with active bilateralism by signing deep and comprehensive FTAs, and finally adopted the reviewed trade policy based on ’open strategic autonomy’ model seeking a more assertive trade policy, which is also presented in more detail herein. It also explores the drivers that instigated this reorientation of trade policy, in particular the crisis of trade multilateralism, the rising nationalism, the systemic challenges posed by the Chinese exceptionalism, as well as digitisation, climate change, and COVID-19.

Chapter 6 analyses the Anti-Coercion Instrument (ACI), which seeks to enable the Union to respond to economic coercion applied by third states. The chapter presents the rationale and scope of the instrument, as well as the procedures prescribed by it. In addition, it provides an extensive analysis of the instrument’s compliance with EU’s international commitments. It first assesses the ACI in view of international customary rules invoked by the EU as a legal basis, especially the principle of non-intervention and its application to economic coercion. Then it examines the ACI in light of WTO procedural and substantive rules that, as argued by the authors, supersede the general international law customary norms, and the possible justifications of a finding of violation. The chapter then complements the analysis with an evaluation of the ACI’s consistency with bilateral trade rules inscribed in EU FTAs. Finally, it contemplates other costs and benefits associated with the ACI besides its legality under international law rules, evaluating whether the adoption of the ACI is worth taking the risks, considering EU’s multilateralist stance.