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 5 is dedicated to the analysis of the amended EU Trade Enforcement Regulation 654/2014 to allow the imposition of unilateral countermeasures in case of appeals into the void in the WTO context or of an FTA party blocking panel proceedings. The chapter introduces the original Regulation, recent amendments, and their legislative history. It then appraises the legality of the amendments in light of WTO and FTA rules and whether general public international law on state responsibility could serve as the necessary legal basis for unilateral countermeasures. Assuming that the imposition of unilateral countermeasures under the amended Trade Enforcement Regulation would be in line with EU’s obligations, Chapter 5 also considers their compliance with the conditions established by general public international law. Finally, the amendments’ possible influence on and consequences for the multilateral trading system are explored in light of EU’s commitment to multilateralism and international law.

As the EU seeks to continue reaping the benefits of multilateral trade and to restore and reform the WTO dispute settlement mechanism, Chapter 4 focuses on the EU-led alternative created for the appellate stage: the Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement (MPIA), which ensures that its parties can continue using the two-stage WTO dispute settlement mechanism without panel reports being sent into the void by regular appeals. The chapter introduces the pertinent WTO rules and the MPIA and assesses the arrangement’s compliance with the former. To ensure that the MPIA can indeed live up to EU’s ambition to ensure assertive enforcement of multilateral trade rights, it evaluates whether the MPIA is likely to provide security, predictability, and high-quality rewards while also helping to unlock the WTO dispute settlement crisis. Then, the chapter assesses whether the MPIA could be blocked by an unwilling party, thereby jeopardizing the operation of the MPIA. Finally, to be able to weigh in on the ability of the MPIA to contribute to solving the crisis or rather to undermine the WTO multilateral system, it considers the MPIA’s broader geopolitical implications.