Consider what happened to a mid-sized European electronics exporter in early 2025. Its goods were held at Rotterdam for nearly three weeks. The customs release was technically compliant. The Battery Passport was valid. The problem? The receiving member state’s verification system could not read and confirm the passport data in real time.
e EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement, in force since 1 February 2019, has delivered measurable results: total bilateral trade grew 23.1% between 2018 and 2025.
The OECD’s new MAGIC database reveals industrial subsidies at their highest level relative to revenue since the 2008-09 financial crisis – concentrated in semiconductors, renewables, steel, shipbuilding, EVs, and advanced batteries.
The numbers look reassuring. In 2020, OLAF and its partners seized over 368 million contraband cigarettes destined for illegal sale in the EU. Joint operations across ten European countries have dismantled major smuggling networks. International training programmes stretch from Brussels to Cambodia.
For years, it was possible to treat the major compliance disciplines as parallel tracks. Customs sat with the trade team. Data protection sat with legal. Cybersecurity sat with IT. AI governance – to the extent anyone worried about it at all – sat with the innovation team, or with nobody in particular.
Negotiations for the EU–Australia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) concluded on 24 March 2026. After eight years of talks, this is a significant moment. But it is important to be precise about what “concluded” actually means – and what it does not.
In March 2026, the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament agreed on what has been described as the most significant reform of the EU Customs Union since 1968. This is not a technical update. It is a structural redesign of how trade oversight will function across Europe for the next two decades.
The UK announced on 5 May 2026 new sanctions against 35 people and companies tied to Russia’s drone war effort and to human trafficking networks[1][2]. These designations mark the first use of London’s world‑first Global Irregular Migration and Trafficking sanctions...
The EU is overhauling its customs framework to meet 21st-century challenges. Rising trade volumes, complex supply chains and geopolitical shifts have strained a 50-year-old system built around paper declarations and fragmented national IT. The new Customs Reform...