Europe-Wide: An International Trade/WTO Overview
Global trade is in a period of profound disruption. The intensifying rivalry between major economic blocs, the USA, China and the EU, combined with the broader fragmentation of international supply chains, has fundamentally altered the environment in which businesses operate. This is compounded by the continued paralysis of the WTO's Appellate Body, which has left the multilateral trading system without its principal dispute resolution mechanism. The EU is responding both defensively and proactively, with trade defence instruments at the centre of that response.
EU Trade Defence – The Legal and Policy Framework
The EU's core trade defence instruments remain twofold: anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigations. Anti-dumping addresses imports priced below exporter home market prices, whereas anti-subsidy measures target goods that have benefited from foreign state financial contributions that confer an unfair advantage. Both instruments can be triggered by an industry complaint and may result in duties imposed for five years.
Safeguard measures are distinct instruments from anti-dumping and anti-subsidy but sit within the same trade defence toolbox of the European Commission (Commission). Safeguards are designed for sharp, sudden and unforeseen import surges, regardless of whether those imports are fairly priced. As safeguards apply to imports of a particular product from all countries (erga omnes), requiring a high injury threshold, this instrument has historically been used sparingly by the EU. However, that looks set to change: several member states are pressing the Commission to adopt a more open stance towards safeguards, particularly where disruptions affect entire industrial value chains rather than individual product segments.
The scale and ambition of recent investigations have brought global attention to EU trade defence. The most prominent example is the Commission's anti-subsidy investigation into battery electric vehicles (BEVs) from China, which marked a defining moment in trade defence. Beyond BEVs, active measures span a broad and growing range of sectors, including steel and aluminium, construction, chemicals and advanced materials. This breadth signals that trade defence is no longer confined to a handful of traditional industries but is increasingly relevant across the wider economy.
The picture at the end of 2025 is striking. According to official trade statistics published by the European Commission in May 2026, there were 147 definitive anti-dumping measures in force (subsequently extended in 39 cases), 25 countervailing duty measures in force (subsequently extended in 7 cases) and two safeguard measures in force. As at the end of December 2025, the Commission had 67 ongoing investigations.
This headline trend from 2025 is not simply a rise in the number of cases, but a decisive shift towards earlier intervention. The rate at which provisional measures were applied increased by more than 12 percentage points between 2021 and 2025. This means that well-prepared, evidence-rich complaints are being rewarded with faster protection – and that industries slow to engage risk being left exposed during the most damaging phase of import surges. Nevertheless, the rise in caseload has placed considerable strain on capacity at DG Trade’s Office of Complaints. With anti-dumping investigations taking up more than a year to conclude from initiation, the Commission is actively exploring complementary tools to provide more timely relief to EU industries facing injury from unfair import competition.
Beyond Existing Tools – New and Renewed Instruments on the Horizon
The intensification of trade defence activity is not limited to a higher volume of anti-dumping and anti-subsidy cases. The Commission has also begun reaching for instruments that have long existed within the EU's legal framework but were, until recently, rarely used in practice. What has changed is political will. The EU Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR), in force since 2023, extends trade defence logic beyond the EU's external border, enabling scrutiny of foreign state subsidies distorting competition within the internal market – including in mergers and public procurement processes.
Where distortion is found, the Commission may require repayment of the subsidy, asset divestiture or behavioural remedies. In addition, the International Procurement Instrument (IPI), which allows the EU to restrict third-country access to EU public procurement markets where reciprocal access is denied, represents a strategic evolution in the Commission’s toolbox upon its activation against China in 2024. Safeguards, meanwhile, are increasingly under discussion as a more agile response to sector-wide trade disruptions. In 2026, the Commission initiated a safeguard investigation into grain-oriented electrical sheets and is preparing to open a further safeguard investigation into key chemicals in the packaging value chain, signalling a strategic use of TDIs to protect an entire value chain.
In parallel, the Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA), presented by the Commission on 4 March 2026, is designed to rebuild EU manufacturing capacity from within, accelerating permitting for industrial projects, creating lead markets through procurement rules that favour EU-origin products and reinforcing supply-chain autonomy (this is not in force yet).
In terms of reform, a group of member states set out a series of proposals for reform of the EU's trade defence framework, reflecting a growing view that the existing toolkit, while more actively used, has structural limitations. Current instruments face acknowledged weaknesses, including long delays before industry can benefit from protective measures and narrow product scopes that limit the EU's ability to react to sector-wide disruptions.
In the medium term, proposals focus on targeted adjustments to the existing framework: strengthening the anti-circumvention tool to address increasingly complex duty-avoidance practices and formally integrating economic security into the Union's interest assessment. Looking further ahead, more fundamental changes are under discussion, such as the development of an entirely new cross-sector overcapacity or resilience instrument capable of addressing market distortions that fall outside the reach of existing tools.
EU leaders are expected to discuss these reform proposals – including the proposed cross-sector instrument – at a forthcoming European Council summit, reflecting the growing consensus that the existing framework requires modernisation. It is, however, important to be clear about where these proposals stand. The proposed reforms were initially set out in a non-paper backed by a subset of member states – this does not represent a Commission proposal, and there is no concrete legislative text on the table. Member states remain divided, with diverging economic interests making consensus on reform difficult to achieve. Businesses should therefore not anticipate wholesale change in the near term. The existing framework remains the operative reality, and any reform is likely to be incremental rather than transformative.
Nevertheless, trade defence will remain a defining feature of the EU's economic and trade policy agenda for the foreseeable future, and the Commission's political appetite for assertive use of these instruments shows no sign of diminishing.