high level grouPS

The High Level Group on Trade Policy Innovation was launched in 2017.

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Trade is an enabler for sustainable economic growth, innovation and social welfare. However, deep shifts of geopolitical and economic nature, and the loss of a Western research monopoly, require a fundamental rethinking of its methods. The coming years are likely to be at best moderately chaotic and mindsets and methods from the past will not bring results. The EU will need to search without prejudice for its autonomous operating space and resilience vis-à-vis other countries if the Member States want to preserve welfare and stability. In the absence of a global reserve currency and military might, trade as the cornerstone of partnerships will be the only instrument of geopolitics for EU countries. Bertil Ohlin, Nobel Prize winner in Economic Science in 1977, pointed out long ago that global trade could also lead to inequality, a prediction that has been largely overlooked in policy discourse and economic literature. 

 

Addressing such issues will require rethinking to position EU trade policy in central place of a horizontal policy framework that coordinates the vertical clusters of other policies and their extra-territorial impact, coordinated also with the EEAS. Comprehensive partnerships are an important instrument for economic diversification, innovation and competitiveness and market expansion, innovation and productivity growth, technology transfer and knowledge exchange, and indeed building a cosmopolitan mindset among citizens fit for the long term future.

 

Europe’s interest is not less trade liberalisation, but a transformation of global trade governance to deal effectively with the downsizes which can affect countries and large groups of people, ensuring that globalisation serves the people. The multilateral rules based trade system must be reformed to  preserve it, in the interests of Europe and of countries striving towards the SDGs, and to be a forum to negotiate trade agreements and resolve the trade problems. 

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This HLG is chaired by Peter Altmaier, former Minister for Economy and Trade, Germany.