France gets its way, thanks to Brexit

France gets its way, thanks to Brexit

Hello from Brussels for the last time in a while for Trade Secrets. Alan Beattie will be up and running in London next week. Among the policy innovations he will be able to appraise is the effect on trade of readopting imperial measurements (clue: not great) and the impact of trade facilitation deals with individual US states (clue: also not great). There may also be the start of a trade war with the EU as London seeks to disapply parts of its post-Brexit trade deal.

I will focus on events in Brussels — well, Luxembourg and Strasbourg actually — as explained below. Charted waters looks at the problem for the UK of securing energy supplies into the winter.

As ever, if you have any thoughts to share, you can contact Alan on [email protected].

How Brexit helped France get its way on trade rules

The French presidency of the EU ends this month and Paris will be very satisfied with its work.

On Thursday the European Parliament plenary meeting in Strasbourg is expected to vote for the International Procurement Instrument (IPI), which will limit non-EU companies’ access to the EU public procurement market if their governments do not offer EU companies similar access to their public