Institut Veblen / Veblen Institute

Financing Europe's strategic objectives

Wojtek Kalinowski — 2026-04-30T09:52:00Z

Insufficient investment in key policy areas impedes the pursuit of EU's objectives and weakens Europe's competitiveness in global markets. Trying to address this problem, the Commission launched in 2025 the Savings and Investment Union as a central piece of its Competitiveness Compass and hoping to channel more credit and savings into productive investments.

But the SIU is not designed to address the underlying reasons for weak investment in areas where financial flows are misaligned with strategic priorities. The only additional EU policy tool proposed for steering financial flows towards political objectives is “blending” private and public funding through the InvestEU fund and the future Competitive Fund. But closing the investment gap will require complementary measures in financial regulation and monetary policy.

This policy brief is a part of the "New approaches in transition finance" project

KEY MESSAGES

• Closing the gap requires steering tools, not only scaling tools. EU's investment shortfall is not primarily a problem of insufficient finance, but of finance that is systematically misaligned with strategic priorities. Many of investments which are highly relevant to EU's policy objectives present risk-return profiles that do not match private investors' expectations.
• The SIUs drive for stronger market integration as about scaling; it promotes the common European market but does little to steer finance towards these investments.
• The same goes for the revival of securitization, a central piece of the SIU. The additional investments promised through banks balance sheet are theoretical and there's no guarantee that they will concern investments of relevance for the EU's policies. In addition, securitization might create new financial risks.
• The SIU missed the opportunity to opt for green securitization with strong conditionalities.
• Measures to improve access to venture capital are important to scale up technological innovation, but these segments do not reflect the overall financing needs of the economy.
• Financing strategic objectives relies therefore on public subsidies and blended finance instruments.
• Complementary measures are necessary and could be deployed in the fields of financial regulation, monetary policy and macroeconomic coordination.

Download "Financing Europe's strategic objectives"

European ISDS Scorecard: a ranking of the harmful effects of 30 countries' investment treaties

Mathilde Dupré — 2026-04-21T22:30:00Z

France ranked among the most active European countries in developing and maintaining the investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism.

France ranks as the fourth most active country in Europe in supporting the international investment arbitration regime, according to a new study (1) published by a coalition of eight European organisations, including the Veblen Institute, Powershift and CAN Europe (2). These findings are released on the eve of the first International Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, to be held from 24 to 29 April in Colombia, during which the investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) system will be examined as a major obstacle to the defossilisation of our economies.

Arbitration tribunals, known as investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanisms, are provisions embedded in many trade and investment agreements. They allow investors (multinational corporations or individuals) to sue governments before private tribunals outside domestic legal systems over public interest policies — such as environmental protection or public health regulation — that they claim harm their profits, with compensation awards often reaching millions or even billions of euros.

The report entitled “Investment Arbitration Index: A Comparative Analysis of the Harmful Effects of Treaties Across 30 European Countries”, published today alongside an interactive “scoreboard”, ranks 30 European countries (3) to measure the scale of their investment treaty networks, their actual use by investors, and their concrete impacts. The index is based on ten indicators, including the number of agreements signed with ISDS provisions, their use in sensitive sectors such as fossil fuels, and the amounts of compensation claimed and awarded.

The report highlights Europe's pivotal role in the global ISDS architecture and underscores the responsibility of a small group of countries — the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, France and Switzerland — which account for a significant share of the treaties, disputes and climate risks generated by this opaque system.

The ranking reveals that:

The United Kingdom ranks first among countries responsible for the development and maintenance of ISDS; British investors are particularly active in ISDS proceedings in the mining and fossil fuel sectors.
The Netherlands follows closely behind; Dutch investors (often using shell companies with no substantial economic activity) have initiated more ISDS proceedings than those from any other European country.
France is characterised by treaties covering a large volume of investments linked to future greenhouse gas emissions and containing very long survival clauses. This configuration may constitute a structural obstacle to the adoption of ambitious energy transition policies.
Ireland is the only country with no bilateral investment treaties with other states (although this may soon change if EU trade agreements containing ISDS provisions enter into force) (4), and Norway has already terminated half of its relatively small number of treaties, demonstrating that European countries can choose alternative paths.

The report makes several recommendations:

That European governments stop signing new agreements containing investment protection chapters with ISDS or an Investment Court System mechanism. (4)
That they begin systematically terminating existing treaties. For treaties containing “sunset clauses” — which allow provisions to remain in force for a period often ranging from 10 to 20 years after termination — countries should pursue “coordinated withdrawals” to neutralise them.
That they cooperate with other countries, including outside Europe, to promote a broader exit from the ISDS system.

Examples of cases

The consequences of treaty networks, rooted in post-colonial economic relationships, are felt particularly strongly in countries of the Global South, which are the target of the majority of ISDS claims. France has been the home state of investors in 69 cases; for example, the disputes initiated in 2021 by Vinci against Peru and Chile over the economic effects of public health measures adopted during the pandemic (5).

However, European countries themselves are increasingly targeted by claims, notably in connection with environmental policies. Severgroup and KN Holdings, two investment companies controlled by sanctioned Russian oligarch A. Mordashov, initiated a proceeding against France in 2021 under the France–Russia BIT, seeking €4.5 billion in compensation following the French government's withdrawal of support for the Montagne d'Or open-pit gold mining megaproject in French Guiana. France is also being sued by Russo-Armenian businessman S. Karapetyan, whose villa on the French Riviera was seized amid allegations of money laundering and acting as a nominee for the sanctioned oil and gas giant Gazprom. This case forms part of a recent wave of claims in Europe directly challenging sanctions imposed following Russia's invasion of Ukraine (6).

Santa Marta Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels

This publication also comes ahead of the first Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, to be held from 24 to 29 April in Santa Marta, Colombia — a country that has just announced its intention to withdraw from the ISDS system. ISDS is among the central items on the conference agenda, and organisations across Europe are calling on their governments to “seize this opportunity” to plan a coordinated withdrawal from the ISDS regime together with other participating countries (7).

According to Mathilde Dupré, Co-Director of the Veblen Institute:
“This report reveals the responsibility of European countries in establishing and maintaining an investment protection regime that is incompatible with states' current commitments to environmental protection and national security. The termination of intra-EU treaties and withdrawal from the Energy Charter Treaty have only partially reduced the risks that this system poses to our democracies. It is time to address the stock of older treaties held by EU Member States in order to reduce, in parallel, the risks faced by countries in the Global South.”

For Stéphanie Kpenou, Programme Officer for Trade Policy Reform at the Veblen Institute:
“France must seize the major opportunity offered by the upcoming conference in Colombia on transitioning away from fossil fuels to unlock investment protection constraints, starting with this sector.”

Notes

(1) The full report is available in English and French, and the results can be accessed online on this website.
(2) The report is jointly published by the Veblen Institute, Powershift (Germany), Global Justice Now and Trade Justice Movement (UK), TROCA (Portugal), Alliance Sud (Switzerland), CAN Europe and the European Coalition for Just Trade.
(3) The index ranks 30 European countries — the 27 EU Member States plus Norway, Switzerland and the United Kingdom — according to their structural involvement in the ISDS system. It adopts a home-state perspective, examining which treaty networks and economic actors feed the system as sources of ISDS claims. Ten indicators measure different dimensions of this involvement, ranging from the size of a country's treaty network to the number and financial scale of disputes initiated by its investors, as well as the fossil fuel assets covered by those treaties. Raw values were normalised, weighted to produce a composite score, and transformed onto a 0–10 scale, where a higher score indicates greater involvement in the ISDS system. The full methodology is available in the annex to the report.
(4) The EU has recently concluded several agreements containing investment protection chapters, including treaties with Canada, Singapore, Vietnam and Chile, pending ratification by Member States, as well as the EU–Mexico agreement pending ratification at EU level.
(5) See the UNCTAD online France page.
(6) See the report “Frozen Assets, Hot Claims: How Russian Oligarchs and Other Investors Use Investment Arbitration to Challenge Sanctions”, December 2025.
(7) See the Veblen Institute brief on the obstacles posed by investment arbitration to phasing out fossil fuels, published on the occasion of the Santa Marta Conference.

Residues of pesticides banned in the EU in imported food: ending a dangerous and unjust double standard

Mathilde Dupré & Stéphanie Kpenou — 2026-04-21T08:14:23Z

An independent legal opinion commissioned by the Veblen Institute, PAN Europe and foodwatch concludes that the EU practice of allowing residues of banned pesticides in imported food is highly questionable from an EU law perspective.

European consumers are exposed, through their food, to residues of hazardous pesticides banned on our market. Residues of at least 88 pesticide substances not approved in the EU are still allowed in imported products. Of these substances, 13% are classified as carcinogenic, mutagenic and toxic to reproduction (CMR) or as endocrine disruptors. Six PFAS pesticides, known as ‘forever chemicals', are also included among these substances (1).

Currently, when a pesticide is banned in the EU, its residue limits are not automatically lowered. Instead, the Commission sets import tolerances for pesticides used in third countries, or adopts residue limits set at international level by the Codex Alimentarius Commission.

In abriefing note, the three organisations outline the key points of the legal opinion and put forward proposals to address this shortcoming.

The findings confirm that, under the current EU legal provisions, the Commission not only has the power, but also the obligation to stop allowing these residues.

For pesticides banned on public health grounds, the practice of authorising residues of EU-banned pesticides is illegal. Import tolerances cannot apply to substances not authorised in the EU on public health grounds. Allowing such residues is contrary to the MRL Regulation, which requires the automatic deletion of MRLs following the revocation of an active substance in the EU. The EC's practice also breaches fundamental EU principles (the principle of regulatory equivalence and the principle of non-discrimination, which protects EU farmers from unfair competition from third-country producers).

The situation is more complex for pesticides banned on environmental grounds, as the MRL Regulation was originally designed to protect consumers. However, the Commission's recent measures regarding neonicotinoids show that change is possible within the current framework. A revision of the MRL Regulation to include environmental protection would strengthen future action. Furthermore, this regulation should also cover crops intended for animal feed, energy production and ornamental purposes.

The ‘omnibus' simplification package on food and feed safety proposes measures to address this situation. However, the proposal currently on the table is insufficient and largely symbolic. Under this proposal, the vast majority of banned pesticides would continue to enter the EU via food imports. It covers only a limited subset, representing around 22% of EU-banned substances (2). Furthermore, the omnibus significantly weakens the general legal framework governing pesticides and their residues. It is therefore unacceptable as it stands.

To address this long-standing shortcoming, the Omnibus Regulation must introduce a clear and binding obligation on the Commission to automatically ban residues of any pesticide not approved in the EU, regardless of the reason for the ban and for all food products. Any less stringent measure would perpetuate a system that knowingly allows harmful substances to end up on Europeans' plates and undermines the EU's own standards.

Notes
(1) List based on banned and restricted active substances included in the Prior Consent Inform (PIC) Regulation
(2) The Omnibus proposal covers active substances that are Carcinogenic, Mutagenic and Toxic for reproduction (CMR) Categories 1A/1B, Endocrine Disruptors for humans or non-target organism, Persistent Organic Pollutant (POP), Persistent, Bioaccumulative and Toxic (PBT), or very Persistent and very Bioaccumulative (vPvB). We calculated, on the basis of available data, that 20 of the 88 substances meet these criteria. While official lists exist for CMR substances and endocrine disruptors, no equivalent official list of PBT/vPvB substances has been established at EU level. This figure should therefore be treated as an estimate.

Unlocking the Investment Arbitration System to Phase Out Fossil Fuels

Mathilde Dupré & Stéphanie Kpenou — 2026-04-20T13:28:15Z

Investment arbitration is increasingly recognised as an obstacle to the implementation of ambitious climate policies by states. This issue will be on the agenda of the “First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels”, which will take place in Colombia from 24 to 29 April 2026 and will be co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands.

In this context, and as part of the consultation on the Brazilian COP Presidency Roadmap entitled “Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels” (TAFF), the Veblen Institute has prepared this brief to put forward several concrete proposals.

Removing protection for fossil fuel investments is an essential prerequisite to ensure that taxpayers do not bear the excessive costs of the transition by compensating fossil fuel investors — often under valuation methods highly favourable to them — for public policies aimed at phasing out fossil fuels and managing stranded assets.

Such removal of protection does not prejudge the trajectory or pace of the fossil fuel phase-out, which may legitimately vary from one country to another depending on their level of development and degree of dependence on fossil fuels.

In response to the call launched by more than 200 economists and academics, Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced on 23 March his intention to withdraw his country from the investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) system. European governments should seize the opportunity of the Santa Marta Conference to plan a coordinated exit from the current investment protection regime together with other participating countries.

Europe plays a pivotal role in the global ISDS architecture, particularly a small group of countries — the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, France and Switzerland — which account for a significant share of the treaties, disputes and climate risks generated by this system. This is what we demonstrate in our “Investment Arbitration Index: A Comparative Analysis of the Harmful Effects of Treaties Across 30 European Countries”, accompanied by an interactive “scoreboard” ranking 30 European countries according to the scale of their respective investment treaty networks, their actual use by investors, and their concrete impacts. The index is based on ten indicators, including the number of ISDS agreements signed, their use in sensitive sectors such as fossil fuels, and the amounts of compensation claimed and awarded.

Banking Regulation and Competitiveness of the EU Banking sector

Jézabel Couppey-Soubeyran & Wojtek Kalinowski — 2026-03-13T10:36:47Z

The European Commission's Call for Evidence frames the challenges facing the EU banking sector in terms of regulatory complexity, fragmentation, and burdens on competitiveness.

Our response draws on recent academic and policy research and is structured in 8 sections, each treating a specific aspect of the problem:
– The state of financial stability risks
– Links between capital requirements and competitiveness
– Sources of complexity in finance and financial regulation
– A critical assessment of the ECB's Buffer Simplification Proposal
– An alternative approach to simplification
– Relation between competitiveness of banks and the needs of the real economy
– Relation between bank competitiveness and sustainability objectives
– Financial risks linked to bank sector concentration

This response has been prepared as part of our “Money & Finance” program activities, supported by Charles-Léopold Mayer Foundation and European Climate Foundation.

Executive Summary

In our response to the European Commission's Call for Evidence on Competitiveness in the Single Banking Market, we challenge the framing that regulatory complexity and capital requirements are the primary obstacles to EU banking competitiveness. Drawing on recent research, we argue that complexity stems from financial innovation and from internal models used by banks in order to reduce effective capital requirements. A misconceived simplification agenda risks weakening financial stability without delivering the economic benefits promised. We propose simplification that eliminates redundancies, reduces regulatory arbitrage while preserving — in some areas strengthening — the prudential architecture built since 2008.

Financial stability risks remain elevated. Recent assessments by the IMF (October 2025), the ECB/ESRB (January and February 2026), and others indicate that financial stability risks remain elevated despite improved headline capital ratios. Growing interconnections between banks and non-bank financial intermediaries, stretched asset valuations, and geoeconomic fragmentation all argue for maintaining, not relaxing, prudential buffers. The Commission's assertion that “banks are well capitalised” understates both the complexity of the current risk environment and the heterogeneity hidden behind the average capitalisation level (large banks remain significantly less capitalised than smaller ones, even though they should be more so given their exposure to systemic risks).

Capital requirements do not undermine competitiveness. Our literature overview finds no evidence that capital requirements are the primary drag on bank competitiveness or lending. Better-capitalised banks tend to lend more steadily through cycles, support higher return on assets, and prove more resilient in stress episodes. The SVB failure of 2023 illustrates what regulatory rollback can produce. We propose that the debate be grounded in this independent evidence rather than in industry self-assessments.

Complexity originates in financial “innovation,” internal model discretion. Regulatory complexity has real costs, but its primary source is not excessive prudential ambition — it is the Internal Ratings-Based (IRB) approach, which allows large banks to use their own models to estimate capital requirements. This creates incentives for strategic underestimation of risk, undermines the level playing field, and generates the complexity that supervisors then struggle to manage. We propose that simplification efforts target this structural problem: replacing internal model discretion with transparent, standardised rules, rather than reducing overall capital levels.

The ECB's buffer simplification proposal would make the framework less legible and harder to activate. The ECB's December 2025 proposal to merge the countercyclical capital buffer (CCyB) and the systemic risk buffer (SyRB) into a single releasable instrument conflates two analytically distinct tools addressing cyclical and structural vulnerabilities respectively. This merger would make the framework less legible and harder to activate. We propose that buffer reform preserve the CCyB/SyRB distinction and prioritise more proactive CCyB deployment rather than instrument consolidation.

An alternative: simplify by eliminating internal model complexity. Genuine simplification without deregulation is possible. Le Quang (2025) identifies real redundancies: the LCR and NSFR could be consolidated into a single NSFR-based liquidity requirement. More substantially, replacing the risk-weighted capital ratio — dependent on manipulable internal models — with a well-calibrated simple leverage ratio would reduce complexity, improve transparency, and maintain loss-absorbing capacity. We propose these targeted reforms as a credible alternative to the deregulatory simplification currently on the table.

Bank competitiveness is not the same as economic competitiveness. We propose broadening the definition of “competitiveness” to encompass the banking system's capacity to finance long-term investment and the ecological transition, not only short-term returns.

Rolling back supervisory engagement with environmental risk is not financially neutral. We propose that the prudential framework's engagement with climate- and nature-related financial risks be maintained and strengthened.

Consolidation risks compounding systemic fragility. Conventional concentration metrics understate the true degree of concentration. We propose that any consolidation be subject to coordinated prudential and competition scrutiny with an explicit systemic risk assessment, and that structural questions about bank size and activity separation be reopened.

Frozen assets, hot claims: How sanctioned oligarchs & other investors sue over sanctions

Mathilde Dupré & Stéphanie Kpenou — 2025-12-09T00:11:36Z

After Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine, the EU, Ukraine itself and almost 20 other countries introduced wide-ranging economic sanctions against the Russian state. The sanctions also target companies and individuals closely linked to the regime and the war effort.
These sanctions are now being challenged by Russian oligarchs and companies in private tribunals using a mechanism written into investment treaties, known as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). While the cases are in early stages, they are already having a severe impact on EU sanction policy and Ukrainian national security policy.

A clear example is the current standoff over the use of immobilised Russian assets. The European Commission and most EU member states want to use 90 billion euros of Russian assets held at Euroclear to provide financial support to Ukraine. But the Belgian government, where Euroclear is located, has blocked the use of the funds
due to the risk of being sued.

Our analysis reveals that 24 publicly known ISDS cases have been initiated directly challenging sanctions against Russia, out of a total of 28 sanctions- related cases and threats. The cases challenging sanctions include:

The sanctioned Russian oligarch Mikhail Fridman is suing Luxembourg for 16 billion USD for freezing his assets;
Several Russian investors are initiating claims against Belgium over the freezing of Russian-held assets at Euroclear;
Investors are suing Ukraine in two separate cases over the removal of a Russian-linked bank from Ukraine's banking sector, for a combined amount of 1.4 billion USD.

Our analysis also shows that:

Overall, known ISDS claims and threats of claims by sanctioned individuals and entities already amount to 62 billion USD. This is getting close to the 70 billion USD of military assistance the EU has provided to Ukraine since 2022. The true figure is very likely to be significantly higher as in more than half the cases no information about the amounts claimed is available.
More than half of the ongoing, sanctions-related ISDS cases are against Ukraine. The others are targeting other European countries (Belgium, France, Lithuania, Luxembourg and the UK) and Canada.
Seven ISDS cases against Ukraine's sanctions and security policies are based on investment treaties with EU member states and a further two on the Ukraine-UK investment treaty. This shows that the investment treaties that European countries maintain with Ukraine have enabled sanctioned individuals and entities to directly challenge Ukraine's national security policy.
Russian oligarch Mikhail Fridman has filed five claims against sanctions-related measures and threatened a sixth case. Three of the five cases are targeting Ukraine, of which two are based on the investment treaty that Ukraine has with Belgium and Luxembourg and the other on one with the Netherlands.

Of the 24 cases challenging sanctions, 13 have been initiated in 2025 alone, highlighting how investors are increasingly resorting to ISDS to challenge the sanctions policy of Ukraine and its supporters.

The incompatibility of EU countries' investment treaties with EU sanctions policy was previously highlighted by the European Court of Justice in 2009. In three rulings against Austria, Sweden, and Finland, it found that capital transfer clauses in the three countries' investment treaties conflict with the Council's authority to unilaterally impose sanctions on third countries. However in the years since then, the countries and other EU Member States with similar clauses in their treaties have failed to remedy the situation. They have not renegotiated their treaties to include safeguards, nor have they cancelled them.

In view of the increasing weaponisation of investment treaties to weaken the European and Ukrainian sanctions policy, it is paramount that the EU and Ukraine adopt effective measures to neutralize ISDS risks.

Recommendations
In order to reduce risks for EU and Ukrainian national security and sanction policy and to prevent the outflow of money to sanctioned entities and investors, European policy makers should immediately:

Work with the Ukrainian government on a termination treaty for all investment treaties between European countries and Ukraine, including the elimination of the sunset clauses.
Cancel the 41 investment treaties with Russia and Belarus currently in force and that pose the most immediate danger to Europe's sanctions regime.
Extend the anti-ISDS provisions of the EU's 18th sanctions package to Ukraine. These are meant to limit the ability of sanctioned investors to pursue and enforce ISDS cases, and currently apply to EU countries and Switzerland. Extending to Ukraine should reduce the risk of further use of European investment treaties to challenge Ukraine's sanctions and national security policy.
Ensure that arbitral institutions hosted by or headquartered in EU Member States fully comply with EU law and the EU sanctions packages.
Leverage the EU's diplomatic influence to persuade third countries, such as Singapore, to adopt similar regulations denying legal effects to awards in favour of sanctioned investors (as Switzerland recently did).
Intervene in the ongoing cases against Ukraine and Member States with amicus curiae submissions.
Provide full transparency about the ongoing cases challenging sanctions and the sums involved, to enable policy makers and civil society to fully assess the threat the cases are posing.

Ukrainian policy makers should consider the following steps:

Work with their European counterparts on a termination treaty for the investment treaties between the European countries and Ukraine. This should follow the model the EU countries used to cancel investment treaties between each other. The cancellation would also be necessary if Ukraine accedes to the EU, since EU countries are not allowed to maintain investment treaties with each other.
Withdraw Ukraine from the Energy Charter Treaty and add Ukraine in the EU's interpretative declaration and inter-se agreement including the neutralisation of the sunset clause.
Provide full transparency about the ongoing cases against Ukraine and the sums involved to enable policy makers and civil society to fully assess the threat the cases are posing.

The findings above shed a new light on the risks posed by the controversial ISDS system, revealing that it endangers sovereignty over policy making even on national security matters. To safeguard their policy space, policy makers should therefore:

Undertake an assessment of how other policy priorities related to national security, taxation, climate and environmental protection and other public interest areas are threatened by ISDS provisions in BITs.
Remove ISDS from all existing treaties and stop signing new treaties with any form of ISDS.

Towards a green and transformative public procurement in the European Union : the case of electric cars

Madeleine Péron — 2025-11-14T12:09:45Z

Europe's green industrial transition is at a crossroads. The European Union is attempting to reconcile three demanding objectives at once : restoring industrial competitiveness, strengthening strategic autonomy, and accelerating decarbonisation. To do so, it is deploying a mix of regulatory, financial and trade instruments that mark a shift toward a more interventionist industrial policy—yet one whose contours remain unclear and whose tools are not always aligned.

Among these tools, public procurement stands out as both under-used and full of potential. Representing nearly 15% of EU GDP, procurement markets could become a powerful lever for steering European industry towards environmental, social and economic objectives. But using them strategically brings to the surface tensions between traditional procurement principles—primarily cost-efficiency and competition—and broader industrial ambitions such as resilience, sustainability, and supply-chain transformation.

This brief argues that these tensions can be constructively resolved, and illustrates how through the emblematic case of the automotive sector. If mobilised deliberately, public procurement can act as a catalyst for the transition : by making sustainability a core pillar of industrial strategy ; by treating the 2035 phase-out of internal combustion engines as a critical milestone requiring support for industrial adaptation ; and by reinforcing Europe's strategic autonomy through policies rooted in sufficiency, resource efficiency and the circular economy.

EU US Deal: possible courses of action for the EU Parliament

Mathilde Dupré & Stéphanie Kpenou — 2025-10-28T11:39:02Z

Since the beginning of his second term, Donald Trump has sought to reshape U.S. trade relations in order to reduce the country's trade deficit.

After announcing in April tariff hikes ranging from 11% to 50%, Donald Trump later scaled them back to 10% and imposed a 90-day ultimatum to conclude bilateral agreements.
Under this pressure, several countries — including the United Kingdom, Vietnam, Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and China — negotiated tariff reductions or stabilisations with the United States.

In an effort to appease the U.S. administration, the European Union likewise made a series of unilateral concessions:

At the end of June, the EU — together with the other G7 countries — agreed to exempt U.S. multinationals from the 15% global minimum tax provided for in Pillar 2 of the agreement finalised under the OECD framework in 2021.

On 27 July, Ursula von der Leyen and Donald Trump reached a political agreement on tariffs.

On 5 August, the European Commission (EC) adopted a regulation removing the additional tariffs that the EU was to impose on U.S. goods in response to Trump's unilateral tariffs on EU products.

On 21 August, the EC and the United States issued a Joint Statement announcing that they had agreed on a “Framework on an Agreement on Reciprocal, Fair, and Balanced Trade.”

Finally, on 28 August, the EC published two draft regulations to implement the EU's commitments on tariffs: one concerning the elimination of tariffs on lobster, and another providing for the elimination and reduction of tariffs on U.S. industrial and agricultural goods.

This note, based on a legal analysis conducted by Clémentine Baldon and Nikos Braoudakis, members of the Paris Bar, together with Juliette Robert (Baldon Avocats), analyses the content of the Joint Statement and the draft regulation on the elimination and reduction of tariffs on U.S. industrial and agricultural goods.
It identifies a series of incompatibilities with EU law and outlines possible courses of action for Members of the European Parliament.

Towards a green and transformative public procurement in the EU : the case of electric cars

2025-09-30T08:24:59Z

The European Union is currently facing a threefold challenge : the urgency of the climate crisis ; rising competition from China ; and, the need to preserve its industrial sovereignty. The automotive sector is at the center of this challenge.

In this context, public procurement is a powerful but still underused lever.In the car sector, the volumes may seem modest — around 2.5% of new registrations in countries like France and Germany — but public demand can still play a strategic role. It can set the example, create stable and predictable markets, and drive industry toward sustainability

French investment protection agreements: an obstacle to the ecological transition

Mathilde Dupré & Stéphanie Kpenou — 2025-07-16T22:30:00Z

The IPCC and IPBES have identified investment protection treaties as an obstacle to the implementation of ambitious public policies on climate and biodiversity. However, the issue remains largely overlooked by policymakers, who believe the problem has been resolved with the withdrawal from the Energy Charter Treaty.

France is party to 90 investment protection agreements with 94 countries, 84 of which are currently in force (6 have been terminated, but the survival clause remains active). The geographical reach of France's treaty network could expand further if the CETA agreement with Canada is eventually ratified.

These agreements protect a significant volume of fossil fuel investments
France ranks third among countries whose investment treaty network protects the largest amount of fossil emissions, according to a July 2024 study by E3G, with 188 million tonnes of potential CO₂eq emissions, or 9.4% of the global total.
Our new study reveals which treaties are the most protective in this regard. After the Energy Charter Treaty—which France withdrew from in 2023—the most impactful bilateral investment treaties (BITs) are those with the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, China, Nigeria, Iraq, Mozambique, Kazakhstan, Libya, Argentina, Namibia, and Russia. In these countries, French fossil fuel investments protected by investment treaties are likely to generate more than 5 Mt of CO₂eq annually.

Sanctioned Russian oligarchs are using these treaties to sue France

Severgroup and KN Holdings v. France (2021) involves two Russian investment firms owned by an internationally sanctioned oligarch. They filed a claim against France after the government refused to extend the open-pit gold mining concession in French Guiana (Montagne d'Or project). In July 2025, three civil society organisations (the Collectif des Premières Nations, the Organisation des Nations Autochtones de Guyane, and Guyane Nature Environnement) submitted amicus curiae observations before the international arbitral tribunal. (See our detailed case study)
A new case was registered in June 2025, based on the France–Armenia treaty. It opposes S. Karapetyan, a Russo-Armenian businessman and owner of one of Russia's largest industrial and construction conglomerates—Tashir Group—against France, following the seizure of his real estate assets under suspicion of money laundering.

Some agreements are particularly outdated

The BITs with Serbia and Montenegro (inherited from the 1974 France–Yugoslavia treaty) are non-reciprocal. They include a stabilisation clause protecting French investors from changes in national regulations and an unlimited survival clause that ensures the treaty remains in effect even after termination.
A large number of these treaties are retroactive, extending protection to investments made before the treaties were even signed.

France's treaty network is incompatible with EU law and international climate commitments, particularly:

Article 2.1(c) of the Paris Agreement, which requires financial flows to align with the climate objectives of the signatories.
Opinion 1/17 of the CJEU on CETA, which defined compatibility criteria absent from older treaties.
The European Parliament resolution on the future of EU international investment policy (June 2022).

For these reasons, the French High Council on Climate should assess the compatibility of these BITs with France's climate commitments.

The French government should also unilaterally terminate the 76 treaties whose initial terms have expired and plan to denounce the others as soon as it becomes legally feasible.

If France fails to act, the European Commission should call on France and other Member States to terminate these outdated BITs.

“French MEPs, MPs, and the government played a leading role in the battle over the Energy Charter Treaty, calling for ambitious reform and choosing withdrawal when that failed. But in the realm of investment protection, the ECT is just the tip of the iceberg. France still has a major clean-up to do with its stock of old treaties that pose the same, if not greater, challenges.”
— Stéphanie Kpenou, Advocacy Officer for EU Trade Policy Reform at the Veblen Institute

“These investment treaties are largely a legacy of decolonisation, designed to protect French corporate interests in the Global South. Today, they hinder and inflate the cost of climate, environmental and public health efforts, both in partner countries and in France. It is high time they were dismantled.”
— Mathilde Dupré, Co-director of the Veblen Institute