Trading Places: The New Dynamics of EU Trade Policy Under the Treaty of Lisbon

After nearly a decade of fits and starts, the Treaty of Lisbon, providing for a reformed institutional framework for the European Union (EU), entered into force on December 1, 2009. With it came a number of critical but little noticed changes in the area of European trade policy. This policy brief broadly outlines these changes and argues that a good understanding of the new EU trade policy regime will be essential for Europe’s trading partners and their trade experts and policy makers, as EU institutional reform will result in substantial shifts in the process and substance of EU bilateral and multilateral trade and investment regimes.