Let's create a new World Trade Organization - Von der Leyen

Published connected 26/06/2025 - 19:03 GMT+2•Updated 27/06/2025 - 7:15 GMT+2

At Thursday’s EU acme successful Brussels, European leaders discussed nan anticipation of overhauling nan WTO’s organization framework, including its stalled conflict solution mechanisms, to amended bespeak nan existent world waste and acquisition landscape.

“The WTO hasn’t worked for years,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said successful a property convention pursuing nan summit, referencing persistent dysfunction nether some nan Trump and Biden administrations.

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen presented leaders pinch different options of waste and acquisition deals, labelling arsenic nan astir charismatic a person practice betwixt nan EU and members of nan Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a location waste and acquisition pact of 11 Pacific Rim countries and nan UK.

She introduced nan inaugural arsenic a imaginable first measurement toward reshaping nan world waste and acquisition order.

“I said that we tin deliberation astir this arsenic nan opening of redesigning nan WTO—of course, knowing what should beryllium reformed positively wrong it,” von der Leyen told reporters aft nan summit.

She stressed nan value of learning from nan WTO’s shortcomings and showing nan world that “free waste and acquisition based connected rules” remains achievable pinch a wide group of consenting partners.

“This is simply a task we should genuinely prosecute in. CPTPP and nan European Union—that’s my team,” she said, adding that nan EU must return nan lead successful managing this initiative.

Asked whether nan United States should beryllium involved, von der Leyen replied: “As acold arsenic I understand, nan Americans near nan CPTPP astatine a definite point.”

This is not nan first effort to circumvent nan WTO’s paralysis. As a stopgap measure, 57 WTO members, including nan UK, Paraguay, and Malaysia, person joined nan Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement (MPIA), a system that replicates nan WTO Appellate Body’s functions for participating members.

However, nan MPIA covers only 57.6% of world waste and acquisition and does not reside nan broader organization crisis.

The WTO has been efficaciously paralysed since December 2019, erstwhile nan US began blocking appointments to nan Appellate Body, rendering nan two-tier conflict colony strategy non-functional.

Major waste and acquisition negotiations—such arsenic those connected eliminating harmful fisheries subsidies and reforming agricultural rules—remain stalled owed to entrenched positions from cardinal members, including nan US, China, Japan, and nan EU itself.

With fewer signs of resolution, nan WTO’s early relevance is progressively being called into question.