Trade agreements
The EU currently has the largest trade agreement network in the world, with over 40 individual agreements with more than 70 countries. These agreements facilitate trade in goods and services between the EU and its external partners.
New agreements continue to be added to the network, while and older agreements are reviewed and updates negotiated with the partner countries.
Tariff elimination
Some of the agreements focus mainly on tariff elimination:
- Association Agreements with the eight Mediterranean countries (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestinian Occupied Territory and Tunisia)
- Agreements with Mexico and Chile
- Economic Area Agreements with Iceland, Lichtenstein and Norway;
- Customs Unions with Türkiye, Andorra and San Marino
- Stabilisation and Association Agreements with the six Western Balkan countries (Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North-Macedonia and Serbia) containing additional provisions to prepare for their progressive integration into the EU market
- Agreements with Switzerland and Faroe Islands.
More comprehensive market access
Other agreements include much broader commitments on opening up trade in goods and services, as well as investment, public procurement, competition, subsidies and regulatory issues:
- Canada
- Central America (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama)
- Colombia, Ecuador and Peru
- Singapore
- South-Korea
- Vietnam.
These agreements aim to develop stronger rules-based and values-based trade regimes with the trading partners concerned and include specific provisions on trade and sustainable development.
Recent agreements have also specific provisions to address the challenges faced by modern economies and societies, such as the Economic Partnership Agreement with Japan, which includes a chapter on small and medium-sized enterprises and specific provisions on information and telecommunications services and e-commerce.
Legal approximation
A specific type of agreements concentrates on the tightening of economic links between the EU and its neighbours by bringing their regulatory frameworks closer to EU law, notably in trade-related areas. This is true for instance for the agreements with:
Development
Another special type of agreement has an explicit development objective. These are asymmetric trade agreements in which the concerned African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries liberalise around 80% of trade over a period of 15 to 20 years, while the EU grants duty-free, quota-free access from day one.
Most of these agreements cover trade in goods and development cooperation. The Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the Caribbean also includes provisions on services, investment and other trade-related topics.
Under these agreements, the EU provides substantial trade-related assistance to help partner countries in implement the agreements, strengthen export competitiveness and develop economic infrastructure. The countries concerned belong to the ACP group:
- West Africa (Ghana, Ivory Coast)
- Central Africa (Cameroon)
- Eastern and Southern Africa (Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles and Zimbabwe)
- Southern African Development Community (Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa)
- Cariforum (Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago)
- Pacific (Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and Solomon Islands).