Europe & Eurasia

Western Balkans leaders agree to bold actions to help region recover from COVID pandemic

The Western Balkans Partnership Summit advances regional economic cooperation to attract investment and accelerate recovery

Western Balkans Partnership Summit: Chair’s conclusions

Leaders from the Western Balkans Six met to agree on bold, practical actions to help the region emerge stronger together from the impact of COVID-19 with greater regional economic development opportunities. Specifically, they agreed to accelerate free movement of goods, services, capital, and people in the region, eliminating barriers that have hindered economic growth; and to pursue an investment plan to attract new foreign direct investment in the region and accelerate the deployment of committed COVID-19 recovery funds, with a focus on infrastructure and energy.

Zelenskyy’s bad economics: Inflation and devaluation will not help Ukraine grow

By Anders Åslund

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s policymakers are causing concern by flirting with the dangerous idea that high inflation and substantial currency devaluation can boost economic growth.

The EU must begin to show Turkey some respect

By Ambassador Faruk Kaymakcı

Turkey, the EU, and the United States have more in common than we do not in common, and the stakes are higher than anyone in these crazy times seems to understand. It is now high time that the EU and its member states treated Turkey as an accession-negotiating candidate and a strategic partner rather than as a rival.

“Mr. Jones” film exposes the fake news campaign behind Stalin’s Ukrainian genocide

By Serhii Plokhii

"Mr. Jones" is an important historical drama that sheds long overdue light on Stalin's man-made famine in 1930's Ukraine. The famine killed millions but remains relatively unknown among international audiences.

What happened to transatlantic cooperation on WTO reform?

By Marie Kasperek

Contrary to the transatlantic aspirations on WTO reform in the summer of 2018, there is now less cooperation, more setbacks, and a bleak outlook for at least the rest of 2020.

Perfect competition: Getting a US-EU trade deal was never going to be easy

By Julia Friedlander

US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer recently criticized the EU for negotiating seventy-seven individual trade agreements globally. What was more striking in this comment was not the criticism of Brussels, but what that number revealed about the transatlantic dilemma. Europe can take home ancillary prizes but the golden goose—an agreement with the United States—remains out of reach.

Two years after Rose Garden deal, Europe prefers to wait it out

By Bart Oosterveld

Two years after the Juncker-Trump summit, a realistic scenario for transatlantic trade discussions in the next few years is progress on minor aspects. Think of lullaby topics like closer alignment of insurance regulation. With such political uncertainty, policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic will hope for agreements that the press tunes out quickly and make sure that farmers do not block the access roads to Paris.

Europe and the US should remember their Rose Garden intellectual property pledge

By Marc L. Busch

While progress on protecting intellectual property since the summit has been disappointing, it still provides a compelling opportunity for the United States and Europe to join forces to protect this key economic freedom.

The curious case of the US Treasury and Gaz Group

By Brian O’Toole

The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) very quietly issued two extensions of general licenses on July 22 related to Vladimir Putin-tied oligarch Oleg Deripaska’s Gaz Group that, while apparently going unnoticed, constitute a significant change in the sanctions on Gaz, which can now seemingly operate according to something like business as usual.