[EN] After the Rupture: EU-CPTPP Responses to a Changing Global Trading Order

As the multilateral engine stalls, can a coalition between the EU and CPTPP countries serve as an insurance policy for the rules-based global trading system?

Published on the eve of the fourteenth WTO Ministerial Conference (MC14), this new report addresses a profound crisis: the global trading system has moved from a period of gradual realignment into a an open rupture. Economic interdependence is being aggressively weaponised through tariffs and coercive statecraft, and major economies are increasingly sidelining core WTO obligations.

Open economies face a critical juncture: a descent into a fragmented system, or an order where might makes right. To navigate this radical uncertainty, the Jacques Delors Institute and the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po, in partnership with leading global institutions, convened experts to develop actionable proposals for the emerging EU-CPTPP Trade and Investment Dialogue. Collectively accounting for approximately one-third of global output and trade, the EU and CPTPP partners possess the market heft and regulatory reach necessary to shape this transition and anchor global confidence in rules-based trade.

Edited by Elvire Fabry, Arancha González Laya, and Nicolas Köhler-Suzuki, this report synthesises strategic pathways across four crucial pillars:

• Reforming Trade: Strategies for acknowledging and navigating severe WTO non-compliance, and why the EU-CPTPP dialogue requires a geopolitical strategy rather than conventional tariff bargaining.

• Resilient Trade: Frameworks for prioritizing « neutral » supply chain resilience and mitigating the second-order effects of economic coercion without raising unnecessary barriers among trusted partners.

• Digital Trade: Opportunities to bridge transatlantic and transpacific digital governance models, moving toward interoperable frameworks that expand disciplines into frontier areas like artificial intelligence and financial technology.

• Sustainable Trade: Pathways to elevate climate ambition and align sustainable development architectures, including the use of joint interpretive instruments to embed environmental commitments within the EU-CPTPP framework.

Contributors: Tim Groser, Alejandro Jara, Lorand Bartels, Ignacio García Bercero, Per Altenberg, Sébastien Jean, Wolfgang Alschner, Rodrigo Polanco, Yuka Fukunaga, Markus W. Gehring.