Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The EU trade ministers met in person in Council on 20 May in Brussels. I was pleased to participate in my capacity as Minister with responsibility for trade. The meeting had a full agenda, which included debate and draft conclusions on the EU trade policy review, preparations for the World Trade Organization ministerial conference later this year, EU-US trade relations, updates on the EU steel safeguards and the EU Mercosur agreement and progress with the negotiations on an EU international procurement instrument.

We discussed the Union's contribution to the reform of the World Trade Organization and preparations for the next Ministerial Conference, known as MC12. This is scheduled to take place from 30 November to 3 December this year. MC12 will chart the course of work for the member-led organisations for the succeeding 18 to 24 months.

Ministers and the European Commission, which lead the international trade negotiations for the European Union 27, agreed that we would seek to play a leadership role in pursuing outcomes on a range of files, including trade and health and trade and sustainability as well as a roadmap for urgent reform of the World Trade Organization. The restoration of the dispute settlement function is an objective for Ireland.

We debated EU-US trade relations and the prospect for a more positive transatlantic relationship with the new US Biden-Harris administration. We focused on progress in resolving the transatlantic trade disputes relating to Airbus and Boeing as well as steel and aluminium disputes, which are adversely affecting several sectors in Ireland given our strong trade volumes with the US. I believe Ireland can act as a bridge between the US and Europe in solving some of these issues.

We held separate discussions with the US trade representative, Katherine Tai, by videoconference and the new WTO Director-General, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, in person. While held in private, the meetings encouraged me to believe that we are back on a pathway to restoring the WTO to the heart of a multilateral rules based international order when it comes to trade. The US is seeking to work in partnership with the EU again to make that happen and to remove barriers to open rules-based free trade, especially insofar as anti-competitive practices by non-market economies are concerned.

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