Directorate-General for Trade

"In a globalised world Europe's trade policy must become an integral part of its wider approach to economic reform and competitiveness. A stronger EU economy at home means Europe has to be more competitive abroad. We need to open markets and create new opportunities for trade and ensure European companies are able to compete fairly in those markets.

The changes in the global economic order today are as significant for the world economy and international relations as the end of the Cold War. Global economic integration is quickening, driven by growing trade, falling transportation costs, and a revolution in information and communications technology. This is creating opportunities for growth and for development on an unprecedented scale. But it is also putting new pressures on global resources and creating new competition for EU workers and industries. It has eroded some old certainties and aroused new fears.

The answer to these fears is not to close ourselves off or to seek to stop change. We cannot pull the blanket over our heads. We need strong economies to preserve the fiscal base of the social models that we regard as an integral part of European life. In a global economy, strong economies are competitive economies. And competitive economies are built on trade.

We need to adapt the tools of EU trade policy to these new challenges, to ensure Europe remains open to the world and other markets open to our trade. More than ever, Europe needs to import to export; to trade in order to grow. Our supply chains are global. We need to be open so that we can insist on openness from others.

In 2005, the renewed Lisbon strategy set out the steps we must take within the European Union to deliver growth and jobs. This internal agenda must be complemented with an external agenda for improving European competitiveness in the global economy. Rejection of protectionism at home should be accompanied by activism in opening markets abroad.

Under the Global Europe framework, in Autumn 2006 and Spring 2007, I will set the agenda for EU trade policy with a series of linked strategies on market access, trade defence instruments, protection of intellectual property rights, EU policy on China and a new generation of bilateral trade agreements to complement the EU's commitment to the WTO."

— Peter Mandelson