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Open RAN is increasingly becoming the answer to how to diversify 5G networks and beyond, especially in the light of a potential exclusion of China's participation in western networks. In recent times, the US and Japan have jointly pledged $4.5 billion to support its development. Much - or perhaps entirety - of this support is predesignated for the O-RAN Alliance, a closed-door and private industry consortium. State interventionism is back - in a sector hereto characterised by open western markets and free competition. The public support currently pledged to the O-RAN consortium bear many resemblances to the Chinese government's attempt to support TD-SCDMA, a unique standard for the Chinese market that was designed to support local vendors. Its use was a pre-condition for public subsidies for R&D or public procurement. As recent as 2020, the US Trade Representative reported on China's standard-setting practices and subsidies as one of the world's worst trade barriers. Those who advocate similar support in the West are either indifferent or nescient about how EU and US trade negotiators worked to address subsidies and opaque standard-setting. It is an open question whether the US and Japan will offer a level-playing field to European vendors - or non-O-RAN members who may develop their own Open RAN variants. Nowadays, Chinese scholars and senior officials openly talk of "TD-style innovation" as a disaster for the nation that delayed China's rollout of 4G and plunged the economy into a performance and innovation lag. A key lesson for policymakers today is how vendors that cannot survive without subsidies will not optimise the organisation for innovation but public grant-seeking. This is an eerie warning for the 5G debate in some western capitals.

The European Green Deal, the flagship initiative of the incumbent European Commission, aims to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 55% by 2030 (from the current target of cutting 40% of 1990 levels) by overhauling fiscal, trading and regulatory regimes. Brussels is well-placed to deliver the interregional distribution or the minutiae of technical regulations that this challenge calls for. Energy diversification is also central to EU competitiveness and strategic autonomy. But this initiative is not costless: its official impact assessment points to a GDP loss of additional -0.3 to -0.7%, by 2030, relative to the previous level of ambition. The full loss could be up to -2.5%. These costs are also unevenly, and the inability to cushion asymmetrical shocks have nearly torn the Union apart in the past. A carbon-neutral Europe could also make losers out of today's winners among stakeholders and give the EU a significantly different industrial structure, forcing over-exporting Northern Europe into reforms that are probably overdue. Most importantly, the gap between the financing needed and the financing available is unprecedented. The success of the European Green Deal and a cost-efficient transition hinge on the rapid and effective mobilisation of investments - as the diffusion period for new energy-related technology is 40-50 years. Therefore, a smart climate policy does not just distribute costs and investments between different groups, but also over time: The investments are needed now, if we are to reap their benefits before 2050.

This policy brief explores the implications of Open RAN concept and its technical and political developments in the mobile network industry. Open RAN is not necessarily a new technology in itself, but represents a combination of existing technologies, e.g. virtualisation, AI, commercial off-the-shelf parts and open interfaces. Its proponents promise more secure networks without 'high-risk vendors' but Open RAN could introduce new systemic risks that must be addressed due to its reliance on open source software. While the proponents also promise significantly reduced costs, it is still inconclusive whether Open RAN in itself reduces the total costs of deploying a 5G network. Economic evidence shows that the equipment market is a buyers' market due to a higher concentration amongst operators. The number of vendors is less critical for prices than the relative power between buyers and sellers. The network equipment market is the only ICT segment where the EU manufacturers are still global leaders. If various industry consortiums call for subsidies, the EU has the commercial policy instruments to countervail against them. Some industry voices suggest that a certain Open RAN specification could replace existing global specifications under 3GPP. However, as today's market condition is not caused by the 3GPP standardisation, a solution is not to be found through developing alternative technical specifications. 3GPP is also more comprehensive than RAN. Thus, the question is whether Europe should try to sustain one common global umbrella of standards - or see the world balkanise into national or regional standards from 6G and onward. For better or worse, there will be regional fragmentation. The EU industrial policy could be facing a reality where network standards are politicised for commercial reasons - to pave way for an indigenous industry - which is unrelated to national security objectives. Also, EU operators may not react well if Open RAN open the door for cloud services to encroach into the telecom market. In conclusion, Open RAN has a raison d'etre as a promising new concept, even if it does not solve any geopolitical gambits. However, the EU have little to gain from government interventions in the RAN segment, which is just one element of the mobile network market.

Given the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and several intra-Asian agreements, the EU is focused on large-sized free trade agreements (FTAs) to avoid trade diversion and to maintain Europe's ability to set the trade policy agenda. The EU is now negotiating with all TPP countries except Australia, New Zealand and Brunei, a blind spot worth US$1.5 trillion in GDP. The idea of an FTA with New Zealand already enjoys the support of key EU Member States. New Zealand is consistently ranked number one on economic and personal freedom indices, and despite accounting for only 0.2% of EU external trade, New Zealand's economy is still on par with previous EU FTA partners like Peru and Vietnam. Measured in final consumption, New Zealand is larger than Chile, Malaysia and Singapore. Agriculture is a sensitivity for some Member States in any trade negotiation. However, the EU has already liberalised New Zealand's key export items such as sheep meat and wool. On other meats, New Zealand pays half the regular duties. Products with full duties have either strong seasonal complementarities or specialisation, notably on kiwifruit and dairy, and none of New Zealand exports are amongst European sensitivities, e.g. grains or sugar. The existing duty-free treatments and complementarities make a case for an agreement negotiated with relative ease: If an FTA cannot be done with New Zealand, it cannot be done at all. (.)

Ineffectual legal-assistance cooperation increasingly prompts governments to apply laws extraterritorially or to force data localisation, with dire consequences for the free flow of data and the global economy. As a result, different layers of national laws counteract and sometimes contradict one another. In response, governments conclude bilateral and multilateral treaties to resolve the problem of online crime and law enforcement. In judiciary co-operation, there are so-called mutual legal assistance treaties (MLATs) that provide for cross-border legal enforcement. Some international treaties, most notably the Council of Europe's Convention on Cybercrime, go beyond MLATs and seek to harmonise criminal laws of the signatories. Finally, bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) ensures that these legal measures are not disproportionate and trade barriers on legitimate commercial activities. The paper argues for the necessity to build a framework with stricter standards for legal assistance and stronger safeguards to protect civil liberties, human rights, rule of law and core principles of transparency. In turn, improved co-operation and safeguards make unilateral measures (such as data localisation requirement) superfluous - thus, the protocol would also incorporate negative rules that are often found in FTAs, to prevent governments from enacting such measures that re-territorise the internet.

Services liberalisation has perhaps suffered from the deadlock of the WTO more than any other area of trade. As the discussions of a potential plurilateral agreement amongst a select group of countries continue, more questions are raised than answered. In a new policy brief by Hosuk Lee-Makiyama, he argues that approximately half of the trade costs are amongst those who are likely to join the plurilateral, while those in the other half - the emerging economies - remain unaddressed. For the EU however, China is the only player that is outside a plurilateral or FTA talks.

Despite being an agreement designed for the fastest developing sectors, the signatories of the Information Technology Agreement (ITA) in the World Trade Organization (WTO) have so far failed to re-negotiate the coverage of the ITA (concluded in 1996) due to a longstanding dispute amongst its members. Since then, a new digital economy has been established and several products have been developed or merged with others, become obsolete, or turned into services. Supply chains in the ICT sector have become fragmented, and gains from increases in productivity and welfare benefits have benefitted the developing economies. The WTO framework is struggling to keep up with these new challenges but the lack of progress risks turning the ITA into an obsolete agreement at the same time as the deadlock contributes to the proliferation of bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs). Nevertheless, FTAs cannot replace a "critical mass" agreement with near-full participation under the auspices of the WTO - an agreement that would be very costly for WTO members to stand outside and also make the complex rules of origin obsolete for the complex ICT products. This working paper proposes a "future-proofing" of the ITA by suggesting the creation of an International Digital Economy Agreement (IDEA) that could expand the current agreement by 40% compared to today's levels: Expansion of the product coverage based on two-tier criteria: inclusion of all products that register, store, process, communicate or render information; and that use digital technology. Many tariff line commitments should be made on category (four-digit) level instead of product-by-product basis. Future additions in the categories would then be included automatically and could only be excluded through negotiations. Establishment of a new system of mutual recognition on product-by-product basis, complemented by a general acceptance of supplier declaration of conformity (SDoC). Encompassment of services trade in computer and related services (CRS, where critical mass should already exist) and telecommunication services. New technologies and developments, like cloud computing, managed services or increasing number of products that depend on online access call for revision of existing protocols. The sector strives on borderless use of competence, and mode 4 is also a key interest of developing economies. Therefore there is a strong political and economic rationale for including intra-corporate transfers and quotas on temporary movement of workers (mode 4) replacing economic needs tests (ENTs) and other barriers. Finally, the membership of the International Digital Economy Agreement could be expanded. There are six priority economies for membership - Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Russian Federation and South Africa. These account for 6.7 % of ICT trade but they are also key players in the Doha round, suggesting that the plurilateral agreement could soon develop the same complications as multilateral negotiations.

A new trade war is looming as the EU is now embarking on its first countervailing duty (CVD) against Chinese subsidies over coated fine paper. As the EU gives a significant amount of subsidies to local production, China is not short of sectors to retaliate against - especially as the evidence in the paper case is weak: The share of Chinese exports is yet too small to inflict any injury on EU producers, and China holds less than 4% of the EU market; alleged subsidies through grants, subsidised electricity, VAT and tax rebates have little impact on the final price; and the main argument is based on an assumption that Chinese commercial banks are state owned and are thereby public bodies. Given the risk for retaliation, CVDs are a risky and costly means to buy time for sunset industries and as CVDs alone cannot remove subsidies in the target country, they are therefore often inferior to a WTO dispute. This calls for a new policy on CVDs where the EU only addresses urgent cases of serious injury against unsubsidised sectors with high value-added and where the EU represents a significant market share. China directs most of its subsidies to strategic emerging industries, and even amongst these sectors only a handful live up to these criteria.

This study considers how best to maintain a globally thriving EU car sector in the face of several interrelated challenges. The climate emergency necessitates a dramatic reduction in emissions to net-zero impacting across the economy, which leads to a fundamental shift in automotive products and therefore manufacturing, given electrification and digitalisation. Moreover, there is a greater emphasis on the need of preserving and restructuring the auto industry in the face of increased competition from the emerging markets, not least China and India. In trade policy, Europe feels the need for a more assertive and autonomous trade policy to protect against perceived imbalances in the current models of globalisation. Much has been written about the individual building blocks of each of these points. Our aim is to consider the cumulative impact of the initiatives, the risks they may entail, and how these can best be managed, on a single industry that is often at the nexus of climate, trade and industry policy debates.

In August 2018, the government of Australia concluded its review of the national security risks of the telecom sector with the new 5G networks. The review provides new guidance to telecom carriers, implicitly restricting Chinese vendors. It concludes that 5G changes how the networks operate and increase the potential security risks to the point today's safeguards are insufficient. The government must therefore intervene, as foreign powers may exploit these risks by coercing vendors. The current rise in national security restrictions in the telecom sectors are different from the typical run-of-the-mill economic protectionism as they are imposed by countries that have no domestic suppliers to protect. Instead, the root of these measures is fundamentally about distrust between governments with conflicting geopolitical agendas, rather than just trustworthiness of the vendors. The situation is not too dissimilar to the US online services after the NSA revelations in 2013. In effect, future security screenings will assess other governments - i.e. the ability of a foreign state to exercise control over its vendors, rather than assess the vendors themselves. Some legal frameworks, such as the US reforms of Cfius or the EU's proposed new FDI screening framework, already point towards such directions.

The EU is hoping to revive the negotiations for a region-to-region agreement with the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), but few trading partners have faced such inauspicious fate as its members. The trade agreement with Singapore is concluded but remains unsigned and the EU Member States do not seem to be in a hurry to ratify the EU-Vietnam agreement due to the prospects of rejection by the European Parliament over labour issues. There is a proposal by the European Parliament to effectively stop the use of palm oil in biodiesels under the new Renewable Energy Directive (RED-II), which has caused Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand to threaten trade retaliation against multiple EU exporters and the termination of both bilateral and regional trade negotiations. Given existing jurisprudence any such differentiated treatment or selective exclusion of one crop would not comply with WTO law, exposing the EU to a time-consuming WTO dispute. Moreover, military rule in Thailand, reports of human rights violations in the Philippines under President Duterte or atrocities in Myanmar will inevitably complicate both bilateral and EUASEAN negotiations. In Europe, much of the policy work undertaken in the current political term is dedicated to restoring the mandate and win back public trust for trade policy. The EU is weakened politically and has little wriggle room for concessions internally. The EU is demanding more, while offering less, in its international negotiations. The European Parliament shifts EU trade policy towards unilateral and short-term interests rather than a trade policy that could enable long-term political reforms and support the EU's long-term geo-economic interests. Europe's engagement with the ASEAN countries and the promotion of WTO rules, human rights and sustainability calls for a long-term approach which requires patience.

The election of Trump into the Oval Office is much of a non-event for EU trade-policy detail, possibly even the TTIP: they have been deteriorating for years. Europe and the global trading system can survive new trade frictions and creeping protectionism, but a Trump that wants to go radical will make everyone miserable.

This policy brief outlines the chronology of the developments since Edward Snowden leaked the documents on large-scale electronic surveillance, including PRISM and Tempora programmes, the policy implications and the public's response. It concludes that the nature of the debate has shifted from a legal and constitutional issue about US surveillance, to a global concern. The revelations have led to divergent attitudes towards surveillance operations, with Britain and other Anglophone countries on one side, and others in Europe and Brazil and in Asia judging intelligence activity more critically (but at times disingenuously). There is also a growing opposition from telecom companies and Internet providers in the US to being forced to pass on the personal data collected during their commercial operations to the government. At this stage, the gulf between security needs and the privacy rights of individuals, both Americans and others, is as wide as ever. However, European attempts to promote data privacy rules as a safeguard against electronic surveillance proved to be unsuccessful, as the rules were not designed for that purpose and comes at disproportionately high costs. So were attempts to leverage on TTIP negotiations, especially as Europe is the demandeur of that FTA - not the US. Data privacy rules are also regulatory barriers in the eyes of trade negotiators, proven by the EU's own offensive stance in its prior FTAs.

While there is an increasing demand for a discipline in the next generation FTAs that restricts SOEs in international trade, there is less debate on the proliferation of sovereign patent funds (SPFs) that are increasingly using intellectual property to engage in discriminatory industrial policy in an attempt to augment the competitiveness of ailing national champions against foreign competition. Some SPFs, like France Brevets, even admit to being retaliatory or discriminatory instruments against foreign actors regardless of whether the original claim is legitimate or not. Such use of intellectual property by government controlled entities threatens to become a new trade defense instrument like anti- dumping or countervailing duties. However, such mercantilist tactics by mid-sized economies are futile, as they only serve to legitimise similar behavior by bigger economies like China that are actively pursuing industrial policy through defensive use of patents through R&D funding, public procurement, competition policy - and the establishment of their own SPFs. This calls for different priorities on SOE disciplines in next-generation FTAs such as TTIP or TPP. In fact, it makes little sense to argue over SOE exports while refraining from counteracting the potentially more disrupting and systemic effects of SPFs that also spill over on innovation as well as the global trading system.

Given the unsatisfactory deployment of fibre based Next Generation Access (NGAs) networks in the EU, the European Commission proposes in a draft recommendation from December 2012 that wholesale prices for access to the copper networks should be between €8-10. This means that the former monopolists who own the copper networks would be allowed to continue to charge high wholesale prices, or even substantially increase their charges to competitors in the coming ten years. The objective is to incentivise and compensate for the necessary investments to reach the ambitious goals of the Digital Agenda to expand bandwidth and improve connectivity in the EU. However, this policy is based on a series of erroneous assumptions - to begin, there is no evidence for unprecedented capacity shortages ahead, or that the market mechanisms and current pace of technological up- grade will not be able to cope with them. Furthermore, a shift towards the gradual deployment of fibre (under so-called FTTC) is less costly yet can reach similar speeds as envisioned under FTTH and will render any compensation for risk or investment unnecessary. However, fixing wholesale prices would limit competition that is the key driver for investments. It would remove incentives for competitors to deploy fibre and risk the re-monopolisation of the future broadband market. Yet no additional investments would be created, as funds are simply moved from one operator to another. Instead, the EU needs to either incentivise demand or investments in a non-discriminatory manner consistent with the values of the Single Market.