시역_무역경제_배소영

[배소영]

시역_무역경제_배소영.docx

28.70KB

본 연설문은 Sabine Weyand EU 집행위 통상총국장의 연설문 일부를 편집한 것이며 주요 내용은 국제 무역의 변화된 환경에 대한 EU의 대응으로, 무역 다변화를 통한 경제 안보 및 경쟁력 강화가 강조되고 있습니다.

글로서리는 표를 참고하시거나 본문 고유명사 옆 대응어를 참고하시어 시역하시면 되겠습니다.

Speech by Director-General Sabine Weyand: Trade policy in a changing world

A speech on 'Trade policy in a changing world', delivered by DG Trade Director-General Sabine Weyand at the ECIPE and Europe Unlocked conference in Brussels, Belgium on 14 May.

분류	연설문	분량	지문 1개(1297 단어)
연사	Director-General Sabine Weyand
일시	14 May 2024
링크	(Script) https://policy.trade.ec.europa.eu/news/speech-director-general-sabine-weyand-trade-policy-changing-world-2024-05-14_en

Glossary

Part 1
1	Leitmotiv	라이트모티프
2	Marrakesh Agreement	마라케시 협정
3	World Trade Organization (WTO)	세계무역기구
4	FTA network	FTA 네트워크
5	European Economic Security Strategy	유럽 경제 안보 전략

Thank you for the invitation to today’s conference.

Now as you know, this year we transition towards a new political cycle in the European Union, following the elections of the European Parliament in June. And this year there are elections taking place also in many other countries.

It should therefore not come as a surprise that change will be a Leitmotiv (라이트모티프[소배1] ) of my speech today.

I will focus on the fast-changing circumstances of international trade and the growing complexity of it all, and in particular on the following three elements:

I will start by looking back at how the world of global trade has changed over the past five years.

Then I will talk about the new trends we see coming in the next years that are likely to affect our trade policy.

Finally, in the third part of my presentation, I will try to look ahead, by focusing on the practical trade policy implications of our new environment.

Changed environment of international trade – and how we adapted trade policy

So, first on the changed environment for international trade. It has now been almost exactly three decades since the conclusion of the Marrakesh Agreements (마라케시 협정), which established the World Trade Organization (세계무역기구). And what a different world we live in today!

For decades, we have taken many things for granted: for example, the benefits of interdependence, the pursuit of efficiency, and the strength of rules-based cooperation.

We saw how international trade and investment have expanded, through trade liberalisation both in the framework of the WTO (세계무역기구) and in the form of bilateral and regional trade agreements, but also by way of autonomous trade liberalisation measures.

But today, we are facing a new environment:

The US and China find themselves in an intense geopolitical rivalry, and this has repercussions on international trade as well as on international cooperation.

The recent crises over the last few years – notably the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, but now also the latest developments in the Middle East – have disrupted global supply chains and added more strains on international trade relations.

Due to these growing tensions in geopolitics and the resulting supply chain disruptions, we have clearly (and unsurprisingly) seen an inward turn of economic policies, including in the EU – a paradigm shift, from a focus on efficiency to a desire for more resilience and ‘economic security’.

In this context, mutual economic interdependence is nowadays often seen as a risk, rather than an opportunity.

I would like to emphasise three ways in which this new environment has tested and affected trade policy:

First, we were encouraged to see how effective our diversified global trade network was in helping to absorb major recent shocks.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, after initial restrictions by national governments, it became clear that we needed to use our open trade links and supply chains, to effectively fight disruptions. Without our open trade links, we would not have been able to ensure vaccine production, or the supply of protective equipment. As a result, since the pandemic, diversification through open trade has become a core component of strategies towards greater resilience of supply chains.

A few years later, we faced the enormous task of transitioning away from Russian energy supplies, following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Also in this context, we have clearly benefitted from the EU’s diverse global trade relations. We have boosted our energy imports from several other countries, as we were diversifying away from Russia, in the context of EU sanctions and Russian countermeasures.

These two examples are very clear reminders that our diversified trade ties are efficient in responding to policy shocks.

Second, we have engaged with partners across the globe, through trade agreements and other platforms to increase the competitiveness and resilience of European companies by securing their access to critical inputs and seeking export opportunities for them.

As a result, the European Union is today a global leader in international trade: we have free trade agreements with 74 countries, covering over 44% of our external trade. The EU is the number one trading partner for 54 countries globally, which together represent 48% of the world’s GDP.

During the past five years, we have further developed our FTA network (FTA 네트워크) and we have deployed new ways of deepening ties with our partners – because we know that flexibility in our approach is more important today than ever. There can be no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to trade relations with our various partners.

We have also reinforced our efforts on the implementation of our agreements, to make sure that EU businesses can really reap the benefits of these deals. We resolved 140 trade barriers fully or partially, in more than 30 countries, over the past five years. This helps boost EU exports in sectors such as agri-food, pharmaceuticals and health.

Third, the international context has made us more assertive, as we aim to preserve the EU's economic openness, when others try to abuse it. Let’s make no mistake: assertiveness is a pre-requisite for keeping our markets open.

We have updated and expanded the EU’s toolbox of autonomous instruments in recent years, by adopting new ones.

Pulling all this together, in June last year, the Commission published the European Economic Security Strategy (유럽 경제 안보 전략).

This strategy embodies many of the trade-offs that we need to acknowledge, between our parallel policy objectives of economic efficiency and economic resilience.

Because we need to be realistic: we can hardly expect that we can take de-risking measures that will only have the benefits of risk minimising but have no costs to our efficiency. We need to acknowledge these trade-offs.

The good news is that a proactive trade policy can support both the competitiveness and the economic security aims – trade diversification is yet again the name of the game.

The three pillars of the Economic Security Strategy (유럽 경제 안보 전략) will help us find the right balance between our objectives: as we enhance our resilience, we can do this through various ways:

by promoting EU competitiveness: competitiveness starts at home, on the EU internal market;

by protecting economic security, and;

by partnering with other countries, across all sectors.

These are the changes that we have put in place over the past five years. This brings me to the second point I wanted to make today: the need for policy integration, to navigate amidst the new trends that will surely affect international trade in the coming years.

New trends – and trade policy as part of an integrated EU policy approach

Let me start with a bit of foresight: What might those new trends be that will affect trade in the coming years?

Let me name four of them:

First, the geopolitical flux: As a result of the US-China rivalry, there is a risk of growing fragmentation of supply chains; and the IMF has put a price tag on the costs of global economic fragmentation: in its study, it stated that if it also includes technological decoupling, it could cost the global economy as much as 12% of total GDP. The global South would be the worst off – but it would be very costly also for the EU.

Second, the economic pressure: Negative externalities of China’s industrial policy and the risk of trade weaponization, all of which lead to de-risking and efforts to promote reindustrialisation, with the related costs to efficiency. Subsidies are being deployed for economic transformation, carrying the risk of a subsidy race – which can make our green transition more costly.

Third, green (energy) transition: This brings me to the trend of green transition. We need to ensure that this happens as smoothly as possible. The green transition brings about both opportunities and costs. It entails new areas of competition, including in supply chains for critical raw materials. The US and China will continue to have access to cheaper energy, until the green transition has allowed us to rely more on renewables.

These developments will require a solid combination of internal and external EU policies.

---

 [소배1]1. 라이트모티브(오페라나 다른 작품들에서 특정 인물·물건·사상과 관련된, 반복되는 곡조)

2. (책·미술 작품·특정 집단 등에) 반복적으로 나타나는 주제, 중심 사상