Greening the Gates or Guarding the Market? Green Protectionism and the Evolution of EU Trade Defence Instruments
Author: Dr. Muhammad Bilal
Abstract
The intersection of climate ambition and international trade governance has produced one of the most contested fault lines in contemporary global economic law. The European Union, through its European Green Deal (EGD) and a suite of associated legislative instruments, has fundamentally reoriented its trade defence architecture towards environmental objectives. This paper critically examines the evolution of EU Trade Defence Instruments (TDIs) within the framework of green industrial policy, analysing how anti-dumping and countervailing duty mechanisms, the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), and the Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR) collectively constitute a new generation of green-justified trade barriers. Drawing upon primary EU legislative sources and WTO dispute settlement jurisprudence, alongside secondary academic scholarship, the paper interrogates whether these instruments represent a legitimate convergence of climate and trade governance, or whether they amount to a form of sophisticated protectionism dressed in ecological rhetoric. The analysis reveals a structural tension between the EU’s stated climate goals, its obligations under multilateral trade law, and the asymmetric economic impacts these measures produce for developing and emerging economies. The paper concludes that the EU’s green trade agenda, while normatively grounded, risks undermining the multilateral trading order unless it is accompanied by genuine differentiation, technology transfer commitments, and reform of WTO dispute settlement capacity.
Keywords
Green Protectionism, EU Trade Defence Instruments, Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, WTO Compatibility, European Green Deal, Anti-Dumping, Countervailing Duties, Carbon Leakage
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DOI: 10.52279/jlss.08.02.208220 | 208-220 | PDF
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