AEGIS Europe is an alliance of European industrial sectors promoting manufacturing, investment, employment, growth and innovation in an environment of fair competition and a level playing field in the EU and abroad. The alliance was created in 2016 to address the critical question as to whether the EU should accept that China was a Market Economy for purpose of anti-dumping policy. Confirming the alliance’s objective, AEGIS Europe sectors increasingly experience the critical need to expand their focus beyond EU trade defence policy and measures dealing with the effects of international economic and trade distortions, towards the root causes of distorted and unfair competition.

Well-designed and enforceable international rules that reflect today’s realities are critical for this purpose. The WTO is the regulatory institution capable of effectively framing and enforcing an international level playing field for the manufacturing industry. AEGIS Europe considers that a rules-based multilateral trade regime benefits all economies. However, the
modernization of the WTO is necessary to address competing economic and political systems.

AEGIS Europe supports the EU ambition to modernize and make the WTO more effective by introducing more transparency, new rules and disciplines and enforcement mechanisms.