Abstract

The European Union is proposing herself as a major actor on the international scene by systematically founding her approach to the reform processes of rules and procedures of the global economic governance on the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the UN 2030 Agenda. The EU trade policy appears the most articulated, complete and innovative commercial policy at world level, producing most advanced Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) with highly relevant trade and sustainable development chapters combining free trade and investment promotion with environmental, forestry and biodiversity protection, the fight against climate change, the respect of fundamental rights and the attention to gender and cultural diversity issues, while developing unilateral tools as the due diligence directive, the carbon border adjustment mechanism, the deforestation regulation, and tabling most innovative sustainability documents for the WTO reform process. Together with the green transition, the EU is also facing the huge challenges of the economic sanctions against Russia and the energy and food crisis. The Seed Funding Project “ImprovEUorGlobe - The UN 2030 Agenda in the EU Trade Policy: Improving Global Governance for a Sustainable New World”, funded by the Una Europa Alliance, has been implemented in order to provide for a critical interdisciplinary overview and analysis of the SDGs oriented EU trade policy, constantly considering the participation of civil society in the shaping and implementation of the EU trade policy and tools, and the EU ability to play a significant and influential role in the international political debate to promote sustainability values in international relations. ImprovEUorGlobe has involved six Una Europa Universities: Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna, Freie Universität Berlin, Uniwersytet Jagielloński w Krakowie (Jagellonian University in Kraków), University of Edinburgh, Helsingin Yliopisto (The University of Helsinki) and Universidad Complutense de Madrid. The ImprovEUorGlobe Coordinator is Professor Elisa Baroncini (University of Bologna), and the ImprovEUorGlobe Chair is Prof. Filippo Fontanelli (University of Edinburgh). The Academic Leads are Dr. Ana Maria Daza Vargas (University of Edinburgh), Prof. Genia Kostka (Freie Universität Berlin), Prof. Reetta Toivanen (The University of Helsinki), Prof. Piotr Szwedo (Uniwersytet Jagielloński w Krakowie), and Prof. Raquel Regueiro Dubra (Universidad Complutense de Madrid). The rich debate and discussion within the ImprovEUorGlobe Research Team and with the speakers selected for the ImprovEUorGlobe Workshop of July 2023 produced the papers presented in this open access publication.