European Commission: Trade Statistics

The European Commission's Directorate-General for Trade helps through the EU's trade policy to secure prosperity, solidarity and security in Europe and around the globe.

Our tasks are:

• on the basis of high-quality analysis, to define (and reappraise) the trade interests of the European Community in both defensive and offensive terms;

• wherever the Union's commercial policy objectives so require, to negotiate bilateral, regional or multilateral agreements on the basis of negotiating directives proposed by the Commission and adopted by the Council;

• to monitor and ensure the implementation of international agreements by using the WTO dispute settlement system and the instruments for trade promotion or defence adopted by the Community (the anti-dumping and anti-subsidy rules and the trade barriers regulation (TBR);

• to take part in devising and monitoring internal or external policies which have a bearing on the Union's trade and external investments (single market, consumers, health, environment, technology, intellectual property, competitiveness, competition, energy, transport, agriculture, sectoral measures);

• to ensure consistency within the Relex group between the commercial policy and the Union's general external relations policy on the one hand and the contribution of the European Union to global economic governance on the other;

• to provide the public, both sides of industry, civil society and professional circles with clear, comprehensive and up-to-date information while seeking their opinions in compliance with the rules set down in the Commission's codes of conduct