A new era of EU mini-trade deals? Re-prioritising sustainable development through Clean Trade and Investment Partnerships (CTIPs)

This policy brief, published in collaboration with Europe Jacques Delors, examines the emergence of Clean Trade and Investment Partnerships (CTIPs) as a new instrument in the EU’s trade policy toolkit. With traditional comprehensive FTA negotiations proving increasingly difficult to conclude — due to political sensitivities, ratification hurdles, and the growing complexity of sustainability provisions — the EU has turned to more targeted, flexible partnership models to engage with strategic trading partners.

The brief analyses CTIPs as a pragmatic response to the current geopolitical context, where the EU needs to secure access to strategic markets, critical raw materials, and clean technology and energy supply chains. Unlike comprehensive FTAs, CTIPs are designed to focus on specific sectors or themes of mutual interest, potentially allowing for faster negotiation and more tailored commitments. The authors explore how this flexibility could make CTIPs an attractive tool for addressing the intersection of trade, climate, and industrial policy.

The authors examine the potential of CTIPs to complement the EU’s existing trade agreements by addressing issues that are difficult to cover in traditional FTAs, such as cooperation on green hydrogen, critical raw materials supply chains, EV value chains, and circular economy initiatives. They also highlight the risks, including the possibility that CTIPs could fragment the EU’s trade policy landscape, create uncertainty about the legal enforceability of commitments, and undermine the ambition of broader FTA negotiations.

Drawing on best practices from existing trade instruments, including Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), free trade agreements (FTAs), and sectoral cooperation frameworks, the paper offers policy options across six key dimensions: i) strategic prioritization of partner countries and sectors; ii) scope and coverage of the agreements; iii) legal nature and binding force; iv) the types of commitments and obligations to be included; v) monitoring and enforcement mechanisms; and vi) governance structures for ongoing cooperation.

The authors argue that CTIPs should be developed as mini trade deals, that is, legally binding agreements with a targeted scope, addressing a crucial gap in the EU’s toolkit for engaging with trading partners. The new CTIPs should be built upon different pillars, such as trade and investment, sustainability standards, value addition in partner countries, and multi-stakeholder engagement. They should include tangible commitments for EU technical and financial support, as well as investment facilitation and regulatory cooperation provisions, together with built-in monitoring and enforcement mechanisms. By bringing decarbonisation, trade, and investment objectives into a single binding framework, the CTIPs can help break up silos between domains where alignment has previously been absent. Achieving this will require setting up a clear yet flexible governance framework within the EU, structured around country-specific CTIP task forces. This could help foster cooperation within the different EU institutions and Commission services and ensure alignment between the EU’s internal and external policies.

The brief concludes that CTIPs represent a promising addition to the EU’s trade policy architecture, but that their success will depend on strategic design, clear alignment with the EU’s broader trade and sustainability objectives, and genuine partnership engagement that goes beyond the EU’s own interests to address the development priorities of partner countries.