Economic coercion, the World Trade Organization, and the EU’s anti-coercion instrument

The World Trade Organization (WTO) remains a cornerstone of the European Union’s (EU) trade policy. However, the WTO does not provide tools to address economic coercion by third countries. To fill this gap, the EU adopted the Anti-Coercion Instrument (ACI) in 2023. This paper argues that the ACI represents the EU’s response to the securitization of trade in an era of strategic economic competition and the weaponization of commerce, for which the WTO was not designed. It is a novel trade instrument that introduces a unique double foreign policy threshold to preserve the EU’s institutional balance between the European Commission’s authority over trade and the Council of Ministers’ responsibility for foreign policy and security. This new mechanism for reconciling commercial and security concerns institutionalizes a securitized worldview within EU trade policy, with implications for the EU’s external actions and the wider international trading system.