Trade Explainer: EU-CPTPP Cooperation and the Search for New Coalitions

Antonia Wunnerlich

The latest World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial conference (MC14) in Yaoundé, Cameroon, ended on a note of frustration. The conference ran nearly two days beyond its scheduled close, and participants still failed to finalize key texts. The resulting “Yaoundé package” is narrower than the outcome of MC13 in Abu Dhabi, producing only draft or incomplete texts on WTO reform, multilateral e-commerce, fisheries subsidies, non-violation complaints under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), and elements of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) package.

Yet, the gathering was not totally devoid of announcements. Ministers from the EU and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) agreed to accelerate work toward a digital trade agreement, confirming a growing conviction among middle powers that meaningful rulemaking on trade—especially digital trade—will increasingly take place outside the WTO’s consensus machinery.

This explainer provides an overview of the CPTPP and outlines EU-CPTPP digital trade cooperation.

What is the CPTPP and why is the EU interested in it?

The CPTPP is a large free-trade area linking 12 countries across the Indo-Pacific and beyond. It includes Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and Vietnam.

The grouping, which aimed at setting high-standard trade rules for the global economy, began as a small Pacific trade pact and later expanded into the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Washington helped shape those rules and President Barack Obama signed the agreement, but President Donald Trump withdrew the United States upon taking office in his first term. The remaining members later revived the deal as the CPTPP.

Today, the agreement contains advanced provisions on digital trade, services, and supply chains. The EU is not a member, but it has concluded (or is concluding) bilateral trade deals with most CPTPP countries. What is new and important is that Brussels now wants to work with the CPTPP as a group, especially on digital rules. In November 2025, the bloc launched a trade and investment dialogue with CPTPP and agreed to support reform at the WTO. Other aims include strengthening supply chain resilience.

From dialogue to deal: What’s on the EU-CPTPP menu?

The near-term objective is the conclusion of an EU-CPTPP digital trade agreement that would set common rules on e-commerce, data flows, and storage. The EU has already concluded digital trade deals with several CPTPP members, including Japan, Singapore, and South Korea, and has recently launched talks with Canada.

The EU-CPTPP joint ministerial statement from March 2026 explicitly backs plurilateral negotiations at the WTO and references efforts to incorporate the Agreement on Electronic Commerce, the Investment Facilitation for Development, and other initiatives into the WTO framework.

For the long term, analysts widely identify four high-potential areas of cooperation:

  • supporting WTO reform while acting outside the WTO when necessary. This includes jointly backing dispute-settlement workarounds (such as the interim appeal mechanism), as well as cooperating in “coalitions of the willing” to develop rules and standards that can later serve as a basis for global standard-setting.
  • strengthening supply-chain resilience and economic security. This entails improving transparency and crisis coordination, reducing frictions arising from export controls and investment screening among trusted partners, and tackling economic coercion and other market-distorting practices.
  • increasing trade and investment by reducing regulatory barriers. This covers cumulation and streamlined rules of origin across EU-CPTPP partners, expanded mutual recognition of standards and conformity assessments, and practical facilitation for small and medium enterprises and services providers.
  • aligning sustainable trade and climate objectives. This involves developing climate-related trade instruments and standards, embedding environmental commitments through joint interpretive tools, and preventing climate measures from becoming uncoordinated trade barriers.

What might an EU-CPTPP digital trade agreement deliver?

At first glance, the two blocs appear to be on different footing: CPTPP’s e-commerce chapter, shaped by a market-driven approach, prioritizes open cross-border data flows and constraints on localization (rules requiring data to be stored or processed domestically), while the EU’s approach is built primarily around privacy and personal data protection. However, analysts have argued that the gap is narrowing. CPTPP members are not uniform, and several have already moved toward additional provisions that go beyond the original CPTPP text in newer digital deals (for example, tighter rules on cross-border data flows). In parallel, the EU has begun to include data-flow and anti-localization disciplines in recent agreements, even as it protects its privacy model.

Realistic possible outcomes include commitments to paperless trading and electronic authentication, consumer protection and anti-spam rules, cybersecurity cooperation, transparency and due process disciplines, and calibrated constraints on forced data localization. For the sensitive center of gravity—cross-border data transfers and personal data protection—arrangements such as the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement might act as a reference point. So, too, might concepts such as “data free flow with trust”: enabling transfers for business purposes while preserving each side’s regulatory autonomy and embedding mechanisms that support compatibility between privacy regimes rather than forcing uniformity.  

Why now?

MC14 laid bare the limits of consensus-based decision-making in a fragmented global trading system. Most strikingly, no decision was reached to renew the Moratorium on Customs Duties on Electronic Transmissions (“e-commerce moratorium”), which expired on March 26, 2026. This lapse marks the first regression on digital trade fundamentals since 1998.

MC14 underscored just how difficult it has become to rally support (or even non-opposition) among a large and split membership. The one tangible success of the ministerial conference only reinforces that conclusion: Sixty-six members agreed to put the e-commerce moratorium into effect on an interim basis without waiting for full WTO approval. It is striking that the headline deliverable of MC14 is not technically a WTO deal, but a plurilateral workaround adopted outside the WTO framework.  

Against this backdrop, the EU-CPTPP track is significant as a vehicle to advance rules for international trade that can later be multilateralized at the WTO level. Deeper EU-CPTPP cooperation is seen as a pragmatic complement to WTO reform efforts rather than as an alternative to them—that is, as an attempt to preserve high-standard, rules-based trade in areas where multilateral consensus has proven elusive. Digital trade, in particular, offers relatively fertile ground for convergence given overlapping interests in interoperability and predictable data governance frameworks.

In their joint statement in Yaoundé, the blocs described the WTO as being at a “critical juncture” and committed to intensifying cooperation among “like-minded” members, explicitly endorsing plurilateral approaches as a way to sustain rulemaking momentum. They highlighted joint concerns over economic coercion and market-distorting practices and signaled cooperation on “supply chain resilience, digital trade, and the global trading environment”.

EU-CPTPP cooperation has also been framed as an exercise in “middlepower coalition-building” after a rupture in the global trade order. Rather than wait for consensus to emerge in a fractured WTO, the EU and CPTPP partners can co-define norms that can later be multilateralized if and when conditions allow.

The EU-CPTPP initiative also fits into a wider pattern. Over the past year, Brussels has moved to push major trade deals over the finish line. It has recently concluded negotiations with Australia, India, and Indonesia, and a trade deal with Mercosur is expected to go into effect on a provisional basis in May 2026. Further deals with Malaysia and the Philippines are in the pipeline. In each case, the logic is similar: Diversify partnerships, anchor rules with likeminded economies, and reduce vulnerability to geopolitical risk.

This approach reflects a growing emphasis on the strategic role of trade agreements in underpinning partnerships that support economic security priorities, including supply-chain resilience, technology cooperation, and access to critical minerals.

The EU’s push to deepen trade ties with partners such as India is driven by a desire to reduce structural dependencies and systemic exposure, particularly to China, by broadening the EU’s network of economic relationships in an increasingly uncertain geopolitical environment.

Can Geneva catch up?

Much now depends on what happens next in Geneva. WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has urged members to finalize outstanding MC14 texts through the General Council, presenting this as part of a “new WTO way of working” intended to be nimbler and more responsive. Some analysts remain cautious: Relying on the same Geneva-based machinery that struggled to deliver at MC14 raises persistent questions about capacity, incentives, and political backing.

If the WTO does manage to stabilize the e-commerce moratorium and advance its digital agenda, EU-CPTPP cooperation could reinforce that momentum. If not, Yaoundé may be remembered as another confirmation that the center of gravity is shifting. Middle-power coalitions are no longer waiting for consensus to emerge. They are building it elsewhere.

The views expressed herein are those solely of the author(s). GMF as an institution does not take positions.