No one loves free trade anymore, the great powers have embraced protection, the EU can achieve little. So goes the narrative. But in her seventh-floor office in Brussels, the jovial Sabine Weyand tries not to take it too seriously.
“Trade and investment ties are holding up. Capital flows are continuing. I don’t really think that you can say that there is an age of deglobalisation. We live through a reconfiguration of globalisation,” says the director-general of the EU’s trade department.
Yes, Covid-19 led to a search for resilient supply chains. But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “has really put the wind in the sails” of Brussels’s plans for trade deals.