An Agreement in Name Only: The Fragile Legal Architecture of the EU–US Turnberry Accord

Commercial relations between the European Union and the United States encompass thirty per cent of global trade in goods and services, and forty-three per cent of world GDP. Far from stagnating, these trading and investment ties have doubled over the past decade, reaching 1,600 billion euros in 2024. When President Trump imposed sweeping tariffs on imported goods in April 2025, ostensibly to redress the trade deficit, the stage was set for a protracted confrontation. The provisional agreement concluded on 20 May 2026 between the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union, aimed at eliminating customs duties on American industrial goods, prompts a single, pressing question: will it definitively bring the tariff war to a close?

An agreement in name only

There is no more useful faculty in politics than a short memory. As early as the 1990s, the creation of a transatlantic free-trade zone had been contemplated. In 2006, in response to the collapse of the Doha round, the EU and the United States began negotiating the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a comprehensive free-trade treaty encompassing technical barriers to trade, public procurement, investment, and tariff reduction. Those negotiations were abandoned during Mr Trump's first presidency. From April 2025 onwards, a relentless barrage of tariffs, threats, proclamations on Truth Social, volte-faces, and temporary exemptions ensued. To arrest the spiral of American protectionism and European counter-measures, the European Commission concluded with the American administration what it termed an agreement on reciprocal, fair, and balanced trade — unveiled on 27 July and solemnised on 21 August 2025 by a joint declaration issued on a golf course in Turnberry, Scotland, belonging to the President himself.

What was brandished at Turnberry as an "agreement" is anything but a binding instrument of international law. It amounts, at most, to a political compromise designed to call a ceasefire in the tariff war. The outcome of these precipitate negotiations is, in any event, far removed from what had been envisaged under President Obama in the context of the defunct TTIP, which was intended to yield a commercial treaty running to several hundred pages.

A lack of transparency

The member states and the other institutions of the Union found themselves presented with a done deal. The Commission departed from the established framework governing the negotiation of trade agreements whose customs component is paramount. These agreements fall within the common commercial policy, which constitutes an exclusive competence of the Union. Neither did the Council of the EU issue negotiating directives to the Commission, nor did it establish a special committee — both requirements under Article 218 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) for the negotiation of trade and investment accords.

Imbalanced Tariff Concessions

Comprising nineteen cursorily elaborated points across four pages, the Turnberry joint declaration was celebrated by the Commission as a triumph, inasmuch as it would spare European exporters from prohibitive duties. Many observers, however, took a less sanguine view: the elimination of European customs duties on American industrial imports does not, save in a handful of exceptions, entail any reciprocal removal of American duties on European goods. As so often in such affairs, the devil resided in the details. The EU undertook to eliminate remaining duties on industrial products — already the case for sixty-six per cent of them — and to grant preferential market access for certain American agricultural and foodstuffs, including walnuts, soya-bean oil, and processed foods. The White House, for its part, merely pledged to cap duties on European goods at fifteen per cent.

An Asymmetric Implementation

On the American side, executive order 14326 of 31 July 2025, which entered into force on 7 August, was able to reduce certain duties on European goods almost immediately, substituting a fifteen per cent rate for the additional tariffs in force since 2 April 2025. Duties on motor vehicles and certain components fell from 27.5 per cent to fifteen per cent. Yet this was not an unqualified boon: European spirits and alcoholic beverages, previously subject to an average duty of 4.8 per cent, found themselves taxed at fifteen per cent. No duties are levied on critical raw materials, cork, aircraft and their components, or generic pharmaceutical products. The additional duties on steel (twenty-five per cent) and aluminium (raised from ten to twenty-five per cent), which entered into force in March 2025, remain entirely unaffected, pending separate negotiations ostensibly designed to shield both markets from Asian imports.

On the European side, customs tariffs fall within the common commercial policy — an exclusive Union competence — and any modification requires an amendment to the Customs Code under the ordinary legislative procedure, entailing co-decision by Parliament and Council. Unlike the expansive interpretation of presidential powers in Washington, the legislative route was inescapable in Brussels, and delays were inevitable. Though the Commission tabled its legislative proposals on 28 August 2025, the co-legislators did not reach agreement until nine months later, on 20 May 2026.

The Provisional Agreement of 20 May 2026

The provisional accord covers two regulations. The first eliminates remaining duties on American industrial goods (thirty-four per cent in 2024) and grants preferential market access, through tariff-rate quotas and reduced duties, for certain seafood and non-sensitive agricultural products. The second, less contentious, regulation extends the suspension of duties applicable to imports of lobster, including processed lobster — hardly a sensitive commodity, given that the EU imported a mere seventy-two million euros' worth in 2024.

There are budgetary consequences: customs duties constitute own resources of the Union budget, and foregoing them necessarily creates fiscal tensions. The Commission estimates an annual revenue loss of 3.6 billion euros — which it characterises, perhaps optimistically, as of "limited negative impact."

Safeguard Clauses and Residual Uncertainty

Unwilling to be party to a game of dupes, the European Parliament secured the insertion of safeguard and suspension clauses. Should American imports increase significantly so as to cause serious injury to domestic producers, the Commission may — at the request of at least three member states, EU industry, or trade unions, or on its own initiative — suspend, in whole or in part, the concessions granted to the United States. A further clause empowers the Commission to suspend concessions on steel and aluminium products should duties in excess of fifteen per cent on EU exports not be removed by 31 December 2026. 

A sunset clause provides for the automatic expiry of the regulation on 31 December 2029 — conveniently encompassing both the remainder of the current American presidential term and the forthcoming European parliamentary elections of May 2029. Whether these clauses will suffice to reassure European industry remains moot, not least because their activation rests upon the Commission's considerable discretionary powers.

Conclusion: Law Eclipsed by Transactionalism

The American President's transactional approach has, in the event, prevailed over the rigour of European decision-making processes. The Commission produced no impact assessment, as required under the inter-institutional Better Law-Making agreement. The co-legislators have ultimately given effect to a political commitment struck by the European executive on a Scottish golf course — a commitment that is, legally speaking, devoid of binding force. One finds oneself in a shaded area, where law and non-law are indistinguishable. Whether the agreement will forestall a fresh tariff war over steel and aluminium is a question that, in asking, one has already half-answered.

Luciano Magaldi Sardella is a Ph.D. and M.B.A. at the European Open University.

Matteo Mantuano is a Professor of Behavioural Economics and Psychology at the Unitré University of Milan.