The EU’s so-called trade “bazooka,” or Anti-Coercion Instrument, offers a range of punitive measures that can be used against trade rivals that try to threaten the bloc. Among them are restrictions on investments and access to public procurement schemes, as well as limits on intellectual property protections.
Despite the calls from the European Parliament, it would be a decision for the European Commission to trigger the Anti-Coercion Instrument should Trump make good on his latest threat. This would then require the backing of a qualified majority of countries — which could prove difficult given the long-standing divisions among EU capitals over how far to go without further antagonizing Washington.
Renew leader Valérie Hayer called Trump’s moves “unacceptable” and said “it is now time to move from reliance to deterrence.”
“The EU should be prepared to deploy targeted and proportionate countermeasures,” Hayer said in a post on X. “The activation of the EU Anti-Coercion Instrument should be explicitly considered, as it was designed precisely for situations of economic intimidation of this nature.”
Bernd Lange, a German S&D MEP and chair of the European Parliament’s trade committee, also backed the unprecedented deployment of the “bazooka” in comments to POLITICO. “What we had in mind when we drafted the Anti-Coercive Measures Act is now coming to pass: If trade policy is used as a political lever, we can resist it with various measures. I therefore call on the EU Commission to initiate proceedings and an investigation immediately,” he said.
The S&D’s vice president for trade, Kathleen Van Brempt, joined the calls for the use of the Anti-Coercion Instrument. “It is nothing short of outrageous that Donald Trump is using tariffs and economic threats to force through an illegitimate territorial claim,” Van Brempt said in a statement. Approving the trade deal, she said, “would not be ‘pragmatic’, but downright foolish,” she said.
