Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2662 actions· ✨ 89 recent

The European Commission's Fourth CEF-Digital Call selection decision (adopted 3 November 2025, publicly announced by HaDEA on 20 November 2025) awarded EUR 10,137,584 (~USD 11.8 million) to "Multimodal-5G," a project coordinated by Wings ICT Solutions Technologies AE (Greece) to deploy 5G infrastructure along the GR-BG Corridor connecting Greece and Bulgaria for cross-border connected-transport and logistics use cases. The grant is one of six "5G Corridors" awards (EUR 53 million combined) under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) Digital programme, administered by the European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA).

On October 31, 2025, Bulgaria's National Assembly voted 135-4 (42 abstentions) to adopt a decision introducing a temporary measure restricting the export and intra-EU supply of petroleum products — chiefly diesel and aviation fuel — to all destinations, including fellow EU member states. The measure took effect around November 1, 2025 upon publication. Gasoline was excluded because domestic production exceeds internal demand. The ban is a direct domestic-supply-security response to US OFAC's October 22, 2025 SDN designation of Lukoil (see responds_to), whose Burgas refinery supplies roughly 80% of Bulgaria's fuel market; lawmakers cited the risk that sanctions exposure could disrupt Lukoil's export activity and drain the volumes needed to cover domestic demand. Exemptions cover refuelling of ships and aircraft and deliveries to NATO and EU member-state armed forces under the common defence policy.

The European Investment Bank signed a EUR 200 million, five-year loan agreement with German multimetal producer Aurubis AG on 11 September 2025 to finance two strategic projects: a EUR 120 million expansion of the copper tankhouse at Aurubis's Bulgarian production site (raising refined-copper output roughly 50% to 340,000 tonnes/year, the largest single investment at the plant since its 2008 acquisition) and the EUR 190 million Complex Recycling Hamburg (CRH) program to scale up metal recycling capacity at Aurubis's German headquarters site. The EIB frames this as its first financing for the copper sector since adopting a new EIB Group strategy to secure EU access to critical raw materials, explicitly supporting the rollout of the Critical Raw Materials Act. Global Trade Alert separately logs the transaction as an "amber"-flagged state-loan intervention (state act 94442 / intervention 149387).

Brazil's Foreign Trade Chamber executive committee (GECEX) issued Resolution No. 768, dated 25 July 2025 and published in the Diário Oficial da União on 28 July 2025, amending the single annex of Resolução Gecex nº 311/2022 — the Ex-Tarifário regime that grants temporary reduced (typically 0%) import-duty rates on trucks, trailers/semi-trailers, motorised chassis, bodies/cabins, road tractors, and agricultural/self-propelled road machinery tariff lines for which no equivalent domestic production exists. The amendment took effect 4 August 2025. Global Trade Alert classifies the measure as a "Red" (trade-restrictive/discriminatory) import- tariff intervention, consistent with its treatment of GECEX's narrow, discretionary Ex-Tarifário product-line grants as favouring specific importers rather than liberalising trade economy-wide.

The US Department of Commerce initiated antidumping and countervailing duty investigations on steel concrete reinforcing bar (rebar) from Algeria, Bulgaria, Egypt, and Vietnam following a June 2025 petition by the Rebar Trade Action Coalition. On 19 December 2025, Commerce published its preliminary affirmative less-than-fair-value determination for Algeria, setting a 127.32% dumping margin (Tosyali Iron and Steel Industry — Algeria, applied to all other Algerian exporters) and requiring cash deposits at that rate. Parallel LTFV and countervailing-duty investigations on Bulgaria, Egypt, and Vietnam remained pending at the provisional/preliminary stage as of this determination, with Bulgaria and Egypt preliminary determinations later postponed to March 2026 (Egypt/Vietnam preliminary CVD margins of 29.51% and 1.08% respectively were set earlier in the case). The investigation covers rebar in straight-length or coil form (HTS-classified, excluding plain/smooth rounds), imported for use in reinforced-concrete construction. Algeria's period of investigation was April 2024–March 2025.

Brazil's Foreign Trade Chamber executive committee (GECEX) issued Resolution No. 730, signed 20 May 2025 and published in the Diário Oficial da União on 21 May 2025, removing 125 tariff-line codes from Ex-Tarifário (temporary import-duty exemption) coverage: 104 capital goods lines, 18 information-technology/telecommunications lines, and 3 automotive products classified as capital goods. The affected lines revert from preferential Ex-Tarifário rates to their standard MFN import duty, effective 20 July 2025, two months after publication. Global Trade Alert classifies the measure "Red" (trade-restrictive) and flags Austria, Belgium and Bulgaria among the trading partners most exposed by historical trade volume in the affected computing- machinery, special-purpose machinery and electric-motor lines.