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

Naalakkersuisut (Government of Greenland), via the Mineral Resources Authority under Minister Naaja H. Nathanielsen, published the Mineral Resources Strategy 2025-2029 in January 2025. The strategy succeeds the 2020-2024 strategy and sets the operational priorities, licensing pipeline and investor-engagement framework for Greenland's mineral sector across the 2025-2029 window. Headline tracks: sustainability (social/environmental/ economic), targeted international marketing and export-import-bank cooperation to mobilise project finance, formal critical-minerals partnerships with the EU and the US (and Nordic regional cooperation), a certification system for small-scale licensees, and expanded geoscientific data availability. The 2021 Inatsisartut Act prohibiting uranium-bearing exploration and exploitation above 100 ppm is preserved.

President Lukashenko signed Decree No. 278 on 10 July 2024, extending the prohibitive import customs duty regime established under Decree No. 16 (12 January 2024) through 30 June 2025, preventing its lapse at year-end 2024. The decree also expands the commodity list subject to elevated import duty rates. The measure explicitly frames the duties as retaliatory, targeting goods originating from states designated as "unfriendly" to Belarus — principally EU member states, the US, UK, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, and other sanctioning jurisdictions. Co-ordinated with Russia's EAEU parallel-import framework (Resolution No. 506), the regime affects the cost arithmetic for sanctioned-goods routing through EAEU customs-union channels and signals continued institutionalisation of Belarus's counter-sanctions architecture.

Regulation (EU) 2023/2842, published in the Official Journal on 20 December 2023, is the first comprehensive recast of the EU fisheries control framework since Council Regulation (EC) No 1224/2009, and amends the IUU Regulation (EC) No 1005/2008 alongside five sectoral regulations (1967/2006, 2016/1139, 2017/2403, 2019/473). Effective in phases from 10 January 2026, it mandates the CATCH electronic catch-certification IT system for ALL imports of wild-capture marine fishery products into the EU single market, replacing legacy paper catch certificates. It also introduces Remote Electronic Monitoring (REM) with CCTV on high-risk EU vessels ≥18 m, full electronic reporting for all vessels by 2028, and extended Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) coverage down to vessels ≥12 m. The regulation tightens the carding regime (red/yellow cards for non-cooperating flag states under the amended IUU Regulation) and requires digital traceability end-to-end through the supply chain, raising compliance cost and market-access barriers for all non-EU seafood exporters.

The US Department of Commerce preliminarily determined that silicon metal from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Iceland is being sold in the United States at less than fair value, and instructed US Customs and Border Protection to begin collecting cash deposits from importers. Bosnia and Herzegovina's sole respondent, R-S Silicon d.o.o., and the all-others rate were set at 21.41%; Iceland's sole respondent, PCC Bakki Silicon hf, received 47.54%, with the all-others rate at 37.83%. A concurrent antidumping investigation of silicon metal from Malaysia, initiated on the same 2020-07-27 date, was not part of this preliminary determination and remained pending. The case followed a July 2020 petition by Globe Specialty Metals, Inc. and Mississippi Silicon LLC.