BRUSSELS: The Euro­pean Union on Monday called for “serious” reform of the World Trade Organisation, ahead of a high-level meeting this week in Cameroon.

The WTO ministerial conference, its supreme decision-making body, will take place in Yaounde on March 26-29. It is usually held every other year.

There has long been a desire to reform the WTO, but this week’s talks come at a particularly tense moment for the world economy, with global trade tensions, US tariffs and disruptions caused by the Middle East war.

“For the European Union, this meeting is a defining moment,” EU trade chief Maros Sefcovic said.

The EU would be “insisting on a serious reform of the WTO, where the level playing field, overcapacity and market policies must be better tackled than in the past,” he told journalists.

“We would like to see a new balance between the rights and obligations, because situations have dramatically changed,” he added.

He pointed to “different economic models” worldwide that had “often led to these overcapacities, which are creating lots of problems in the European economy”.

The EU frequently accuses China of significant overcapacity in some industrial sectors including steel, which Brussels says drives prices down and causes unfair competition for European manufacturers.

The WTO has faced structural and geopolitical obstacles, and the demand for reforms is nothing new.

Several WTO members seek changes to the organisation’s decision-making procedures, which are currently based on consensus, among other reforms.

Published in Dawn, March 24th, 2026