Thirty years ago, the global economy was placed on a new footing in Vienna: the Vienna Agreement set the course for even closer co-operation and collaboration. What has changed since then? Fewer barriers to trade, more harmonized rules, and more room for innovation. Under the heading "From global to local: Joining forces to help global standards create local impact", the leaders of international standardization organizations such as CEN and ISO met again in Vienna on 11 October to further advance international co-operation.  The Vienna Agreement was signed in Vienna 30 years ago. Its objective: ensure that European and international standards are not in conflict with each other, but that rather they are as consistent with each other as possible. The motto: "One standard, one test – accepted everywhere". Much has happened since then. Thanks to the Agreement, enterprises can rely on globally harmonized approaches to improving the quality of products and processes – there are uniform rules for measuring, testing and quantification of greenhouse gas emissions – parents can be confident that the packaging of drugs is child-resistant – the users of health apps can be sure of clear security levels for data protection and machinery manufacturers can use the same standards for exporting tractors to countries all over the world.

The European Union has today committed to increase the role of trade in the fight against climate change and protecting the environment. It has signed up to three new initiatives to step up joint action in the World Trade Organization, sending a strong political signal on pursuing a strong environmental agenda for trade. The EU and a significant number of WTO countries will now work jointly on facilitating trade in green goods and services, promoting sustainable supply chains and the circular economy. They will also cooperate on battling plastic pollution and to enhance transparency of fossil fuel subsidies.

The Commission adopted a Communication on Sustainable Carbon Cycles, setting out how to increase removals of carbon from the atmosphere. To balance out the impacts of our CO2 emissions, the EU will need to drastically reduce its reliance on fossil carbon, upscale carbon farming to store more carbon in nature, and promote industrial solutions to sustainably and verifiably remove and recycle carbon. Removing and storing more carbon, from the atmosphere, oceans, and coastal wetlands, is essential to achieve the EU's legally binding commitment to become climate neutral by 2050. The Communication sets out short- to medium-term actions to support carbon farming and upscale this green business model to better reward land managers for carbon sequestration and biodiversity protection. By 2030, carbon farming initiatives should contribute 42Mt of CO2 storage to Europe's carbon sinks.