Hard as it is to believe now, at the start of 2012 the prospects for the eurozone seemed to be looking up, despite its difficulties with sovereign debt and the stability of its banking sector. Soon the clouds began to gather: the eurozone had not been in recession since April 2009, but by November the die was cast: data showed that the 17-member bloc had suffered two consecutive quarters of negative growth.

Figures from individual member states were even more worrying. Greece suffered its fifth consecutive year of recession and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development warned that growth would not return until 2015. Unemployment remained sky-high in Greece and Spain – at 25.4% and 26.2% respectively – and high in the eurozone as a whole, at 11.7%. By the year’s end, there were signs that even Germany, Europe’s economic powerhouse, was being dragged down.

With growth so weak, there was extra pressure on the European Commission to agree trade deals – not easy in such a competitive environment, with other big economies, including the US, China and Japan, and regions also seeking to create big free-trade zones. At the same time, the EU tightened trade rules: in December, it raised the threshold for membership of the EU’s generalised scheme of preferences so that preferences are now limited to the poorest countries.

The biggest trade setback of the year for the Commission was delivered by MEPs, who in July rejected an international treaty designed to curb counterfeit trade, ACTA. Over the course of the year, the Commission picked off free-trade deals with some small partners – six central American partners, Peru and Colombia – but its biggest successes came at the end. Free trade was agreed with Singapore and, though a deal with Canada was not finalised, the Commission won a mandate to negotiate what would be the biggest trade deal to date – with Japan. Could this be the precursor of an even bigger coup, a deal with the US? Karel De Gucht, the European commissioner for trade, is expected to suggest this month that preliminary talks should begin, following the completion last year of a scoping exercise.

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The tricky issue of Europe’s banana trade with 11 Latin American countries was settled in November, to the satisfaction of the World Trade Organization (WTO). But the WTO had to engage with plenty of other irritants in EU trade – the battle of the European and US aircraft-makers Boeing and Airbus continued, and the EU asked it to look into China’s conditions on the export of rare-earth materials and Argentina’s sweeping trade restrictions. It may soon also be asked to rule on Russian restrictions. Other large disputes with China (about solar panels and ceramics) and Russia (about its behaviour on central and eastern European gas markets) are being dealt with by investigators at the Commission.

2012 saw the biggest ever fine (€1.5 billion) handed down to seven companies involved in a cartel forged by producers of cathode rays for televisions. The Commission said the cartel was the most organised that it had investigated.

The headlines about competition – and technology – were, however, dominated over the year by the anti-trust case that the Commission brought against Google in 2011. The year closed with the Commission still hesitating over its judgement.

The other landmarks on the technology landscape were the cloud-computing strategy presented by Neelie Kroes, the European commissioner for the digital agenda, and the debate on how to stimulate investment in fast broadband infrastructure. Kroes eventually refused to cap the wholesale price for access to ageing copper networks, a decision that delighted incumbents and angered rivals.

The main focus of EU decision-makers throughout 2012 was on financial regulation. Agreements were reached on credit-rating agencies and over-the-counter derivatives (EMIR); negotiations on banks’ capital regulations (CRD IV), financial-market reform and high-frequency trading (MIFID) and bank resolution and recovery have slipped into 2013.

A tax on financial transactions, seen as a means of limiting market speculation, was another issue carried over. The EU’s 27 finance ministers agreed the tax had no chance of being approved by all member states, and so set the wheels in motion for a levy to be imposed by a small group of countries.

The same mechanism – ‘enhanced co-operation’ – was used to agree, after decades of disagreement, on an EU-wide patent, though Spain and Italy refused to join.