Brussels, 23/05/2012 (Agence Europe) - The EU and US will not negotiate a free trade agreement unless they are certain that it will help growth and job creation on both sides of the Atlantic. France does not want the cultural goods sector to be included in the negotiations.
Brussels and Washington are both categorical that they will not begin trade talks unless they are sure that these talks directly lead to economic growth, affirmed Ron Kirk during a speech at the London School of Economics on Tuesday 22 May. The US representative for trade explained: “The United States and the European Union face common economic challenges that require us to work even harder to enhance the competitiveness of our economies and workers and to support more and better jobs for our peoples.” “As we continue to recover from the worst recession since the Great Depression, a consensus has emerged on both sides of the Atlantic that we can - and we should - do even more to tap the full potential of this extraordinary relationship to boost our growth, support more and better jobs, and to help meet the competitive challenges of the coming decades.”. Kirk confirmed that both his team and that of Commissioner Karel De Gucht “are working together to examine a wide range of possibilities” including the elimination of conventional barriers to trade in goods, such as tariffs and tariff-rate quotas; reducing barriers to trade in services, and to transatlantic investment; promoting regulatory approaches that facilitate trade; reducing, eliminating, or preventing in the first place behind-the-border barriers to trade in all categories; and developing rules and principles on other global issues that are of common concern. Kirk concluded: “With so many jobs at stake right now, neither the US nor the EU can afford to leap into open-ended negotiations on faith alone. Our mutual, urgent needs to enhance growth and employment compel us to identify a reasonably short path to success before we launch negotiation”, he noted. “After all, the leaders' mandate was simply to identify options that are both achievable and that will enhance economic growth and help create jobs in the United States and the European Union. By that standard, the United States is committed to finding the smart, prudent, and most effective way forward on measures to strengthen and deepen transatlantic trade and investment.”
The high level group was set up at the end of 2011 to examine the possibility of an agreement and is expected to provide its conclusions this June. Both the EU and US are determined to obtain an agreement as soon as possible. At the beginning of May, De Gucht said that he hoped it would be possible to negotiate an “ambitious but realistic agreement” at the beginning of 2013, by limiting discussions to an 18-month deadline (see EUROPE 10615).
French fears over cultural exception. Whilst discussions on the scope of the EU/US free trade agreement follow their course between the Commission and the Obama administration, France is preparing to ensure that the sensitive sector of cultural goods, which, within its own borders, are subject to rules which provide protection, including from Hollywood, be excluded from the negotiations. This is a debate which led to the battle over the GATT agreement at the beginning of the 1990s after which France succeeded in ensuring that the cultural sector be treated as a case apart. According to the French weekly, Le Point, the cultural sector has already made clear its concerns to the French minister for Foreign Affairs who is, “looking at a negotiation strategy that will counter liberal objectives” contained within the draft agreement. France may argue for the exclusion of audiovisual services as a whole from any liberalisation measures, as well as their horizontal exclusion, in order to ensure that existing or future audiovisual services are not kept separate. The difficulty lies in appropriate differentiation between the content industries and activities linked to internet access provision. (EH/trans/fl)