Brussels, 18/03/2013 (Agence Europe) - The negotiations will include the financial services sector - not on regulation but on market access. France mobilises for the cultural exception.
Meeting at the German Marshall Fund of the USA conference on Saturday 16 March, European Commissioner for Trade Karel De Gucht and US Deputy National Security Advisor for International Trade Michael Froman confirmed the desire of the EU and USA to reach as full a free trade agreement as possible within 18 months. “We are not interested in a ten-year negotiation that that doesn't get done. The administration was devoting the resources necessary to get this done as quickly as possible. I know the Commissioner (de Gucht) is commissioner until late 2014 but that is a good deadline for us to work on”, said Froman. Nevertheless, although the end of 2014 should be a milestone, it should not be an “unnatural deadline” for completing the negotiations. “We shouldn't be bound by any unnatural deadlines. We should be focused on the substance of getting the agreement right, and when it's done right then we should move it forward to our respective processes for approval”, he added.
While, on the European side, the 27 member states have to examine and amend the European Commission's draft negotiating mandate by the end of June (postponed from 12 March), on the US side, the Obama administration will begin its formal consultation in the Congress in the “coming days”.
On Saturday, De Gucht and Froman said that, although they will not include financial regulation (which us being examined in different forums), the negotiations will cover market access in the financial sector.
De Gucht and Froman also stressed that the future transatlantic agreement was not aimed against developing countries, and that it would give fresh momentum to the multilateral negotiations at the WTO. “Nothing that we are doing here is about ganging up on emerging economies. Our fervent hope is that what we're doing here will have a positive impact, including with countries like Brazil”, Froman stated.
France on the look-out for the cultural exception. French President François Hollande, like French Culture Minister Aurélie Filippetti, last week spoke out to defend the exclusion of audiovisual services from the Commission's negotiating mandate. (EH/transl.fl)