Brussels, 31/07/2013 (Agence Europe) - France's Minister for Foreign Trade Nicole Bricq is urging the EU and the US to lay their cards on the table in negotiations. She is critical of any idealised vision of the bilateral relationship.
In an article entitled “Stop the liars' poker!” in French daily newspaper Libération on 29 July, Bricq calls on the EU and US to conduct their negotiations for a transatlantic trade and investment partnership agreement (TTIP) with greater transparency. The negotiations were launched at the beginning of July (see EUROPE 10887, 10893, 10895). “I know it is customary to move forwards in a negotiation with one's mask on, not to reveal one's cards and to bluff to achieve one's ends. This is the rule. But if the discussions we are currently holding with the US really are about a partnership, and if we treating each other as equals, then our practices must evolve - otherwise the discussion will turn into nothing more than talking to a brick wall. Let's play our cards on the table on both sides of the Atlantic and let's build a 21st century agreement together”, Bricq writes, reiterating her demand to have the European Commission's negotiating mandate from the member states made public.
Bricq also warns against an “idealised vision” of the transatlantic relationship, pointing out the “splendid ambivalence” shown by the US in their espionage on the EU institutions through the US National Security Agency. The US “remains the country where anything is possible and we French people envy its dynamism and energy. At the same time it is this prickly power incapable of resisting temptation which gives it its supremacy”, she states (our translation throughout). (EH/transl.fl)