Brussels, 04/11/2013 (Agence Europe) - The EU and the US will meet again in Brussels from Monday 11 until Friday 15 November for a second round of negotiations ahead of a free-trade agreement - a transatlantic trade and investment partnership agreement (TTIP). Services, investment, energy, raw materials and regulatory issues will be discussed. The third round is due to take place in Washington during the week of 16 December.
The discussions, which aim to create one of the biggest free-trade areas in the world, were due to have started at the European Commission at the beginning of October, but they had to be postponed due the partial closure of the US administration against a backdrop of budgetary paralysis. The Commission adds that discussions on public procurement - which is only partly open to competition in the US - took place “before” the US budget crisis.
Next week's discussions are due to resume in a climate once again weighed down by the revelations on the scale of US spying in Europe. Before the first round of talks in July, the practices of the US National Security Agency (NSA) had already created a diplomatic storm and threatened to derail the TTIP talks. The negotiations are also likely to be complicated as regards the content - especially on the issue of private data protection on the internet. At the end of the first round of talks in July, the EU and US said they had made progress, although they identified areas of divergence - particularly on agriculture. (MB/LC/transl.fl)