Brussels, 15/11/2013 (Agence Europe) - The technical negotiators promise that the sought after regulatory convergence will not reduce the level of standards on either side of the Atlantic.
After setting the scene during the first round of negotiations in July for a transatlantic trade and investment partnership agreement (TTIP), EU and US negotiators went on to share their respective approaches this week to several key chapters of the future agreement - including services, investment, regulatory convergence, and energy and raw materials.
On Friday 15 November, chief EU negotiator Ignacio Garcia Bercero reported the results of the second round of talks in Brussels to the press and hailed the “very fitting climate and constructive attitude of the regulators”. “A very productive meeting with positive engagement”, his US counterpart, Dan Mullaney, was pleased to announce. Videoconference meetings on the health and phytosanitary chapter, on intellectual property rights, competition policy and SME policy took place in parallel this week, and videoconference meetings on the tariff chapter, agriculture, the environment and sustainable development are planned for the coming weeks, as well as a meeting on financial services scheduled for 27 November. The third round of negotiations will take place during the week of 16 December. “All this process will involve high political commitment and we hope that this will be translated into a package of proposals at the start of 2014”, Bercero said.
The first two days of discussions focused on services (comparing approaches to cross-border services, financial services, and electronic trade) and investment (liberalisation flows and investment legal protection) - a chapter that Bercero said has “a good degree of convergence”, stating that the partners nevertheless want “to preserve some control on regulation”.
Besides the chapter on energy and raw materials (on which the EU and US tried “to define a common approach”) the last three days of this second round were given over to the regulatory component of the TTIP. The negotiators thus addressed the four dimensions of this chapter - technical obstacles to trade, health and phytosanitary obstacles, regulatory coherence and transparency, and sectoral regulatory compatibility - focusing on the sectors of medical devices, cosmetics, pharmaceutical products, chemical products, ICT and motor vehicles.
Lastly, Bercero and Mullaney again tried to reassure stakeholders (whose concerns they heard during an information meeting on Friday), promising that the TTIP negotiations will not reduce the level of standards or consumer protection on either side of the Atlantic (our translation throughout). (EH/transl.fl)