Brussels, 19/05/2014 (Agence Europe) - No major developments in the sensitive areas of the negotiations for a transatlantic trade and investment partnership agreement (TTIP) are expected from the fifth round of talks in Arlington (Virginia) this week (19-23 May).
European and American negotiators will continue their technical work this week on nearly all the TTIP chapters - goods and services, investment, regulatory issues, sanitary and phytosantiary (SPS) measures, public procurement, intellectual property, e-commerce and telecommunications, sustainable development, SMEs, competition policy, energy and raw materials. The parties will continue the positioning process and the process of defining issues before the negotiation. No breakthrough is thus expected on the most sensitive aspects of the negotiations.
On the US side, the presentation of a revised tariff offer - which is requested by the EU - will not be made at this fifth round of talks. The initial exchange of offers on access to services markets and public procurement will not come for several months either.
There is, however, a “main objective” of the talks on public procurement this week, said a Community source last week. The parties will exchange information and discuss their respective priorities for the two aspects of the file - market access and rules. For the aspect relating to rules, the two parties are counting on a text for agreement based on the WTO agreement on government procurement (GPA), although the EU has proposed “GPA-plus” arrangements. The EU wants access to US public procurement both on the federal level and on the state level. Given that it will not be possible to have the US states around the negotiating table - unlike in the negotiations with Canada where the provinces participated directly - the European party expects a “firm commitment” from the US on behalf of its states. “If the US government cannot commit, we'll have to see, but a fair number of rules on public procurement are of federal order”, said a Community source.
The regulatory section remains the “toughest nut to crack”, as European Commissioner for Trade Karel De Gucht said at the beginning of the year. While the US seems to give priority to SPS issues, the EU wants to tackle the non-tariff barriers for several industrial sectors and wants results on regulatory cooperation.
The European Commission published the EU's negotiating position on 14 May for five industrial sectors - chemicals, cosmetics, vehicles, pharmaceuticals and textiles. These documents include EU proposals to improve the compatibility of rules and regulations in force in the EU with those of the US, and to carry out closer joint work in the five sectors. For each of them, the objective is to put an end to the needless duplication of product tests and factory inspections, to recognise the current regulations of each, and to bring the respective procedures for new product approval or registration closer together or to harmonise them (see EUROPE 11079).
Lastly, on the section on rules, the chapters on SMEs and sustainable development (environmental standards and work standards) are less controversial, and the two parties intend to consolidate their convergence on these two files to give momentum to the more difficult chapters. At the end of the fourth round in mid-March, the two parties tried to seduce SMEs by highlighting the parties' commitment to making TTIP more accessible and profitable for SMEs. Finding agreement on an ambitious chapter on sustainable development would also enable some oil to be poured on troubled waters as regards civil society and unions. Finally, although the issue of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) is on hold while the consultation process comes to an end that was committed to by the European side in order to determine its position on this controversial issue, the issue of state-state disputes will be discussed. (EH)