Brussels, 16/06/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 15 June, the political groups represented in the European Parliament's international trade committee decided to hold an extraordinary meeting in Brussels on 29 June in order to decide on the fate of the 116 amendments lodged on the draft European Parliament recommendations on the negotiations for a free trade agreement between the EU and US (TTIP).
This new vote in the international trade committee on 29 June will be preceded by a debate between the committee members starting at 4.30pm, the European Parliament's press department announced on Tuesday 16 June. In order to enable the amendments and/or the requests for split or separate votes to be put to a plenary vote, at least five MEPs from the international trade committee will have to vote in favour of them.
This process will enable the international trade committee MEPs to put the TTIP recommendations to a plenary vote at the July or September session, pending a decision from the conference of presidents of the European Parliament (European Parliament President Martin Schulz plus the leaders of the political groups).
On 9 June, Schulz decided during the plenary session in Strasbourg to postpone the plenary session vote on the Parliament's TTIP recommendations (planned initially for 10 June), given the very large number of amendments (over 200) and the request for split or separate votes lodged for the draft resolution compiled by Bernd Lange (S&D, Germany) - which was adopted in the international trade committee on 28 May (see EUROPE 11232 and 11324). The objective of postponing the plenary vote is to build a more robust consensus from the Parliament on its requirements for reframing the TTIP negotiations.
The international trade committee MEPs will have the delicate task of finding a common position on how to handle investment protection and the inclusion of the very controversial investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism.
The TTIP negotiations remain on track after nine rounds of technical level talks. The last of these was in New York at the end of April and enabled fresh progress ahead of the political review in the autumn (see EUROPE 11302). A tenth round of talks is planned in Brussels for the week of 13-17 July. (Emmanuel Hagry)