Brussels, 29/06/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 29 June, MEPs from the European Parliament's international trade committee paved the way for a plenary vote on the Parliament's draft recommendations on the EU-US free trade agreement (TTIP) by retabling the amendments from the June plenary that had been sent to the international trade committee for assessment.
The decision was taken during two separate votes - one for retabling the amendments in plenary, and the other for retabling the requests for split votes or separate votes. The vote was conducted by a show of hands - with the support of five MEPs being enough to return the amendments and requests to plenary.
The international trade committee can now put its draft recommendations on TTIP to a vote of the full Parliament at a date to be determined by the conference of presidents of the European Parliament (Martin Schulz plus the leaders of the political groups).
On 9 June, Schulz decided at a plenary session in Strasbourg (see EUROPE 11331 and 11332) to postpone the plenary session vote on the Parliament's TTIP recommendations initially planned for 10 June, given the very large number (over 200) of amendments and requests for split or separate votes tabled for the draft resolution compiled by Bernd Lange (S&D, Germany) and adopted in the international trade committee on 28 May (see EUROPE 11232 and 11324). The objective was to build more consensus from the Parliament on the demands for reframing the TTIP negotiations, and especially on the treatment to be given to the protection of investments 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 round to date - in New York at the end of April - enabled fresh progress ahead of a political review in the autumn (see EUROPE 11302). A tenth round is planned in Brussels for the week of 13-17 July. (Emmanuel Hagry)