Brussels, 17/07/2015 (Agence Europe) - The tenth session of technical level talks for the transatlantic trade and investment partnership agreement (TTIP) was held in Brussels on 13-17 July and covered the revised exchange of offers on market access for services.
“The EU and US are seeking to achieve ambitious and additional commitments to what we have reached in our other bilateral and multilateral agreements so far”, resumed the European chief negotiator, Ignacio Bercero, at the end of the week's work, and he underlined the “very promising atmosphere” of the discussions. The revised offers are “without a series of reservations” that existed in the initial offers, he added, stating that they included e-commerce.
More specifically, the negotiators held intense discussions on telecommunications. They also addressed the air industry. “In this domain, which is governed by a whole series of firmly entrenched agreements such as Open Skies, we asked if we should include these agreements in TTIP or look for other means”, said US chief negotiator Dan Mullaney.
Mullaney reiterated the US reluctance about including financial services in TTIP. “It's better to speak about this in other fora, so as to make the process evolve”, he said.
Furthermore, Bercero and Mullaney repeated that, in line with the political declaration adopted by European Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmström and US Trade Representative Mike Froman at the end of March, public services were excluded from TTIP (see EUROPE 11280). “TTIP will fully preserve the right of public authorities to choose the manner in which they deliver and run the public services offered to their citizens”, said Bercero, giving assurances that it had been reaffirmed during meetings with stakeholders this week that “in no case will TTIP put public services at risk”.
The other two pillars in the market access section - tariffs and public procurement - were not addressed this week, but Bercero repeated that the EU wanted to have “ambitious results” on public procurement and said he hoped the issue would be addressed “by the end of the year”. “In the case of public procurement (…) our objective remains to enhance business opportunities through substantially improving access to government procurement opportunities at all levels of government on the basis of national treatment”, Bercero said.
As regards the regulatory cooperation section, the negotiators continued their work both on the three horizontal disciplines (technical barriers to trade, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, and regulatory coherence) and on the regulatory convergence in eight key sectors (pharmaceuticals, automobiles, chemicals, textiles, cosmetics, medical devices, engineering and pesticides).
Bercero noted “significant convergence” on the whole of this section. The work is bearing fruit beyond the TTIP negotiations, as the Food and Drug Administration authorised commercialisation of a biosimilar medicine on the US market in March, he said.
As regards the rules section, the negotiators progressed on several issues - like trade facilitation, competition, SMEs, and dispute settlement between states and they held positive discussions on energy and raw materials.
Issues related to work and the environment were not addressed this week. The European party is finalising an “ambitious proposal” for a chapter on sustainable development, “moving beyond all that the EU has so far done on this”, which it will present “in September”.
The chapter on investment protection remains on ice while awaiting the Commission's proposals for a new dispute arbitration system. These proposals are promised for the autumn.
In addition, the two parties confirmed that the objective remained of reaching a common position on the skeleton and key parameters of the agreement before the end of 2015, so as to “finalise an agreement under the Obama administration”, Mullaney said. (Emmanuel Hagry)