Strasbourg, 10/03/2016 (Agence Europe) - On a two-day visit to Washington for a series of meetings with the US authorities, European Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmström said on Wednesday 9 March that she hoped the US presidential election in November would “not stop” the talks for the transatlantic trade and investment partnership agreement (TTIP). These talks were launched in July 2013 and entered a more political phase in autumn 2015.
“Just because there's an election, we can't stop our activity”, Malmström stated, adding that she would do as much as she could to obtain an agreement before the end of US President Barack Obama's term of office in January 2017, according to reports by French news agency AFP.
Several candidates for the US presidential elections, including Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump, have strongly criticised some free trade agreements, leaving a question mark as to the outcome of the work done by the Obama administration, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, concluded with the Asia-Pacific area, and the TTIP negotiations.
Against this background, Malmström has deemed it necessary “to agree on as much as possible with this [Obama] administration” as regards TTIP, rejecting a lightweight agreement.
“We don't want a lightweight TTIP because it would be very difficult to get it accepted with the European Parliament and the EU member states”, Malmström stated, adding that Turkey, a non-EU member country, had also expressed interest in joining TTIP.
During the 12th round of technical level talks in Brussels during the week of 22-26 February, the TTIP negotiations made further progress in consolidating texts in two of the three pillars of the negotiation - cooperation and regulatory convergence, and rules. As regards the market access pillar, the parties, whose discussions are based on revised offers on trade and initial offers on services, recently exchanged their offers on public procurement at the end of February (see EUROPE 11500).
During her visit to Washingon, Malmström was due to have meetings on Thursday 10 March with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner Robert Califf, the head of the US AFL-CIO union Richard Trumka, and several senators - including the head of the US Senate finance committee Orrin Hatch. She was also due to talk to the Peterson Institute.
On Friday 11 March, Malmström is due to meet US Trade Representative Mike Froman, the deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs Adewale Adeyemo, and to speak to the US Chamber of Commerce. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)