Brussels, 20/04/2016 (Agence Europe) - With the 13th round of EU/US free-trade negotiations (TTIP) to take place in New York at the end of April, and on the eve of a visit of the American President, Barack Obama, to the UK and then Germany (21-25 April), potentially breathing new life into the talks on a political level, political decision-makers in France seem to feel that the TTIP has become something of a lame duck.
Following on from the French President, François Hollande, who said on Thursday 14 April that France “[could] say no” to a TTIP which did not meet its “conditions”, specifically “reciprocity”, the protection of European agriculture and access to American public procurement contracts, the French Secretary of State for Trade, Matthias Fekl, threatened on Tuesday 19 April to block the talks with the US unless significant progress is made in the coming months.
“I said in September 2015 that if things did not move forward, then we would have to consider stopping the negotiations. This option is still on the table, very clearly”, Fekl said on Tuesday, on the sidelines of a colloquium of Medef. “France will not accept a second-rate agreement. What matters is the content, not concluding at all costs” before the American presidential elections, he added. “There is a strong sense that some people wish at any price to conclude before (then)”, he continued. In an interview with EUROPE on Monday 18 April, Fekl reiterated his opposition to the “hurried” conclusion of a “cut-price” agreement which would not satisfy the offensive interests of the EU - public procurement, geographical indications (see EUROPE 11535).
“There is a temptation, on the part of Germany, to speed things up. Many countries are in favour of concluding the TTIP quickly, such as Italy and the countries of Eastern Europe. However, there has been no real development in the American offer. They don't want to and they can't. This greatly minimises the point of these negotiations for France. We regret this, because a positive agreement contains things of interest to many different sectors of our economy”, a French source close to the dossier told us.
On Wednesday 20 April, the French newspaper Mediapart published an article by the French MEP Eric Andrieu (S&D), who urged France to “get off the 'good ship TTIP', this commercial Titanic, before it sinks.” “Both defensively and offensively, the TTIP, as it has been negotiated, does not respond to the French interests. So far, the negotiations have been unbalanced and there is no reciprocity in the concessions granted. This is particularly true for European agriculture, which is the target of a vast [American] offensive, yet they refuse to recognise our geographical indications”, he added, stressing the risks that standards could be “watered down” and the “states (end up) at the mercy of lawsuits brought by multinationals”. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)