Brussels, 29/04/2016 (Agence Europe) - Despite significant progress in consolidating texts in the regulatory cooperation and rules pillars being recorded at the 13th round of talks on the technical level in New York this week (25-29 April), much work remains to be done and bridges remain to be built in order to satisfy the offensive interests of the EU - services, public procurement and geographical indications. The 14th round, probably in July, will be decisive, with a view to an agreement in principle by the end of 2016.
By the admission of the European chief negotiator himself, Ignacio Garcia Bercero, no real breakthrough was expected at the New York round, where the negotiators tried to advance work as much as possible on each of the three negotiation pillars - market access, regulatory cooperation and rules - with a view to concluding an agreement in principle before the end of the Obama administration's mandate.
“On the EU side we are ready to work hard” for this, “but only if the substance of the deal is right”, Bercero stated at a press conference after the round. “The objective for this [next] round would then be to continue the work of consolidation in all areas, so that we only have a very limited number of open issues (the so-called 'square brackets') that will ultimately be resolved at political level”, he said. “The task we now face [is] of creating joint texts and finding compromises where necessary, in particular in the regulatory and rules pillars”, he said.
In New York this week, the parties recorded significant progress in the regulatory cooperation pillar, where the texts on regulatory cooperation and good practice were consolidated.
With regard to regulatory cooperation in nine key industrial sectors, “a lot of technical work has been done, but quite substantial work is still ahead of us”, Bercero summed up. The EU presented its text proposal for the pharmaceutical sector, which will soon be made public.
In the pillar on rules, Bercero announced “substantial progress” on the SMEs chapter and on the chapter on customs and trade facilitation.
The parties advanced the process of consolidating the chapter on sustainable development (protection of labour standards and the environment) on the basis of proposals submitted by the EU at the 11th round of negotiations and submitted by the US at the 12th round of negotiations.
It was the same for the chapter on investment protection, where the parties continued their work of consolidating texts on the basis of proposals from the US and EU - the EU having submitted its proposal for a new investor-state dispute settlement system (the Investment Court System) in November 2015. The US negotiator, Dan Mullaney, confirmed “an area of convergence” on Friday on the objectives of the arbitration courts - in particular, transparency, the fairness of the system, strong protection of the investor but also of the right of states to regulate.
By contrast, positions are still far apart on the issue of protecting geographical indications (GI) - an “extremely important” issue for the EU, as Bercero said. “The US has a robust and flexible system for protecting the EU's GI in the US. And many producers of high quality agri-food products benefit from this system in the US through the marks and their certification. We think our system is more flexible and more robust in certain cases”, Bercero stated. “We think it is still possible to find a solution that ensures legal certainty. It is possible to do this respecting our legal frameworks”, he said, acknowledging that it was “a very difficult issue”.
In the market access pillar, the parties recorded “progress” on the tariffs section, in order to improve the existing offers - for example, by making the transition periods shorter for certain products. Discussions are continuing on the basis of the revised offers exchanged in October 2015, which cover 97% of the tariff lines (the other 3%, the sensitive agricultural sectors, will be discussed at the end).
On the services section, Bercero spoke of “some progress”. “The EU's objective is to pursue a high degree of ambition and gain substantial new market access for EU firms”, he said. The parties also had a “good discussion” on the mutual recognition agreements for professional services and made significant progress in consolidating the text.
In addition, the parties had “extensive discussions” on public procurement, on the basis of the offers exchanged in February. “Here, we started to consolidate our respective texts. But for us, it is clear that we need to reach a similar level of progress in access to procurement markets as in tariffs and services in order to move the negotiations to the end game”, Bercero concluded. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)