Brussels, 03/05/2016 (Agence Europe) - After Greenpeace's disclosure of classified documents linked to the transatlantic trade and investment partnership agreement (TTIP) that reveal the thus far secret US position (see EUROPE 11544), France again spoke out on Tuesday 3 May, threatening to oppose the conclusion of TTIP as it stands in the current state of talks.
“At this stage” of the TTIP negotiations, “France says no”, warned French President François Hollande on Tuesday. “We are not for unregulated free trade. We will never accept the questioning of essential principles for our agriculture, our culture, for the reciprocity of access to public procurement”, he stated.
French Secretary of State for Trade Matthias Fekl had earlier said that a halt to the TTIP negotiations was “the most likely option” today, due to the “American attitude”. “I've been criticising the [American] attitude for a year now. We want reciprocity. The EU is making many proposals and receiving very little in return. This is not acceptable”, Fekl stated, reiterating some conditions for an agreement - SME access to the US market, the defence of EU agriculture and geographical indications, and the respect of high environmental standards. Fekl also said he was convinced the Americans did “not want to hear about” the principle of precaution that is defended by the EU.
Despite some progress in the consolidation of texts in the regulatory cooperation and rules pillars at the 13th round of TTIP talks in New York at the end of April (see EUROPE 11453), much work remains to be done and bridges remain to be built to satisfy the EU's offensive interests - services, public procurement, and geographical indications - in order to conclude an agreement in principle by the end of 2016.
At a press conference in Brussels on Monday, the EU's chief negotiator, Ignacio Garcia Bercero, again underlined the EU's requirement to reach “the same level of ambition” on public procurement market access as on customs duties and services. “We think a revised offer is required. For the moment, the Americans are telling us that this is difficult; it's a subject that is too sensitive. They won't be in a position to make a revised offer by July. This is the point of difficulty in this negotiation”, Bercero admitted to EUROPE.
Elsewhere, as the Commission had done on Monday, the US minimised the scope of the documents revealed by Greenpeace, saying the interpretations were mistaken and founded on outdated texts. The spokesperson for the US Trade Representative said that TTIP would preserve, and not weaken, their solid rules of consumer, health and environmental protection, and would put the US in a position to promote more solid rules throughout the world. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)