Danish prime minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen says he is in favour of a political agreement being signed for an EU-United States free trade deal (TTIP) before the end of the year and the end of the current US administration, arguing that such an agreement would be increasingly difficult to obtain when the current US president, Barack Obama, is replaced.
The EU should aim to sign a TTIP this year despite recent doubts, Rasmussen said in an interview with Reuters on Tuesday 6 September (in the evening), saying he feared that the protectionist policies promises by presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton (Democrat) and Donald Trump (Republican) made a transatlantic deal increasingly unlikely.
"When listening to the American election campaign, you become really worried", Rasmussen said. "Trump is the first Republican presidential candidate, I can think of, who is actually against free trade", he said, pointing to Trump's ambition to "build walls and pull all jobs back to the United States". "And Hillary Clinton is under great influence from Bernie Sanders, a left-wing socialist and also a protectionist", he added.
Rasmussen said he was concerned about recent signals sent by France, whose trade secretary Matthias Fekl said early last week that he was calling for an end to the TTIP talks. "While we all very recently thought we should clinch a new trade deal that could bring wealth to both USA and Europe, there's now no telling where it will end."
"This just underscores the point that it would be good to reach a deal this year. I think President Obama has a commitment to this issue that I would like to see materialising into at least a political deal", he said. Denmark’s neighbour Sweden is working with Finland, Spain and Italy to keep the TTIP talks alive, said Swedish trade minister Ann Linde on Monday 5 September, admitting that political rhetoric about Brexit (the UK leaving the EU) could lead to a freezing of the talks in the near future.
On Monday, the French president, François Hollande, responded strongly to comments made by the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, on the fringes of the G20 summit in Hangzhou, that Juncker intended to pursue the TTIP talks. Hollande is reported in Tuesday’s edition of the Est Republicain newspaper as saying that Jean-Claude Juncker can pursue if he wants to, but France’s position is clear. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)