As part of her initiative for greater transparency in trade negotiations, Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström invited the Presidency of the Council of the EU, in a letter to Slovak economy minister Peter Ziga on Tuesday 6 September, to encourage disclosure by the Council of all new negotiating directives for free-trade deals with Mexico, Mercosur and Tunisia.
Under its new October 2015 strategy, Trade for All, the Commission "committed to invite the Council to disclose all new negotiating directives immediately after adoption", Malmstrom says in her letter.
The European Commission therefore formally proposed to the Council in December 2015 to disclose the negotiating directives for the modernisation of the FTA with Mexico, but the commissioner regrets that "the Council has so far refused such publication".
For negotiating directives adopted prior to 2015, "in principle we proposed publication on a case-by-case basis. So far the Council has published the negotiating directives for TTIP (Ed: the United States), TiSA (Ed: trade in services) and CETA (Ed: Canada), each of which was welcomed by the European Parliament and civil society without affecting our negotiating positions", the commissioner explained.
"The Council and the Commission must continue to make progress towards more transparency in line with the commitment made by the Council to examine publication of negotiating directives on a case by case basis", she concludes, calling on the Presidency of the Council to reconsider publication of the negotiating directives for the modernisation of the EU-Mexico FTA, and publish the negotiating directives for the FTA with Mercosur and the DCFTA with Tunisia. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)