Meeting in Brussels on Thursday 15 September, Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström and US Trade Representative Mike Froman urged their negotiators to make as much progress as possible at the 15th round of technical talks in New York on 3-7 October on the EU-US free trade deal (TTIP).
"We had a good meeting where we reviewed the substantial progress being made and discussed next steps for moving forward. We have directed our teams to make as much progress as possible during the next round", they said in a joint press release issued on Thursday evening.
The previous round of TTIP talks in Brussels on 11-15 July allowed a further exchange of draft documents and more advanced consolidation of documents already on the table. It did, however, reveal a persistent large gap between the two sides’ positions on market access. The EU insists on greater access to public procurement in the US and protection of geographical indications, while the US demands more concessions from the EU on tariff liberalisation for agriculture (see EUROPE 11595).
Officially, both sides’ aim remains to conclude an agreement in principle by the end of the current government’s term of office under President Barack Obama, in other words January 2017. At the European summit on 28-29 June, the EU28 said they supported continuation of the TTIP negotiations (see EUROPE 11583). France cast doubt at the end of August through its secretary of state for trade, Matthias Fekl, who called for the talks to halt. The French president, François Hollande, said on 30 August that there would not be any agreement before the end of Obama’s term of office. This week, Fekl said that the TTIP talks were no longer being supported by France, although he conceded that France could not block the negotiations.
On Thursday, the trade ministers of 12 EU member states - Denmark, Spain, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom and Sweden – called in a letter to Malmström for the TTIP talks to continue and they stated that they supported the Commission in this (see EUROPE 11625).
The TTIP talks are due to be discussed at a meeting of EU trade ministers in Bratislava on 22-23 September. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)