In a fourth opinion on the future EU-United States free-trade agreement, which it adopted on Thursday 22 September, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) reiterates the importance that the gains of the future transatlantic agreement benefit SMEs, consumers and citizens.
This opinion, which was drafted by Belgium's Philippe de Buck (group I, 'employers') and Tanja Buzek of Germany (group II, 'workers'), looks at how the EESC's concerns listed in earlier opinions have been taken into account in the EU's position documents and its proposed texts on regulatory cooperation, sustainable development, technical barriers to trade and sanitary and phytosanitary measures, customs and trade facilitation and makes recommendations for further clarifications, guarantees and precautionary measures.
The EESC highlights the importance of ensuring that regulatory cooperation improves social, environmental and labour standards, instead of watering them down.
It welcomes the fact that the proposed text on regulatory cooperation includes public policy objectives, reaffirms the aim of maintaining a high level of protection and clarifies that the joint institutional body to be set up to oversee transatlantic regulatory convergence will have no powers to adopt legal acts or replace internal regulatory procedures.
It calls, however, for the chapter on best regulatory practice not to limit the right of the parties to regulate or to bring in procedures equivalent to the one in the US notice-and-comment procedure for the notification of projects and the taking into account of related comments. It also calls for the details on the representative participation of stakeholders to be clarified.
Although it welcomes the scope of the proposal as regards sustainable development, which it describes as complete and detailed, it recommends reinforcing the monitoring and application mechanisms in order to guarantee that the sustainability standards are met.
The committee notes with satisfaction that the recent proposal on the institutional setup of the agreement includes the creation of domestic advisory groups made up of representatives of civil society and competent to advise the parties on the application of the agreement.
It welcomes the fact that the mandate of these groups has been expanded to cover all issues of interest in the framework of the TTIP, as the committee has long been calling for, but regrets the fact that the groups are not foreseen as members of a joint consultative body for EU-US civil society organisations. Such a body should be able to meet at its own initiative and issue joint recommendations to the parties, it argues.
As regards technical barriers to trade and sanitary and phytosanitary measures, the EESC opinion stresses the importance of proposals for standardisation, technical regulations, marking and labelling for gaining access to new markets. However, it recommends more detailed work on marking and labelling requirements and further reassurances that EU food legislation will not be changed.
Finally, the EESC commends the Commission's commitment to transparency, but urges it to discuss with the US the possibility of making later texts available to the public, or at least to the EU Advisory Group. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)