On Friday 11 November, the Commissioner for Trade, Cecilia Malmström, said that she expected the EU-US free-trade negotiations (TTIP) to be shelved for an uncertain length of time, following the election of Donald Trump to the White House, stating that the ball was now in the American court for the next steps in the process.
“Might the TTIP be in the freezer for a while and what will happen once we have defrosted it? I don't know. I think that we will have to wait and see what happens”, she said, following a meeting in Brussels of EU trade ministers.
“TTIP was not mentioned once during [Trump’s] campaign. He said that he wanted to renegotiate the NAFTA (Ed: free-trade agreement in North America, between Canada, the US and Mexico) and the TPP (ED: free-trade agreement between the US and eleven Asia-Pacific countries, which was concluded in 2015 and signed in February 2016: Ed)”, Malmström said on Friday, admitting that she did not know what Trump’s intentions were for the TTIP.
“The ball is now in the American Administration’s court”, Malmström stressed, as did the Slovak minister for the economy and President-in-exercise of the Council of the EU, Peter Ziga, who went on to say that the EU has not closed the door to dialogue.
Addressing the Council, Malmström said that there was nothing else for it but to see what Trump proposes. She said that she had never heard Trump mention TTIP in the whole of his campaign. She added that she was not even sure that Trump knows what TTIP is, a diplomatic source told us.
The member states which took the floor during the debate said that, whilst waiting for first contact from the new administration, the EU must maintain unity and preserve what has already been achieved in the negotiations, the same source added.
French Secretary of State for External Trade Matthias Fekl said that the negotiations should stop. “They are dead in the water and everyone knows it, although many do not wish to admit it”, he added.
The TTIP will be discussed again this Sunday at the informal meeting of foreign ministers, called in the wake of Trump’s election victory.
The TTIP negotiations, which were launched in 2013, could not be concluded, as both sides had fervently hoped, before the end of the term in office of the outgoing President, Barack Obama, in January 2017.
The EU’s objective is still to conclude an “ambitious, balanced and full” agreement, as the European Council of 21 October stressed (see EUROPE 11652).
Despite considerable progress in the regulatory pillar, made since the beginning of the negotiations and at the 15th and last round of talks so far, in early October (see EUROPE 11641), there is still a considerable distance to be covered on market access. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)