Ahead of the inauguration of the new US President, Donald Trump, on 20 January, the Commission and the administration of the outgoing US President, Barack Obama, published an assessment on Tuesday 17 January. This assessment examines progress in the EU/US (TTIP) free trade negotiations since their launch in July 2013 and after 15 rounds of technical level talks.
This joint report was drawn up by the services of the Commissioner for Trade, Cecilia Malmström, and the outgoing US Secretary for Trade, Michael Froman. It describes the more or less substantial progress achieved in all the different areas of the three negotiating pillars of the TTIP: market access; regulatory cooperation; rules – and what work to undertake.
First of all, it highlights the expected benefits from the TTIP: increased exports and transatlantic investments that stimulate the creation of “Quality” jobs; the development of high common standards and their promotion in the global economy; a strengthening of the transatlantic partnership based on common values on democracy, human rights and the rule of law.
The report then underlines the significant strides made since 2013, identifying landing zones for certain issues, finding common ground on other important issues, and clarifying the remaining differences. It particularly highlights: exchanged offers to eliminate duties on 97% of tariff lines; identifies steps to reduce nontariff barriers; agrees that TTIP must include strong obligations to protect the environment and fundamental labour rights and the dedicated chapter in TTIP focusing on SMEs.
The report outlines the progress made in non-tariff areas, simplifying technical regulations without lowering consumer protection standards all those for workers, health, safety and environment. It emphasises that, ”In the key regulatory areas of the TTIP negotiations, our ambition has been to reduce differences that make transatlantic commerce more burdensome, while preserving or enhancing our strong protections”. In this connection the different parties have made significant progress in the area of horizontal regulatory cooperation: finding areas of understanding on a “significant number” of good regulatory practices; made progress in developing approaches to facilitate cooperation on future areas of common interest for reducing unnecessary burdens in transatlantic trade arising from redundant or duplicative product testing and certification requirements; negotiated provisions that would facilitate trade subject to sanitary and phytosanitary import checks.
In addition to these cross-cutting efforts, “good progress” has been made in enhancing compatibility in nine key manufacturing sectors (Cars, pharmaceutical products, chemical products, cosmetics, ICT, pesticides, engineering, medical devices and textiles) by identifying “common objectives”. In the pharmaceutical sector, for example, we made “substantial progress” towards updating mutual recognition agreement on good manufacturing practices inspections, which would reduce duplicative requirements on manufacturers of pharmaceutical products and allow regulators to allocate resources more efficiently and where they are most needed, benefitting public health. In the car sector, regulators had detailed discussions on specific approaches to achieve more compatible automotive safety regulations and enhance both bilateral co-operation in the framework of the UNECE 1998 Agreement and have explored concrete cooperation activities to achieve greater compatibility in the medical device sector. Increased cooperation on textiles (names and labelling, safety requirements, and conformity assessment procedures in the textiles sector) was also undertaken.
Finally, the document also highlights the enormous amount of work that still needs to be done to overcome the differences in several significant areas of negotiations such as: how to treat the most sensitive tariff lines on both sides; how to lock in market access in key services sectors; - how to reconcile differences on sanitary and phytosanitary measures; how to encourage the recognition of qualifications to facilitate licensing of experienced professionals; - how to improve access to each other’s government procurement markets; how to address standards and conformity assessment procedures in ways that yield greater openness, transparency, and convergence, reduce redundant and burdensome conformity assessment procedures; - how best to achieve our shared objective of providing strong investor protection while preserving the right of governments to regulate; - how to reconcile differences in our approaches to trademarks, generic names, and geographical indications; how to structure commitments on data flows so that they strengthen e-commerce and digital infrastructure in bilateral relations while respecting legitimate concerns regarding the protection of private life; how best to promote transparent, open, and secure energy markets. The report provides assurances that “our work over the past three years brought greater clarity to our differences and enabled us to explore avenues for reconciling them.”
It concludes that “The progress we have achieved so far gives us confidence that, with continued engagement by both sides, and with the political will to prioritise long-term gains for our economies and our broader relationship, the USA and the EU could…conclude an ambitious, balanced, comprehensive, and high-standard agreement that strengthens the transatlantic partnership”.
The TTIP negotiations have not been concluded before the end of the Obama mandate, as the two sides had hoped for, however. The EU objective still remains that of concluding an “Ambitious, balanced and comprehensive agreement”, as underlined by the European Council on 21 October (see EUROPE 11652).
Despite the significant progress achieved in the regulatory chapter since 2013 and during the 15th and last round of talks so far at the beginning of 2016 (see EUROPE 11641), a significant disparity persists with regard to market access.
The report is available at the following address: https://goo.gl/vqm9gR . (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)