Speaking to the European Council on Thursday 19 October, France's President Emmanuel Macron underlined the need for a trade policy that is "balanced between openness and protection" in order to rebuild people's trust in trade, which largely started to be lost with the CETA free trade agreement between the EU and Canada.
"We must meet the internal challenge of rebuilding people's trust in trade agreements as this is now virtually non-existent, as we have seen with CETA, and we must meet the external challenge of building strategic trade relations with several regions in the world at a time when the USA is at an isolationist turning point", Macron said at the end of the summit.
"In this framework, I underlined the need for a reform of our trade policy which is based on trade agreements founded on balance and reciprocity, so that our stronger environmental demands can be respected and so that our social criteria can be taken into account", Macron said, insisting on "increased transparency in negotiations and strong sanctions against dumping".
"I continue to hold the idea important that after the changes on the international scene, Europe must respond positively to the demands launched worldwide for trade agreements. We will do it in our way, respecting standards and demanding appropriate reciprocity, as the French president wants", European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker stated.
The Commission will work hard to conclude a political agreement by the end of 2017 on a free trade agreement with Mercosur, Juncker stated, saying that a "good agreement with the countries of the Latin American bloc would be, in terms of volume, eight times bigger than the gains resulting from CETA and four times bigger than those from the free trade agreement with Japan".
Juncker also reaffirmed the Commission's intention of publishing proposals for mandates from now on, and he said he wanted the same from the Council. "The time for meetings behind closed doors exists no longer. It is time for transparency. Transparency will prevent us from negotiating unquestionably the agreements that are underway", he said. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry with the editorial team)