On Tuesday 30 October, a Commission spokesperson said that the discussions between representatives of the European Commission and their US counterparts on subjects of regulatory cooperation took place "in a constructive atmosphere".
Issues addressed in Washington the previous week included how to enable trade facilitation in the pharmaceutical sector and that of medical devices, cybersecurity and liquefied natural gas.
The search for ways to reduce the cost of conformity assessments and to strengthen transatlantic cooperation during the development of standards or technical regulations for new technologies were also on the agenda of the week's negotiations.
This work at expert level paves the way for the next meeting between European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer in Washington in November.
Consumers vigilant
The director of the European Consumer Organisation BEUC, Monique Goyens, met Malmström ahead of these discussions. The two women addressed this section of the transatlantic dialogue.
"We were vocal on this issue during TTIP times (the previous transatlantic trade negotiations). Our view remains the same as always", a BEUC spokesperson commented.
BEUC has always deplored the fact this dialogue is dominated by trade interests. "We criticised these plans as an effective brake on our governments’ – whether EU or national – ability to regulate in the public interest", the BEUC spokesperson stated.
While BEUC today confirms it has "the utmost confidence" in Malmström, its concerns are more as regards the US negotiator and "the deregulatory trend on the other side of the pond. Especially as we receive information from US consumer groups on what is happening in Washington", the BECU spokesperson added. He promised the greatest vigilance of the organisations defending consumers' interests on this file.
Mutually beneficial?
The Commission stated that any cooperation in this domain was possible only if "it happens on a voluntary basis, in a mutually beneficial way and in full respect of the EU’s legal framework, including the existing levels of protection".
However, according to Gabriel Siles-Brügge from Warwick University, "there are fundamental differences between the EU and US in regulatory matters that are difficult to square in these ongoing negotiations… crucially, a difference in the approach to standardisation and conformity assessment".
On the other side of the Atlantic, the system of normalisation is decentralised, and rules can vary from one state to another. This is a completely different system from in the EU, where the respect of European standards effectively gives access to the European single market.
This system "has been a persistent concern from the US side, which sees the European standards and conformity assessment system as a barrier to its exporters", Dr Siles-Brügge told EUROPE.
And he concluded: "there is probably little to be gained here for EU manufacturers insofar as these provisions on process will likely do little to change the fragmented nature of the US system and are intended to provide in-roads for US firms and the US government to challenge EU regulatory decision-making". (Original version in French by Hermine Donceel)