On the agenda of the informal trade ministerial meeting on Thursday 21 and Friday 22 February in Bucharest, is the topic of relations with the United States, WTO reforms and ongoing bilateral negotiations.
EU ministers and EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström will attend the meeting chaired by Ștefan-Radu Oprea, the Romanian Minister for the Business Environment, Trade and Entrepreneurship.
Roberto Azevêdo, Director-General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and Bernd Lange, Chairman of the European Parliament's Committee on International Trade (INTA), will attend the informal dinner being held on 21 February.
On the morning of Friday 22 February, Ms Malmström will propose an overview of the WTO modernisation process to representatives of the Member States.
As a key element of the meeting, EU-US trade relations will be discussed in the early afternoon.
The European Commission has tabled to Council two negotiating directives pertaining to a trade agreement limited to market access for industrial products and conformity assessments (see EUROPE 12175). While the Council has basically completed the technical work on these texts and has introduced a number of reservations and conditions, one area remains particularly problematic, that of the extension of the mandate's cover to include fisheries and forestry products in accordance with the classification applied by the WTO, which concerns market access for non-agricultural products (NAMA). This should ensure sufficient cover to comply with Article XXIV of the WTO.
However, it will mainly be timing and calendar issues that will be at the heart of the discussions in Bucharest.
The signals sent by the transatlantic partner remain disturbing and leave an undeniable uncertainty about the future of these talks (see EUROPE 12195, 12171).
Moreover, if the European Commission prefers, in general, to obtain the approval of the European Parliament, it is possible that validation of the draft mandates in plenary next March could be disrupted by the European elections in May 2019. Campaigning MEPs could, in fact, be particularly sensitive about protecting themselves from public opinion, which has often been very unfavourable to previous TTIP negotiations.
Finally, the EU's bilateral negotiations to advance its trade liberalisation agenda, as well as recent developments related to the Everything But Arms initiative, will also be discussed on Friday 22 February. (Original version in French by Hermine Donceel)