In a plenary vote on Thursday 14 March in Strasbourg, the European Parliament failed to agree on the conditions for launching limited trade negotiations with the United States.
By rejecting this non-binding resolution by 198 votes to 223 with 37 abstentions, Parliament fails to send a clear signal to the other institutions on the way forward for future negotiations with Washington on a mandate for a trade agreement limited to market access for non-agricultural products and another mandate on conformity assessment (see EUROPE 12175/1).
Table tennis in Parliament
The resolution drafted by Socialist MEP Bernd Lange (Germany), which called on the Council of the EU not to validate the negotiating directives proposed by the European Commission, was rejected in the parliamentary committee last February (see EUROPE 12197/22). It was therefore a resolution in favour of the Commission's mandates that ended up being tabled by MEPs in Strasbourg. Nevertheless, during the plenary vote, the parties to the left of the assembly succeeded in getting several fundamental amendments voted on, which again changed the essence of the text: they instructed the Council not to endorse the mandates and called for the revocation of the TTIP mandate with the United States, whose negotiations had been suspended in 2016.
However, the 458 MEPs present at the vote chose to reject the text of the final resolution, failing to propose a united vision on the subject.
The Trump factor
The failure of this vote probably does not reveal so much a European disunity on trade issues – we have seen clear majorities emerge in votes on free trade agreements with Japan or Singapore in recent months – as the difficulty, faced with the administration of US President Donald Trump, of laying the foundations of this "positive agenda" that the Commission is calling for. The threat of tariff sanctions and signals about the inclusion of agriculture in the talks (see EUROPE 12171/10) fuel the mistrust of European elected officials, calling on them to include more safeguards in mandates.
“There is clearly a majority in Parliament to start trade talks with the US. But obviously we can not agree under which conditions”, Christofer Fjellner (EPP, Sweden) noted after the vote on Twitter. "Today's vote is a sign of a divided European Parliament when everyone agreed on one thing: to be more firm. Instead, we have no position and Member States will be more inclined to give in to American pressure. This is regrettable", said Frenchman Franck Proust, a member of the same group.
On the same day, Donald Trump spoke out, warning Europeans if they did not engage in talks: “If they don’t talk to us, we’re going to do something that’s going to be pretty severely economically. We’re going to tariff a lot of their products”, the AFP reported. “The European Union treats us very, very unfairly”, he also said.
And now what?
Parliament's vote, while not binding, embarrasses the other European institutions, starting with the EU Council.
The Member States' trade ministers had indeed wished to wait for the green light from Parliament (see EUROPE 12200/1) to legitimise their support for the mandates. In the absence of this, they can of course override, but some of them, including France, will probably prefer to wait until the European elections.
This delay could shake the German automotive industry, while Washington threatens to impose tariff sanctions on European car imports (see EUROPE 12200/1). Mr Trump theoretically has until 17 May to decide on them.
The matter will therefore be referred for debate to the European Council on 21 and 22 March.
The Commission spoke via a tweet from Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström: “We will work with the Council as they take this forward. MEPs raised important concerns in the debate. We will continue to involve the EP throughout the process”. Everything indicates that the institution is working to provide clear guarantees that it will not be possible to return to the TIPP (see EUROPE 12213/4). (Original version in French by Hermine Donceel)