The transatlantic relationship on agri-food issues is declining, said Ted McKinney, US Under-Secretary of Commerce in charge of agricultural issues, on a visit to Brussels on Thursday 27 June.
He met with European officials and parliamentarians, as well as representatives of the private sector and some European journalists.
He thus "got to know" Sabine Weyand, the European Commission's new Director General for Trade, with whom he discussed the future of transatlantic trade negotiations (see EUROPE 12236/12, 12175/1). "I did share my honest opinion, which you have no doubt read in the papers, that a number of our members of Congress, some of them in key leadership positions, our president, others, who told us that they are not ready to settle a deal with Europe without agriculture", he said, despite the fact that the EU had excluded this subject from the upcoming negotiations.
Convinced of the strong ties between the United States and the European Union, McKinney believes that trade talks have the potential to evolve positively. "You start by crawling, and maybe take a small step, and then you walk: that's what we're ready to do", he said.
He regretted that the American agri-food sector has been "considerably denigrated" in Europe: "we hear about chlorinated chicken, beef with hormones and yet you do not hear us poking at African swine fever here or taking shots at the fact that mad cow disease has began in the EU as well", he said outraged.
According to the Under-Secretary, the transatlantic relationship on agri-food issues is declining because of European "harassment": "It is not at all a good relationship now, for all these reasons: not only geographical indications, but also the precautionary principle, biotechnology, the opinion of the European Court of Justice, the risk of pesticides", he quoted jumbled.
McKinney is confident, however, that the main objective is to improve transatlantic communication on these issues - and that the opinions of many Europeans do not diverge as much from those of their American counterparts on many of these issues.
He called on Europeans to open their markets to GMOs and not to miss the "opportunity to edit genes", both plant and animal, which he said was necessary to ensure food security in the future (see EUROPE 12273/29).
Mr McKinney also decried the European precautionary principle, which he said "causes great disruption and has the potential to cause more".
The American representative also recalled Washington's reticence about the system of geographical indications (GIs), advocated by the EU in its free trade agreements, which he considers "unfair".
Finally, he welcomed the recent agreement on the high quality beef quota for US exporters, while deploring the length of the talks: "it still took us ten years to get there" (see EUROPE 12275/21). (Original version in French by Hermine Donceel)