The President of the European Council, Charles Michel, gave a speech on the state of Europe at the Berlin conference on Tuesday 9 November. In a section dedicated to the EU’s trade with the rest of the world, he regretted the slow pace of ratification of free trade agreements within the EU.
“The problem is one of form and one of substance”, he explained. On the form, “the confidentiality of these negotiations makes it increasingly difficult to explain their value to the public and to the national parliaments that must approve them”. He echoed the last European Council, where EU leaders highlighted these same problems (see EUROPE 12817/4).
On the substance, Mr Michel raised the need to “clarify the goals and priorities of these agreements”. It is clear to him that free trade agreements alone should not solve all the problems.
He therefore agrees with the position of the European Commission, also expressed on 9 November by Sabine Weyand, Director General of DG Trade (see EUROPE 12829/20).
Jörgen Warborn MEP (EPP, Sweden) also shares this view: “So far in this mandate, we have only ratified one agreement, and that is with Vietnam. If you exclude, of course, the UK agreement. And I think that it is not up to the speed that I expect. So I expect the Commission and I expect my colleagues in the Parliament and in the Council to step up now and to make sure that we can create trade agreements, diversify our supply chain, and help people and businesses across Europe to trade more, because that is what we need”, he told EUROPE.
On the other side of the House, however, several MEPs believe that the EU’s trade policy should take greater account of sustainable development goals and environmental issues. This is for example the case of the Greens/EFA group (see EUROPE 12829/20).
See Charles Michel’s speech: https://bit.ly/3n20tn1 (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)