Why have the EU and the US still not reached an agreement on critical minerals and sustainable steel and aluminium? The question was raised several times by members of the European Parliament’s Committee on International Trade on Monday 19 February. They questioned European Commissioners Valdis Dombrovskis and Margrethe Vestager on the latest meeting of the EU-US Trade and Technology Council (TTC).
MEPs find it regrettable that the EU has still not resolved its trade differences with Washington despite five meetings at ministerial level and several working groups within the TTC (see EUROPE 13339/10). The Europeans have been trying for many months to conclude an agreement on critical minerals with the United States in order to circumvent certain discriminatory rules in the American IRA subsidies (Inflation Reduction Act). Work on the steel and aluminium arrangement has been going on for years.
Samira Rafaela (Renew Europe, Dutch) and Heidi Hautala (Greens/EFA, Finnish) questioned the Commissioners on the reasons for this lack of progress.
The ball would be more in the court of the United States, according to the European Commissioner for Trade, Valdis Dombrovskis. As far as the global agreement on sustainable steel and aluminium is concerned, points of disagreement persist between the two partners, he pointed out. He went on to explain that Washington had no intention of committing itself to permanently withdrawing its Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminium.
As for the work on the critical minerals agreement, he said that here too the United States was less committed. “The difficulty is that the expectations from the US side are much more higher than with Japan”, Mr Dombrovskis lamented. Tokyo concluded an agreement on critical minerals with Washington very quickly last year, with the same objective as the Europeans, to have a solution to access certain IRA subsidies, thanks to the partnership. “If we were able to conclude in comparable territories, the agreement would have been reached a long time ago”, said the Commissioner.
A number of MEPs on the right and left have also shown an interest in working with Washington on a global carbon price. Here too, the approaches differ between the EU and the United States, according to Valdis Dombrovskis, with a transatlantic partner that uses subsidies and regulations to green its industry, rather than carbon pricing. (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)