The European Parliament and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is the official name of the forthcoming free trade agreement between the European Union and the United States. This agreement aims at eliminating trade barriers and most importantly non-trade barriers between these two markets. Nontrade barriers take the form of different technical standards, sanitary and security market regulations. The launch of these negotiations counts with a strong political support on both sides of the Atlantic. According to the European Commission, the TTIP should be very beneficial for the exports in all economic sectors. It would be particularly beneficial for the car industry (+43% in the exports), the metallurgy (+12%), the processed food products, the chemical industry, etc.‌ 1 Americans would like to eliminate restrictions on imports of agricultural products in the European market, including GMOs and cloned products2. A Member of the European Parliament declared that these negotiations would be focusing on the question of which sanitary norms would prevail. This creates strong concerns amongst agricultural stakeholders in Brussels. Since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, the European Parliament must give its consent to the signature of trade agreements by the European Union. On the basis of these new powers, the European Parliament tries to influence the definition of the negotiation mandates too despite the fact that it has no voice at this stage. It clearly gave its views on the TTIP negotiations through the vote of a resolution on the 23rd May 20133. The European Parliament welcomes the launch of negotiations with the world first economy, but an important number of MEPs expressed reservations concerning cultural and agricultural goods. The Parliament asked Member States to exclude the audiovisual sector from the negotiation mandate of the European Commission.
The Parliament’s claims were heard and defended by France during the Council in Luxemburg, on June 14. The audiovisual sector has been excluded from the mandate. After the controversy about the cultural exception, the negotiations today face a new turmoil following the declarations by Edward Snowden about the US spying European Union offices. The forthcoming negotiations promise to be fierce. The last declarations of Martin Schultz, the President of the European Parliament, show that this institution will keep a close eye on them4.
1
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-13-211_en.htm http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/05/24/business/global/european-parliament-moves-to-limit-scope-ofeventual-us-trade-deal.html?from=world 3 http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+TA+P7-TA-20130227+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN 4 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/30/us-clarification-us-spying-nsa 2
Despite this scandal, the European Commission has confirmed that "the beginning of EU-US trade negotiations should not be affected.”5 The discussions will therefore start next week with a view to reaching an agreement before October 2014.
Cécile Fouquet, AliénorEU July 2013
5
http://euobserver.com/tickers/120726