The 13th round of Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) discussions wrapped up in New York last night with EU chief negotiator, Ignacio García Bercero describing it as a “bridging round.” In other words, after the political hype of earlier in the week with the meeting of President Obama and Chancellor Merkel, Trade Commissioner Malmstrom and US Trade Representative Froman, there was no major breakthrough.Bercero described the work of the week as to “consolidate as many texts as we can – in other words, to agree on joint text in as many areas as possible. The round was a bridging round, between the huge amount of technical work we have already done, and the task we now face of creating joint texts and finding compromises where necessary.”
The 13th round of Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) discussions wrapped up in New York last night with EU chief negotiator, Ignacio García Bercero describing it as a “bridging round.” In other words, after the political hype of earlier in the week with the meeting of President Obama and Chancellor Merkel, Trade Commissioner Malmstrom and US Trade Representative Froman, there was no major breakthrough.
Bercero described the work of the week as to “consolidate as many texts as we can – in other words, to agree on joint text in as many areas as possible. The round was a bridging round, between the huge amount of technical work we have already done, and the task we now face of creating joint texts and finding compromises where necessary.”
They have covered 97% of trade areas in discussions so far but the other 3% is where the crunch issues lie including agriculture and still have to be tackled. From a negotiation perspective it makes sense to leave the difficult issues to the end but for Irish and EU farmers the threat from this is that if agreement is moving into place on everything else, the pressure for compromise on agriculture will be immense.
Threat
The threat to EU farming was highlighted by Friends of the Earth in Brussels this week in a report critical of likely impact of TTIP on agriculture which suggested many more losers than winners from a deal. Agriculture Commissioner Hogan hit back saying that the report was assuming the EU negotiators had caved in on everything, a further indication from the commissioner that the EU won’t be bullied on Agriculture.
Negotiations move on to Brussels in Mid-July for the next round with numerous technical working groups taking place in between. There is huge drive at a political level to get a deal before the end of this year but given the amount of work that remains that is ambitious. The single transferrable soundbite from Commissioners and negotiators alike every time they speak about TTIP is that substance will take precedence over speed.
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Feeling of now or never for TTIP
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