The eight round of negotiations with the United States for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) has started. The negotiations will go on for the entire week and will be managed by the Chief Negotiators Ignacio Garcia Bercero for the EU and Dan Mullaney for the US.
“We expect a real fresh start in 2015 with both sides willing to discuss everything in a constructive way ranging from tariffs to intellectual property rights, not forgetting public procurement and regulatory cooperation,” said Marcus J. Beyrer, Director General for BusinessEurope, the European Industrial Association. According to the association, “We must remain ambitious,” including important topics like “financial services regulation and energy.”
Last week the Head of the S&D group at the European Parliament, Gianni Pittella, travelled to Washington for some discussions about the TTIP with the US Trade Representative Michael Froman. “We aim at a fair deal with the US,” said Pittella back from the States, based on a “compromise bearing mutual benefits to both parties,” removing “price-related and price-unrelated barriers,” establishing a series of “common standards, norms and laws guaranteeing a fair competition” and avoiding “costs for double certifications, especially for SMEs.”
Still, warned Pittella, “there are thin red line which we shouldn’t overtake,” namely: “lower quality of European rules on consumers’ safety or workers’ conditions,” no “hormones in the meat on our dishes,” and “no to GMOs.” Moreover, exclusion of the “norms on data protection” and – above all – “no investor-state dispute settlement mechanism,” the so-called ISDS.
