News / France

US avoids making concessions in EU-US trade pact talks: France

Tuesday, 03 May 2016 10:36 AM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 03 May 2016 10:34 AM ]

French Minister of State for Foreign Trade Matthias Fekl (photo by AFP)

France has warned that negotiations between the US and the EU over a grand trade deal would come to a standstill due to Washington’s reluctance to make concessions.

French Minister of State for Foreign Trade Matthias Fekl told French radio on Tuesday that the talks on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) could end without agreement.

“In view of the United States’ state of mind today, that seems to be the most likely option,” he said.

“Europe is offering a lot and we are getting very little in return. This is unacceptable,” he added.

Fekl, who negotiates trade deals on behalf of France, said, “It is a deal that — in the state it is in today — would be a bad deal.”

Negotiations over the TTIP, which aims to create a free trade zone covering 850 million people, started back in 2013.

Washington and Brussels both hope to finalize the deal before US President Barack Obama leaves office in January. The deal, however, faces growing opposition on both sides of the Atlantic.

Environmental pressure group Greenpeace warned on Monday that compromising with the US would undermine EU standards on the environment and public health.

The groups said it had obtained 248 pages of classified documents from the closed-door negotiations.

“These leaked documents confirm what we have been saying for a long time: TTIP would put corporations at the center of policy-making, to the detriment of environment and public health,” said Greenpeace EU director Jorgo Riss.

People rally in the German city of Berlin against the TTIP trade deal, April 18, 2015. (Photo by AFP)

“We have known that the EU position was bad, now we see the US position is even worse,” Riss said.

The European Commission, which negotiates on behalf of the 28-member block, however, denied the groups’ claims, saying Greenpeace was “flatly wrong” in its interpretation of the documents.

Washington also denounced the group, saying, “The interpretations being given to these texts appear to be misleading at best and flat out wrong at worst.”

The Greenpeace report, however, has concerned tens of thousands in Europe this week. People took to the streets in Germany against the proposed pact, saying it could seriously harm the existing ecological and labor market standards.

While advocates say the trade deal would create many new business opportunities, critics argue that US corporations could put excessive legal pressure on some EU states; a move that would have a “chilling” effect on legislators, forcing them to water down welfare protections.

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