TTIP Negotiations Speed Up

From 20th to 24th April, the ninth round of negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the EU and the United States took place in New York, US. The negotiations focused on all of the three main pillars of the agreement, which are market access, regulatory cooperation and rules.

The regulatory part of the negotiations dealt with both horizontal cooperation and sectors, with detailed discussions on regulatory cooperation in pharmaceutics, car sector and medical devices sector, and it is expected that the talks regarding the regulatory part will intensify in the coming months. An important progress has been achieved in energy and raw materials, as the ways how to ensure a fair access of third-parties to transport infrastructure of energy, meaning pipelines and electricity grids, were discussed for the first time since the beginning of the negotiations. It is still not clear whether there will be a chapter dedicated to energy and raw materials, but this decision can still be made further in the negotiations. The SME chapter of the TTIP was also discussed in New York, showing a clear willingness of both sides to make SMEs benefit from the agreement as much as possible. In addition, just before the beginning of the round, the European Commission published results of its survey among almost 900 European SMEs showing that they will profit greatly from elimination of obstacles to mutual trade.

Furthermore, the main negotiators announced that in early autumn, a political stocktaking exercise will take place in order to identify progress in the negotiations and help both sides to focus on elements on TTIP that haven’t been decided yet. This adds to the announcement of both the EU and the US that the aim is to intensify the negotiations as much as possible this year.