EU, German officials play down reports of trade talk failure

The future of the proposed free trade deal between the U.S. and European Union was dealt a further blow on Tuesday when France’s foreign trade minister said his country wanted an end to the negotiations.

The deal is aimed at boosting trade and investment between the USA and Europe, Alden says.

Accusing the USA side of offering “just crumbs”, Mr Fekl said France would ask the European Commission to halt the talks at a trade ministers meeting in Slovakia next month.

Sigmar Gabriel, who is also Germany’s vice chancellor, compared the TTIP negotiations unfavorably with a free trade deal forged between the 28-nation European Union and Canada, which he said was fairer for both sides.

President Obama’s chief negotiator, US Trade Representative Michael Froman, had made the same claim on Sunday.

“The U.S.is seen as this unregulated, red in tooth and claw kind of place, and if we have to standardize regulation with the U.S., that will lead to an erosion of standards and protections within the EU”, said Simon Tilford of the Centre for European Reform.

“The goal is to get rid of the remaining mostly small tariffs in place between the United States and Europe on the trade front”, says Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations specializing in USA economic competitiveness.

Keen to disarm TTIP as an electoral weapon, the commission, the EU’s executive arm which conducts all bloc trade negotiations, said a deal would not come at any cost.

“We mustn’t submit to the American proposals”, said Gabriel, who is also the head of Germany’s center-left Social Democratic Party.

A Downing Street spokesman said it is “obviously in Europe’s and America’s benefit to get an worldwide trade deal organised”.

In Britain, the failure of TTIP “may strengthen the Brexiteers’ argument that the United Kingdom will be more nimble on its own, as it will not have to co-ordinate 27 European Union countries’ individual desires into one combined European Union effort”, says the Daily Telegraph.

Figures were eventually even produced by the Ministry of Industry and Trade that around one percent of GDP, or around 900 million dollars a year, could be the maximal Czech benefit from the deal it the most ambitious version was signed and realized.

“We’re still not out of the woods in terms of dealing the EU’s legacy of toxic trade deals”.

French President François Hollande told French ambassadors he wouldn’t support an agreement that would be concluded before the end of Obama’s mandate.

Spokesman of the European Commission Margaritis Schinas said in Brussels on Monday that the commissioner is ready to finalize TTIP by the end of the year and pointed that talks on the agreement are witnessing a critical phase.