France wants halt to ‘imbalanced’ EU-US trade deal talks

French President Francois Hollande has cast doubt on a landmark trade deal between the United States and the European Union, saying it can not be completed before US President Barack Obama leaves office later this year.

“It’s better to let everyone know that France will not be able to approve an accord that still lacks essential elements necessary to guarantee a positive outcome”. “France would rather see things as they are and not harbor the illusion that an agreement will be struck before the end of the US president’s term in office”.

“The negotiations are bogged down, positions have not been respected, it’s clearly unbalanced”, he said.

French trade minister Matthias Fekl has indicated that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) deal is dead in the water.

Throughout the negotiating process, a protest movement against the liberalisation of trade between the U.S. and the European Union has formed.

“They have been hard, of course, we knew from the beginning, but they have not failed”, she said. Both US presidential candidates, for example, say they oppose the TPP.

France will make this case at a meeting of foreign trade ministers in Bratislava in September, Fekl added. Italy’s Economic Development Minister Carlo Calenda said in an interview with Corriere della Sera that talks will require many more months.

Malmstrom added that it made no sense to suspend talks in September because the two sides could still make advances in regulatory cooperation, agreeing standards that are important to industries such as the auto sector, and that could be picked up by Obama’s successor even if a deal was not sealed this year.

Trade commissioner Cecilia Malmstroem, who is in charge of the negotiations, tweeted that she would hold a video conference with her American counterpart, U.S. trade representative Michael Froman on Tuesday.

He said that the negotiations were loaded in favour of the USA, with the Americans giving Europe “nothing or mere crumbs”.

However, a European Commission spokesperson earlier said of Gabriel’s comments: “It is worth mentioning that although trade talks take time, the ball is rolling right now, and the Commission is making steady progress in the ongoing TTIP negotiations”.

“If both these deals go down in flames, which is quite possible, the U.S. position in the world is going to be much weaker”, he says. Merkel backs the talks and her spokesman insisted on Monday that they should continue. All 28 EU member states and the European parliament will have to ratify TTIP before it comes into force.

For her part, Luxembourg’s Viviane Reding, a former EU commissioner who is now an MEP with the conservative European People’s Party (EPP) on Tuesday also called on the Grand Duchy to demand the end of the “useless” TTIP negotiations.