European professionals say EU-US trade pact talks likely to collapse
Negotiations for a vast U.S.-EU trade pact, which aims to create a free-trade zone covering 850 million people, are likely to grind to a halt because of Washington's reluctance to make concessions, a top French trade official warned on Tuesday, a remark which admits the difficulty in arriving at a deal between the U.S. and EU, similar to remarks of Germany's Minister of Agriculture Christian Schmidt, who has defending the EU's protection of high food security standards.
That it will be a challenge to reach an agreement is supported by Schmidt saying food security in the EU is not negotiable, when he spoke on German radio on Monday.
"In view of the United States' state of mind today, that seems to be the most likely option," said France's minister of state for trade Matthias Fekl, when asked if the talks on a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which began in 2013, could collapse.
Fekl's comments reflect deep suspicion in Europe that the deal will erode environmental and health regulations to the advantage of big business.
Washington and Brussels want the mega-deal completed this year before U.S. President Barack Obama leaves office, but it has faced mounting opposition on both sides of the Atlantic.
On Monday, environmental pressure group Greenpeace released a trove of leaked documents about the closed-door negotiations, charging that the deal would inflict a dangerous lack of standards on U.S. and European consumers, and erode EU legal safeguards for the environment and workers' rights.
However, the European Commission, which negotiates trade deals on behalf of the 28 EU member states, said Greenpeace was "flatly wrong" in its interpretation of the documents.
The Greenpeace leak was a "storm in a teacup," Brussels said.
U.S. officials also hit back at Greenpeace with the U.S. Trade Representative saying: "The interpretations being given to these texts appear to be misleading at best and flat out wrong at worst."
That it will be a challenge to reach an agreement is supported by Schmidt saying food security in the EU is not negotiable, when he spoke on German radio on Monday.
"In view of the United States' state of mind today, that seems to be the most likely option," said France's minister of state for trade Matthias Fekl, when asked if the talks on a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which began in 2013, could collapse.
Fekl's comments reflect deep suspicion in Europe that the deal will erode environmental and health regulations to the advantage of big business.
Washington and Brussels want the mega-deal completed this year before U.S. President Barack Obama leaves office, but it has faced mounting opposition on both sides of the Atlantic.
On Monday, environmental pressure group Greenpeace released a trove of leaked documents about the closed-door negotiations, charging that the deal would inflict a dangerous lack of standards on U.S. and European consumers, and erode EU legal safeguards for the environment and workers' rights.
However, the European Commission, which negotiates trade deals on behalf of the 28 EU member states, said Greenpeace was "flatly wrong" in its interpretation of the documents.
The Greenpeace leak was a "storm in a teacup," Brussels said.
U.S. officials also hit back at Greenpeace with the U.S. Trade Representative saying: "The interpretations being given to these texts appear to be misleading at best and flat out wrong at worst."