Spotlight: U.S., EU strive to reach landmark trade accord in 2016

Chief negotiators from the United States and the European Union (EU) said Friday that they have exchanged the second tariff offers and fully engaged in all areas of negotiations on a landmark U.S.-EU free trade deal this week, with the aim of accelerating bilateral talks and finalizing a trade pact in 2016.

During the weeklong talks that ended Friday, the U.S. and the EU put forward and began discussing "comprehensive new tariff offers," the second tariff offers of the negotiation, said chief U.S. negotiator Dan Mullaney in a press conference call after wrapping up the 11th round of negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) here.

"In our new offers, we each identified a large number of products for which we're prepared to fully eliminate the tariffs," Mullaney said, adding that negotiators will have intensive discussions on the revised tariff offers in the coming weeks prior to the next round of TTIP negotiations, which he expected to take place "soon after the start of next year."

"We continue to push hard for the goal of complete tariff elimination on products traded across the Atlantic, with tariffs on the overwhelming majority of goods being eliminated immediately upon entering the force of the agreement," the U.S. negotiator said.

EU's chief negotiator Ignacio Garcia Bercero confirmed in the conference call that the tariff offers that the two sides exchanged this week for full duty elimination covered 97 percent of tariff lines, holding back the remaining 3 percent of sensitive products for what he called the "end game" negotiations.

"We had the first opportunity to compare the offers, to discuss them and I think there is recognition they fulfilled the criteria we set out before we proceeded to the exchange," Garcia Bercero said.

The two sides exchanged initial tariff offers in February 2014, with the EU accusing the United States of failing to match its level of ambition.

Garcia Bercero said the two sides also discussed market access on public procurement, which will prepare the ground for the exchange of initial offers in February next year.

"There is a strong political will on both sides of the Atlantic to reach a good agreement," the EU negotiator said, adding that the goal of the current negotiating round in Miami, Florida, was to translate this political will into concrete steps forward.

That has been achieved by "progress and intensification of talks in many areas," Garcia Bercero said, noting that the two sides this week have exchanged proposals for product-specific rules of origin for industrial products and discussed how to "achieve greater regulatory compatibility" in nine sectors, including textiles, cars and machine engineering.

Following the successful conclusion of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations among 12 Pacific Rim countries earlier this month, Mullaney said negotiators committed themselves to pick up pace and conclude the TTIP talks under the Obama administration.

"We believe it is important to try to finish these negotiations during President Obama's presidency. To do that, we'll need to use our time with maximum efficiency," he said.

Some trade experts said one of the reasons the TTIP talks have not made much progress in the past two years is because the Obama administration has made concluding the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations as top priority, instead of the TTIP talks.

In order to achieve the goal of completing TTIP by 2016, Mullaney, the chief U.S. negotiator, said U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman and the EU's Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom agreed on the need to "accelerate work in all areas" when they met in Washington D.C. to review the status of the negotiations last month.

"We and the EU also agreed that intersessional work will now become even more frequent across negotiating areas than it has been so that we can put ourselves in the best position to complete the negotiations in 2016," the U.S. negotiator added. "We know that the next four months are going to be important to our hope of completing TTIP during the Obama administration."

The U.S. and EU may have to reach a full agreement on TTIP before April 2016 if they want to conclude the trade talks under the Obama administration, according to Joaquin Roy, Jean Monnet professor and director of the European Union Center at the University of Miami. After that, it will not be "the right time" to have real negotiations on the TTIP because of U.S. presidential campaigns, he said.

"There are issues subject to controversy and checks and balances. It's not going to be easy. It's not going to be fast," Roy told Xinhua, pointing out areas of cultural, linguistic issues, the process of food, mutual recognition of regulations and labor provisions as potential stumbling blocks in the TTIP talks.

The recent ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) that a crucial transatlantic data-sharing deal, which allows American tech companies such as Facebook to transfer users' data from the EU to the United States, is invalid will also cast a shadow over the trade talks.

That could be one of the most sensitive issues to "slow down the process" of the TTIP negotiations, Roy said, adding that some European interest groups distrust the U.S. policies and systems about sharing the sensitive data.

While U.S. government officials intended to get the TTIP done on "only one tank of gas," which means "just going to the gas station only once", Roy believed negotiators may need "three or four trips to the gas station." Endit