(Recast) Spotlight: No "political resolve" to move TTIP talks to final stage

There is no "political resolve" to move Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) talks to the final stage when they have been connected to electoral politics, European experts told Xinhua recently.

After 14 painful rounds of negotiations, the TTIP is still far from being sealed at present.

In recent days, big demonstrations against TTIP took place across Germany and in Brussels. French and German officials have been publicly opposed to TTIP negotiations.

European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom told a German newspaper last week it would be "very hard" to have an agreement finished by the end of the Obama administration on Jan. 19.

"There are several roadblocks for the TTIP talks -- some political, others technical. What it's missing right now is the political resolve to move talks to the final stage when critical compromises will be struck. Neither side is in mode for such compromises now, and it will take some time before they are there," said Fredrik Erixon, the director of the Brussels-based European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE).

Erixon believes EU member states still support the TTIP.

"What has happened is that France is entering an election cycle and the government feels compelled to talk down TTIP. The German government remains supportive, but the leader of the social democratic party has had to talk down TTIP in order to win support for the EU-Canada free trade deal, which he has just won," he said.

"TTIP is dead anyway, for the time being, on both sides of the Atlantic. The problem with TTIP is not related to economic issues, but public perception," said Daniel Gros, the director at the Brussels-based Centre for European Policy Studies.

Erixon said electoral politics in Europe would dominate the debate over TTIP for the next year, and nothing would happen until next summer on the U.S. side either due to a change of president there and the time it will take to fill up key staff posts and develop the new administration's policies.

Politics may eventually kill TTIP, but for the time being the biggest threat to it is Donald Trump, not the French and German governments, said the expert.

The time when TTIP talks realistically can be finalised are in early 2018 and it has been clear for a while that this is also what negotiators aim for, he said.

His view was echoed by Gros: "After U.S., German and French elections it might be possible for the two sides to go back to serious negotiations."

The problem of public perception would remain, but after elections, politicians would be more likely to focus on the substance and listen to business. Early 2018 seemed widely optimistic, he added. Endit