Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/621909
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 3 JANUARY 2016 16 Inside the EP In the area of trade policy the European Commission negotiates on behalf of the EU and its 28 Member States. The Commission works according to guide- lines agreed by the EU's Member States. The Com- mission's trade department (Directorate General for Trade) takes the lead in the negotiations while work- ing closely with other Commission departments. The US is represented by the United States Trade Repre- sentative (USTR). The Commission has a legal obligation to consult the Council on all aspects of the TTIP-negotiations. This occurs in various formats and at different levels. Since the start of the TTIP process the Commission has had more than 45 meetings with the EU's Member States, including at ministerial level. On top of this there are numerous bilateral and other meetings. The European Parliament is similarly consulted and informed. In addition to the European Parliament's Trade Committee, a specially set up Monitoring Group and a group of high-ranking MEPs around the Par- liament's president also work on the TTIP. Since the beginning of the talks, representatives of the Com- mission have appeared in the 15 meetings of the Eu- ropean Parliament and many more informal meetings to brief MEPs and answer their questions. So far, the Commission has sent more than 65 important TTIP documents to the European Parliament and answered over 80 parliamentary questions. The Parliament has welcomed this openness and transparency on several occasions. What is TTIP about? The TTIP talks are in three parts: market access, reg- ulatory cooperation, and trade rules. Market access deals with the removal of trade barri- ers such as import duties between the EU and the US, which should allow a wider range of goods to be sold from Europe to the USA but also enables American companies to bid for public contracts in the EU. Regulatory cooperation means harmonizing rules on standards – from the production of cars to chemi- cals – and this has opened questions on food safety due to the production of genetically modified food in the USA that could be exported to the EU. Finally trade rules that can promote labour rights, help SMEs, promote free competition, and more con- troversially, setting up up a dispute settlement system for resolving disputes between governments. All this has created a huge split between corporate supporters of TTIP, and a grassroots campaign that has rallied millions to tell governments and MEPs to scrap the agreement which they say only facilitates large multinational players seeking easier trade be- tween the USA and the EU. Transparency issues This is a major sticking point for campaigners: the talks are being held in secret. While diplomats will say that such negotiations cannot be carried out in the open, campaigners want to have transparency on such an important trade agreement that can af- fect the lives and health of millions of consumers in the EU. The European Commission says it is doing all it can to make TTIP negotiations transparent. "That's why in TTIP we've now gone further than in talks in any pre- vious bilateral EU trade negotiation – by publishing EU negotiating texts. These are documents we give our US counterparts during week-long rounds of face-to-face talks. Our texts and theirs are the basis of our discussions," the EC says. These include textual proposals –the European Un- ion's proposals for legal text on topics in TTIP. They are tabled for discussion with the US in negotiating rounds. The actual text in the final agreement will be a result of negotiations between the EU and US. And then there are position papers setting out out and describing the EU's general approach on topics in the TTIP negotiations. They are tabled for discus- sion with the US in negotiating rounds. However, the documents negotiating on market ac- cess will remain confidential, because the EU says it wants to reach the best possible final deal for every- one in the EU. "To do that we need to strike the right balance between what each side wants. And that means offering concessions to each other at differ- ent stages in the talks; being able to do so in confi- dence." The EU says that discussions in TTIP are mostly based on the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) where the EU recently concluded negotiations with Canada and that this gives a fair idea of what it is negotiating on market access in TTIP – even if the outcome may well be different. In terms of regulatory co-operation, the second pil- lar of the TTIP, the EU has provided detailed propos- als on trade barriers and ensuring food safety and the health of animals and plants. For trade rules, all the textual proposals prepared so far, as well as a number of position papers for various chapters, have been published. All MEPs to have ac- cess to all confidential TTIP documents All MEPs will have ac- cess to all categories of confidential TTIP docs after 11 months of ne- gotiations with the Com- mission. MEPs will be able to read the "con- solidated texts" in a se- cure reading room, take handwritten notes and use the information as a basis for their political actions. nform yourself The European Commission says it is negotiating TTIP as openly as possible. You can find factsheets in plain language as well as negotiating texts, EU textual proposals and EU position papers at this link here: http://trade.ec.europa. eu/doclib/press/index. cfm?id=1230 i TTIP vows to simplify EU-US trade but its secrecy has raised supicions TTIP A giant leap for the EU, but does it pose a risk to the public? Part 6 and the final part in our series on the European Parliament THE transatlantic trade and investment partnership (TTIP) is a free trade agree- ment being negotiated between the Euro- pean Union and the United States whose ultimate aim is to create economic growth and jobs on both sides of the Atlantic by re- moving trade barriers, and making it easier to trade between the two continents. In itself this means removing duties on imports but also finding agreement on standards for goods on both sides, disman- tling "unnecessary" regulatory barriers, and setting international standards. Customs duties at the US border are rela- tively low, but given massive trade flows of some €2 billion daily even small reductions in customs duties can have enormous eco- nomic leverage. Removing customs duties would instantly pave the way for more EU imports from particularly competitive sec- tors such as textiles, ceramics and proc- essed agricultural products – which is why TTIP is being mainly geared as beneficial for European SMEs. The trade agreement could have its biggest effect on growth in the area of standards and regulations, because both sides have