TTIP – as it’s known – is the highly controversial plan to create a free trade zone between the USA and the European Union.
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“France calls for an end to these negotiations”, Fekl told RMC radio.
“France prefers to look things in the face”, Mr Hollande said in a diplomatic speech. Influential American labor leader Richard Trumka, president of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), has said the agreement, which aims at harmonizing safety, labor, manufacturing and other regulations across the world’s two largest economies, appears aimed at lowering standards, and not improving them.
Guaranteeing the United States access to the European single market and EU countries benefits for selling to America, the talks have dragged on for three years.
“We mustn’t submit to the American proposals”, said Gabriel, who is also the head of Germany’s center-left Social Democratic Party. There’s resistance on both continents, and the talks are complicated by Britain’s planned exit from the 28-nation European Union and upcoming presidential elections in the US and France. But he too said it would be hard to reach a deal before Obama left office at the end of the year.
On the U.S side, further difficulties arise on horizon as Donald Trump seems firmly opposed to global trade deals and Hillary Clinton has not shown much enthusiasm on the TTIP either.
“The negotiations are bogged down”, he told them, “positions have not been respected, it’s clearly unbalanced”.
In a tweet, Fekl said “France demands the cessation of negotiations #TAFTA #TTIP”.
“We need to ensure that any deal that is negotiated is in the best interests of the people of Ireland, and for Europe as a whole”.
European Union trade ministers will discuss the issue when they next meet in Bratislava on Sept.22. He did not indicate when or under what conditions the the talks could restart. “Nothing is moving forward”.
As the USA presidential vote nears and with the French and Germans heading to the polls in 2017, Gabriel is only the latest high-ranking European to cast doubt on a swift deal.
Last month, Agence France-Presse quoted diplomats as saying that talks may be suspended until after the US elections in November, as well as elections in France and Germany next year.
The White House spokesman meanwhile said Obama will send his top trade official to Europe in the coming weeks for further discussions.
Looming elections in Germany and France next year as well as the USA presidential elections later this year always looked like they could derail this trade deal until a new set of politicians, or the same with new mandates, might be around to give TTIP or a modified form of it a new lease of life.
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Earlier this year, the European Commission was forced by an alliance led by France to concede that a final TTIP treaty would have to be ratified by each of the 28 legislatures in member states, rather than simply by a vote in the European parliament.
