On Sunday Sigmar Gabriel, who is also Germany’s Economy Minister, said: “In my opinion, the negotiations with the United States have de facto failed”.
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Washington has been insisting that the free trade deal be signed before the end of 2016, but it has encountered strong opposition from a number of European nations, not only Germany.
He noted that in 14 rounds of talks, the two sides haven’t agreed on a single common item out of 27 chapters being discussed.
Gabriel compared TTIP with the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), a free-trade treaty that the European Union and Canada have been negotiating, which he said was fairer on the parties involved.
But public dissatisfaction with free trade deals is growing and politicians are facing increasing scrutiny for concessions.
“The negotiations with the United States of America have de facto failed, because we as Europeans, of course, should not subject ourselves to American demands”, Gabriel said in an interview with German ZDF television.
Neither the European Commission nor the U.S. Trade Representative’s office had any immediate response to the comments.
The plan – known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership or TTIP – aimed to remove or reduce a wide range of barriers to EU-US trade and investment.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel said last month that the TTIP is “absolutely in Europe’s interest”. Gabriel is also leader of the Social Democrats (SPD) – the junior coalition partner in Merkel’s government – and his comments come as campaigning gets under way for a federal election next year and for regional elections in Berlin and the eastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. But such a damning verdict from a leading official in Europe’s biggest economy is likely to make further talks between the European Union executive and the Obama administration harder.
