France said Tuesday it wanted to halt thorny EU-US trade talks as President Francois Hollande said there would be no deal until after President Barack Obama leaves office in January.
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German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel said on Sunday that TTIP negotiations had effectively failed after Europe refused to accept some us demands.
He added that the US and European Union trade representatives are set to meet in mid-September for further negations.
In the United States, Obama has promoted the accord, saying it would fuel growth.
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.
“The United States is angry that Canada might come to a different agreement with us, or rather with Europe”.
“For me, that goes against free trade”, Gabriel previously commented regarding the issue. Campaigners have called for nationwide protests against the talks on September 17 – about year before Germany’s next general election. The European Commission says it would be worth 545 euros ($620) to each European citizen every year.
According to the European Commission, the TTIP would boost the EU’s economy by 120 billion euros, the USA economy by 90 billion euros and the rest of the world by 100 billion euros. Many Social Democrats have serious reservations about TTIP but Merkel backs the talks.
Speaking to reporters in Washington, White House spokesman Josh Earnest admitted “significant aspects” of the deal were unresolved, but said U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman would travel to Europe in an effort to push the talks forward.
Three years of talks have failed to resolve multiple differences, including over food and environmental safety, but the USTR’s spokesman told German magazine Der Spiegel the negotiations “are in fact making steady progress”.
“Practically there’s no real change”.
Hosuk Lee-Makiyama, director of the Brussels-based European Centre for International Political Economy, compared the current status of the talks to a romantic breakup.
The EU’s loss is the UK’s gain for trade deals, as the country now finds itself first in line for a transatlantic hookup, one expert has said.
Italian Minister of Economic Development Carlo Calenda believes that the TTIP talks must continue.
However, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said last month that the proposed US-EU deal was “absolutely in Europe’s interest”. He added that after 14 rounds of talks, the two sides haven’t agreed on one common item out of 27 chapters being discussed.
Asked whether TTIP could go through without support from Germany, the EU’s paymaster and largest economy, he said Juncker had won fresh backing for the negotiations from all bloc leaders at a summit in July.
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Matthias Fekl said that his government will seek to bring talks to a halt. “The negotiations have bogged down, the positions have not been respected, the imbalance is obvious”.
