By Brian Beary, U.S. Correspondent for Europolitics
As some 60 EU trade officials descend on Washington this week to launch negotiations on a free trade agreement with the United States, Europolitics, the leading Brussels-based EU affairs newspaper, has just published a special section on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership or TTIP.
Entitled ‘Transatlantic Common Market – Opportunity or Pipe Dream,’ the report explores the core issues involved in the TTIP talks. In exclusive interviews, top U.S. and EU trade officials outline their respective goals and potential red lines. The supplement also offers concise perspectives from the other key players, notably from the European Parliament, the U.S. Congress, the business community, the trade unions, the World Trade Organization and China. It drills down into the nuts and bolts of the talks, with a dozen special features focused on individual sectors. They range from public procurement, an area where Europe would like to see America open up its markets more, to agriculture, where it is the Americans that are on the offensive in seeking to get rid of EU trade barriers. The report also examines sectors that may or may not be included depending on how the talks go, from commercial air travel to banking to the cinema industry to U.S. liquefied natural gas exports. There are, in addition, brief biographies of a dozen key Europeans and Americans pivotal to the TTIP negotiations and a statistical overview of the EU-US trade relationship.
Download the issue
here.