EU Commission Prefers Its Own “Leaks” On FTA

By Monika Ermert for Intellectual Property Watch

In an obvious effort to push back against claims about a continued lack of transparency in free trade agreement negotiations, the European Commission has published a number of initial documents on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the United States.

“We are very conscious that this is the EU’s largest ever bilateral trade negotiation,” reads the announcement of the EU negotiators at the Commission.

The set of published documents includes the initial position papers on the following issues:

• Cross-cutting & institutional provisions on regulatory issues
• Technical barriers to trade
• Sanitary and Phytosanitary measures (i.e. barriers to trade in food and agricultural products)
• Public Procurement 
• Raw materials and energy
• Trade and sustainable development 

Close observers of the TTIP might find that the texts are abridged versions from a longer document. The longer version had been leaked earlier by the US-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade and heavily cited by activists’ blogs.

Additional materials available at the EU negotiators’ website are documents from public consultation and a letter to the US that details how to handle the documents during the negotiation, which took place last week.

A report about a meeting with industry and civil society groups in Brussels today, attended by about 150 associations and organisations, will be published tomorrow, according to the Commission.