Negotiators meet for the second round of Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership talks. The EU and U.S. EU negotiators met in Brussels yesterday for the first day in a second round of talks to foster progress in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
The beginning of the week will be devoted to discussions on investment rules and trade in services. The teams of negotiators will continue working on those topics during the course of the week, as other negotiators meet to discuss a range of regulatory issues, including regulatory coherence, technical barriers to trade, and sectoral approaches, as well as energy and raw materials, supplemented by video conferences on sanitary and phytosanitary measures and other topics.
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is a trade agreement currently being negotiated between the European Union and the United States. It aims at removing trade barriers in a wide range of economic sectors to make it easier to buy and sell goods and services between the EU and the US.
On top of cutting tariffs across all sectors, the EU and the US want to tackle barriers behind the customs border – such as differences in technical regulations, standards and approval procedures. These often cost unnecessary time and money for companies who want to sell their products on both markets. For example, when a car is approved as safe in the EU, it has to undergo a new approval procedure in the US even though the safety standards are similar.
The TTIP negotiations will also look at opening both markets for services, investment, and public procurement. They could also shape global rules on trade.
