‘Enormous gulf’ in world trade talks as Europe refuses to buy GM food
Eight months into talks to create a transatlantic pact encompassing almost half the world’s economy, divisions remain over opening up to each others goods, rules governing the names of foods and genetically modified food.
“There is an enormous gulf between the EU and US positions,” said Michael Dolan, a lobbyist for theUS Teamsters union, who rejected the idea that the European Union shouldbe the only market to call Greek-style cheese ‘feta’.
He warned that a trade deal “is likely to be smaller, more modest than its ambitions, because of so many intractable issues,” telling negotiators in a forum also open to reporters.
Tensions over food, which have bedeviled many trade talks around the world, risk eroding already fragile public support for a deal that proponents say would increase economic growth by around $100bn (€72bn) a year on both sides of the Atlantic.
Negotiators aim to finalise a deal by the end of this year.
Mindful of the huge protests surrounding global trade talks in the 1990s, EU and US negotiators holding a fourth round of talks this week in Brussels took the unusual step of not only receiving lobbyists but also letting in the media.
What little awareness there is about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership could be distorted by anti-globalisation protesters, EU ministers have warned.
At risk is a pact creating a market of 800m people where business could be done freely, building on the almost $3bn (€2.15bn) of transatlantic trade in goods and services each day.
Even animal welfare is sensitive in a proposed accord where both sides would recognise each others standards to oil the wheels of commerce.
