French call to quash trade treaty talks

The French minister for trade has added his country’s voice to concerns over the trade deal between the US and the EU and has called for the talks to be dropped.

Matthias Fekl, the minister for foreign trade, tweeted that the French government demanded that negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) should cease.

The deal would create the world’s largest free trade area.

The country has long held doubts about the treaty and has also threatened to block the whole arrangement. All of the EU’s 28 member states and the European parliament must ratify TTIP if it is to be adopted.

France has in the past argued that the US has offered few concessions compared to those being made by Europe.

"The Americans give nothing or just crumbs... that is not how negotiations are done between allies," Fekl said on Tuesday.

Now his government will ask the European Commission to stop the negotiations, he said. With “no more political support in France” for the talks, he said “a clear and definitive halt” is needed.

Fekl’s thoughts echo comments made recently by Germany’s economy minister, Sigmar Gabriel, who said on Sunday that after 14 rounds of talks in three years, the two sides have not agreed a single item out of the 27 chapters under negotiation.

"The talks with the US have de facto failed because we Europeans of course must not succumb to American demands," he told public broadcaster ZDF.

"Nothing is moving forward."

The French and German views are not shared by either the US or the European Commission.

A spokesman for the US trade representative, Michael Froman, said talks had not stalled. “Negotiations are in fact making steady progress,” he told the German news magazine Der Spiegel.

The European Commission insisted on Monday that the talks were on track.

"The ball is rolling right now. The Commission is making steady progress," according to Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas.

The US and the EU had hoped the treaty would be concluded by the time President Obama, a TTIP supporter, leaves office in January 2017. This, however, looks increasingly unlikely as the gap in perceptions appears still to be too wide to resolve within a few brief months.

Britain’s shock Brexit vote has removed one of TTIP’s influential proponents and now French and German doubts are being aired.

France's Prime Minister Manuel Valls has said it would be "impossible" for the two sides to conclude negotiations on a trade deal by the end of 2016.

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