In 2016, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the European Union entered into provisional application. This is one of the most important agreements signed in recent years, and many expect a similar agreement between the United States and the European Union.
Nevertheless, the negotiations proved difficult and today we are still far from having finalized a free trade agreement between the United States and the EU.
WHAT IS TAFTA?
The Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA), also known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) or PTCI in France (Partenariat transatlantique de commerce et d’investissement), is an agreement to create the largest free trade exchange area world.
THE MAIN OBJECTIVES OF TAFTA
The agreement discuss three main issues:
– The access to the respective public markets of the EU and the US, removing the principles of national preference and protectionism;
– the regulatory cooperation, in particular by mitigating certain “regulatory barriers” (such as environmental, health, safety, etc. standards);
– the elimination of customs duties for trade in goods, while notifying exceptions for certain sensitive products (namely that custom duties rates between the United States and the European Union are already particularly low: between 2% and 3% % in most sectors);
The agreement therefore aims to define new trade and investment rules to facilitate imports and exports.
THE EVOLUTION OF NEGOTIATIONS BETWEEN THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION AND THE US
The idea of the agreement launched in 2011, the European Commission published a first draft on March 12, 2013. Since then, there have been nearly 15 rounds of negotiations that have been initiated in the United States and Brussels.
Although the future of this agreement is still uncertain, the US market remains attractive for European companies. ASD Group has recently opened an agency in the United States, in the heart of San Francisco, to facilitate the development of businesses in the United States.
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