EU and US, Reaching an Agreement over TTIP?

Abstract

Starting with 2013, the European Union (EU) and the United States of America (USA) are negotiating over what is expected to become the largest bilateral trade and investment agreement that was ever agreed on. The process counted 13 rounds of negotiations and several groups of interest that were a part of the good course of the round table talks; within the EU-US Summit of 2011, a High Level Working Group on Jobs and Growth (HLWG) was created, being designed to find new ways of improving the transatlantic trade flows and ease the investment decision implementation; this group issued two years later a Report that represented the basis for the start of the negotiations over TTIP. Assuring the sides, the negotiators of the two economic powers are the European Commission (EC) on one side and the United States Trade Representative (USTR) on the other side. In June 2013 the representatives of the EC and USTR initiated the first round of negotiations; these events were accompanied by civil society dialogues that took place mirroring the location on where the negotiations were held. After the first three negotiation rounds, an Advisory Group formed of experts and practitioners was instituted, designed to offer expertise for the diplomats involved in the TTIP talks. The end of this long process is expected to be met by December 2016, even though the 24 chapters are not fully negotiated and several aspects still need to be given a better understanding.