Bernd Lange: 'Good progress' but a deal on the EU-US trade pact will have to wait until 19 May (Source: European Parliament)
Bernd Lange: ‘Good progress’ but a deal on the EU-US trade pact will have to wait until 19 May (Source: European Parliament)

Economy

MEPs hail ‘good progress’ but deal on US trade pact remains elusive

By Benjamin Fox,

EU lawmakers moved closer overnight to a deal on the controversial trade pact with the US Trump administration — with the next round on 19 May billed as crunch talks.

In a statement early on Thursday morning (7 May), Bernd Lange, the chair of the European Parliament’s international trade committee, said that “good progress” had been made on the safeguard mechanism demanded by MEPs and the review and evaluation of the main regulation, “but there is still some way to go.”

“We will continue to work expeditiously and responsibly on the two legislative proposals to ensure that the letter and the spirit of the Turnberry Deal are honoured,” he added.

Earlier, the EU’s top trade official told MEPs on Wednesday that “volatility” in world trade is “here to say”, days after a row with trade commissioner Maros Sefcovic forced her out.

“If we want to survive we have to get our own house in order,” said Sabine Weyand, telling MEPs that the EU urgently needed to improve its own economic competitiveness.

Weyand dumped after WTO disagreement

Weyand was moved from her post as the EU Commission’s chief trade negotiator last week after contradicting her superiors’ view that the trade agreement struck with the US Trump administration last year was compatible with the World Trade Organization’s rules.

She was previously the chief negotiator on the Trade and Cooperation Agreement that governs post-Brexit trade between the EU and the UK.

And the deal with the Trump administration, which most MEPs believe that the US got the better of, was one of the main talking points in Weyand’s final exchanges with the international trade committee.

“We prepared all options for action. We discussed these with industry and we had to choose what was the best available,” said Weyand.

She added that she was “convinced” that the Turnberry agreement was the best defence of the EU’s economy in the circumstances.

Last September, Weyand defended the deal to the international trade committee with Trump as “the best deal available”, adding that the commission had sought to “restore some degree of stability and predictability.”

At the time, MEPs were highly critical, with committee chairman Lange dismissing the agreement as “not a negotiation”.

Off to Florence

Officials say that Weyand has been appointed as a senior advisor and seconded to the European University Institute in Florence, where she will take up a teaching position while drawing her EU salary. Lange said that he was “shocked” by Weyand’s sudden removal from her post.

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Bernd Lange: 'Good progress' but a deal on the EU-US trade pact will have to wait until 19 May (Source: European Parliament)

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Author Bio

Benjamin Fox Benjamin Fox is our trade and geopolitics editor. His reporting has also been published in the Guardian, the East African, Euractiv, Private Eye and Africa Confidential, among others. He is based in Nairobi, Kenya, although he often reports from London.