France demands an end to TTIP talks

France's trade minister has increased the pressure on the proposed EU-
US trade deal by calling for the talks to be called off.
Matthias Fekl, the French minister for foreign trade, tweeted that his
government demanded negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and
Investment Partnership (TTIP) should cease.
François Hollande, the French president, also raised doubts about TTIP
and said France would not support a deal this year.
In a speech to French ambassadors, Hollande said: "The negotiations are
bogged down, positions have not been respected, it's clearly unbalanced."
He said he would withhold support from any agreement reached before
the end of Barack Obama's presidency in January.
France has been sceptical about TTIP from the start and has threatened to
block the deal, arguing the US has offered little in return for concessions
made by Europe. All 28 EU member states and the European parliament
will have to ratify TTIP before it comes into force.
Fekl's statement follows similarly gloomy
comments from the German economy
minister, Sigmar Gabriel. He said on
Sunday: "The negotiations with the United
States have de facto failed, even though
nobody is really admitting it."
Gabriel's views were at odds with public comments by the German
chancellor, Angela Merkel, who said last month that the proposed US-EU
deal was "absolutely in Europe's interest".
However, Gabriel, who leads Germany's centre-left Social Democratic
party and is vice-chancellor in Merkel's coalition government, said: "We
mustn't submit to the American proposals."
Gabriel said on Sunday that in 14 rounds of talks on the transatlantic
pact, the two sides have not agreed on a single common item out of the
27 chapters being discussed. His spokesman blamed lack of movement
by the US and said Gabriel had concluded there would not be a deal this
year.
The US and the EU have been negotiating TTIP for three years to forge a
free trade zone covering half the world economy. Both had sought to
conclude talks this year, but differences remain.
However, a spokesman for the US trade representative, Michael Froman,
said talks had not stalled. He told Germany's Der Spiegel: "Negotiations
are in fact making steady progress."