Ref. Ares(2015)1684034 - 21/04/2015
Ref. Ares(2017)3665888 - 20/07/2017
EUROPEAN COMMISSION
Directorate-General for Trade
Directorate G – Trade Strategy and Analysis, Market Access
Chief economist and Trade Analysis
Brussels,
17/04/2015 DG TRADE/G2/NS/mc (Ares 2015) 1889273
NOTE TO THE FILE
Subject:
Minutes of workshop “TTIP myths debunked - What’s really in it for
consumers?” held in Brussels on 31 March 2015
On 31 March I attended the workshop “TTIP myths debunked - What’s really in it for
consumers?” on invitation by the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue. The event took place at
the premises of BEUC and gathered around 25 participants, including representatives from
US and European consumers associations, staff from Member States permanent
representations as well as from the US mission to the EU.
The first part of the workshop was dedicated to discussing the economic gains from TTIP.
The introductory remarks were delivered by Monique Goyens (director-general at BEUC)
who set the scene by saying that many doubts persist on whether this agreement will bring
any actual benefits to consumers while there are concerns about potential negative effects on
employment. These were followed by two presentations. The first speaker was Rhoda
Karpatkin (president Emeritus at Consumers Union) who voiced some frequent criticisms to
TTIP (ISDS, threats to consumer protection, potential for reducing the civil society
participation in rule making) and made the point that these concerns should weigh more than
promises of more variety and lower prices. The second speaker was Professor Art. 4.1 b
from the University of Ghent who criticised TTIP and the CEPR (2013) analysis along three
main ideas: i) the benefits of the agreement are small (and unevenly distributed), ii) their
quantification is based on unrealistic assumptions (referring in particular to the fixed labour
market closure used in the CGE simulations), iii) the TTIP simulations feature unrealistic
scenarios for NTB cuts. I was given the opportunity to react and insisted on the importance
of the gains coming out from the CEPR (2013) analysis especially considering that they are
delivered by a single policy initiative. I also pointed out that the CEPR (2013) analysis is
based on well-tested methodologies and that its results are in line with others (while the
studies that adopted less conventional techniques have actually put forward considerably
higher gains). I also called the attention to the transparency of the analysis as it offers an
insight of the impact of TTIP under several possible scenarios.
The second part of the workshop was dedicated to discussing whether there is scope for
mutual recognition of technical product standards in TTIP. The session was structured along
three presentations: one by
Art. 4.1 b
(CEN/CENELEC), another by Dr. Art. 4.1 b
(former CPSC commissioner, Consumer Reports technical director and ANSI Board) and a
third one by
Art. 4.1 b
(ANEC). An important part of these presentations was
Commission européenne, B-1049 Bruxelles / Europese Commissie, B-1049 Brussel - Belgium. Telephone: (32-2) 299 11 11.
Office: CHAR 05/46. Telephone: direct line (32-2) 2953315. E-mail
Art. 4.1 b
dedicated to clarifying the difference between the EU and the US very complex systems for
standard development and implementation. Two challenges in particular were brought up by
several participants: the risk that any harmonisation effort could carry in terms of loss of
accountability and the difficulties in assessing equivalence of standards. Given the
complexities at play many argued that the only way forward is to follow a case-by-case
approach in the negotiations.
Art. 4.1 b
(e-signed)
Cc: S. Ratso, I. Garcia-Bercero,
Art. 4.1 b
,
Art. 4.1 b
2