Dies ist eine HTML Version eines Anhanges der Informationsfreiheitsanfrage 'DigitalEurope's and European Services Forum's contacts with DG Trade on TiSA'.















Ref. Ares(2017)4308961 - 04/09/2017
Ref. Ares(2017)5324690 - 31/10/2017
14 April 2016 
Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) Negotiations 
As the 17th round of the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) negotiations 
is currently underway in Geneva this week, the Global Services Coalition 
(GSC), representing services enterprises  and sector-specific services 
associations  in our respective countries and regions, call on  the trade 
negotiators to intensify efforts toward a high ambition agreement.  
The GSC is encouraged by the ambitious plan for the year 2016  where 
many rounds of talks have been scheduled and two sets of deadlines for 
revised offers have been agreed upon. This demonstrates a clear 
willingness to seek to conclude the negotiations in the near future.  


This week’s round is critical to ensure that concrete progress is  made 
toward stabilising texts of the core agreement and of regulatory 
disciplines in crucial areas such as domestic regulation, transparency in 
licensing procedures, in telecommunication and e-commerce (particularly 
data flows and prohibitions on  forced  data localization  for all sectors), 
financial services, and  delivery services. Further work needs to be done 
on important issues for international trade such as temporary mobility of 
service providers, environmental services and transportation. 
Services industries continue to share the view that the  substance of the 
deal remains paramount. GSC calls upon the negotiators to make utmost 
strides  to conclude the  talks by the end of this year,  consistent with 
ensuring a high standard and ambitious agreement. Efforts need to 
continue to be made by all parties to push towards a conclusion by 
following the agreed timetable and registering significant progress at each 
step, notably ambitious market offers by end of May 2016 that provide 
new meaningful business opportunities. We encourage Parties to consider 
the planning of an additional TiSA ministers meeting in due time. 
The GSC recalls that latest figures from the OECD/WTO Trade in Value 
Added (TiVA) database show that services represent roughly half of total 
global  exports.  For much too long, services in multilateral negotiations 
have been hostage to other negotiating topics.  The TiSA offers the best 
opportunity to overcome that impasse and establish  a template for 21st 
century services trade, for the benefit of the world economy.  
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