France, joining German Economy Minister, urges halt to trade talks with U.S.

[August 30, 2016]  PARIS (Reuters) - Current transatlantic trade talks should be halted and a new set started, France's trade minister said on Tuesday, adding his voice to calls from within Germany for an end to the negotiations.

Matthias Fekl said he would request a halt to negotiations with the United States over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) on behalf of France at next month's meeting of European Union trade ministers in Bratislava.

"There should be an absolute clear end so that we can restart them on good basis," he said on RMC Radio, adding he would suggest that course to fellow ministers.

German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel said on Sunday that TTIP negotiations had effectively failed after Europe refused to accept some U.S. demands.

Gabriel is the chairman of Germany's Social Democrats (SPD), who share power with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives. Many Social Democrats have serious reservations about TTIP but Merkel backs the talks.

Her spokesman insisted on Monday that talks should continue, while Germany's Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier - also a member of the SPD - said on Tuesday that both sides were still far away from agreeing on standards and procedures.

Fekl's and Gabriel's comments highlighted discrepancies between the views in the EU's two biggest economies and the official line from both the European Commission, the bloc's executive, and the U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman.

Three years of talks have failed to resolve multiple differences, including over food and environmental safety, but the USTR's spokesman told German magazine Der Spiegel the negotiations "are in fact making steady progress".

The White House has said this week it aims to reach a deal by the end of the year. "It's going to require the resolution of some pretty thorny negotiations, but the president and his team are committed to doing that," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters in Washington.

The Commission also remains upbeat.

A sign against the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) free trade agreement is pictured in Frankfurt, Germany, July 21, 2016. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski

"Although trade talks take time, the ball is rolling right now and the Commission is making steady progress in the ongoing TTIP negotiations," the executive's spokesman, Margaritis Schinas, told a news conference in Brussels on Monday.

Supporters say the TTIP could deliver more than $100 billion worth of economic gains on both sides of the Atlantic, but critics say the pact would hand too much power to big multinationals at the expense of consumers and workers.

Paris threatened to stall further negotiations as long ago as April, but there are national elections due in both France and Germany in 2017, and before the summer, experts were saying that this year -- ahead of the U.S. presidential election -- may be the best opportunity to strike a deal.

That prospect looks less likely now, and Britain's June vote to leave the EU has further clouded the picture, even though the Commission has a mandate to finalize TTIP talks on behalf of all EU 28 members.

(Reporting by Sophie Louet; Writing by Andrew Callus; editing by John Stonestreet)

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