Surveillance Programs Not Part of TTIP Round One Discussions, U.S. Chief Negotiator Says
Reports about U.S. surveillance programs “really haven’t come up” in last week’s discussions about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), said Dan Mullaney, assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Europe and chief U.S. TTIP negotiator, during a press conference Friday. “Those conversations are taking place in another channel” and “didn’t come up” as negotiators discussed trade topics including intellectual property rights and e-commerce, he said.
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Discussions about privacy in cross-Atlantic data transfers are also happening in a parallel conversation, Mullaney and Chief EU TTIP negotiator Ignacio Garcia-Bercero said. There are separate discussions to address these issues, which “have been ongoing for quite some time,” Garcia-Bercero said. Still, addressing commerce issues involving data flows is an “important objective in our” free trade agreements, Mullaney said. “We are confident that we can put in place” a system to “encourage data flows and respect the privacy regimes that each side values,” he continued.
USTR recognizes the calls and need for transparency in the TTIP negotiation process, Mullaney said. “There is an intense focus on transparency,” he said, calling it “a need we take very seriously.” Mullaney pointed to the opportunities for stakeholder input and engagement as examples of the process’s transparency, as well as the USTR letter (http://1.usa.gov/XqeqWF) to Congress in March notifying legislators of USTR’s objectives going into the negotiations. USTR received 370 comments from stakeholders prior to the first round of negotiations and had 350 stakeholders attend stakeholder engagement events during last week’s round, including 50 stakeholders that gave presentations to the negotiators, he said. “We're working very hard to conduct an open and transparent process."
Negotiators discussed trade topics including intellectual property rights, localization requirements, e-commerce and telecommunications, Mullaney and Garcia-Bercero said. These topics, as well as others including investment, government procurement and market access, are the topics negotiators are “intent to cover” in TTIP, Garcia-Bercero said. During last week’s discussions, negotiators identified “certain areas of convergence” and divergence within each trade topic, he continued.
Any cloud computing provisions would not be just an attempt to open up European markets to U.S. cloud computing companies, Mullaney and Garcia-Bercero said. Potential provisions addressing the cross-border flow of data through cloud computing are meant to “facilitate trade in all the ways it develops” and create a “win-win” situation for U.S. and EU companies and customers, Mullaney said.
Negotiators are committed to meeting the 2014 deadline for TTIP, Mullaney and Garcia-Bercero said. “As I think we've demonstrated with this first round ... we're very interested in moving expeditiously” while still trying to get the negotiations done right, Mullaney said. The process has “very considerable high level political support” and “is being watched very closely by the highest levels in my organization,” he continued. The next round will be in Brussels, “which we aim to hold sometime in October,” Garcia-Bercero said.