Paris will keep up pressure on EU negotiators to stick to a hard line on key agricultural issues in talks with the US on a new transatlantic trade deal, France’s farming minister has said, reports The Financial Times.
“Red lines” insisted on by France against any changes in Europe’s rules against importing genetically modified crops, meat produced using growth hormones, chemically cleansed meat and cloned animals are set to be at the heart of discussions when trade pact talks resume after the US government shutdown.
“France will be extremely vigilant to ensure that the red lines set out in the [negotiating] mandate given to the European Commission are fully taken into account,” Stéphane Le Foll told the Financial Times in an interview.
Paris has adopted a highly circumspect stance on the trade negotiations, aimed at producing a so-called transatlantic trade and investment partnership, which President Barack Obama and the European Commission want completed next year.
It vetoed inclusion in the talks of the “exception culturelle” , which allows countries to protect their film and music industries, and set out strict conditions on agriculture.
Although sectors such as financial services are also set to be stumbling blocks, the French position on farm and food products illustrates the obstacles facing negotiators. Powerful lobbies on the US side regard European barriers on such issues as GM foods and growth hormones as protectionist, and want them lowered.
Asked if he could envisage movement on these issues, Mr Le Foll replied: “Very difficult . . . We have real differences [with the US] of approach and law on these subjects. We can’t imagine that European rules, which are coupled to the public debate and the choice of consumers, could be modified in the negotiations with the US.”
Mr Le Foll, a long-time close aide to President François Hollande, was speaking before the EU reached a trade pact with Canada on Friday. He acknowledged France had its own interest in potential US concessions in areas such as Washington’s ban on European beef, dating back to the mad cow disease episode in the 1990s, its block on cheese made with unpasteurised milk and its refusal to accept “geographical indicators”, an issue on which Canada made concessions. These, for example, prevent the labelling of any sparkling wine as champagne unless it is made in the French Champagne region.
But the minister, himself of farming stock, said France already had a €2bn food and wine surplus with the US. “I repeat, dialogue must be built on [recognition] of the very different conceptions of agriculture,” he said.
Read more of this report in The Financial Times.