Cultural Engineering Group

Barack Obama and European leaders launched talks on « the biggest bilateral trade deal in history », an initiative that the US président has put at the heart of his second-term economic agenda.

The US president announced that talks on a transatlantic trade and investment deal would begin in Washington next month. While EU leaders admint that they can be wrapped up within two years.

Mr Obama urged politicians to « look beyond narrow concerns and focus on the big picture » of a trade deal covering half the global economy…

But Washington remains worried that the scope of the agreement will narrow dramatically over the course of the talks as specific industries are carved out on the European side, limiting its economic impact.

The launch talks at G8 summit in Northern Irland was overshadowed by a row over French protectionism.

The head of EU’s executive laid bare his frustration – shared by the US, Britain and Germany – in an interview with the International Herald Tribune. « Somes ay they belong to the left, but in fact they are culturally extremely reactionary », José Manuel Barroso said in an apparent swipe at French president François Hollande.

Althought the European Commission président did not specifically name France, Mr Barroso said critics of liberalised trade in films and music had « no understanding of the benefits that globalisation brings also from a cultural point of view ».

Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, a senior official in Mr Hollande’s Socialist party, described Mr Barroso’s remarks as « bewildering and intolerable ». A commission spokesman said they were aimed at critics of its liberal stance, note the Hollande government.

In the US, political reaction was mostly positive, but key lawmakers said any deal needed to be « comprehensive » with no exclusions such as France’s carve-out for cultural issues.

« If the negociations ultimately do exclude audio visual… it is hard to see how the whole thing will keep from unraveling », a Republican aide in the Senate said.

Extract from the Financial Time’s article « US and EU push talks on historic trade deal », by George Parker, Vanessa Houlder and James Politi.

Filed under: Analyses, Evénements, Gouvernances, Politiques culturelles, Diversité culturelle, Exception culturelle, Nouvelles gouvernances, Polémiques, Politiques publiques