France not to Sign TTIP Deal Due To US Position

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — France cannot sign the EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement due to the attitude of the United States, French Foreign Trade Minister Matthias Fekl said on Tuesday.

Suspending talks is "the most probable option [due to] the mindset of the United States… It is an agreement which, as it stands today, is a bad deal. As it is, France cannot sign [it]," Fekl told Europe 1 radio.

The United States has shown little reciprocity to offers made by Europe, the minister said, stressing that no treaty can be imposed on France against its will.

The negotiations are at a standstill, he added.

The minister's remarks come after Greenpeace obtained a 248-page leak of classified TTIP documents representing around two-thirds of the draft free trade agreement. The documents exposed the leading role of corporate interests in the proposed deal, as well as policies posing a threat to the environment, public health and consumer protection, according to Greenpeace. The text allegedly ignores environmental protection regulations and has no mention of the Paris deal on reducing global emissions.

On Monday, EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said that the European Union would not reduce its consumer protection as a result of the TTIP agreement, while US Trade Representative Michael Froman said that interpretations of the leak had been misleading and incorrect. Later, the White House stated that the leak would not impede the agreement's signing by the end of the year.

The TTIP deal has drawn severe criticism for the lack of transparency in the negotiations as well as for the tremendous power it would potentially give to international corporations.

Moreover, the TTIP has also been slammed for bypassing the framework of the World Trade Organization and excluding the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries.