← LSE: Public lectures and events
LSE: Public lectures and events
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership: implications for multilateral economic integration
00:50:47
Loading summary
Transcript5 lines
- [00:00]
A
Well, welcome to you all, and thank you all for coming along to tonight's event. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Implications for Multilateral Economic Governance. This event is jointly Hosted by the LSE's Department of Law and the Institute of Public Affairs. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, currently under negotiation between the United States and the European Union, has the potential to transform the way we govern international economic affairs not only transatlantically, but also globally. And tonight, I think we are very lucky to have three participants, two speakers and a chair who have tremendous experience of and interest in the field of international economic governance going back more than 30 years. Our chair, Ambassador Peka Hutaniemi, is currently the Finnish Ambassador to the United Kingdom, and during the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations, he served as Minister, Councillor and Deputy Permanent Representative to the GATT in the Permanent Mission of Finland. And I shall leave the introduction of the other speakers to him. A few small housekeeping announcements. First of all, I'd like to thank the events team of the Law Department for an impeccably organized event. The event tonight will be recorded and a link to the recording will be posted on the website of the Department of Law. And there will be questions. There will be time for questions at the end. Given the number of people here, I would ask you to keep your questions courteously direct and to the point. It remains just for me to pass over to Ambassador Hutaniemi and thank you all again for coming.
- [01:52]
B
Well, thank you very much, Andrew, for this kickoff of the event and very warm welcome also on my behalf to this very timely event with our eminent panelists. Before introducing them, maybe a few words about my own background, which probably explains why I have been asked to moderate tonight's discussion. Andrew already mentioned that I had a role in the Uruguay Round. Yes, indeed, I was the Nordic Coordinator and Spokesman for Agriculture, which was quite a challenging task because of the differences of the various Nordic countries in their agricultural policies. Already during the Tokyo round in the 70s, I had the pleasure of being a Finnish delegate to the preparatory committee in 1973, when Tokyo Round, the previous Round, was launched. But then I had already moved to other responsibilities when the Round itself was being carried out and ultimately concluded in 1979, during my Geneva years, during the Uruguay Round, I had the pleasure also of being member of three GATT dispute settlement panels, which is, believe me, quite an interesting and unique experience. Then I was back in Geneva in the latter part of the 1990s. Then Finland had already joined the EU. Our role was different in WTO, which had then already been established and I did not have so much to do with WTO because as you know in Geneva the EU countries are represented largely by the Commission on WTO Affairs. But I nevertheless had again the chance to serve as the Chairman of the Trade Policy Review Body which scrutinizes the trade policies of various member states, contracting parties. And I was pleased to be a Finnish delegate in the Ministerial meetings of Seattle and then later in Doha, which paved the way to the launching of the Doha Round. And my last direct links with WTO go back to the latter part of last decade when I was based in Helsinki as an Under Secretary for Trade in my ministry. Then I represented Finland at and also chaired during the Finnish presidency, 2006, EU's Trade Policy Committee. And during my watch then this Doha Round had some quite dramatic and delicate also some promising moments which nevertheless did not result in the final agreements which still, as we know, are eluding us in most areas which were originally covered by the Doha Round. But the main role here tonight will be played by our panelists if I start with Mr. Ignacio Garcia Barcerona to the left. He is currently Director at the Directorate General for Trade at the European Commission in Brussels and among his many responsibilities and duties he is the EU's chief negotiator for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, TTIP. Tonight's topic. He holds law degrees from the UCM University of Madrid and University College here in London. He started his career in the Commission during the Uruguay round in 1987 and ever since has worked in numerous trade related policy areas in the Commission including trade safeguards reviews, review of GATT articles and the functioning of the GATT Trade and environment, trade and competition dispute settlement as well as the trade related aspects of sustainable development. In recent years he has been in charge of EU's bilateral trade relations with south and Southeast Asia, Korea as well as with the EU's partners in the Mediterranean region and Middle East. And I already mentioned his current central role as the EU's chief negotiator on the TTIP. He has authored several papers and publications on the subject of trade laws, systemic aspects of the GATT and WTO safeguard measures and interplay of trade and competition policies, as well as on bilateral and multilateral dispute settlement mechanisms. Mr. Pascal Lamy is interestingly currently referred to by Wikipedia as a French political advisor and businessman, unquote. But I think we all remember him, particularly as the Director General of the WTO. During eight years from 2005 until 2013 he studied economics, business and management in the great French institutions of science. Po and Enna went into politics already in the late 1960s, became in the early 80s a close advisor of Jacques Delors and Pierre Morois when they were serving respectively as Economics and Finance Minister and Prime Minister of France under President Mitterrand, and then he was 10 years head of Cabinet of Jacques Delors when Monsieur Dalors was President of the EU Commission from 1984 to 1994. Thereafter he moved to banking in Paris, became number two at Credit Lyonnais, but came soon 1999 back to Brussels as the Trade Commissioner of the EU in the Proddy Commission, which job he had until 2004, after which he was appointed Director General of the WTO in Geneva, succeeding Dr. Subathchai of Thailand. Also Mr. Lamhi has authored many publications, including a recent one titled the Geneva Making Trade Work for All, unquote, which seems to be very pertinent. Also, in view of tonight's debate, the panelists have been asked to talk about the TTIP's implications for multilateral economic integration. So the idea is not to focus on the remaining sensitive, unsettled issues of the TTIP negotiations, but rather to look at the question of this project's TTIP project's potential impact on multilateralism in global economic governance. The TTIP is, as we know, one of many ongoing bilateral efforts which have been launched in recent years in a situation where the multilateral WTO path towards further trade liberalization and establishment of globally applicable rules has been tedious and without spectacular results. Surely the WTO has nevertheless played simply because it exists and it has its regular activities. It has played a stabilizing role in the global economy, helping, for example, the international trading system withstand most of the protectionist pressures which always have a tendency to emerge in times of economic hardships and crises. But many countries seem to have drawn the conclusion that it might be more productive to pursue trade liberalization and harmonization or approximation of regulatory systems rather on a bilateral or plurilateral basis. Now, this state of affairs, this vista raises a few fundamental questions regarding the future of the global multilateral trading system. Firstly, how can we ensure that these bilateral efforts remain really truly complementary to the work which is pursued by at the multilateral level in Geneva? Are there, for example, enough resources in the various administrations to cope with so many parallel negotiations at the same time? Secondly, how can the results of these bilateral agreements be fed back into the multilateral process and help re energize the multilateral negotiations? Is this likely to be an easier route to global understandings than by pushing directly on multilateral WTO platform in Geneva. And thirdly, how will the parties to these new bilateral agreements, like ttip, handle their relations with third countries, as it is obvious that these agreements will potentially impact even heavily on other important trading nations? Should these new bilateral agreements be open for willing countries to join in? Is it likely that these third countries may have misgivings regarding the compatibility of these bilateral agreements with the existing WTO legislation? Questions like these, I hope, will sort of dominate tonight's discussions. So my hope is that our panelists focus on issues like these in their opening remarks, about 15 minutes from both of them, and then after that there will be ample time for questions from the floor and answers from the podium. So with these words, may I ask Pascal Lamy perhaps to kick off and make his observations?
- [12:44]
C
Well, thank you, Mr. Ambassador, for this introduction and thanks to the LSE for the invitation. This issue of the relationship between the multilateral trade regime and other trade regimes, whether bilateral, regional or even unilateral, has been a classical topic of academic trade literature. And that is in many ways to the surprise of trade practitioners, because those who trade don't bother a lot about conceptual schemes. They just on the whole, want trade to be more open. And as the Chinese proverb goes, they don't mind the color of the cat, provided the cat catches mice. And this explains the sort of discrepancy between the huge importance of this topic, again for academics and students. And it's limited so far, at least important in reality. And yet, as the ambassador just said, this contrast between a new wave of mega regional negotiations and the difficulties in the multilateral negotiations have once more regional directed the spotlight on this topic. Now, my own take on this issue, which I will explain briefly now, is that this articulation between different trade regimes never was a serious problem in the old world of trade, whereas it probably deserves more attention in the new world of trade now. What's the difference between the old world of trade and the new world of trade? And we are in a transition between these two worlds. To put it very simply, the old world of trade was a world where production was national and obstacle to trade that limit market access were mostly about protecting producers from foreign competition. That's the world of trade that started when the king of Crete negotiated the first treaty of commerce with the pharaoh of Egypt. Until roughly now, the new world of trade is quite different. It's a world where production has become international or more precisely, transnational. And it's a world where obstacle to trade stem from not measures, the purpose of which is to protect the producer from measures, the purpose of which is to protect the consumer. Or more precisely, the obstacle doesn't stem so much from the measure. It stems from the discrepancies in the way precaution for the benefit of the consumer is administered by various countries. So these two worlds are very different. One is a world of protection, another one is a world of precaution. And ttip, which will run through our discussion tonight, is the first example of a trade agreement which would fit with this new world. Now, why was, in my view, this issue of compatibility, convergence, coexistence, complementarity between various regimes not a problem in the old world? Because, as I said, the old world was a world where mostly tariffs had as a purpose to protect domestic producers. And you had a multilateral regime with a sort of least common denominator. And you had MFN plus systems where tariffs were lower than in the multilateral system, so called tariff preferences. And that was also true in terms of market access for services who do not have tariffs, but who also have fruit. Usually regulatory practice, market access impediments. That has never been a problem for a simple reason, which is that the more tariff preferences you establish bilaterally or regionally or unilaterally, the less preferences there are in the system. It's a pure mathematical issue. If A give the preference to B, fine. But A will then give a preference to C, thus eroding the preference A gave to B and B will give a preference to D, thus eroding the preference B gave to A. And at the end of the day you multiply the abcd and at the end of the day you have an asymptote which mathematically is zero. So in this old world there is a sort of automatic convergence between bilateral and multilateral preferences are self eroding, thus conducing to a multilateral zero. Now, of course, this is not 100% true. There are other problems with the rules of origin. For instance, because if you give a preference, you need to give a passport to the good to which you give a preference. Which by the way, explains why in theory, 50% of world trade should be conducted through preferential regimes, in reality, not more than 15 or 20%, because many people get go to the MFN tariff instead of having to endure the cost of the rate tariff rules of origin. Of course there is still a difference between multilateral and bilateral, because some of the unfair trade practices are out of reach of bilateral preferences. For instance, subsidies. If you subsidize your chicken, you won't make a segregation between a bilateral chicken and a multilateral chicken. So in some areas the this distinction doesn't operate. It also may create problems. This notion that you can go multilateral plus is true for tariffs, but it's also true for issues like intellectual property, for instance. And you have bilaterally some intellectual property agreements that protect intellectual property more than the trips, which is the standard for the multilateral regiment, thus creating a number of problems. But again, it never was a real issue in the old world of trade. Which is, by the way, why this famous Article 24 of GATT, which basically establishes that in order not to apply the multilateral regiment, you have to liberalize essentially all trade, which is a fairly vague definition, as we all know, has remained vague and was never really a serious topic of surveillance by the GATT and the WTO system. The principle is there that in order to derogate to the mfn, you have to do something specific. But the weight and the seriousness of this obligation never really was tested. And the reason why it wasn't tested is because it didn't need to be tested, because it wasn't a real problem. Now let's go to the new world of trade, where this issue of coexistence articulation probably is a more serious issue. Why? Because as I said, in this new world of trade, obstacle to trade stem from discrepancies in regulatory regimes, the main purpose of which is to administer precaution. And thus, if you want to level the playing field in this new world of trade, you have to level these differences, which is called regulatory convergence, harmonization, approximation. I don't insist on the various ways to do that, whether harmonization, whether mutual recognition. We can come back to that later in the discussion. But in theory, bilateral regulatory convergence does not lead automatically to multilateral regulatory convergence. On the contrary, let's assume in ttip US and EU agree on the standard for crash tests for cars, which then leads to a harmonization of safety equipment for cars. If Japan and Korea have a bilateral agreement where they adopt a different standard, which in theory is possible, then not only do you not have convergence, but you have divergence. Instead of multilaterally leveling the playing field, you create ruptures between regulatory system, which then become obstacle to trade. Now this is the theoretical approach. In reality, it all depends on who is the standard setup. And this is where once more the TTIP comes in. The sort of obscure, unadvertised real strategic purpose of the TTIP probably being to make sure that EU and US, who have in this world of today, the highest, the most sophisticated system of precaution administration as compared to other systems become the standard setters, for instance, in harmonization of car safety equipment. And the odds are that although the theory would say otherwise, in reality, if you and US succeed in agreeing on the parameters of crash test hands on safety equipment, so that US cars will have medium bumpers instead of having big bumpers, and EU cars will have medium bumpers instead of having small bumpers, which has a big impact on the cost of cars. The reality is probably that if they do that, Korea and Japan will have to match the standard, because that would be the easiest and the less costly route to trade. And what is true for crash tests for cars is true for pesticide residues in flowers or ractopamine in pork meat, which are, let's say, reasonably scientific issues. Where it becomes more difficult, and we will come back to that, I'm sure in the description is where the convergence is about things which are much more sensitive, much more linked to cultures, to tradition, to sensitivities which people have, such as, for instance, data privacy or GMOs. So the reality is that probably in this new world of trade, the ones that will create the first step will have a big first mover advantage. And the one that is intended to create this first step is ttip, not tpp, which is this Trans Pacific Partnership. I know my good friend, the USTR doesn't like me to say that, but TPP is the last of my old generations of trade agreements, the one that started between the King of Crete and the Pharaoh of Egypt, because it's mostly about classical market access, even if there is a little bit more, whereas TTIP is the first of the new generation. Now, this de facto supremacy which would be given to US and EU if TTIP was to work, which remains to be seen, of course raises problems of transparency and of legitimacy, assuming it gets to its purpose, which is leveling the regulatory differences in areas where this is possible. And there will be areas where this is possible, but there will also be areas where this is not possible. This of course raises the question, question of what's the impact on trade partners. Third countries, whether countries who have specific trade relationships with the EU on the one side or with the US on the other side. Think about Mexico and Canada with the US in nafta. Think in Europe about countries like Switzerland, Turkey, Norway, who do most of their trade with with the European Union and who have bilateral trade agreements with the European Union. This raises a question for them now, not again according to academic Literature, because this would be a big problem in creating trade diversion. If you look at the reality of the way the system works, there is a huge benefit for third countries, for instance, in EU and US adopting a similar regulation, because they will benefit from the economy of scale in exporting to this larger market. Instead of having 1, 301, 500, they'll have 1, 800, which is, by the way, what happened when the EU started the internal market in 85. Remember all these buzz at the time about fortress Europe? Nothing of that never ever happened. You know, these buzz about fortress Europe evaporated simply because if Europeans, which they did partially create a level playing field within Europe, this is to the benefit of exporters into the European market. Yet. Yet I don't think this is a totally sufficient answer to this question of transparency and of legitimacy. And I personally believe that the right way to handle this multilateral optimum option in this new world of regulatory harmonization is probably, probably one, to revamp Article 24, which is about tariff preferences in adjusting this notion to some sort of regulatory preference. And second, to entrust a multilateral organization, preferably wto, because you always have to try and build on what exists, rather than creating new things, entrusting WTO with a mandate, the purpose of which would be to monitor these processes of regulatory convergence in ensuring notably something which is extremely important for third countries and which is transparency. Again, not that it is a concrete issue for business people, but this is in my view a legitimate political question. So that probably in my view would be the way to go. A short word before I conclude on another aspect of the TTIP and of modern trade agreements in this new world, which by coincidence combine trade and investment. One of the differences between the old world and the New world is also that the intimacy between trade and investment is much closer than it used to be because of these global value chains, which is the explanation why production has basically moved from being national to being transnational. And this issue of the compatibility, the coexistence, the synergy between bilateral investment regimes and something of a multilateral investment regime is also raised. And you can see that in the skirmishes about TIP with the investor to state dispute settlement, which is an old story, the reality being that most bilateral trade investment that exists today do include, at least in the case of EU and us, an investor to state dispute settlement, which is a specific channel outside normal court systems. Whereas there's, as we all know, nothing like a multilateral system. Following the failure of the multilateral Investment Agreement, which was negotiated at the OECD in the 1990s. Conclusion on this, and notably in the perspective of TTIP, which again is in my view sort of on a 50% probability for the moment, for reasons I have explained by the way here a few weeks ago, there is clearly a difference in the way EU and US look at this EU issue of compatibility between bilateral and multilateral. If you look at dinner speeches, which do not matter a lot, what matters is what happens on Monday, not on the dinner speech on Sunday, but which give an indication the US are displaying vision that for them trade is something which has a lot to do with the strategic, with geo, big politics, with security. Whereas the EU has always had a sort of dinner speech software which is about we love multilateral, this is our preference. This is where, by the way, and that's true, this is where we developed a comparative advantage which stems from the habit we have of discussing this more than bilaterally within the eu. So in theory, EU should have an answer to this question more than the us, who in many ways do not bother Nazis because they invented in the 90s this notion of competitive liberalization, which the EU never would very comfortable with. Now, whether the EU has an answer to this question, whether in practicing negotiations like TIP they will have to take the lead in outlining a more clear, more sophisticated, more substantial answer to this question of how do you ensure multilateral and bilateral convergence in a world of regulatory convergence remains to be seen. But we hopefully will have a clearer view of that after my good friend Ignacio has taken the floor. Thanks for your attention.
- [34:59]
B
Well, thank you. Thank you very much tonight. Your last remarks are an excellent introduction to the contribution of iMnats, explaining the EU view on many of these issues that you raised in your own intervention. Please.
- [35:14]
D
Well, thank you very much. And of course it's always a very big challenge to speak after Pascal, Amy, particularly here, because 28 years ago I was a student London, and I used to come often to LSE to do research about the gatt. So now coming back here to talk about the implications of what we are doing bilaterally on the global trading system is quite an interesting opportunity. What I would like to do is to basically identify three areas in which the ttip, if properly negotiated, can have a positive global spillover which goes beyond the mere bilateral trade relationship between the United States and the European Union. And then in the end make a few comments about possible implications for the future WTO agenda and the question about whether one should envisage that the TTIP could become an open agreement that other countries could Join. Now, let me start by saying that before we started these negotiations, both the United States and the European Union, perhaps each one of us, for their own reasons, were very conscious that it was more than a mere bilateral negotiation and that the fact that we had decided to embark on 10 negotiations like this would inevitably have global implications for the trading system. We came to the conclusion that this global implication would be, in overall terms, positive. Now, in my view, there are three main areas in which the TTIP can't potentially have a positive global impact. The first one is that I would very much agree with Pascal Lamy that the TTIP is Potentially the first 21st century agreement in tackling regulatory issues. But we should not forget that you cannot do a 21st century agreement without also solving 19th century trade issues which are still out there. And I think the first thing that we need to be able to demonstrate having launched this negotiation, negotiation with the United States, is that we are able to conclude a free trade agreement which is of a very high level of ambition from the point of view of WTO Article 24, Article 5 standards. So I think we need to bear in mind that the United States and the European Union would certainly not be credible in the global trading system if at the end of the day, the agreement that we negotiate is not very ambitious on the elimination of tariffs, is not very ambitious on services, and it's not very ambitious on government procurement. And these are the three key pillars of a classical market access package. We have now concluded, I think, a very ambitious agreement with Canada. Canada is not the United States of America. But at the end of the day we, we would aim to ensure that the agreement that we conclude with the United States has a similar level of ambition on classical market access issues. Even here, I think apart from the demonstration effect, there is a potential significant positive spillover on what we are doing. You cannot negotiate a trade agreement without harmonizing of or otherwise reconciling rules of origin. And if we manage to agree on rules of origin between the United States and the European Union which are trade facilitating, this could potentially have a significant global effect. It could open the door to look also into the other trade agreements which the European Union and the United States have negotiated and eventually why not, but might be able to consider some possibility of doing some multilateral work on preferential rules of origin, which up to recently has been something that was considered to be quite not achievable in a multilateral trading setting. So there I would say this first potential positive spillover effect. Secondly, as Pascal has said, the TTIP is the first trade agreement in which regulatory issues are going to be discussed and negotiated between two highly regulated economies of an equivalent level of development and of similar size. And that, of course, is a totally different proposition from the way in which regulatory issues have been discussed so far. On trade agreements. We always used to have one of the two partners we had if you want an hegemonic role in the discussion of regulatory matters. And that clearly cannot be the way for an agreement to be reached between the European Union and United States of America. Now, in looking into how to tackle regulatory issues, I think that it is perhaps useful to classify regulatory divergences into three boxes. First, there are certain regulatory divergences which are the result of clear policy choices. And where that is the case, let's be clear, one should not even try to solve those regulatory divergences because they are deeply enshrined in the culture of and in the political regime of each of the two entities. And trying to find a way forward in those areas, we just simply condemn this agreement to unworkability. Just two examples. There's clear to understanding that the way that GMOs are regulated in Europe and in the United States is very different. We are not going to change the way that we regulate GMOs, and of course the United States is not going to change the way that it does either. Another good example is chemicals that we decided a few years ago to adopt a strict regulatory regime for chemicals in the European Union. It is true that there is a political debate in the United States with some states which are adopting similar legislation. But at the end of the day, it is clear that a choice by the United States to go to a higher level of regulation of the chemical sector is not something which can be the consequence of a trade negotiation. So while you have divergences which are the result of a clear policy choice, I think that the wise approach to take, and I think is the approach which we are taking in this negotiation is just to simply recognize that differences are going to vary remain. Then you have a second category which are the issues which potentially would be simpler where when you actually look into the details of the regulatory regimes, you realize that you are just simply unnecessarily lubricating resources. A good example would be inspections for good manufacturing practices. This is something that both the Food and Drug Administration in United States does and that European regulators do. There is no real justification to duplicate the inspections, provided that you have enough trust between the two regulators to accept that the inspection which has been done by the Other party has the same value of inspection that you would do yourself. What you need at that point in time is to ensure that you have created the mechanisms that reflect that mutual trust. And certainly there is the most challenging area, areas where in principle there is no real difference in policy choice. But for historical reasons, the way in which regulations have developed are very different in the United States and in the European Union. In the case of the European Union, it is more frequently the case that our regulations are based on, based on work which has been done in international organizations, in the case of the United States, because their regulatory regime is, if I may say so, a little bit more inward looking than the European regulatory regime. These regulations have been developed in a predominantly domestic setting. And as a result of that, the regulations are often different without, on the other hand, necessarily reflecting a different level of protection. A good example would be tech safety regulations on cars. This is an area where most people would argue that at the end of the day, it's not that the Americans want to have safer cars than European cars. It just so happens that the regulations have been developed differently. And in those cases you have basically two choices. If you can demonstrate that the differences have no impact on the level of protection, then you can mutually recognize regulations. If at the end of the day this is not possible, then the option that you have is to harmonize, but preferably to do it not on a purely bilateral basis, but on the basic of work in international organizations like the UNEC in Geneva. Which brings me to the positive spillovers of the regulatory agenda. The more that as a result of ttip, you have a situation in which progressively, regulations and standards in the European Union and in the United States are sufficiently close to either be common to regulations and standards or to be mutually recognized, the more that this would also have a potential positive effect on certain countries in, in the sense that the single regulatory framework would apply for their exports both to the United States and to the European Union. And the more that also the United States and the European Union would be able to have an influence in the development of global regulatory regimes. Now, the third area where I think potentially there can be a positive spillover effect has to do with reconciling the traditional approaches that the United States and the European Union have been following to certain issues in their belated trade agreements. Now, I would not want to be very long because I think that it would be good to have time for the discussion. But when you look into issues like the role of labor and environment in the trade agreements, competition policy, geographical indications, an area where traditionally the United States and the European Union have had very divergent approaches, or indeed the issue of investor to state dispute settlement and investment protection. The significance of what we do or what we do not do in the TTIP is not merely a bilateral one. It would inevitably send a signal that goes beyond the pure bilateral relationship. Now, this does not mean that if we agree on something with the United States, we can expect other countries to follow automatically. But it is clear that if we do not reconcile differences of view between the United States and the European Union on issues like the ones that I have mentioned, it's very difficult to imagine that it will would ever be possible to develop rules of a broader application. Now, this brings me to the two final comments which is impact on the WTO and the question of TTIP as a potential open agreement. Now, it is clear that at this point in time, no one in Geneva wants to discuss too much what would happen in the medium term in the wto, since everyone recognizes that first one needs to find a resolution one way or another to the Doha development agenda. It seems to me, however, that in a world in which the TTP and the TTIP would have been concluded, inevitably the question and bud arise and what is going to be the future agenda in the wto? And that may well imply the combination of having forced monitoring function, which I think is what Pascal has alluded to, but also perhaps why not? Or it may require some adjustments in the way that the WTO does its business to identify some areas where rules can still be developed within the WTO framework on some of the issues which currently are not sufficiently covered by the multilateral rules. However, in order to reach that point, it's clear that some changes in the way that the WTO function would probably be unavoidable. As to the question of the TTIP as an open platform, now we are seriously reflecting upon it. We haven't yet taken the policy decision and this is something that we would want to debate fully with our member states, with the European Parliament. Certainly there is one particular case on which we see a very strong argument to have a way of bringing the country closely associated to the TTP once the TTP is concluded, which is the case of Turkey, because as you know, Turkey has a customs union with the European Union. It is clear that it would be unsustainable situation if we were going to conclude a free trade agreement with United States, and the United States was not going to be ready to negotiate a free trade agreement with Turkey. So one way or another, I think we need to, to find the solution to the question of the relationship of Turkey with the TTIP negotiations. Now, whether this means that we need to try to find more systemically the idea that ttip, once it is concluded, could be open for other countries under certain conditions to join is a complicated issue and something that, quite frankly, we still see that it needs a lot of reflection in terms of how it would actually work in practice. So for the time being, we still haven't come to a definitive view on that matter. So I think I would stop it here and look forward, of course, to the discussions.