US accused of offering crumbs as doubts grow over EU trade deal

THE proposed trade deal between the EU and United States has been cast into further doubt after the French trade minister called for an end to talks.

Matthias Fekl, the minister for foreign trade, tweeted that the country is calling for negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) to cease.

Mr Fekl also told RMC radio that “we need a clear, clean, definitive stop” to the negotiations, adding that talks could resume if wider EU-US trade relations improved.

Accusing the US side of offering “just crumbs”, Mr Fekl said France would ask the European Commission to halt the talks at a trade ministers’ meeting in Slovakia next month.

His comments came after German economy minister Sigmar Gabriel said at the weekend that the current round of talks with the US have “de facto failed, even though nobody is really admitting it”. His views were in marked contrast to public comments by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said last month the proposed deal was “absolutely in Europe’s interest”.

But Mr Gabriel, who is the head of Germany’s centre-Left Social Democratic Party which is in coalition with Ms Merkel’s centre-Right Christian Democratic Union, said: “We mustn’t submit to the American proposals.”

The prospect of TTIP failing could also be welcomed on the Left of British politics, as Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has been a prominent critic.