Document leak strains controversial US-EU trade deal negotiations

Speaking to The Brief, City of London lawyers said the leaked documents show how difficult negotiations over the transatlantic trade and investment partnership (TTIP) have been.

Anthony Woolich, a partner at Holman Fenwick Willan, said: “Although the European Commission and US government still appear to be keen to finalise negotiations before the end of this year it also seems that opposition to the deal is strong, not least from the French government.”

Matthew Weiniger, a partner at Linklaters, added that while the leak may not spell the end of negotiations, “it won’t help”.

He said: “The deal will require an enormous amount of political will on both sides of the Atlantic.

“On the US side, only Obama is pushing it and he faces a date deadline. We expect that Trump will torpedo it and we don’t know at this stage how Hillary will position herself in relation to the terms and she may be tempted to ditch her previous support of trade deals and try to move closer to Trump’s populist position.”

Laurence Shore, a partner at Herbert Smith Freehills in New York, raised the issue of arrangements for investor-state dispute settlements

He said that “the leak suggests that dispute settlements have not taken centre stage in the latest round of negotiations. In particular, working through the key differences between the EU and the US on settlements has been deferred to a later round.”

He added: “It is hard to draw any conclusions from that decision. It could mean that there the parties were so far apart in their views that the issue was parked, or could simply be a response to the political uncertainty surrounding the TTIP in both the US and EU.”