EU Expects Upcoming U.S. Trade Talks To Prepare Ground for Later Agreements

European Union negotiators don’t expect any major breakthrough during the upcoming Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) talks with the U.S. but instead hope to prepare the ground for future discussions through meticulous, across-the-board technical work, EU officials said.

“Don’t expect any big announcement or any big decision. In important trade negotiations, it is a progressive process to enable our positions to converge,” one EU official said May 14 in Brussels, ahead of the fifth round of U.S.-EU talks scheduled to take place May 19-23 in Washington.

“We prepare the ground so we will be able in early 2015 to ...