Under Trump pressure, EU agrees to implement US trade pact
EU lawmakers and member states reached a deal in the early hours of Wednesday to implement the bloc's nearly year-old trade pact with the United States, with President Donald Trump threatening new tariffs unless it is done by July 4.
The 27-nation bloc struck an accord with Washington last July setting levies on most European goods at 15 percent, but a final version of the text still needed to be nailed down on the EU side -- to Trump's growing frustration.
Negotiators from the EU's parliament and capitals wrangled late into the night, finally emerging several hours after midnight with news of a hard-fought compromise.
"Today, the European Union delivers on its commitments," Cyprus's energy, commerce and industry minister Michael Damianos, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, said in a statement announcing the deal.
"Maintaining a stable, predictable and balanced transatlantic partnership is in the interest of both sides," he said.
The EU agreement puts the bloc on track to meet Trump's deadline for ratification of the deal sealed in Turnberry, Scotland between Trump and EU chief Ursula von der Leyen, and hopefully turn the page on more than a year of transatlantic trade battles.
Short of that, Trump had warned the European Union should expect "much higher" tariffs -- and had already vowed to raise duties on European cars and trucks from 15 to 25 percent.
The tariff blitz unleashed by Trump before the Turnberry accord, including hefty levies on steel, aluminium and car parts, has jolted the bloc into cultivating trade ties around the world.
But the EU cannot afford to neglect the 1.6-trillion-euro ($1.9-trillion) relationship with the United States, its largest trade partner.
- No more 'sunrise' -
To reach a compromise with member states, parliament was under pressure to renege on several amendments it added to the text that the Americans considered unacceptable.
One bone of contention was a suspension clause toughened by parliament that would scrap favourable tariff conditions for US exporters, should the United States breach the terms of the deal.
According to lawmakers, parliament agreed to scale back its demands -- and the final text notably gave the United States until the end of the year to drop surtaxes above 15 percent on steel components, rather than insisting on it as a precondition.
Another fight was over so-called "sunrise" and "sunset" clauses under which the EU side of the accord would kick in once the United States makes fully good on its pledges, and would expire unless renewed in 2028.
The sunrise clause was removed altogether, while the sunset was pushed back to the end of 2029, lawmakers said.
The head of parliament's trade committee, Bernd Lange, faced the challenge of hammering out a common stance between the parliament's different factions, which were haggling until the last moment.
Lange played down the concessions extracted from lawmakers, declaring after the deal was announced that "parliament has prevailed with its demands for a comprehensive safety net."
"There is a suspension mechanism if the US does not abide by the deal, a monitoring mechanism for the impact on our economy, provisions for unjustified tariffs on certain products, an expiry date for the legislation, and strong involvement of the European Parliament," he said.
The EU parliament's conditional green light in March came after months of delay caused by Trump's designs on Greenland and a US Supreme Court ruling striking down many of the president's tariffs.
The assembly's largest force, the conservative European People's Party (EPP), to which von der Leyen belongs, was pushing hard to finally implement the accord, which it says is vital to ending damaging uncertainty for EU businesses.
W.Murphy--NG
