European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is stepping onto very thin ice if she presses ahead with a mini trade deal that she has targeted with the U.S. in the next few weeks
That doesn't solve the original dilemma, however. Either the EU opens up its market in a significant way to U.S. farm goods, or it doesn't. Commission officials, EU diplomats and politicians in Paris, the Hague, Stockholm and Berlin contacted for this article all agreed on one thing: Getting a deal across the finish line in the next few weeks will take some major bluffing. What they did not agree on is who was being tricked: Trump, or European citizens.
At a meeting of EU trade envoys on Friday, the Commission's trade chief Sabine Weyand said Brussels was also ready to recognize U.S. testing procedures for"bivalve molluscs" such as oysters and clams, according to three people in the room.However, the U.S. has made clear that a deal on clams and pears won't cut it, and several EU diplomats and Commission officials said they believed the EU would end up offering more.
"The Commission may offer to approve more GMOs, which would be of real value to U.S. exporters," one official said. “The EU and the Commission can only work with a mandate that has been given and that’s about conformity recognition, regulation and the industrial aspects. There is nothing else,” Kaag said. “Commissioner Hogan has said that in the future perhaps [there would be talks on agriculture]. Those are his words, the words of Commissioner Hogan.”
An EU official from another country was even more blunt:"I am sure that the Commission can find legal tricks to put agricultural questions back on the table," he said,"but there is an academic reality and a political reality. They can do this now but then we won't trust them the second time around."The problem for von der Leyen is that she won't get an agreement without some palpable concessions.
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