TTIP: Commissioner Malmström addresses consumers in Brussels; further negotiating documents published

EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström delivered today a keynote speech on the benefits the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) would bring EU consumers at a conference organised by the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD) on the “precautionary principle”. In this speech, Commissioner Malmström highlighted that this trade agreement will bring more choice of high-quality goods and services, jobs, higher quality regulation and better cooperation with the US to ensure that the goods consumers buy are produced in sustainable ways. The Commissioner also stressed that TTIP would enshrine the EU’s freedom to regulate in a precautionary way. The TACD is a forum of EU and US consumer organisations, which develops and agrees on joint consumer policy recommendations to promote consumer’s interests on both sides of the Atlantic. Also today, in line with its transparency initiative, the Commission published a technical paper for regulatory cooperation on generic medicines outlining the EU objectives in this part of the negotiations with the US. In this paper the EU proposes to make the marketing authorisation process more similar on both sides of the Atlantic, which would allow patients to get access to generic medicines more quickly. In addition, this paper proposes to reduce duplicative clinical trials, which in turn would reduce the exposure of humans in these trials. The EU position on pharmaceutical productsas well as a factsheet on pharmaceutical products is available online.