In its Statement on the TTIP, the Committee called on the European Parliament and EU Member States to support further Commission’s negotiations with the United States with a view to achieving an ambitious, comprehensive, balanced and high quality agreement and highlighting the strategic importance of the agreement for geopolitical transatlantic partnership.
The document stressed that a TTIP ensuring a long-term genuine reciprocal market openness would strengthen the entire transatlantic partnership; facilitate the establishment of standards, norms and rules based on the principles and values of the EU and the US; and hold a clear potential for these rules to become the norm on the global scale.
The Committee unanimously agreed that the TTIP would contribute to GDP growth; unquestionably bring benefits to Lithuania’s consumers and exporters, in particular to small and medium-sized enterprises faced with disproportionate restrictions on access to the US market; create better conditions for attracting investment; and promote economic growth.
The Committee highlighted the importance of inclusion into the TTIP of a separate chapter on energy, covering industrial raw materials in particular, which would ensure free trade in, transit, and distribution of energy resources.
The Committee also stressed that after the conclusion of the TTIP, the EU would maintain its standards in the areas of safety, health, animal health and data protection and would preserve its social and environmental standards.
In its Statement on CETA, the Committee stressed that CETA had the potential of becoming one of the EU’s most ambitious free trade agreements that removes virtually all customs duties from the date of its entry into force. It would significantly improve EU’s access to Canadian public procurement and services markets and would lift non-tariff barriers to trade.