Guest blog by Senior Economic Officer Vilmos Frigyes Nagy
Last week was indeed a special week. On Monday in Washington the EU and US started to negotiate the details of an extraordinary trade initiative. The short name is TTIP which stands for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. It has the potential to be the largest bilateral trade deal ever agreed, and could change our lives for the better on both sides of the Atlantic.
The aim of the TTIP is to create new opportunities for jobs and growth by cutting barriers to EU-US trade, including tariffs and red tape. An ambitious, extensive TTIP should bring more opportunities for the UK and Hungary to increase their direct and indirect exports to the USA and help SMEs by reducing the many rules, standards and other bureaucratic procedures that make it harder to penetrate the US market.
As PM David Cameron said at the recent G8 summit in Lough Erne, Northern Ireland: “… there is no more powerful way to achieve that [economic growth] than by boosting trade. And there’s no better way than by launching these negotiations on a landmark deal between the European Union and the United States of America; a deal that could add as much as £100 billion to the EU economy, £80 billion to the US economy, and as much as £85 billion to the rest of the world.”
The positions of EU Member States on TTIP were, and remain, aligned in a way similar to bicycles entering a bike rack: one-by-one towards the same target.
Leading politicians in Hungary, including PM Viktor Orbán and Foreign Affairs Minister Martonyi, agree that eliminating the barriers of international trade could offer significant advantages for our countries.
TTIP represents a once in a generation opportunity to secure new jobs and growth. So we have to seize the moment, act boldly, and conclude the negotiations quickly. That will enable us all to start reaping the economic benefits, including improved growth, as soon as possible.