EU-US trade deal looks likely to miss latest deadline

The EU and US will not finish negotiating their proposed  Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) in 2015, the EU’s chief negotiator admitted on April 28.

“It is clear that a completion of the negotiations, a conclusion of the agreement, that is something that will require more time than 2015,” said Ignacio Garcia Bercero in Berlin.

Negotiators were given a provisional deadline of December 2015 by EU leaders to agree a draft text, and are keen to avoid TTIP getting caught up in the 2016 US Presidential election. But Bercero insisted that Americans were “telling us very clearly that they can continue negotiating with us in 2016″.