New trade talks between the EU and US will create growth opportunities for Europe's food and drink industry, claim manufacturers, who together exported £11.67bn of food and drink to the country last year.
Trading places: New US/EU trade talks were released at the G8 meeting in Northern Ireland, attended by Prime Minister David Cameron and President Barak Obama
The manufacturers' organisation FoodDrinkEurope was responding to the launch of talks on a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.
FoodDrinkEurope pledged to back the talks – announced at the G8 summit in Nothern Ireland – in a bid to ensure a mutually beneficially trade deal.
The US was both the most important export destination for Europe's food and drink products and the third most important source of food imports to the EU, after Brazil and Argentina, it said.
Nearly 60% of EU exports to the US was accounted for by the trade in drinks, followed by dairy, vegetable oils and chocolate.
'No new regulatory barriers'
But US regulatory barriers remained the biggest obstacle to a trade deal, claimed FoodDrinkEurope. "It is particularly important that no new regulatory barriers are introduced through the implementation of the Food Safety Modernisation Act, recently signed into law in the United States," said the organisation in a statement.
The act could facilitate trade but also introduce new trade barriers, it claimed. Of particular concern were the foreign producer verification programme and associated inspection fees, which could curb exports by European food and drink small- to medium-sized enterprises.
FoodDrinkEurope president, Jesús Serafín Pérez, highlighted a commitment from José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, that both parties will look at ways to reduce red tape and avoid "divergent regulations" for the future.
"As Europe's largest manufacturing industry, and the world's largest exporter and importer of food and drink products, we look forward to playing an active role and providing input to the negotiations on this agreement," said Pérez.
Reaching an agreement had the potential to "drive growth and facilitate access to a major export market, thereby generating new opportunities for Europe's food and drink manufacturers", he added.
'Ambitious trade agreements'
Speaking before the Northern Ireland summit, Pérez urged the G8 leaders to work "towards ambitious trade agreements", which will drive growth and facilitate access to export markets.
But Douglas Carswell, Conservative MP for Clacton-on-sea, Essex, warned negotiations could drag on for years.
"Transatlantic trade underpins much of our prosperity," he wrote in a blog for the Daily Telegraph. "One of the reasons the world managed to avoid a 1930s-style slump after the financial meltdown of 2007-08 is the fact we managed to avoid 1930s-style protectionism."
But, in reality, trade deals depended upon agreeing the detail of common standards, which define the conditions of transatlantic trade.
"Genuine free trade agreements, as a rule of thumb, require little negotiation – just the removal of restrictions on trade," wrote Carswell. "Trade agreements involving the EU, by contrast, tend to drag on for years."
