The European Parliament passed a resolution on Thursday demanding that the free-trade pact now under discussion with the United States exempt “audiovisual” industries so that countries like France could shelter their movie businesses from foreign competition.

The resolution, which also called for similar protections to be granted for online media, underlined the sensitivity in parts of Europe to the encroachment of American culture. It also represented a reality check for trade talks that in their early stages had generated enormous optimism but could still bog down in trans-Atlantic acrimony.

“This vote shows the honeymoon phase is over,” said Marietje Schaake, a Dutch member of the European Parliament for the free-market D66 party. She was referring to the excitement that many trade advocates had felt since February, when President Barack Obama endorsed U.S. efforts to reach a trade deal with the European Union that would create a partnership between the biggest markets in the world.

While the resolution is not binding on the Union’s governments, which still must agree on a mandate for the European Commission to begin negotiating with Washington, the vote was a signal that the Parliament was prepared to use newly acquired powers to block any eventual agreement with the United States that it disliked. And ultimately, the Parliament’s consent would be necessary as part of any final passage.

Trade officials from various E.U. member states planned to meet in Brussels on Friday to discuss the mandate, which members of Parliament said Thursday that they expected to be approved by mid-June. A similar process is under way in the United States, where Congress is in a 90-day consulting period with the Obama administration.

The British government immediately signaled frustration with the European Parliament for demanding so-called carve-outs, which could make bargaining more difficult for concessions in areas that the Americans consider sensitive.

“We want to realize all the potential benefits of this deal for businesses and consumers,” a British government spokesman said, on condition that he not be named, as is customary. “That’s why we believe that we should put all sectors on the table at the start of negotiations,” the spokesman said.

The resolution that passed Thursday did broadly welcome the prospect of trade talks with the United States.

But the inclusion of the paragraph about cultural industries that passed Thursday “summarizes how challenging it will be to reconcile the goal of raising growth by breaking down barriers with the tensions and political demands that crop up at the more local level,” said Ms. Schaake, who advocates a far-reaching deal between Europe and the United States.

The resolution comes as European filmmakers and governments in countries like France seek the right to preserve state subsidies for filmmakers and maintain requirements that television and radio stations broadcast at least a minimum number of European programs.

Karel De Gucht, the Union’s trade commissioner, has pledged in the trade talks to preserve the principle of cultural diversity, including allowing member states to set quotas for European movies and other cultural goods, and to subsidize European productions.

But he has also repeatedly warned that full-scale exclusion of media, including digital media, from the talks could significantly narrow the scope of any eventual deal.

“We are already streaming content without borders” and “we should also have the possibility to discuss about the audiovisual sector,” Mr. De Gucht said at a business conference in Brussels last week. “We should not carve out the audiovisual sector; it will be a mistake, and it’s also not good to start negotiations on the basis of carve-outs.”

The vote, held at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, passed by a wide margin, with 460 votes in favor, 105 against and 28 abstentions.

The resolution called for a comprehensive trade agreement and noted the many jobs that it could create, in principle at least. The lawmakers underlined some of their other priorities, including being kept “immediately and fully informed” at all stages of the talks.

“Parliament has teeth and can bite,” said Vital Moreira, a Socialist member of the European Parliament from Portugal who prepared the resolution and steered it through the chamber.

The United States and the Union, between them, already account for about half of global economic output and one-third of world trade. Bilateral trade in 2011 amounted to €455 billion, or about $588 billion, with a positive balance for the Union of more than €72 billion, according to the European Commission.

The United States is the bloc’s main export market, buying €264 billion of goods, or about 17 percent of total E.U. exports, according to figures the commission issued in March.

A free-trade deal with the United States could expand gross domestic product by 0.5 percent in the Union about a decade after the pact enters in force, the European Commission, the Union’s administrative arm, said in March. That would translate into an extra €545 a year for each family of four in the Union, the commission said. Mr. De Gucht said the same month that the deal would generate “hundreds of thousands of jobs.”

Previous attempts to forge a trans-Atlantic free-trade deal have failed. And any new attempt at a pact faces huge obstacles — beyond the question of audiovisual restrictions — because some of the biggest gains would come not from the relatively easy goal of dropping tariffs but from removing restrictions like customs procedures that can and do create bureaucratic hurdles.

The Union also wants to pry open so-called public procurement markets and scrap “Buy American” clauses that restrict the ability of European companies to sell goods and services to U.S. states and cities. The Europeans also have long complained about restrictions on foreign ownership of U.S. airlines.

The Americans, in turn, are eager to see a reduction in barriers to exports of agricultural goods, including produce from genetically modified organisms and cloning, which many Europeans oppose.

The talks also could run into difficulties over European initiatives like privacy restrictions on major online operators like Facebook and Google, and a tax on financial transactions aimed at recouping money from investment banks.

Government officials and industrialists who support a trade pact have argued that things are different this time because Europe, in the throes of a recession and debt crisis, is seeking ways to accelerate growth without raising domestic spending. Proponents also maintain that the United States is eager to set global standards with Europe, to create a model that giant emerging economies like China might have no choice but to follow.

You may find the invitation for the event here.

The pace to negotiate bilateral or plurilateral free trade agreements has been accelerating rapidly over the last month as the big trading blocs seem eager to position themselves in the race for market access and standards.

China, Japan and Korea in March hurried to open their first official round of negotiations (CJK), just in time to edge ahead of Japan’s joining the negotiations of an enlarged Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) and also ahead of the official start of a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) announced by the European Union and the United States earlier this year. Meanwhile, a concerned Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) rushed to counter these ventures with their own competitive bid by starting detailed talks on a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) in Brunei Daressalam last Friday.

For years, China and Korea had been reluctant to negotiate the CJK FTA, said Junji Nakagawa, professor of international economic law at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Tokyo. Research on the CJK started in 2003, with an official study begun in 2010 and finalised only last spring.

Is TPP and Japan’s Joining a Stimulus for the CJK?

Trade deficits between China and Japan (and to a lesser degree Korea and Japan) were at the core of concerns responsible for the slow path. Plus, China had suspected, Nakagawa said, that “Japan would urge for liberalization of investment and ask for more stringent protection of IPR.” The Japanese academic told Intellectual Property Watch that “Japan’s move to join the TPP must have made them change their mind.”

Japan in March announced it would join the controversial TPP. During the negotiating round in July the East Asian country will for the first time participate as an official party to the treaty. Japan took its time wrestling with the impact on its agricultural products before deciding “to catch the bus” to the “mega FTA,” said Nakagawa. Besides being a stimulus for the CJK, Japan’s entering the TPP group may also have prompted other countries to reconsider their next steps in joining FTA negotiations, including the TPP, Nakagawa said

At the same time there are experts pointing out that China’s and Korea’s announcement last year to go ahead might have been a strong incentive for Japan to go ahead with the trilateral agreement.

Not only the TPP, but also the TTIP is being watched closely by Chinese economists. Fan Gang, director of the National Economic Research Institute, said in an interview with the Chinese newspaper First Financial Daily recently: “The start of free trade negotiations between the United States and Europe has not only a significant impact on the U.S. and European economies, it can also be seen as an attack to the economies in Asia.”

A combined free trade zone with the United States and Europe, coupled with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) members Mexico and Canada, would create a large free market and put other economies under pressure, he said. For Fan, the CJK and the regional FTA agreement therefore should be put very high, in fact on top of the political agenda of Asian countries. Asian countries should strive to be in the driver’s seat of free trade development, instead of being driven by others, he said.

Countries Negotiating on Both Sides

In order to counterbalance the impacts from the TPP and TTIP, China also supports the RCEP negotiations that officially started Friday in Brunei Daressalam and will be continued in September.

The sudden rise of the RCEP was in fact due to the many concerns Asia has about the TPP, wrote Jianmin Jin, senior fellow at Fujitsu Research Institute, in his analysis of the poker-like moves.

RCEP brings together even more partners than the TPP, 16 altogether. In their official statement during the first round, negotiators underlined that RCEP would take a step beyond the existing ASEAN plus 1 FTAs, yet at the same time be “taking into consideration the different levels of development of the participating countries.” Instead of reaching for the elimination of all exemption of taxes, for example, a more gradual integration is being eyed. At the same time, the RCEP drags some countries into the middle between the different negotiations.

Singapore, Brunei, Vietnam and Malaysia (all members of the ASEAN 10) joined the TPP, arguing as Singapore did that both agreements would be “complementary.” Australia and New Zealand are parties to both TPP and the RCEP, as they previously signed FTAs with ASEAN. And Japan gets it all: RCEP, TPP and CJK and at the same time is starting negotiations with the EU, giving Japanese negotiators quite a busy schedule.

Is there a risk of entering into different, and even conflicting, provisions? “That is certainly possible,” agreed Nakagawa. Yet in his opinion, not only had studies shown that Japanese companies are clever in using the FTAs, but TPP and CJK also differ in their end goals.

TPP Going for an IPR TRIPS-Plus “Gold Standard”

Nakagawa sees the TPP with the US in the driver seat as the “most ambitious FTA” being put on the negotiating table – and the CJK as more general and focussed on market access. The TPP is “possibly the biggest FTA in the world” with a clear TRIPS-plus agenda, he said. The US government is, for example, asking for the extension of copyright from 50 to 70 years and also pushing for data exclusivity and the protection of test data.

While the requests reflect US business interests, Nakagawa said more stringent IPR protection is a common goal of the US and Japan. For the CJK agreement, on the other hand, the inclusion of IPR protection still has to be battled out. Chinese negotiators so far have not agreed to build a dedicated CJK IPR working group. Another troublesome issue, according to Nakagawa, is the regulation of state-owned enterprises, which was negotiated in the TPP competition chapter.

The declared targets were Vietnamese state-owned enterprises, explained Nakagawa, acknowledging at the same time that the ultimate target of the US in this regard was China. According to experts from universities and also the Fujitsu Research Institute, China had been considering joining the TPP, but has complained that “many conditions are being written into the TPP in order to make it difficult for China to join and thus exclude it from the agreement.” The CJK talks, parallel talks between China and Korea, and the RCEP negotiations allow for an Asian counter-strategy.

For Japan, entering negotiations in both directions while potentially ending on different or conflicting levels of standardisation, is still beneficial, Nakagawa said. Having liberalised its economy to a considerable extent, relatively small steps would provide access to additional markets. And while there is resistance in Japan, for example from farmers, the Japanese policy can be read as a “the more market access, the better, the more FTAs, the better.”

A similar strategy drives the European Union’s list of FTAs. The EU Commission is, at the same time, negotiating half a dozen bilateral FTAs and also supports another new plurilateral agreement focussed on services, the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA). The most buzz recently has been on the US-EU FTA that will start official negotiations in the coming weeks. The EU also is and has been reaching out to TPP/RCEP/CJK-partners, in an obvious effort not to lose ground against the trans-Pacific or Asian initiatives. As China is looking West, the EU certainly is looking East.

No Chance for the WTO Processes

Marietje Schaake (see her TTIP FAQ), member of the EU Parliament for the Liberal Party group and a supporter of an ambitious EU-US agreement, pointed out: “Emerging trade blocs are evolving into powerhouses wishing to play increasingly active and competitive roles on the world stage.” With China and Iceland signing a bilateral FTA, it was “the first time the Asian giant has entered into such a deal with a European country. Beijing has also been knocking on Brussels’ doors to revamp direct trade and investment talks.”

Schaake also touched on the much-debated issue of a stalled Doha Round as the root cause for the FTA monopoly. To her the accelerated pace of negotiations indicate that “far from dead, as the Doha round’s stalemate suggests, global trade is getting a make-over.”

Nakagawa, and even Chinese economist Fan seem to agree that the run for the regional standards is not a terminal threat to the multilateral trade system. Fan in his interview with First Financial Daily said the Doha Round might come back to life from the death.

Nakagawa said that while countries have “shifted their forces to the FTA races,” the WTO still is a far better forum than any other combination of mega-FTAs. Yet multilateral consensus with the shifting weights of trading partners had been difficult to manage for some years. He expects that, “for the coming five or six years major countries will concentrate their resources in major regional trade agreements. With major mega trade agreements concluded five six years from now countries will have to think about new directions and a re-vitalization of the WTO.”

Multilateralising whose Standards?

Japanese officials harbour – like officials in the EU regarding the TTIP by the way – the hope that standards developed in the TPP will find their way into WTO negotiations somehow. EU Commissioner Karel de Gucht in a commentary for the Parliament wrote that “transatlantic standards could be embryos of future world standards,” and “an ambitious transatlantic agreement would be in effect a global public good.” But the question of who can father the future common WTO standards might only be postponed.

Pierre Sauvé, director of external programmes and academic partnerships and a faculty member at the World Trade Institute (WTI) at the University of Bern, said the race for standards outside the WTO is an expression of a high degree of frustration about the Geneva process. Sauvé, a senior economist in the OECD Trade Directorate and past staff member of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), analyzed the potential of the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) for the European Parliament’s International Trade Committee. TISA is a multilateral answer from the group of the “really good friends in services” to the stalled GATS talks.

Sauvé, while a free trade proponent, called “pure fiction” the idea of the TISA negotiators – who met last week for their second round in Geneva – to have the standards of one of the groups multilateralised later. And he goes a step further calling “shocking” the “we against them” positioning expressed during a TISA hearing by Deputy US Trade Representative and US Permanent Representative to the WTO Michael Punke.

“If you exclude people from the table telling them you’re not sufficiently liberalised, what is the likelihood that they afterwards will just sign on the dotted line? It will never happen,” Sauvé said.

Innovative steps in preferential agreements could be positive, he said, but the closed door nature of talks like TISA – like the ones on the ACTA in the past – were “very damaging to the collective spirit and very saddening.” Sauvé also warns that the former heavyweights should not misjudge their strength. Somehow, the crisis-ridden EU and US might wage one fight too many in the current race like the aging Muhammad Ali losing in the attempt to become world boxing champion just one more time.

The complete text of the joint motion for a resolution on the situation of Syrian refugees in neighbouring countries can be found on the website of the European Parliament. The adopted text will be updated shortly.

Mr President, the Commissioner mentioned in his introduction that he was here on behalf of the High Representative, Ms Ashton. Mr Commissioner, could you tell us whether she is now at the Friends of Syria meeting that is taking place in Jordan and, if she is not there, why not, and whether she has attended these meetings before?

I agree with colleagues that the EU must be much more involved in finding a solution to the violence and the humanitarian crisis in and around Syria, because for over two years we have witnessed how Syrians have been murdered in the most brutal way. The conflict is rapidly becoming increasingly radicalised and the Syrian people are being crushed; a regional disaster is looming. The corpses of boys and men were revealed by the receding waters of a river, hands tied behind their backs, bullet holes in their skulls. Children seek shelter in the arms of their mothers to no avail; there are at least 80 000 people dead, and most of them are civilians.

Of course people are fleeing this horrible violence, and enough is enough, but beyond the death and destruction a humanitarian crisis of unprecedented magnitude is unfolding. There are now seven million Syrians who rely on aid, around four and half million are displaced in the country and the number of refugees is expected to rise to three and a half million in the next month. Four and a half thousand cross the border to Lebanon every day. These people are mostly women and children. They need basic help: food, water, shelter, medicine. Girls and women are especially vulnerable. We receive horrific reports of rape, and also of the selling or marrying-off of girls far too young to marry. These girls and women need specific aid.

The EU needs a long-term plan, and we must prepare to free up a lot more in emergency aid. The UN will ask for no less than USD three billion to cover the needs only for this year. I believe the External Action Service needs to develop a roadmap for political governance in the liberated areas that includes the possibility of lifting economic sanctions, and we need to seek a UN Security Council mandate that allows for the delivery of humanitarian aid. The Assad Government is using access to aid as a weapon against its people, even though that is against international law. Let us also pressure Russia to be more constructive and stop delivering arms, and let us make sure that countries which promise aid do also transfer the money.

The complete text of the motion for a resolution on the negotiating mandate can be found on the website of the European Parliament. The adopted text will be updated shortly.

This FAQ answers the main questions and sets out my priorities for TTIP.

Madam President, this perspective and the ambition to break down barriers that remain in the trade and investment flows between the world’s largest trading blocks is historic. Besides the opportunity to create jobs and economic growth – and all this without governments needing to invest – the scope is wide and ambitious in an unprecedented way.

The road ahead will be long and rocky, but the goals of setting common standards and boosting competitiveness together in a rapidly changing world are persuasive.

The Liberal Group supports a green light to start negotiations on a comprehensive agreement. We do not need any red lines now. But let there be no confusion. A green light for the mandate is not a carte blanche for the negotiators.

This Parliament has a key role to play, and we expect to be closely involved: to represent all interests, those of consumers, citizens, small and medium-sized enterprises, businesses and civil society. Stakeholders are eager to be involved, to share their hopes and concerns.

I would say to the Commissioner that it is essential to ensure that benefits are not only measured in spreadsheets and studies, not only for shareholders or in boardrooms. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership should lead to a win-win situation, to fewer bureaucratic burdens, and to high standards of fundamental rights, environmental standards and consumer protection.

This should be an agreement for and by people, and macroeconomic figures alone are not enough to gather political support. We – and you, Commissioner – must do all you can to gain trust in the process.

Transparency is essential, and while we share concerns over the gap between, for example, the federal level and the state level on the American side, and over the independence of regulators and how that should figure in the negotiations on our side, we must also guard against being too fragmented.

Let us work together to ensure that local communities, specific sectors and constituencies can share their concerns and hopes, but that we also keep in mind the bigger picture and the ambitions that we share. Let us make sure that the bigger picture trickles down and translates to the individual level.

I believe we have an opportunity which we must take. But we cannot be naive about the challenges of making it all work in a world that is rapidly changing in the meantime.