In the following chapter, the reader will gain substantial knowledge about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership in context of data protection. Firstly, general background information on TTIP will be given to ensure a basic understanding of TTIP’s effect on the world economy and trading relationships. The political dimension of TTIP will be largely ignored. In the second subchapter the planned regulatory cooperation will be described generally but also in respect to data protection.
2.1 Background Information on TTIP
The EU and the US have negotiated officially on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership since July 2013 (EurActive, 2015). The negotiations are …show more content…
At its core, TTIP aims at removing any kind of non-tariff barrier (NTB), first of all any differences in regulation that could harm competition. Generally speaking, trade barriers between the EU and the USA have already been relatively low. However, differences in standard setting and regulation policies weaken imports and exports between the two countries. In Appendix A it can be seen that certain industry sectors face significantly higher restrictions and therefore also higher costs due to non-tariff barriers. Many of these trade barriers should be removed by generating regulatory …show more content…
Regulations are legally-binding standards to ensure consumer protection, not only in respect to food safety and health related issues but also when it comes to the protection of personal data (European Commission, 2013). Such regulations are also seen as barriers restricting trade between nations. For example, a standardization of regulations, would remove the 10% tariff which exists currently on US-made car imports into EU member countries and the 2.5% tariff on EU cars imported into the USA (Hamilton, 2014). The European Commission sees this as an opportunity to eliminate red tape and create common regulative standards that might be benchmarks for countries all around the world (European Commission, 2013). Moreover, closer regulatory cooperation might also result in a more effective regulation setting procedure by deriving benefits from different perspectives and experiences (European Commission, 2015d). The regulatory coherence should be achieved by horizontal and sectoral actions. On a horizontal level shared principles and best practices should be outlined to build a cooperative procedure for implementing regulations. On a sectoral level existing regulations regarding a specific economic sector will be analyzed in order to remove duplications and simplify doing business at the partner country especially for small and medium