Orgalime Position Paper proposing a horizontal Technical Barriers to Trade Chapter in on-going and future Free Trade Agreements.

A key feature of free trade agreements, other than reducing or eliminating existing tariff barriers for engineering goods and establishing a coherent set of rules of origin, is to reduce technical barriers to trade and to ensure access to public procurement. Orgalime believes that tackling regulatory divergences will benefit businesses of all sizes as well as increase trade flows.

Technical regulations, standards and conformity assessment procedures should facilitate trade and not become technical barriers for the engineering industries. We therefore support trade negotiations as a way to improve technical cooperation by reducing as far as is possible the existing differences in the respective regulatory frameworks between the EU and the trading partner. We believe that the alignment of national and regional standards with ISO, IEC and ITU international standards is the most effective way forward for the removal of technical barriers to trade.