France threatens to block talks for an EU-US free trade agreement. As reported by the Financial Times, in fact, Paris has said it is ready to boycott the ongoing negotiations if the sectors linked to culture are not excluded in advance, claiming the so-called “Exception culturelle”, an international system that protects local realities (especially in music and cinema), from the onslaught of English-language productions, mainly coming from the United States.
The European authorities, and above all Great Britain, would instead like to include the major in the agreement plan
possible number of sectors, but France, also given a tough internal campaign aimed at defending the "cultural exception" born in recent months, does not want to hear about it.
Meanwhile, just yesterday President Francois Holland had asked for the organization of an extraordinary European summit to address and resolve the ongoing trade problems with China, which has imposed an anti-dumping procedure on European wines, as retaliation for the duties imposed by the EU on Chinese solar panels. A procedure that weighs more precisely on those countries, such as France, Italy and Spain, which had said they were against the imposition of duties.
Attachments: The Financial Times article
