BeST Presents to TTIP Negotiators

On Wednesday 15 July Maurits Bruggink – Director EU Affairs – gave a presentation to the TTIP lead negotiators with regards to raw materials to advocate the position of the beryllium industry.

BeST had the opportunity to make a 9 minute presentation at the TTIP Stakeholder meeting.  The meeting was split up into 4 separate sessions.  The BeST presentation was among 20 presentations in the session on “Issues related to manufacturing including, regulatory coherence, technical barriers to Trade, specific sectors”. On the EU side, Mr. Petros Sourmelis, Head of Unit Market Access, Industry, Energy and Raw Materials at DG Trade and Mr. Klaus Berend, Head of Unit in DG GROW responsible for REACH represented the European Commission, and for the US Side Ms Jean Kemp, USTR Lead Negotiator for Energy and Raw Materials.

The presentation called ‘Technical Barriers to Trade in the Raw Materials Sector in the case of Beryllium’ focused on the importance of beryllium to major EU-US industries and to the technical barrier to trade for beryllium from the US to the EU. To illustrate why beryllium is essential for various major industries, examples were given about beryllium and the automotive industry and beryllium and medical equipment such as X-Rays.

BeST advocated the need for:

• The EU and US to secure their number one position as technology leader in the world by incorporating critical materials in TTIP.

• A common approach incorporating a secured supply of beryllium while maintaining high environmental standards

• Outcome of TTIP could be a common RMOA for raw materials

To access the presentation, please click below:

BeST-TTIP-Presentation-July-2015.pdf

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