Abstract

Regulatory cooperation is both one of the most ambitious and contentious parts of the EU-US Transatlantic  Trade  and  Investment  Partnership  (TTIP)  negotiations.  In  this  paper,  having identified  the  many  levels  of  international  regulatory  cooperation,  we  show  that  TTIP regulatory cooperation will be significant, but not ambitious, while political and legal limits on cooperation in both the EU and the US minimise the concerns. For transatlantic regulatory cooperation  to  work,  it  must  accept  these  political  and  legal  constraints,  build  trust  and confidence among counterpart regulators so they see that their transatlantic partner can help them do their work better, and provide tools to help regulators on both sides make informed decisions while retaining their regulatory autonomy and accountability to their politicians and citizens. A TTIP that provides these tools – and some more detailed instruments to that effect – will be more ambitious than previous trade agreements, and should, over the longer term, provide  both  the  economic  and  regulatory  benefits  that  the  two  sides  envisage.  The  paper incorporates comparisons with the relevant chapters of recent FTAs the US and the EU have concluded,  so  as  to  clarify  the  approaches  and  degrees  of  ambition  in  this  area.  This comparison suggests that the TTIP regulatory cooperation will probably be more ambitious in terms of commitments and have a wider scope than any of these FTAs.