Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, for what reasons the text of the proposed Trade in Services Agreement treaty has not been made public.

Information on the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) can be found on the European Commission’s dedicated TISA website - http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/in-focus/tisa/ . In a bid to encourage transparency, the EU has published its initial TiSA offer from November 2013, the EU proposal for core text provisions based on the World Trade Organisation’s General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and the EU proposal on financial services.

Whilst the Commission are committed to publishing as much information as possible on the TiSA, for trade negotiations to work and succeed, it is necessary that there is a degree of confidentiality surrounding the negotiating texts to ensure that the best deals are obtained.