BRUSSELS — The European Union’s new trade commissioner said on Friday that she and her American counterpart were committed to injecting new energy into stalled trans-Atlantic trade negotiations.
“We are both very, very committed to push forward,” the European commissioner, Cecilia Malmstrom, told reporters after a meeting with Michael Froman, the United States trade representative. “He really believes in this, and I do as well.”
Negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, a pact aimed at lowering tariffs and reducing regulatory barriers to encourage job creation and economic growth in Europe and the United States, began last year but have yielded few results after seven rounds. They have been effectively frozen during the midterm elections in the United States and a leadership changeover at the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union.
The comments by Ms. Malmstrom, who spoke on the margins of a meeting of European Union member states’ trade ministers and is not yet a month into her new job, came after talks last weekend between European Union leaders and President Obama at the Group of 20 meeting in Australia. There, David Cameron, the British prime minister, called for “rocket boosters” to be put on efforts to reach a deal. Mr. Froman was to meet on Friday with several European Union officials as part of an effort to reinvigorate the trade negotiations.
Despite voicing enthusiasm on Friday, Ms. Malmstrom said there were no immediate plans for an early resumption of the talks. The next round is scheduled for February in Brussels. Mr. Froman said his meeting with Ms. Malmstrom had been “an opportunity to get acquainted” and to agree “to work together to have a fresh start to the negotiations.”
In coming weeks and months, Mr. Froman said, the United States will be “looking for a clear signal that the E.U. is similarly focused on achieving an ambitious and comprehensive agreement, and doing so as soon as possible.”
Ms. Malmstrom said on Friday that she would travel to Washington Dec. 9 for more talks with Mr. Froman. The idea was “to see if we can put a fresh start into those negotiations,” she said.
The talks began with great fanfare in early 2013, after President Obama announced the project in his State of the Union address. The Europeans expressed hope for a preliminary deal by the end of 2014. But that optimism quickly ebbed away.
Trying to negotiate a deal so broad as to affect almost every area of the economy has so far stymied negotiators. While the pact could be the biggest trade agreement ever in its economic sweep and do much to harmonize regulations governing products like cars, drugs and medical devices, the talks have become bogged down in the type of parochial concerns that have derailed efforts to strengthen trans-Atlantic ties in the past.
European nations have dug in their heels over sectors like food and farming, while Congress has balked at Mr. Obama’s trade agenda.
Many Europeans also suspect the United States is more interested in a trade deal with Pacific nations than with them and are looking for signs of more engagement in trans-Atlantic trade.
Moreover, any deal could get delayed until after the American presidential election in 2016 unless Washington shows more commitment to the talks, Phil Hogan, the European commissioner for agriculture, warned early this week. The Americans “are more interested in the Asia-Pacific region,” Mr. Hogan told reporters. “There is no demonstration of a serious intent at the moment to have a T.T.I.P. deal on the American side.” he said.
Mr. Hogan, after holding his own meeting on Friday with Mr. Froman of the United States, said in a statement that he was committed to reaching “a balanced agreement.”
Public interest groups on both sides of the Atlantic have argued that a trade pact might simply hand more power to multinational corporations.
A central area of discord has been a clause that gives companies the right to sue governments to enforce the terms of any trade deal. Critics say that including the clause could undermine European standards of environmental and social protection. The European Commission has already received 150,000 public comments about that provision.
Powerful figures like Sigmar Gabriel, the German economy minister, have called that clause unnecessary, and Matthias Fekl, the French junior minister for trade, said in an interview on Wednesday that including it would make any deal unacceptable to Europe.
“If it stays I think it will make a deal impossible,” Mr. Fekl said, adding that neither the European Parliament nor member states’ own legislators appeared willing to ratify it. “That’s the political reality, and not only for France,” he said.
But American officials have insisted that the enforcement mechanism, formally known as investor-state dispute settlement, remains an essential aspect of the deal.
That is a view partly shared by European negotiators, who say the clause is commonplace in other European trade deals, including recently agreed-upon accords with Canada and Singapore. Those deals still require ratification by European lawmakers.
To ease concerns that the trans-Atlantic deal is being negotiated behind closed doors to meet corporate demands, Ms. Malmstrom said this week that more of the documents used in the talks would be made available for inspection by a larger number of members of the European Parliament, and that more documents also would be made available to the general public.
On Friday, the European trade ministers meeting in Brussels endorsed that approach in written conclusions, citing the need “to better communicate the scope and benefits of the agreement and to enhance transparency and dialogue with civil society.”
France has also been a proponent of keeping some parts of the European economy sheltered from the effects of any eventual deal. Mr. Fekl this week underlined his government’s opposition to opening European markets to genetically modified foods and to dropping protections for the French film and television industry.
Mr. Fekl also said Europe would continue to insist, despite American objections, that financial regulation needed to be covered in the pact. He said the United States also needed to agree not to use the names of European foodstuffs that carry special protections, like Brie cheese and Parma ham.