H.E. Mr. Patrick Engelberg:

As much as some countries have their views and sometimes express them very forcefully, others have different views and this is what the EU is about. It is about shaping compromise. At the end of the day, we will not have one or the other in the short term. At the EU Council ten days ago, Prime Minister Cameron presented the four main topics they would like to discuss with EU member states. This discussion has been launched and we have a rendezvous clause for December. Luxembourg is not formally involved in this through the Presidency, in the same way as we are not formally involved with Greece or other topics. The Presidency is no longer what it used to be. We now have a permanent President of the European Council and President of the Eurogroup. The institutions have various competencies and roles. Faithful to our tradition of trying to find solutions, make deals and progress the European project, we will be very active behind the scenes and we will try to build bridges between the positions. It is the same with Brexit, although I should not call it Brexit as it is about renegotiation and reform of the EU. There have been a number of high-level contacts between Britain and Luxembourg in recent weeks. We are very aware of the issues the British want to raise with us all and we assured them that, as always, Luxembourg will be an honest broker and will try to help everyone find proper solutions.

Luxembourg like other countries is very concerned about certain aspects of TTIP, particularly ISDS. We very much expressed the view that dispute settlements are still for national parliaments and systems. In May, Luxembourg was among five countries which proposed an alternative to what was on the table.

The proposed alternative was a more permanent tribunal of independent judges dealing with dispute settlement, rather than something that could be seen as less transparent and impartial. Otherwise, Luxembourg is very much committed to progressing the TTIP negotiations. Earlier this year, we were quite optimistic that we could achieve something before the end of the year. This optimism seems to have vanished a little now. Nevertheless, we want to move it forward as much as we can by the end of the year.