The European Commission has reached the internal decision that it needs to seek a new negotiating mandate from member states in order to partake in negotiations on a new plurilateral services agreement among selected members of the World Trade Organization. The commission will likely encounter few obstacles in securing such a mandate and plans to do so before entering formal services talks early next year, according to European diplomatic sources. EU member states have made clear they can agree to grant such a mandate so long as an initial services agreement is eventually incorporated into the multilateral trading system and opened up to all WTO members, sources said. That said, the services deal will initially be negotiated as a "closed" deal, whose benefits are only available to those trading partners that participate in the negotiations.
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