European Union trade ministers opened the gates on Friday for negotiations on a landmark free trade deal with the US, but initially excluded audiovisual services from the talks after France insisted on shielding its film and music industries.

“We, the French, are satisfied,” Trade Minister Nicole Bricq said after 13 hours of talks with her EU counterparts in Luxembourg. “We have obtained a good agreement, which allows every one of the member states to find themselves in this agreement.” Others had warned in recent days that taking a whole sector off the table could weaken the EU’s negotiating position and encourage the US to exempt areas of its own.

“We had imagined a more robust (negotiating) mandate,” German State Secretary Anne Ruth Herkes said. “But that was not possible. We had to make concessions to one member state. What is important is that the US gets a positive signal from Europe.” The ministers’ agreement on the mandate was needed for talks with the US to get underway. The launch is now expected to be announced at the Group of Eight summit next week in Northern Ireland.

A pact with Washington would forge the largest free trade area in the world, affecting more than 800 million people. The EU believes that it could yield 400,000 new jobs and a yearly boost of 0.5 per cent in gross domestic product.

“It will reap rewards on both sides of the Atlantic and provide an important stimulus at a time when the European economy needs such a stimulus,” said Irish Enterprise Minister Richard Bruton, who led Friday’s talks. “That’s a prize really worth working for.” The talks with the US will be carried out by the EU’s executive, the European Commission.

EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht insisted that the audiovisual sector is not completely off-limits, because ministers agreed Friday to consider future commission recommendations on “possible additional negotiating directives.” He argued that what is really at stake is the “digital evolution of revolution” in film and music, an area that has not yet been regulated by the EU.

“We will come back to the matter on the basis of what is happening during the negotiations,” De Gucht said. “Yes, it will be discussed with the US. It’s up to them to tell us what they really have on their minds. We will then make up our mind.” Bricq predicted that Washington already has sectors it wants to carve out of the negotiations, most notably financial services. Other areas expected to prove tricky during the talks include agricultural exports and military supplies.

Negotiators on both sides of the Atlantic hope a deal can be concluded by mid-2014, when the EU commission’s term expires and mid-term elections are due in the US.

“For the greater good, we will need to push our particular interests to the background,” the British and Spanish trade ministers, Vince Cable and Jaime Garcia-Legaz, said in a joint message Thursday.

“You can be sure that there will be a lot of difficult topics to tackle,” De Gucht said late on Friday. “In the end, you’ll have to see if you can create a win-win situation.”

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