The Position of the EU in the Political and Economic Relations with the USA in 2008-2015

Nowadays the European Union and the United States of America are the most important economic and political partners, and their interdependence is only growing. It should be highlighted that the trade and economic component of bilateral relations in recent years has been often more intense than the military-political one. In this regard, in this paper we focus mostly on economic and trade aspects of relations between the EU and the US and, in particular, on the EU position on the future agreement on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The objective of TTIP is to strengthen the EU's economic and trade cooperation with the USA and establish on the basis of the WTO rules new international standards for the world trade. However, there are a lot of contradictions between the EU and the USA on certain points of agreement, such as access to public procurement markets, financial services, food, protection of intellectual property, elimination of non-tariff barriers. These contradictions emphasize the position of the European Union and demonstrate specific features in the EU-US relations.