BRUSSELS — The European Parliament voted Thursday to approve a trade deal between the European Union and the United States but with amendments added to protect European interests should the U.S. fail to hold up its end of the bargain.
The deal was negotiated last July in Turnberry, Scotland, by U.S. President Donald Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. It set a 15% tariff on most goods in an effort to stave off far higher import duties on both sides that might have sent shock waves through economies around the globe.
New language now says that the deal can be suspended if it is determined that Washington “undermined the objectives of the deal, discriminated against EU economic operators, threatened member states’ territorial integrity, foreign and defence policies, or engaged in economic coercion.”
That clause was forged because of tensions over Greenland, said Bernd Lange, a German lawmaker and head of the EU’s parliamentary trade committee.
Trump drew widespread condemnation across the 27-nation bloc by threatening to take control of Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark. He has backed away from the threat, at least for now.
“If this would happen again, then immediately the tariffs would be installed,” Lange said at a news conference after lawmakers voted. He said the protective modifications were “weatherproofing” the Turnberry deal.
The deal will now be further negotiated by EU trade representatives Maroš Šefčovič and his U.S. counterpart Jamieson Greer, who are meeting Friday on the sidelines of the World Trade Organization meeting in Yaoundé, Cameroon.
“We need the EU-US deal in force on both sides — delivering real certainty for EU businesses and showing that genuine partnership gets results,” Šefčovič said after the vote in Brussels.
There were formally two votes to introduce clauses to the deal. One passed 417-154 and the other 437-144 with dozens of abstentions each.
The U.S. Ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder said the vote would provide “stability and predictability” for U.S. and EU businesses and drive economic growth. “We encourage all parties to think to the future and the importance of unleashing opportunities for businesses on both sides of the Atlantic,” he said.
Malte Lohan, CEO of the American Chamber of Commerce to the European Union, said the vote is “the right signal for businesses that have been stuck in limbo over the past year” and “a necessary step towards a more predictable transatlantic marketplace.” The EU had paused the deal in the wake of the February ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court that struck down Trump’s use of an emergency powers law to set new import taxes. The European Commission, the EU executive charged with trade negotiations, had sought clarity on the ramifications of the court ruling.
The value of EU-U.S. trade in goods and services amounted to $2 trillion in 2024, or an average of 4.6 billion euros a day, according to EU statistics agency Eurostat.
Europe’s biggest exports to the U.S. are pharmaceuticals, cars, aircraft, chemicals, medical instruments, and wine and spirits. Among the biggest U.S. exports to the bloc are professional and scientific services like payment systems and cloud infrastructure, oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, aerospace products and cars. Croatian lawmaker Željana Zovko noted that despite the trade spat between Brussels and Washington, trade across the Atlantic had grown over the past year. “This resilience proves the trans-Atlantic trade works, and if it works, we should strengthen it, not hold it back.”
Story by Sam McNeil, Associated Press
