U.S. President Barack Obama, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, UK Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President François Hollande, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy made the following joint statement following their meeting in the margins of the G20 Summit in Brisbane:

“We, the Leaders of the United States and the European Union, and the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Spain meeting in the margin of the G20 Summit reaffirm our commitment to comprehensive and ambitious negotiations, in a spirit of mutual benefit, leading to a high standard Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreement.

We remain committed, as we were when we launched these negotiations in June 2013, to build upon the strong foundation of our six decades of economic partnership to promote stronger, sustainable and balanced growth, to support the creation of more jobs on both sides of the Atlantic and to increase our international competitiveness.

Underlining the strategic importance of this agreement, we see it as an opportunity to promote the principles and values that we, as citizens of open economies and societies, share and cherish, including transparency and joint approaches to global trade challenges.

We commend the work of the negotiators over the last 16 months, and direct them to make all possible progress over the coming year.”