of a commitment of our guest today and ambassador michael froman to meet following each round cecilia malmstrom european commissioner for trade is in washington. we welcome the commissioner to our forum is only. dr. malmstrom became commissioner of trade for the european union in november 2014. argue that she was commissioner for home affairs, and long career in this field. most importantly in her early days she was an intern at csis. so this is -- [laughter] this is a welcome back to csis for the commissioner. thank you again for joining us, and please help me welcome commissioner cecilia malmstrom. [applause] >> thank you so much for this. good morning, everybody. it's really nice to be here and it is especially nice to be at csis where as well as that i had an internship almost 20 years ago. i think those 10 weeks laid the ground for my interesting in american politics and it's really good to be back again. this is even bigger. i am here indeed in washington to meet with ambassador from on the transatlantic trade and investment partnership. we are going out with the sure to assess where we a

thank you again for joining us and please help me welcome commissioner cecilia malmstrom. [applause] cecilia: thank you so much for this. good morning, everybody. it's really nice to be here and it is especially nice to be at csis, where as was said, i had an internship almost 20 years ago. i think those 10 weeks laid the ground for my interesting in american politics and it's really good to be back again. this is even bigger. i am here indeed in washington to meet with ambassador froman on the transatlantic trade and investment partnership. we are going out to assess where we are and to make sure negotiations are on track. that's the third time i meet with michael froman this year. that is more often than i meet with some members of my family. i hope that is not the case for him. want to promote or perform those negotiations, we want to make sure this has a political touch with a regular exchange viewpoints, that we take stock of where we are, assessing the difficulties, the possibility and it's economically important for europe and u.s. and that's why we will keep on hav