I'm glad to see this development and I hope other countries will follow; the agreement with China will be particularly significant. Hopefully India and Canada will be next.
However, I don't think that the EU nations should give this authorisation to the EU without some concessions. The EU's stance on the EU/US negotiations has caused unnecessary delays and as I've mentioned, it's use of 847/04 while it was holding up negotiations with its demands has not been helpful. I'd like to see some negotiation on this; true, the US is the first nation with which the EU has held negotiatons as a single unit, but lessons need to be learned.