After
the leaks today showing just what it really stands for, this could be
the end for TTIP
The
documents show that US corporations will be granted unprecedented
powers over any new public health or safety regulations to be
introduced in future. If any European government does dare to bring
in laws to raise social or environmental standards, TTIP will grant
US investors the right to sue for loss of profits
John Hilary /
2-3-2016
Today’s shock leak
of the text of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
(TTIP) marks the beginning of the end for the hated EU-US trade deal,
and a key moment in the Brexit debate. The unelected negotiators have
kept the talks going until now by means of a fanatical level of
secrecy, with threats of criminal prosecution for anyone divulging
the treaty’s contents.
Now, for the first
time, the people of Europe can see for themselves what the European
Commission has been doing under cover of darkness - and it is not
pretty.
The leaked TTIP
documents, published by Greenpeace this morning, run to 248 pages and
cover 13 of the 17 chapters where the final agreement has begun to
take shape. The texts include highly controversial subjects such as
EU food safety standards, already known to be at risk from TTIP, as
well as details of specific threats such as the US plan to end
Europe’s ban on genetically modified foods.
The documents show
that US corporations will be granted unprecedented powers over any
new public health or safety regulations to be introduced in future.
If any European government does dare to bring in laws to raise social
or environmental standards, TTIP will grant US investors the right to
sue for loss of profits in their own corporate court system that is
unavailable to domestic firms, governments or anyone else.
For all those who
said that we were scaremongering and that the EU would never allow
this to happen, we were right and you were wrong.
The leaked texts
also reveal how the European Commission is preparing to open up the
European economy to unfair competition from giant US corporations,
despite acknowledging the disastrous consequences this will bring to
European producers, who have to meet far higher standards than
pertain in the USA.
According to
official statistics, at least one million jobs will be lost as a
direct result of TTIP – and twice that many if the full deal is
allowed to go through. Yet we can now see that EU negotiators are
preparing to trade away whole sectors of our economies in TTIP, with
no care for the human consequences.
What is TTIP? And
six reasons why the answer should scare you
The European
Commission slapped a 30-year ban on public access to the TTIP
negotiating texts at the beginning of the talks in 2013, in the full
knowledge that they would not be able to survive the outcry if people
were given sight of the deal. In response, campaigners called for a
‘Dracula strategy’ against the agreement: expose the vampire to
sunlight and it will die. Today the door has been flung open and the
first rays of sunlight shone on TTIP. The EU negotiators will never
be able to crawl back into the shadows again.
The leak of the TTIP
text comes at a time when senior politicians across Europe have
already begun to distance themselves from the increasingly toxic
deal. President Hollande announced this weekend that France will veto
any TTIP agreement that could endanger the country’s agricultural
sector. Germany’s economy minister Sigmar Gabriel has also spoken
publicly of TTIP collapsing, and has pointed the finger at US
intransigence as the cause. When politicians start playing the blame
game in this way, you know they are already preparing their exit
strategies. The writing is on the wall.
For those of us in
the thick of the EU referendum debate, the contempt shown by the TTIP
negotiators to the people of Europe is the most potent reminder of
the democratic deficit at the heart of the EU institutions. Today’s
leak of the TTIP text leaves the leaders of the European Union with a
choice. Either they abandon the TTIP negotiations immediately or they
risk seeing the entire European project come crashing down about
their ears. They have until 23rd June to decide.
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