What
is TTIP? And six reasons why the answer should scare you
Have
you heard about TTIP? If your answer is no, don’t get too worried;
you’re not meant to have
Lee Williams
@leeroy112 Tuesday 6 October 2015
The Transatlantic
Trade and Investment Partnership is a series of trade negotiations
being carried out mostly in secret between the EU and US. As a
bi-lateral trade agreement, TTIP is about reducing the regulatory
barriers to trade for big business, things like food safety law,
environmental legislation, banking regulations and the sovereign
powers of individual nations. It is, as John Hilary, Executive
Director of campaign group War on Want, said: “An assault on
European and US societies by transnational corporations.”
Since before TTIP
negotiations began last February, the process has been secretive and
undemocratic. This secrecy is on-going, with nearly all information
on negotiations coming from leaked documents and Freedom of
Information requests.
But worryingly, the
covert nature of the talks may well be the least of our problems.
Here are six other reasons why we should be scared of TTIP, very
scared indeed:
1 The NHS
Public services,
especially the NHS, are in the firing line. One of the main aims of
TTIP is to open up Europe’s public health, education and water
services to US companies. This could essentially mean the
privatisation of the NHS.
The European
Commission has claimed that public services will be kept out of TTIP.
However, according to the Huffington Post, the UK Trade Minister Lord
Livingston has admitted that talks about the NHS were still on the
table.
2 Food and
environmental safety
TTIP’s ‘regulatory
convergence’ agenda will seek to bring EU standards on food safety
and the environment closer to those of the US. But US regulations are
much less strict, with 70 per cent of all processed foods sold in US
supermarkets now containing genetically modified ingredients. By
contrast, the EU allows virtually no GM foods. The US also has far
laxer restrictions on the use of pesticides. It also uses growth
hormones in its beef which are restricted in Europe due to links to
cancer. US farmers have tried to have these restrictions lifted
repeatedly in the past through the World Trade Organisation and it is
likely that they will use TTIP to do so again.
The same goes for
the environment, where the EU’s REACH regulations are far tougher
on potentially toxic substances. In Europe a company has to prove a
substance is safe before it can be used; in the US the opposite is
true: any substance can be used until it is proven unsafe. As an
example, the EU currently bans 1,200 substances from use in
cosmetics; the US just 12.
3 Banking
regulations
TTIP cuts both ways.
The UK, under the influence of the all-powerful City of London, is
thought to be seeking a loosening of US banking regulations.
America’s financial rules are tougher than ours. They were put into
place after the financial crisis to directly curb the powers of
bankers and avoid a similar crisis happening again. TTIP, it is
feared, will remove those restrictions, effectively handing all those
powers back to the bankers.
4 Privacy
Remember ACTA (the
Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement)? It was thrown out by a massive
majority in the European Parliament in 2012 after a huge public
backlash against what was rightly seen as an attack on individual
privacy where internet service providers would be required to monitor
people’s online activity. Well, it’s feared that TTIP could be
bringing back ACTA’s central elements, proving that if the
democratic approach doesn’t work, there’s always the back door.
An easing of data privacy laws and a restriction of public access to
pharmaceutical companies’ clinical trials are also thought to be on
the cards.
5 Jobs
The EU has admitted
that TTIP will probably cause unemployment as jobs switch to the US,
where labour standards and trade union rights are lower. It has even
advised EU members to draw on European support funds to compensate
for the expected unemployment.
Examples from other
similar bi-lateral trade agreements around the world support the case
for job losses. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
between the US, Canada and Mexico caused the loss of one million US
jobs over 12 years, instead of the hundreds of thousands of extra
that were promised.
6 Democracy
TTIP’s biggest
threat to society is its inherent assault on democracy. One of the
main aims of TTIP is the introduction of Investor-State Dispute
Settlements (ISDS), which allow companies to sue governments if those
governments’ policies cause a loss of profits. In effect it means
unelected transnational corporations can dictate the policies of
democratically elected governments.
ISDSs are already in
place in other bi-lateral trade agreements around the world and have
led to such injustices as in Germany where Swedish energy company
Vattenfall is suing the German government for billions of dollars
over its decision to phase out nuclear power plants in the wake of
the Fukushima disaster in Japan. Here we see a public health policy
put into place by a democratically elected government being
threatened by an energy giant because of a potential loss of profit.
Nothing could be more cynically anti-democratic.
There are around 500
similar cases of businesses versus nations going on around the world
at the moment and they are all taking place before ‘arbitration
tribunals’ made up of corporate lawyers appointed on an ad hoc
basis, which according to War on Want’s John Hilary, are “little
more than kangaroo courts” with “a vested interest in ruling in
favour of business.”
So I don’t know
about you, but I’m scared. I would vote against TTIP, except…
hang on a minute… I can’t. Like you, I have no say whatsoever in
whether TTIP goes through or not. All I can do is tell as many
people about it as possible, as I hope, will you. We may be forced to
accept an attack on democracy but we can at least fight against the
conspiracy of silence.
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