The US-EU Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA). Devastating Social and Environmental Consequences
The Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) between the US and EU aims to ‘protect’ investment and remove ‘unnecessary regulatory barriers’. Corporate
interests are driving the agenda, the public have been sidelined and
unaccountable, pro-free-trade bureaucrats are facilitating the strategy
(1).
There is growing concern that the negotiations could result in the opening of the floodgates for GMOs and shale gas (fracking) in Europe,
the threatening of digital and labour rights and the empowering of
corporations to legally challenge a wide range of regulations which they
dislike.
One
of the key aspects of the negotiations is that both the EU and US
should recognise their respective rules and regulations, which in
practice could reduce regulation to the lowest common denominator. The
official language talks of ‘mutual recognition’ of standards or
so-called reduction of non-tariff barriers. For the EU, that could mean
accepting US standards in many areas, including food and agriculture,
which are lower than the EU’s.
Even the leaders of the US Senate Finance Committee, in a letter to
U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, made it clear that any agreement
must reduce EU restrictions on genetically modified crops, chlorinated
chickens and hormone-treated beef.
Food lobby group Food
and Drink Europe, representing the largest food companies (Unilever,
Kraft, Nestlé, etc.), has welcomed the negotiations, with one of their
key demands being the facilitation of the low level presence of
unapproved GM crops.
The TAFTA negotiations are shrouded in
secrecy and are closed to proper public scrutiny (2,3,4). They amount to
little more than grubby back room deals, while striving to give the
appearance of somehow being democratic, and effectively constitute part
of the ongoing corporate hijack of democracy and the further
restructuring of economies in favour of elite interests (5,6,7).
However,
despite claims by the European Commission that there is no secrecy (8),
the notes of European Commission meetings with business lobbyists
released to Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) under the EU’s freedom of
information law were heavily censored. The documents showed that the EC
invited industry to submit wish lists for ‘regulatory barriers’ they
would like removed during the negotiations. There is no way for the
public to know how the EU has incorporated this into its negotiating
position as all references have been removed (4). The documents show
clearly that removing differences in EU and US regulations is the key
issue in the talks: in other words, a race to the bottom in setting the
lowest barriers possible.
A leaked
EU document (9) from the winter of 2013 shows the Commission proposing
an EU-US Regulatory Cooperation Council, a permanent structure to be
created as part of the TAFTA deal. Existing and future EU regulation
will then have to go through a series of investigations, dialogues and
negotiations in this Council. This would move decisions on regulations
into a technocratic sphere, away from democratic scrutiny. Also, there
would be compulsory impact assessments for proposed regulation, which
will be checked for their potential impact on trade. This would be ideal
for big business lobbies: creating a firm brake on any new progressive
regulation in the very first stage of decision-making.
As
if all of this isn’t bad enough, there is also the highly contentious
trade-investor dispute settlement provision in TAFTA. It would enable US
companies investing in Europe to bypass European courts and challenge
EU governments at international tribunals whenever they find that laws
in the area of public health, environmental or social protection
interfere with their profits. EU companies investing abroad would have
the same privilege in the US.
This
constitutes a charter for the systematic destruction and dismantling of
legislation that exists to protect the hard-won rights of workers and
ordinary people.
Across the world, big business has
already used such investor-state dispute settlement provisions in trade
and investment agreements to claim massive sums in compensation.
Tribunals, consisting of ad hoc three-member panels hired from a small
club of private lawyers riddled with conflicts of interest, have granted
billions of euros to companies, courtesy of taxpayers (10).
EU and US companies have used these
lawsuits to destroy any competition or threats to their profits by for
example challenging green energy and medicine policies, anti-smoking
legislation, bans on harmful chemicals, environmental restrictions on
mining, health insurance policies and measures to improve the economic
situation of minorities.
If governments and parliaments fail to
act to protect the public’s interests, powerful corporations will
acquire carte blanche to rein in democracy and curb policies devised for
the public good.
Despite such major concerns, campaigners
from the Seattle to Brussels Network (11) have criticised the European
Commission’s recently implemented consultation on the investor rights in
the EU-US trade deal as a mock consultation aimed at selling its
pro-industry agenda, rather than an honest attempt to have a much-needed
open debate on the issue.
Roos van Os of the Centre for Research
on Multinational Corporations (SOMO), a member of the Seattle to
Brussels Network, has said:
“Those who reject the undemocratic and dangerous investor-state dispute settlement system will have no opportunity in this consultation to voice their opposition because the Commission’s biased questions provide no option for that. The Commission should make itself available for a real debate, not a cowardly advertising campaign for its corporate agenda.”
In meetings with the Commission, members
of its civil society advisory group on the EU-US trade deal had
stressed the need for the consultation to be intelligible for
non-experts and for there to be balanced questions. But the Commission’s
consultation questionnaire only contains questions about its agenda for
minor reforms to salvage the controversial investor-state dispute
settlement system, in a 40-page legalistic text which will be difficult
for members of the public to understand.
Marc Maes of the Belgian development organisation and also a member of the Seattle to Brussels Network:
“The Commission’s so-called reform agenda does nothing to address the basic flaws of the investor-state dispute settlement system. Therefore foreign companies will continue to have greater rights than domestic firms and citizens. And international tribunals consisting of three for-profit lawyers will continue to decide over what policies are right or wrong, disregarding domestic laws, courts and democracy.”
Analyses of leaked investment texts from
the EU-Canada trade negotiations indicate that the EU’s approach to
investment protection does very little to protect the right to regulate
(in fact it sometimes does the exact opposite) and it will establish an
arbitration system that is far inferior to domestic legal systems in the
EU and North America (12).
Pia Eberhardt, trade campaigner with CEO, another member of the Seattle to Brussels Network, said:
“The investor-state arbitration system cannot be tamed. Profit-greedy law firms and their corporate clients will always find a way to attack countries for actions that threaten their profits. The corporate super-rights should be abolished – and people in Europe should not miss this crucial opportunity to tell the Commission to do so.”
To enhance public scrutiny and
democratic debate about the controversial investor rights in EU trade
agreements, members of the Seattle to Brussels Network have set up a
website to publish leaked negotiating texts and critical analyses of
these texts: http://eu-secretdeals.info/
The network is also inviting civil
society organisations and members of the public to participate in
ongoing online actions against the dangerous corporate rights in EU
trade deals.
Be informed and take action:
Seattle to Brussels Network: http://www.s2bnetwork.org/themes/eus-free-trade-agreements/eu-us-transatlantic-trade-and-investment-partnership-ttip.html
Corporate Europe Observatory: http://corporateeurope.org/tags/ttip
Stop the Crop: http://www.stopthecrop.org/
Notes
11)
The Seattle to Brussels Network (S2B) includes development,
environmental, human rights, women’s and farmers’ organisations, trade
unions and social movements working together for a truly sustainable,
just and democratic trade policy in Europe. www.s2bnetwork.org
12)
See, for example: IISD (2014): A Response to the European Commission’s
December 2013 Document “Investment Provisions in the EU-Canada Free
Trade Agreement (CETA)”, http://www.iisd.org/pdf/2014/reponse_eu_ceta.pdf; Seattle to Brussel Network (2014): Investment in CETA – A response to a lobby document by DG Trade, http://eu-secretdeals.info/upload/2014/03/S2B-Marc-Maes-CETA-Investment_Response-to-DG-Trade-claims-March-7-2014_v2.pdf.
About the author:
Originally from the northwest of England, Colin Todhunter has spent many years in India. He has written extensively for the Bangalore-based Deccan Herald, New Indian Express and Morning Star (Britain). His articles have also appeared in many other newspapers, journals and books. His East by Northwest site is at: http://colintodhunter.blogspot.comRelated content:
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The US-EU Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA): Big Business Corporate Power GrabThese secret negotiations are intent upon creating the world’s largest free trade area, Corporate interests are driving the agenda. It’s a corporate power grab masquerading as something that promotes growth, freedom, harmony and job creation. Those claims are bogus.
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A Brave New Transatlantic Partnership: The Social and Environmental Consequences of the Proposed EU-US Trade DealAs the second round of negotiations on the EU-US trade agreement kick off in Brussels next week, a new report published by members of the Seattle to Brussels Network (S2B), including CEO, reveals the true human and environmental costs of…
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www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner.
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Copyright © Colin Todhunter, Global Research, 2014
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