EU-US Trade Negotiations - lack of transparency: A brief history of the TTIP: Stop this corporate plunder - by Colin Todhunterr

The corporate jargon surrounding the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) deal is about ‘protecting’ investment’, reducing ‘unnecessary’ barriers and ‘harmonising’ regulations that supposedly deter free trade between the US and the EU.

In principle, the notion of trade that is free and fair sounds ideal. But, across the world, the dominant ideological paradigm allows little scope for neither. Markets are rigged , commodity prices subject to manipulation  and nations are coerced , destabilised  or attacked  in order that powerful players gain access to resources and markets.

On 11 October, over 400 groups across Europe took to the streets to demonstrate against the TTIP, which has just ended its seventh round of talks in Washington. While some groups are accused by supporters of the TTIP of being ideologically driven in their opposition, it is not ideology that drives this opposition.

It is sceptism and suspicion fuelled by the prevailing pactices and actions of powerful corporations and their ideological brand of neoliberalism and rampant privatisation. The secrecy and lack of transparency surrounding the TTIP fuels this suspicion. The public has not been allowed to know who set the agenda for the negotiations or what specifically is being negotiated supposedly its our behalf?

The public is expected to put up and shut up and leave it all to those who know best: EU officials with their deep-seated conflicts of interest and big business. It has been mainly through leaked documents and recourse to freedom of information legislation that the public has gained insight into the nature of the negotiations.

When questioned about the nature of the group, the European Commission (EC) said it had no identifiable members and stated that “several departments” contributed to the discussion and the reports of the (memberless) group. It even stated that there was no document containing the list of authors of the reports. A request by Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) to disclose membership/report authors was met with the response: “Unfortunately we (the EC) are not in a position to provide you with the information requested.” 

CEO argued that the group should be subject to the transparency requirements set up in EC’s rules on ‘expert groups’, including transparency about who participated.

The US wants all so-called barriers to trade, including highly controversial regulations such as those protecting agriculture, food or data privacy, to be removed. Even the leaders of the Senate Finance Committee, in a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, made it clear that any agreement must also reduce EU restrictions on genetically modified crops, chlorinated chickens and hormone-treated beef .

Read more: A brief history of the TTIP: Stop this corporate plunder