EU-US trade pact to miss 2015 deadline - "Europe should not sell its soul to the devil" - by Benjamin Fox

A 2015 deadline to agree a landmark trade deal with the United States is likely to be missed, EU trade officials have conceded.

"We cannot exclude that it may take longer," Latvian foreign minister Edgars Rinkevics, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, told reporters following a meeting of EU trade ministers on Wednesday (25 March).

“We have to do our best to get an agreement but we don’t want to reach an agreement just for the sake of it,” he added. “The political will is there but there is an acceptance that it may take longer”.

“We are aiming to conclude this under the Obama administration … but I cannot give you a date,” said EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom, who added that ratification of TTIP could get caught up in the next US presidential election cycle.

The race to replace Barack Obama will begin in earnest in autumn, when the Democratic and Republican parties begin their nomination process ahead of the presidential election in November 2016.

Trade negotiators have now concluded eight rounds of talks with a view to agreeing a transatlantic trade and investment partnership (TTIP), but were given a provisional deadline of December 2015 by EU leaders to agree a draft text.

The most thorny issue for ministers remains the investor protection mechanism known as ISDS, which allows firms to take governments to court if they discriminate against them or introduce new laws which threaten their investments.

“ISDS is a hot potato,” conceded Rinkevics. He said there are “differences in opinion” amongst ministers, but added there is no indication that member states want to open up the EU-Canada trade agreement, which includes the controversial regime.

Note EU-Digest: A European Parliamentarian when asked about the TTIP and the ISDS controversy said. "The EU must not sell  its soul to the devil by agreeing to the non-transparent TTIP - regardless of the 'fantastic' stories we hear about the economic benefits of the TTIP, we only need to look at the results achieved following the NAFTA agreement between Canada, Mexico,  and the US."

 "That  agreement, which has now been in effect 20 years, still shows little improvement in the overall economic conditions of ordinary citizens in the participating countries." 

"NAFTA has, however, certainly been a bonanza for the free-wheeling, uncontrolled, multi-national corporations - we must not repeat that in these negotiations with the US."

Read more: EU-US trade pact to miss 2015 deadline

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