EU-Digest July-August Poll results shows majority polled want stronger European Union - by RM

A recent EU-Digest poll  (see insert) shows a majority of those polled favor a stronger, better structured and governed European Union.

Only 20%  favored a return to independent nationhood for the 28 nation member Union.

A large percentage (40%) felt that the EU has not become stronger , or more unified over the past 10 years to face the challenges of globalization

If there is any finger pointing to be done about the progress that has been made so far in Bruxelles, as to creating a stronger and better functioning Union, it must be noted that more than half of the 28 EU governments are run or led by Conservative and right-leaning Liberal governments. This political picture is also reflected in the EU Commission and the EU Parliament.

Consequently legislation on a Financial Transaction Tax, the regulation of casino capitalism, off-shore tax evasion, an independent foreign policy, or more social justice in the area of immigration and migrant policies have not been forthcoming. Mainly because legislation within the EU and among member states has been blocked by inward looking nationalist and conservative political forces 

Another major issue looming high above the EU's weak and "toothless" legislative structure is the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP, as it is known. TTIP will be the most important global trade agreement of its kind, representing nearly half of the world's GDP.  It is a trade deal between the USA and the EU, whose impact will be felt by all and everyone.

Is the EU able to control these negotiations, or at best, to keep them on an even playing field against the slick US corporate trained and supported negotiating team? Not really, if one looks at how the US's NSA got away with spying on the EU commission, EU corporations, local EU governments and EU citizens.

Bottom-line: Europe needs some imaginative thinking and vision to lift it out of its current torpor.

Watered down solutions will eventually bring this amazing and most promising global project of this century, called the EU, which has brought peace and prosperity to the European continent now for over 50 years, to a standstill.

Our new EU-Digest is about the election of the EU President  - should it be by popular vote or by parliamentary majority ? 

EU-Digest 

EU-US Trade Pact Negotiations: Will US Chlorine Chicken and Genetically modified foods end up on European dinner tables?

Famous TV Chef Jamie Oliver

Famous TV Chef rJamie Oliver who is popular around the world has warned that a new trade deal presently being negotiated between the EU and America will open the door in Europe to inferior US food products, including beef pumped up with growth hormones, banned additives and pesticides.

There are also concerns that GM crops and food produced in the USA, which have not been through more strict vetting procedures in Europe, could be forced on to dinner plates of Europeans

The campaigner and chef held talks this week with British Business Secretary Vince Cable to outline his ‘massive concerns’ that the deal could seriously undermine European food and farming

"If Europe signs this TTIP deal we are signing our own death sentence, because it is hardly news that the United States faces epidemic health problems linked to poor diets and hormone infected food. Nearly two out of every five Americans today are obese as a result of the bad and polluted food they consume and Europe must not go down that same road", said a EU parliamentarian. 

When EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström, who is negotiating the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership" (TTIP) between the EU and US on behalf of the EU 28 member states  was asked if chlorine chicken and genetically modified foods would end up on the plates of European consumers if the agreement is signed, she said: "No, that's a myth. we have high standards of consumer protection in the EU that will not be compromised by a trade agreement. Genetically modified foods are not allowed in Europe, hormone-treated meat is also taboo here, and chlorine-treated chickens are prohibited.

Hopefully the EU Commission and Parliament will keep a watchful eye that the EU does not fall for the "sweet talk" of the Americans. Remember they are mainly carrying out the objectives of their multi-national corporate sponsors in these crucial EU-US negotiations.

EU-Digest

EU Trade Negotiators Please Take Note - "US Senator Sanders Contrasts U.S. Trade Secrecy to EU Transparency" - by RM

EU negotiators at the EU - US Trade Negotiations better take note of how US Independent Senator. Bernie Sanders of Virginia  recently challenged the trade representative of the United States to follow the example of the European Union and stop hiding details of a proposed 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement.

“It is time for American trade negotiators to stop operating in the shadows and come clean with details of an agreement that would almost certainly throw more American workers out of jobs and shift more manufacturing to low-wage countries overseas,” Sanders said

In Brussels recently, the European Commission published documents setting out EU proposals for a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership that it is negotiating with the United States. The commission also posted an online guide to the document.

Sanders cited the Europeans’ openness in renewing his call for U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman to at least turn over to the senator the full text of a proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement that has been negotiated in secret with input from corporations which stand to profit on the deal.

Earlier, senator Sanders wrote a letter to Froman asking for the document that Congress could soon be asked to approve.

“It is incomprehensible to me that the leaders of major corporate interests who stand to gain enormous financial benefits from this agreement are actively involved in the writing of the TPP while, at the same time, the elected officials of this country, representing the American people, have little or no knowledge as to what is in it,” Sanders said in his  letter.  “In my view, this is simply unacceptable.”

On New Year's Day, 2014, Canada, Mexico and the US celebrated the 20th anniversary of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The Agreement created a common market for goods, services and investment capital with Canada and Mexico. And it opened the door through which American workers were shoved, unprepared, into a brutal global competition for jobs that has cut their living standards and is destroying their future.

NAFTA's birth was bi-partisan -- conceived by Ronald Reagan, negotiated by George Bush I, and pushed through the US Congress by Bill Clinton in alliance with Congressional Republicans and corporate lobbyists.
Clinton and his collaborators promised that the deal would bring "good-paying American jobs," a rising trade surplus with Mexico, and a dramatic reduction in illegal immigration. Instead, NAFTA directly cost the U.S. a net loss of 700,000 jobs. The surplus with Mexico turned into a chronic deficit. And the economic dislocation in Mexico increased the the flow of undocumented workers into the U.S.

As to the cost of living, they have only been going up.

Nevertheless, Clinton and his Republican successor, George Bush II, then used the NAFTA template to design the World Trade Organization, more than a dozen bilateral trade treaties, and the deal that opened the American market to China -- which alone has cost the U.S. another net 2.7 million jobs. The result has been 20 years of relentless outsourcing of jobs and technology.

By any measure, NAFTA and its sequels has been a major contributor to the rising inequality of incomes and wealth and yet there are two more such trade deals being negotiated: the Trans-Pacific Partnership with eleven Pacific Rim countries and a free trade agreement with the EU.

Consequently, Europeans better be aware : even though the EU Commission  has released it's online guide as to the present ongoing negotiations at the Trade and Investment Partnership meettings, which is a step in the right direction, EU Negotiators must also be aware that they are not only negotiating with US government officials, but also, indirectly, with ruthless American multi-national corporations.

Unfortunately these corporations, which are mainly motivated in making profits, and avoiding paying taxes whenever possible, basically can't care less about increasing employment opportunities for Europeans or Americans as history has shown us with NAFTA.

Axs it stands today, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Project is a one way street to more corporate involvement and control in government and the daily lives of citizens in Europe and the US.


EU-Digest 

Is the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between EU and US Dead in the Water? - by Judy Dempsey

No, TTIP is not dead in the water. It’s still steaming ahead, albeit at a reduced speed. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership was never expected to be closed quickly or smoothly, so there is no need to panic about emerging roadblocks.


TTIP is about dollars and euros and how to make more of both. This is the same idea around which French statesman Robert Schuman and French economist Jean Monnet built the precursors of the EU in the 1950s. Others then extended the concept to include free movement of capital and labor and increasingly standardized rules and regulations for business. This lifted all boats and made Europeans richer.

If the chief business of the American people is business, as the adage goes, then TTIP speaks the language everybody in the United States understands. The sticking points, such as agricultural subsidies, European rules of origin, and the precautionary principle, will be on the table. Compromises will be struck in the name of the larger prize, which is more efficiency, lower prices, and higher wages.

Europeans have built the common market for acutely pragmatic reasons. Given the size of the transatlantic economy and the gravitas of the United States for technology transfer, innovation, and military ties, TTIP is an indispensable deal that offers gains for everyone. It will be hard to negotiate, will take a long time to clinch, and may include painful compromises—but it should be done.

The newly elected chair of the European Parliament’s trade committee is Bernd Lange, a veteran Social Democratic member of parliament with a German trade-union background. In his considered May 2014 policy paper on TTIP, he sees advantages for German car exports (no surprise for a member of parliament from export-driven Lower Saxony), but he also sets out a long list of demands: that U.S. states adopt International Labor Organization norms; that exports of certain scientifically engineered U.S. agricultural products be banned; and that EU data privacy be respected—with a sideswipe at the NSA revelations that have done such damage in Germany.

Read complete report: Judy Asks: Is TTIP Dead in the Water? - Carnegie Europe