by Ed Butt
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership has encountered stiff opposition in Europe. Picture credit: Jakob Huber, flickr
A new leaked European Commission proposal which if implemented would form part of the EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) treaty currently being negotiated in secret between Brussels and Washington, EU member state legislative proposals will be subjected to vetting by corporate lawyers for potential impacts on private business interests first.
Yes you read it correctly – governments of sovereign nations will need to obtain approval from an unelected bunch of corporate lawyers before they can make laws and police in the best interests of the people who elected them. As we have been saying for two years, TTIP puts corporate profits above freedom, democracy and the rule of law.
Civil rights and libertarian groups have already denounced this plan as being nothing less than tool to enable corporate business to operate above the law, the references to 'free trade' really mean corporate bosses will be free to do as they like. Consumer protection and workers' rights lobbyists have condemned the “regulatory exchange” plan as an affront to representative democracy. "TTIP is an insult to citizens, elected politicians and democracy itself", says Max Bank of Lobby Control.
Responsibility for the screening of national legislation proposals will be given to the 'Regulatory cooperation body', a permanent, undemocratic, and unaccountable conclave of European and American technocrats. "Both the Commission and US authorities will be able to exert undue pressure on governments and politicians under this measure as these powerful players are parachuted into national legislative procedures. The two are also very likely to share the same agenda: upholding the interests of multinationals," says Kenneth Haar of Corporate Europe Observatory.
“The Commission proposal introduces a system that puts every new environmental, health, labour, and standard at European and member state level at risk. It creates a labyrinth of red tape for regulators, to be paid by the tax payer, that undermines their appetite to adopt legislation in the public interest,” says Paul de Clerck of Friends of the Earth Europe.
We will have more on this as it breaks.
Read Full TTIP Document HERE
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