TTIP Documents Revealed

http://international.sueddeutsche.de/post/143690739565/ttippapiere

by BonsaiDen • 10 years ago

256 91 10 years ago

international.sueddeutsche.de

aw3c2• 10 years ago

All I see is a single post and an image of a container ship, is my browser broken or are there no documents?

weinzierl• 10 years ago

The material, consisting of 240 pages, was provided by Greenpeace and will be published this coming Monday.

r721• 10 years ago

Greenpeace Netherlands is releasing a package of leaked TTIP negotiation texts on Monday morning, at 11am CET

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/press/releases/20...

kzrdude• 10 years ago

Hit the International Home or German Edition links on the left hand side. Looks like the german newspaper has a lot more articles though.

anotheryou• 10 years ago

Not much additional content in the german articles. Thursday comes the print edition I think, that probably will have longer stories about it.

marmaduke• 10 years ago

Why would the EU comprise citizens' health to sell a few more cars? Is it American investors on both sides?

Aelinsaar• 10 years ago

I'm not sure that they will. The Brits at least don't seem to be interested in presenting their nethers for this chopping block.

M2Ys4U• 10 years ago

The UK government is one of the most pro-TTIP in the EU, unfortunately.

mtgx• 10 years ago

And the EU may not even gain all that much from car sales, either, if the EU car companies don't get serious about EVs. TTIP may just make it easier for Tesla to sell more cars into the EU.

RobertoG• 10 years ago

This is not an EU against USA thing.

It's more a corporations against the people thing. The problem those treaties solve is that they lock future legislative changes at the national level.

After signing it, how are you going to change it? It will be very hard and we will accept it because it's like "things work in the real world".

marak830• 10 years ago

Well doesn't that agreement sound bloody delightful. I am looking forward to reading the full text.

edko• 10 years ago

How about some reciprocation on immigration laws as well? How fair and free can this agreement be if the immigration flow in one of the directions is so much easier than in the other?

tomp• 10 years ago

Which direction is that (honest question, I suspect US -> EU being easier, but I recall companies having trouble "importing" Americans as well...)?

davidw• 10 years ago

US -> EU is not easy although it depends on the exact country you're talking about. Maybe a bit more rational in many cases, but not easy.

jakub_g3• 10 years ago

In fact there's no such a thing as a EU-US deal at all. US has separate deals with each EU country.

If you're from one of non-blessed EU countries (Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Romania and most notably Poland), you can not enter the US without a visa, even for tourism.

cmarschner• 10 years ago

The estimated benefit of TTIP is 400,000 jobs and 0.5% GDP for the EU. Not much.

Apparently, the few selected MoP in Germany who were given access to the drafts had a few hours to look at a 1000+ pages, in English legalese, with a dictionary but no internet access.

Apparently, the drafts were full of certain spelling errors. The assumption was that they were personalized and injected on purpose such that photographs could be traced back to the origin.

Source - German media coverage.

Symbiote2• 10 years ago

What would those MPs lose if they leaked the text? It seems like a vote-winning action...

richmarr• 10 years ago

My guess would be that they'd be gently shunned, so would probably be weighing up the relative merit of some (possibly short term) popularity against longer term merit of being able to effectively collaborate with party & peers.

lumberjack• 10 years ago

They would probably be chastised by their respective parties.

mcv4• 10 years ago

I suspect it's illegal and punishable in some way. There are definitely German MPs who would be congratulated rather than shunned for exposing this.

But if only selected MPs can see the text at all, maybe they've been selected carefully.

chiaro• 10 years ago

The estimated benefit of TTIP is 400,000 jobs and 0.5% GDP for the EU.

My support for most post-globalisation trade liberalisation treaties tends to be lukewarm. However, this can't really be called "not much". 400,000 jobs against a working population of ~300M is a decrease in unemployment by .13 percentage points. 0.5% increase in GDP is still ~70B that otherwise wouldn't be there.

skosch• 10 years ago

And those 70B are going to trickle down, aren't they?

pizza2342• 10 years ago

Estimates vary wildly. According to a Techdirt [1] article, the mentioned 0.5% is pure marketing.

Besides, you can't decontextualize the gains from the losses, both economical and cultural.

I can imagine for example, in worst case scenario, billions transferred from EU to tax havens because of the ISDS, and job losses because of [partial] loss of protection of Geographical indications.

[1]=https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140417/09391926947/tafta...

ulfw• 10 years ago

That's the opposite of a 'democracy'.

auganov• 10 years ago

That overzealous secrecy around TTIP is a shame. It doesn't look like such a bad piece of legislation. The overall theme seems to be some deregulation on EU side (as generally EU is the over-regulated side) and bringing regulatory standards closer together. The IP protections are the most concerning part so far IMO?

I don't know much about that kind of negotiations, the secrecy might as well be the right strategy to push it through I guess?

tobltobs• 10 years ago

" the secrecy might as well be the right strategy to push it through I guess"

Why not canceling this whole concept of democracy.

inDigiNeous• 10 years ago

The most alarming features of this proposed legislation are the facts that it contains this:

".. it also contains an ‘investor protection’ provision allowing corporations to effectively sue governments for taking action to harm their business."

(source: http://www.publicfinanceinternational.org/news/2016/02/ttip-...)

So .. effectively, this could mean that a corporation could overrule a government in legislation if it would be harming it's profits.

The big problem with this for example here in Finland is that through these measure big corporations could try to take over the nations natural resources, like water and forest, which are and should be protected by local laws. But through this kind of legal means, these corporations could be allowed to sue the government over the loss of a profit due to protecting legislation, in order just to make a profit out of it. Which is complete and total bullshit.

toomuchtodo• 10 years ago

My biggest issue with the TTIP; thanks for calling it out.

pas13• 10 years ago

Okay, first of all, that's bullshit.

ISDS (Investor-State Dispute Settlement) is a sane concept. The implementation might have problems (for example closed courtroom "trials"), but it's not about protecting profits. It's about protecting equality and fairness for all before the law, and in case of States, holding them accountable to make fair and egalitarian laws.

What's the typical example? A random Company invests in a country, sets up a nice subsidiary starts doing business, everything is legal. But the country (the State) sees that it's taking up the market, uh-oh,

a) better make a law against whatever they are doing, or b) better make a law against (that specific or all) foreign companies doing whatever.

Which one(s) is (are) problematic?

Also, the other thing, fairness, comes in when a State wants to buy out a company but doesn't want to pay market price. Basically eminent domain without unfair compensation.

The same goes for ending tax breaks (or other investment incentives) sooner than promised. Because that's a breach of agreement.

Your link (publicfinanceinternational.org) refers an article from globaljustice.co.uk which has a list of problematic ISDS arbitration cases, that's the real data, anything else is just fluff. ( http://www.globaljustice.org.uk/sites/default/files/files/re... )

Let's look at the big bully US agribusiness vs Mexico (the rules of arbitration are set by NAFTA).

http://www.state.gov/s/l/c42198.htm

http://www.italaw.com/sites/default/files/case-documents/ita... the concrete "award" (findings of the tribunal).

It turns out that these tribunals are looking at laws and apply them. Like courts. And they are much likely more objective than any court in either host country. And then that award was reviewed by the courts of a place chosen by the parties (the Ontario court system).

Seems quite like due process to me.

I'm not saying all of the cases are jolly good and there was absolutely no problematic awards, but just looking at the Vodafone vs India one, the "retrospective capital gains tax" hits us and makes you wonder, what the fuck were the Indians thinking, first rule of how to legislate. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_certainty )

But enough on ISDS. There are big problems with TTIP, but not this one.

Hockenbrizzle• 10 years ago

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know Obama's stance on this particular part of the legislation? He was just in Hanover and was asked about this by the public, but avoided giving a clear answer. Are there any records of him explaining why he actually might think this is a good thing?

spdy• 10 years ago

"(as generally EU is the over-regulated side)

Why is regulation a bad thing? These rules exist for a reason in health/food for example.

DanBC2• 10 years ago

Generally I agree with you.

The recent changes to VAT feel like a mess. Maybe I'm missing something there and they're not as bad as they seem?

joesmo2• 10 years ago

Corporations lose money through regulation and lives are saved. I'm sure you can see why many Americans are horrified by it: they value money over human lives.

onetimePete2• 10 years ago

I am a citizen, i voted for those regulations, these are the laws i wanted, you try to step upon.

mcv4• 10 years ago

And that's the root of what's wrong about TTIP: the US doesn't like the way Europeans vote, and wants to put a stop to it. Business interests need to be protected against the evil democracy.

kbart• 10 years ago

"generally EU is the over-regulated side"

We usually call it consumer protection here and most of EU citizens like the way it is.

matt_wulfeck2• 10 years ago

The U.S. government concurrently has criticized the fundamental prevention principal of the EU Consumer Centre which protects 500 million Europeans from consuming genetically modified food and hormone-treated meat.

Good for the EU. If only our government showed the same care for its own citizens.

thesimon• 10 years ago

Related to food: The German site says the US are pushing to remove the protected designation of origin. "Parma" ham could be manufactured in Kentucky, Camembert in New York and Champagne in California. Crazy.

seqastian• 10 years ago

it is impossible to get this through the parliaments in europe.

zavi• 10 years ago

The U.S., for example, demands that statutory prohibitions on products to protect human health should only be allowed to be passed if it has been scientifically proven that these products really are harmful.

Sounds like a reasonable argument.

joesmo2• 10 years ago

Unless you're the one that dies and becomes the scientific proof.

Veratyr• 10 years ago

I disagree. Maybe the prohibitions being statutory is a bit strong but I think products should be proven safe before they're allowed.

The burden of proof shouldn't be on the government, it should be on the manufacturer, similar to how medicines require FDA approval.

brute• 10 years ago

More reasonable than the alternative?

"whereas the U.S. only bans them if people have already been harmed as a result of consuming said products"

I think those people harmed would disagree.

Also to "scientifically prove" something might not be as easy as it sounds. You may have a couple of studies that find a harmful effect, and then you have some (possibly industry-backed) studies that find no effect at all. You now have a strong hint, but no proof. At best it is "scientifically debated". Think of tobacco industry vs "smoking causes cancer", or oil companies vs "global warming is caused by humans".

skrause• 10 years ago

In a way the US is regulated by a high risk of expensive lawsuits with really high amounts of compensation if they harm someone. So a company will not release a product that might be harmful because they could end up paying hundreds of million dollars of compensation to harmed people.

These kinds of lawsuits don't exist in Europe, in the worst case a company will pay $10,000 to a single person. But there are other protections in place and if you take those away you will end up with much worse protection than the US has because this indirect regulation doesn't exist.

green7ea2• 10 years ago

Science isn't math, it can't prove anything. What it does is reduce uncertainties more and more until we become confident that it's likely to be right.

matt_wulfeck2• 10 years ago

Wait until it's proven harmless or wait until it's proven harmful. Two different approaches and I personally think one is wiser.

mcv4• 10 years ago

Science doesn't prove things. It provides likelihoods and most likely explanations.

So the real question is: should something only be banned when it's 99.5% certain that it's harmful? Is 50% chance of it being harmful okay? Or 80%? And why?

The EU prefers to err on the side of safety. The US prefers to err on the side of profit. I don't see why the US approach would be better.

tootie• 10 years ago

That's a matter of opinion. An opinion unsupported by evidence.

KMag2• 10 years ago

Furthermore, it's demanding proof of a negative. We can't prove that carrots won't attract swarms of malicious homosexual space aliens with a taste for human brains to Earth, and therefore should ban carrots because they can't be proven to be safe. Politicians in support of carrots should be shamed as being pro-gayzombpocalypse. Spread the fear!

The very reason we're creating GMOs for food is to reduce the resources (land, energy, fertilizers, water, etc.) needed for food production. The motivation of course is that lower resource usage means lower production costs.

Requiring unreasonable burdens of proof mean greater waste in our food production, but that side of things isn't a scary and therefore gets less consideration than the limitless possibilities of unknown harms that could come from GMOs.

There's some drop in the price of a hamburger below which I'm not willing to risk a Leprechaun extinction. However, I'm willing to risk extinction of Leprechauns, Yetis, and Loch Ness "monsters" in exchange for less land needed to grow my food, and fewer children being under-nourished. These are real problems that GMOs can help with.

erikb2• 10 years ago

Yeah, reading that my first assumption was that US citizens suddenly would also be against the details of TTIP.

prodemo• 10 years ago

I wonder whats the estimated damage of democracy to the western economies (seriously). Wouldn't it be way better to let the heads of big cooperations or their relatives rule the western world? This way trade agreements like TTIP could be done in a more open way. Nobody would be able to complain as they got no vote and legislation would be easier! Also we could forbid lobbyism and replace it with a more open and honest "Pay for Law". So vote for more open legislation by abolishing democracy. Remember making life easier for the best and richest among us is the most nobel goal in life.

Qantourisc• 10 years ago

I just wondered about one thing. Why when the US asked (forced ?) the EU to negotiate in secret didn't the EU answer with a f.u. ? Also who are these people that agree to do this in secret ?

fsloth• 10 years ago

US has a pretty strong political leverage in most of europe. 1.Believable defence against Russia is built on the existence of Nato and the US forces it brings. 2. I guess there is still a sense of goodwill involved. US funds helped to rebuild europe after ww2 to stopgap Soviet Union. 3. Economic threat (not direct, but latent). 4. Personal reputation. I guess being too anti US is considered a faux pass in various places.

mcv4• 10 years ago

The EU isn't quite the democratic paradise either. We too have corporate lobbyists writing laws, and politicians and officials negotiating behind closed doors.

On average, the EU is more transparent than the EU, and politicians tend to feel more like they really should be representing the people, but it's really a sliding scale with the US just a bit further down than the EU.

I really hope transparency about the TTIP negotiations will help turn this around in both the EU and the US.

ghostDancer• 10 years ago

And they call this free market. US government bullying for benefit of the corporations and not even for the US people. This is going back to middle ages , the landlords and the peasants.

onetimePete2• 10 years ago

Assuming TTIP fails, how will the next contract to attack democracy be called? QTIP? UTIP? COUP? GRACE?

At least put some effort into naming. To have your rights grind away so slowly and being coerced like a mule to even thread that mill that maims you.. Im for a law that forbids to discuss content-similar contracts that have been downvoted for at least 8 years.

TTIP Documents Revealed

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