TTIP trade deal could be re-launched under a different name, say EU ministers

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/ttip-latest-eu-deal-dead-must-be-relaunched-transparency-say-ministers-a7325276.html

by breitling • 10 years ago

151 128 10 years ago

independent.co.uk

mynameislegion• 10 years ago

This redirects here, can someone change the URL?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/ttip-latest-...

wanderr• 10 years ago

Or better yet link to another article without advertising modals and auto playing videos.

krylon2• 10 years ago

European Union ministers today admitted that a giant EU-US trade deal is dead in its current form, with drastic change needed to salvage any hope of a deal going ahead.

The devil, as always, is in the fine print - a cynic might read that to mean "TTIP has gotten such a bad reputation we would rather wait a few more years so the public forgets all about it, then try again."

In fact, I am tempted to quote Lovecraft here, except that a few years hardly count as "eternal".

aerique2• 10 years ago

The name escapes me for a moment but they're already working on a new secret deal. (Since 2012, so that's why they're so easily letting go of TTIP.)

xg15• 10 years ago

TISA? (Though that one isn't EU-US but has a much wider range from what I've read)

the_mitsuhiko5• 10 years ago

What do you mean by "secret"? All negotations are listed on the information page of the commission.

jpfr• 10 years ago

An optimist might read that to mean "Europeans found out that trade deals can be a lot better than what TTIP offered. Such as CETA which the EU is about to close with Canada".

thatfrenchguy2• 10 years ago

CETA is terrible though.

petre• 10 years ago

They will just change the name to something else, change a few words and voila, a new secret trade agreement.

singularity2001• 10 years ago

They have realized that multinational corporations can screw the citizens of the EU just as well through CETA, which is about to get ratified on October 27.

makomk• 10 years ago

Of course, CETA has vital concessions to EU interests such as banning Canadian companies from marketing Canadian cheese as "parmesan-style" to Canadians.

pipio21• 10 years ago

There is nothing wrong about trade deals per se.

I am not against any trade deals, but against this particular deal with those particular conditions because of some particular reasons.

krylon2• 10 years ago

With TTIP, I kind of got the impression that the "Trade" part was just an excuse to push various policies politicians know very well are not popular with their voters.

StavrosK2• 10 years ago

Offtopic, but does anyone else find Lovecraft too over-the-top? I know that many people like him, but it gets tiresome that everything is nameless, frightful, indescribable, hideous, hellish, monstrous, indescribable, etc. He's not very subtle at all with his descriptions, even a house that was previously established as super creepy gets an "abominable" when referring to it.

I found him so over the top that I wanted to confirm my hunch experimentally, and made a list of the 150 most prominent words in his opus. It is unsurprising:

https://i.imgur.com/pUUzFCJ.png

BjoernKW• 10 years ago

Someone once said that Lovecraft suffered from adjectivitis. I'm fond of his writing and have read pretty much all of his stories but I get the point. Especially when reading several Lovecraft stories in quick succession they can seem repetitive.

I'm surprised words like 'mongrel' aren't featured more prominently in that word cloud. His blatant racism really detracts from some of his otherwise great stories. It's particularly annoying in the Call of Cthulhu where it's almost like from the author's perspective the true evil isn't the monstrous, cyclopean abomination but non-WASPs.

YeGoblynQueenne• 10 years ago

> does anyone else find Lovecraft too over-the-top?

Does anyone find Metallica over the top? How about Slayer? Cannibal Corpse?

It's the form- it's supposed to be over-the-top. And btw, that's not in an ironic way.

moogly• 10 years ago

I must admit I cracked up when seeing "PENGUINS" in that word cloud.

sam4ritan• 10 years ago

Well, thats what happened to ACTA too, isn't it?

A lot of the stuff that was in there got reused in TTIP.

the_mitsuhiko5• 10 years ago

I don't see the overlap of ACTA with TTIP.

pluma3• 10 years ago

You may be thinking of IPRED, not TTIP? IPRED popped up at some point during the anti-ACTA protests and seemed to have significant overlap.

toyg3• 10 years ago

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, said someone pretty famous on one side of the Atlantic.

walterbell2• 10 years ago

Related analysis of TiSA, Sep 20, https://edri.org/tisa-leaks-set-alarm-bells-ringing/

"Despite the rumours and assertions by several Member States that TTIP is dead, the fight for safeguarding citizens’ rights and freedoms via so-called “trade agreements” is far from over ... Greenpeace Netherlands has released another batch of crucial and worrying documents ... EU privacy and data protection standards are endangered and diminished in 6 out of the 9 analysed documents ... Exceptions for “essential security interests” are a Damocles sword over every single part of the agreement ... TiSA can limit the access and transfer of software source code."

sztwiorok• 10 years ago

can someone summarize ttip in 3 short points?

I am sure that most people like me do not have a clue about what is ttip

walterbell2• 10 years ago

5-min video on the major trade agreements and ISDS, https://youtube.com/watch?v=M4-mlGRPmkU

feelix• 10 years ago

My god, this is brilliant

lumberjack• 10 years ago

So the US negotiators don't want to concede anything. So then one questions what they had in mind to convince the EU negotiators to go on with the deal...

toyg3• 10 years ago

US elites got used to a very sweet state of things in transatlantic relations post-1989, and it got even better after 9/11. Steamrolling Europeans was almost too easy, because Euroelites had been fully co-opted by the American way.

Unfortunately, 13 years of unpopular wars have taken their toll. There are now two generations of politically-active Europeans who were not invested in the Cold War, and see the US fundamentally as a big bully. Couple that with tight economic times (which, many feel, have been foisted upon us by reckless American finance), waves of unwanted migrants generated by US foreign policy, and the self-inflicted loss of influence of "Airstrip One" Britain over EU matters, and you have a situation where US negotiators likely found themselves surprised by European pushback on all sorts of topics.

evgen3• 10 years ago

Possibly. An equally likely situation is that US leadership can see that the EU is falling apart. The UK is already headed out the door, the failure of EU banking and financial institutions given the current massive debt problems, and a collective that seems to only be able to solve their bleak demographic future by pulling in eastern European basket-cases that no one really wants to have in the union makes an EU trade deal less important. Why waste time dickering with a declining EU when you can get a better return on your efforts by improving trade with Asia and Africa?

soufron• 10 years ago

It's also due to the US elections. The same thing happened last time. Negotiations will come back under a new name - and probably a slightly different scope and form, after the new administration has been designated.

douche• 10 years ago

Yup. Obama is sliding into lame-duck territory, with a Congress that won't agree with him on anything. Chances of successfully sliding anything in before January are not good, and then it will be a more-or-less different regime involved.

erhardm2• 10 years ago

What really bothers me, as citizen of an european country, why is it possible to have secret deals? If I don't know about such deals how can I call my representative to oppose them? Or encourage them to take the deal if it's a good one.

AFAIK, TTIP was leaked and that's the only way european citizens knew about it.

Why is it legal? Because all I see is corporations trying to make a sweet deal with governments, and the loosing side is always the people.

That's the only incentive I see to make deals secret.

sehr3• 10 years ago

The full text is going to be released. I've heard most trade deals are negotiated this way, but I don't know how true that is.

erhardm2• 10 years ago

"... Upon the insistence of the US, the documents are not transmitted any more as electronic or even printed documents.[5] They are only made available [to authorised readers] in secure rooms at the European Commission HQ in Brussels, in a number of US embassies,[5] and at the offices of member states' trade ministries.[61] In all these secured rooms phones or other types of scanning device are forbidden.[5] Blank sheets of paper, marked with the reader's names, are provided on which visitors can jot down their notes.[61]..."[0]

How can my representative be really productive in analyzing such a deal? Why all the barriers to understand the document?

I didn't find out the time it's supposedly be public for debate, but if you're doing a deal for the people, you want people to negotiate, not just accept the deal as it is, which, as history taught us, it will be a really tight timeframe for debate and it's approved few days before a major holiday when people are distracted.

Our representatives must have our [all citizens] best interest at heart. I don't see how this is in our best interest.

And I didn't event talked about the deal itself, only the procedure which seems flawed.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Trade_and_Invest...

raphman• 10 years ago

Here is a nice explanation of the reasons for secrecy:

https://www.quora.com/Why-are-trade-agreements-like-the-Tran...

tl;dr: two reasons: if each minor step in the negotiations is made public, lobbyists and NGOs will constantly bug the negotiators. Furthermore, if one side publicly states which lines it will never cross in the negotiations, it loses leverage because the opposite side now knows on which points they can expect less resistance, and will use this knowledge as a tactical advantage.

the_mitsuhiko5• 10 years ago

Why would it not be released? CETA has been public for two years now. No reason to assume different about other EU trade agreements.

cperciva• 10 years ago

There are no secret trade deals. What there are is closed-door trade negotiations, because it's impossible to get anything done if every time you open your mouth you have street protests from the industries you're considering removing protectionist measures from.

wildmusings2• 10 years ago

This, and it allows the negotiating countries to save face when they make compromises. All real diplomacy is done in private for this reason.

joelthelion• 10 years ago

If negotiations are completely secret, by the time the deal is ready it's too late to debate on the large orientations of the deal.

Sorry but a large treaty like this cannot be completely negotiated completely behind closed doors. Negotiators need to deal with it.

SturgeonsLaw2• 10 years ago

I understand the reasoning, but if your requests trigger street protests then maybe it's time to reconsider those requests.

celticninja• 10 years ago

Why don't you want people, who elect those making the trade deals, to let their representatives know how they feel about the things that they are voting on?

pluma3• 10 years ago

FWIW, the group TTIP was mostly going to "remove protectionist measures from" was consumers.

meira2• 10 years ago

It would be better and more effective if the protesters barely strip down the "negotiators"?

yxhuvud• 10 years ago

Yes, the life of the politicians are easier if they don't have to be accountable for the stances they take in the negotiations. It seems to me that if the politicians want to get anything done, they'd have to convince their electorate that what they are doing is a good thing. If they have trouble justifying that, then they shouldn't do it in the first place.

sambe2• 10 years ago

Exactly. Was there actually anything different at all about TTIP negotiations (vs other EU negotiations) until the leaks?

I was under the impression that most or all similar documents were only made available at a mature stage (eg after first official draft is ready, passed legal, translated etc).

tim333• 10 years ago

street protests from the industries...

Are there any of those? All the protests I see are by the people against the industries

chadcmulligan• 10 years ago

That was a lot of peoples problem with the TTIP - there were secret courts that we the people would never know about

andrepd• 10 years ago

Are you saying it's okay to do deals in secret because otherwise you would have to deal with a pesky democratic opposition?

Silhouette7• 10 years ago

What there are is closed-door trade negotiations, because it's impossible to get anything done if every time you open your mouth you have street protests from the industries you're considering removing protectionist measures from.

That's a common argument, but it doesn't really stand up. National legislatures manage to negotiate and pass laws just fine through open negotiations, even though many of them have hundreds of participants representing a range of political parties, as well as often having a local representation aspect. In many cases, there is some sort of multi-stage process, with a balance between completely open debate to establish principles and general approval on the one hand and smaller sessions with particularly interested representatives hammering out the fine details on the other, which seems to work reasonably well.

While we're addressing common fallacies about secret trade negotations, the idea put forward by others here that you can't tell what is really on the table unless everything is done in secret is also dubious, because it means trade negotiators can put things on the table that don't have the support of those they allegedly represent. Those people are then presented with a fait accompli where their only options are to accept in its entirety or strike the whole thing down, often after many years and a small fortune have been spent working on the deal. What benefit came from all those secret TTIP negotiations if ultimately it's clear that the EU members aren't going to accept such a one-sided deal or give up what the people considered unacceptable concessions anyway?

The idea that the secrecy prevents lobbyists representing special interest groups from influencing the deal is so implausible that I won't bother countering it, except to observe that these controversial international trade deals often seem to include wording that is remarkably similar to statements previously given by exactly the kind of lobbyists and SIGs we're talking about.

We're supposed to be talking about professional politicians and negotiators here, and we're supposed to be talking about making deals for the mutual benefit of both sides. If the professionals can't identify areas of common ground and work with a more transparent process for negotiation than doing the entire thing behind doors and then presenting a single final result with the people or their elected representatives having nothing but a power of veto, I contend that the deals being made probably aren't worth much anyway and certainly have no democratic mandate.

antris• 10 years ago

it's impossible to get anything done if every time you open your mouth you have street protests from the industries you're considering removing protectionist measures from.

I don't understand how the demonstrations are preventing getting anything done?

If it's a small minority protesting, it won't change anything. If it's a mass demonstration, maybe there's a reason for it. Maybe the deal shouldn't be done.

DominikR3• 10 years ago

A trade deal has to be negotiated, and your position as a negotiator improves when you and the other side know that you can follow through on any commitment you make.

Therefore it follows that anyone who can negotiate from a position of secrecy or absolute power (dictatorship) is in a better position to achieve his goals during a negotiation.

You might laugh at this but I believe this is exactly how the EU commission thinks about this. Maybe they will try later again in a more dictatorial manner since secrecy has failed, who knows.

The other extreme would be that you negotiate from a position where you are constantly attacked by NGOs and your own people, which certainly doesn't help with creating trust that you can follow through on anything you sign. You can certainly place your signature on a document but it means nothing because you can't execute.

This was actually a problem during the Cold War crisis between JFK and the Soviet leaders. The Soviets were hard to convince that JFK could follow through because he was so heavily opposed by his senior military staff. They actually believed that there was a real possibility that JFK would be disposed by a military coup so they thought a war between the Soviet Union and the US was imminent and acted accordingly.

Silhouette7• 10 years ago

You can certainly place your signature on a document but it means nothing because you can't execute.

But how is this any different from signing a deal that you've happily made in secret, only to find that the people you claimed to represent won't honour that deal because something in it was unacceptable to them and rejecting it in its entirety is the only possible action you've left them that doesn't accept the unacceptable element?

atmosx• 10 years ago

What really bothers me, as citizen of an european country, why is it possible to have secret deals?

Indeed. That alone, makes me not want to even take a look at the text and dismiss it right away as negative for the vast amounts of the population.

TeMPOraL2• 10 years ago

Imagine building a website for a client, and having them hover around you all the time, 24/7, looking at your screen and going:

- Oh, why did you put that button in here? What do you mean "temporary"?

- Why are you wasting time browsing that "documentation" site instead of writing code?

- What is this "class" thing? We're egalitarian company!

- Is this Ruby? Everyone knows websites are best done in PHP!

Usually you'd like to have a chance to at least finish a basic prototype in peace, before gathering customer feedback.

acqq2• 10 years ago

Under a similar trade deal the government of Ecuador was ordered to pay German oil company Occidental $2.3 billion for, apparently legally, terminating a contract.

No. Occidental is a US company, the trade deal was US-Ecuador bilateral investment treaty ("BIT"):

http://kluwerarbitrationblog.com/2012/12/19/icsids-largest-a...

Such kind of penalties are planned by TTIP too, and I don't see the major EU leaders rejecting that approach.

Also, don't forget there's at least CETA and TISA, and CETA is to be signed very soon. More demonstrations are needed if EU citizens want to attempt to affect anything!

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/ttip-ceta-tisa-trade-dea...

jokoon• 10 years ago

The issue people are failing to see, is that usually, countries are negotiating against each other, for their own perceived interest. The much valued "rule of law" only applies within countries, not internationally. There are no "international law" for trade.

So it's a murky situation from the beginning. I think the TTIP is an attempt to have a common ground to end up with something instead of nothing. Of course there are huge interests at stake here, and I want to be the devil's advocate for once to try and understand the real philosophy of the treaty without the cynicism and a more strategic view in mind.

izacus• 10 years ago

So it's a murky situation from the beginning. I think the TTIP is an attempt to have a common ground to end up with something instead of nothing.

That's the standard rationalization we've been fed form EU comission as well. But when that "something" means that we give up on our EU consumer protection laws to benefit american corporate profits it's actively harmful and against the values of people actually living in EU.

witty_username5• 10 years ago

our EU consumer protection laws to benefit american corporate profits it's actively harmful

Could you elaborate on why it's actively harmful?

Also, what does actively harmful mean? What is the difference between actively and passively harmful?

values of people actually living in EU.

People vote for representatives who vote for/against the TTIP.

cm2187• 10 years ago

A roadkill of brexit... With the loss of support of the UK.

Silhouette7• 10 years ago

Original source without the strange Google link:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/ttip-latest-...

TTIP trade deal could be re-launched under a different name, say EU ministers

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