EU dropped plans for safer pesticides because of TTIP and pressure from US

http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/05/eu-dropped-plans-for-safer-pesticides-because-of-ttip-and-pressure-from-us/

by de_Selby • 11 years ago

428 143 11 years ago

arstechnica.co.uk

ddon• 11 years ago

And what can be done now?

higherpurpose2• 11 years ago

Write to your MEPs.

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/map.html

sillygoose7• 11 years ago

You know, if EU countries were genuinely concerned about their beloved citizens coming into contact with damaging chemicals, they could warn them on the evening news or something.

    Hey there Dear Citizens, these products have been found
    to cause cancer. Please avoid using them, and tell your
    friends to avoid them too! 
    
    Best Regards, 
    Your Benevolent, Caring Overlords

Do you think that just might have an effect on the companies producing the toxic crap they force on us?

    "Those naughty companies haven't stopped putting cancer-causing
    chemicals in their products. You should still boycott them."

If they really cared, they could just keep informing the citizenry until they were safe.

ownagefool• 11 years ago

There's probably nothing stopping the individual members from doing something about it and many of them probably will in the form of laws, not news. Sadly, assuming that it's evidenced based, it would be better if it was an EU wide thing.

Maarten882• 11 years ago

Because there is freedom of transportation of goods within the EU, banning a substance in one country does nothing to prevent products containing the substance reaching consumers.

Flimm• 11 years ago

You mean, in addition to regulations and taxes, right?

m_eiman2• 11 years ago

Or they could, your know, ban the use of the dangerous stuff. That'd be a whole lot more efficient.

psykovsky2• 11 years ago

Dangerous stuff like, say, cannabis? That has been efficient.

imron3• 11 years ago

Uh-huh, right, because EU governments have editorial control of the evening news, and also have bigger marketing budgets than the companies producing such chemicals.

Sure.

If they really cared, they could just keep informing the citizenry until they were safe.

No, if they really cared they would ban or strictly regulate the use of such chemicals.

sillygoose7• 11 years ago

Uh-huh, right, because EU governments have editorial control of the evening news

Well yeah, they largely do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuC_4mGTs98

But even if they didn't, surely news organizations would co-operate for a noble cause, yes?

No, if they really cared they would ban or strictly regulate the use of such chemicals.

Sure, and if they really cared, they could do that even despite the TTIP, or they could reject or re-negotiate the TTIP. There's no way around that, regardless of whether you trust that governments are operating with our best interests at heart.

rrrrob• 11 years ago

But this would surely open the governments up for lawsuits in the TTIP courts...

sillygoose7• 11 years ago

Well they could just reject or renegotiate the TTIP then?

fleitz• 11 years ago

Is the EC in charge of the EU? Couldn't they just say no?

germanier4• 11 years ago

Simplified, the EC is the government of the EU. Additionally, they are (almost always) the only ones that can propose legislation.

SagelyGuru2• 11 years ago

and they are unelected

matt4077• 11 years ago

Neither are Merkel, Cameron, Tsipras and probably about 50% of the heads of government. I doubt there is a country where the Secretary of Defense is elected.

There's nothing wrong with an elected parliament choosing the executive, and the EU actually moved to a more direct election with the 'Spitzenkandidat' system. People still didn't care to vote for the EU parliament.

talideon• 11 years ago

...just like the executive in the US, which has only one (indirectly) elected member: the president.

Brakenshire6• 11 years ago

In general, the way the EU works is that the European Commission have the right to start all legislation. Then, in order for the legislation to pass, it has to be approved by the European Parliament (which is directly elected) and the European Council (representatives of the national governments).

What has happened here is the European Commission have scrapped legislation that was working its way through its internal mechanisms, before it was formally proposed and handed off to the Parliament.

The Commission holds enormous power, and has traditionally has been an apolitical civil service, but recently there has been a movement towards its leader being elected by the Parliament. But this has only happened a handful of times, and the President of the Commission has never been removed from his position by the Parliament. I'm not even sure if such a procedure exists.

TazeTSchnitzel• 11 years ago

But this has only happened a handful of times, and the President of the Commission has never been removed from his position by the Parliament. I'm not even sure if such a procedure exists.

If the Santer Commission hadn't resigned, the Parliament was going to force them to.

Maarten882• 11 years ago

To me this whole TTIP feels like the US trying to bundle and export their most profitable corporate lobbying results through the corrupt and payed-for US politicians to the EU. Secret negotiations, state-investor dispute, all of this seems organized to help big corporations screw consumers further.

I simply hope the whole thing fails, I really don't see the benefit to me.

mercurial2• 11 years ago

I'm sure the EU corporations are doing their share of lobbying, but I agree that all these trade agreements seem to be tailored for Big Business at the expense of consumers.

pizza234• 11 years ago

This is a completely different level than lobbying, this is effectively corporative control.

You enforce labeling of "inconvenient" ingredients on food? That hurts Mamacorp, you're going to be sued. You ban pesticides? Mamacorp is going to sue you. You prevent smoking? Mamacorp is going to sue you. You block eternal copyright? Well, you got the rap.

The thing I find terrifying is that virtually any form of social progress can be interpreted as damage to some company's profit.

TTIP is corporatocracy at its finest.

Brakenshire6• 11 years ago

Yes, there's no need to make the US the bad guy.

The key point is the way in which a treaty like this puts a whole class of what would once have been domestic legislation beyond the reach of democratic decision-making. Both in the treaties themselves, and their transnational private courts.

contravariant• 11 years ago

Is there even a sharp divide between EU and US corporations anymore? I get the impression that the really large ones operate in both, and those tend to be the ones that will profit most from such an agreement.

rorykoehler• 11 years ago

We're not consumers we're people. Please stop calling people consumers as if the only value we bring is the consumption of mass produced goods.

nraynaud2• 11 years ago

Actually, treaties are always negotiated in secret. The only openly negotiated one (the EU constitution) was massively rejected afterwards.

jgreen10• 11 years ago

and then quietly renamed Treaty of Lisbon and ratified.

Elrac2• 11 years ago

Treaties are always negotiated in secret? I'd expect at least the decision makers to be in the information loop. I'm not sure that's really the case. Isn't it unusual that (as I've been hearing) even the Congressfolk who are expected to vote on this contract are unable to obtain preliminary copies of the in-progress document other than through WikiLeaks?

deepnet3• 11 years ago

That is literally the definition of a fascict dictatorship.

This is what Adam Smith warned us against.

I think you have hit the nail on the head.

Governments around the world have capitulated to this.

This seems like the financial wing of the whole spyocracy.

joelthelion• 11 years ago

That is literally the definition of a fascict dictatorship.

No, it's not.

nhebb• 11 years ago

You should read George Orwell's piece "What is Fascism?" [1]. It's a short essay worth the read before you're tempted to point the finger and call someone or something fascist.

[1] http://orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/efasc

atmosx2• 11 years ago

If the EU exists with it's current form in 5 years, we can re-discuss the TTIP, but generally speaking I think it will not matter what the 'EU' agreement was, if the EU gets dissolved ... and from where it appears like if they're trying really hard to dissolve it (even if the state otherwise).

akhatri_aus2• 11 years ago

I'm not as cynical, but they did say this 5 years ago too. There are many people happy with it contrary to what is usually on the daily news spread.

mplscoder• 11 years ago

Pop quiz: who says the text of the TPP must remain secret? Under what authority? Members of Congress are scuttling around like weasels, claiming they can’t disclose what’s in this far-reaching, 12-nation trade treaty. They can go into a sealed room and read a draft, but they can’t copy pages, and they can’t tell the public what they just read. Why not? If there is a US law forbidding disclosure, name the law. Can you recall anything in the Constitution that establishes secret treaties? Is there a prior treaty that states the text of all treaties can be hidden from the people? I see no authority anywhere that justifies withholding the text of the TPP. --WORLD AFFAIRS BRIEF

tomelders2• 11 years ago

I'm not an expert on these issues, but I haved heard mention of the Singapore treaty and that it already provides investment protection. Can anyone explain why these protections are deemed no longer suitable?

based24• 11 years ago

Chemicals Legislation http://ec.europa.eu/growth/sectors/chemicals/legislation/ind...

http://ec.europa.eu/growth/single-market/european-standards/...

Measuring REACH and CLP Enforcement - new study Published on: 19/05/2015, Last update: 20/05/2015 http://ec.europa.eu/growth/tools-databases/newsroom/cf/itemd...

src: https://www.theparliamentmagazine.eu/articles/eu-monitoring/...

http://newsletter.echa.europa.eu/home/-/newsletter/entry/4_1...

tzs• 11 years ago

See also extensive discussion from 2 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9587772

That was a submission from a different publication, though.

de_Selby• 11 years ago

Apologies, I completely missed that discussion.

po• 11 years ago

No need to apologize, frankly this needs a lot more discussion than it's probably going to get.

trombone8• 11 years ago

Well, this is arstechnicas coverage of the guardians story so essentially the same thing.

realusername• 11 years ago

How can you seriously defend the EU to the average European when you see things like this ? This kind of stories are not going to help to reduce the current distrust of everything related to the European union. All this corruption really does a disservice to the EU.

peteretep• 11 years ago

Honestly? Because my first thought was "there's no way the EU signed off on this". I challenge anyone to find a stauncher protector of consumer rights in history than the EU...

andy_ppp2• 11 years ago

This is the strange thing about the EU, it is almost as barmy as the BBC but like them somehow largely manages to do the right thing. It's amazing that most of our politicians believe with a kind of religious faith that big business and the free market is the solution when it seems fairly clear the psychopathic behaviour and the free market has bankrupted government and ruined the economy. Instead of saying let's put in further more stringent regulations the neocons have got more of their policies through. I think this is largely due to an obedient and corporate controlled media.

allendoerfer2• 11 years ago

That is because they have very limited area that they can regulate, so consumer protection laws are essentially their playing field. For more serious topics they have to ask Merkel & Hollande.

based24• 11 years ago

http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/index_en.htm

chki2• 11 years ago

Could you please elaborate on the corruption point, because I don't see anything about that in the article and have actually not heard about corruption in the European Union for a long time.

nisa• 11 years ago

I guess he refers to the heavy lobbying that going on in the EU that goes as far as laws written by corporations are presented to members of the parliament and other similar unhealthy looking issues.

spacehome2• 11 years ago

The purpose of the EU is not to be perfect. It's to link the countries via economy and culture so tightly that going to war every 30 years is unthinkable.

benaston7• 11 years ago

And yet this is based on an untested assumption that political union is the only way to avoid this.

Furthermore, you could argue that the EU contributed to the triggering of a new Cold War (hot in the Ukraine) by staging a coup of a democratically elected government.

Or at the very least having unelected foreign policy actors (Ashton et al) take ham-fisted actions on behalf of a whole continent.

...or that it has contributed to untold sufferring of an entire generation in the Mediterranean countries due to an ill-conceived currency union.

Given said negative externalities, might it be worth re-visting the premise of the whole endeavour?

kokey• 11 years ago

Opening up trade is bad by default... to those that benefit from the barriers that are in place. I am always suspicious of a lot of emotive campaigning in response to trade agreements that opens up trade.

Brakenshire6• 11 years ago

It's not that opening up trade is bad by default, it's that opening up trade is not an absolute value which overrides all other considerations (in this case, an individual's right to protection from harm by third parties, or a democracy's right to make decisions within its own borders).

msvalkon• 11 years ago

Did you by chance read the article? This has little to do with opening up trade and much to do with providing ridiculous amount of power to any major corporation.

EDIT:

Suppose I'm a producer of bottled water from Germany. I bottle a lot of water in California. The Californians vote to move to heavy water rationing and regulation due to the threat of continuous draught. This hurts my business, so should I be allowed, as a corporation, to sue the state of California, have any possible trials and hearings within a closed courtroom and possibly overrule the vote?

RobertoG• 11 years ago

Agree, the motivation of all this is, at least, worrisome.

You should be allowed, as a corporation, to sue the state of California... in California. But this is not what we are talking about here.

We are talking about the creation of new special courtrooms above the laws of California, staffed by people that worked for corporations and when they left the job are going to work for corporations again.

If this is not worrisome, you tell me what it is.

glesica2• 11 years ago

TTIP doesn't open up trade. There have been plenty of articles about this. Actual trade barriers between the participants are already incredibly low. http://www.cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/correction-to-manki...

twoodfin• 11 years ago

There are plenty of ways to have trade barriers that aren't tariffs. Differing regulatory standards, for one.

ck2• 11 years ago

The do-nothing-congress better crash and burn that thing in the House.

It's going to be crazy if this is one of the few things they pass this year.

benaston7• 11 years ago

Parliamentary democracies are often deeply flawed and in need of reform. That much is obvious (in the UK at any rate).

The problem with the EU is that is is even less democratic and hence less accountable than the pre-existing system of national governments.

Furthermore, as this article shows, the EU makes it easier for large companies and trading blocks to pull-off greater subversions and abuses of power via lobbying and corruption, since power is concentrated in a much smaller number of people.

The founders and implementors of the EU "project" used the term "ever tighter integration" in their founding documents, where they laid out their vision for a United States of Europe.

They even describe how they intended to implement this via a technique called "gradualism". The idea being that big sweeping reforms would be rejected by the individual polities, but that more gradual, subtle changes spread over time could achieve the same effect without the same resitance. And we have seen this in action over the past forty years.

A bit like the apochryphal boiling of a frog.

The problem is that this is in some sense subversive and in another, presumptious that the EU project is desired and/or sensible. At some point the frog metaphor breaks down and people begin to realize what is happening and what has happened.

And in the UK at least, finally, we are beginning to see a debate being held on the desirability of the EU being a political union (rather than the more prosaic free-trade area).

higherpurpose2• 11 years ago

All democratic republics are in dire need of an overhaul for the 21st century. However, US and UK tend to be worse than many because of the first past the post voting system.

minot3• 11 years ago

I feel bad for the voters in the UK. LD got trounced in this election but in the previous two elections they had 22 and 23 percentage of votes.

In 2010, Conservatives had 47% of the seats with 36 percent of votes. Labor had almost 40% with 29% of the votes. LD had 8% with 23% of votes. Even in 2015, they had 1.2% of seats with 7.9% of votes.

If you have almost a quarter of the population voting for you, you'd think you can make things happen. What went wrong with the referendum? What could the YES proponents have done differently? More importantly, has the damage been done? How long do UK nationals have to be quiet about alternative voting now?

jokoon• 11 years ago

I hate to say this, and I don't think it's justified, but that's the kind of stuff al-qaeda would fight against.

Someday having anti-american opinions might equate with being a terrorist.

andy_ppp2• 11 years ago

Someday! Funny that you should say this but David Cameron wants us to never be left alone by the state and anti terror laws are regularly used against people who are not terrorists. The police are being militarised and the human rights act is being removed from law here in the UK. Someday looks like tomorrow to me.

mcintyre1994• 11 years ago

Probably not terrorist but maybe extremist? If you haven't heard that's David Cameron and Theresa May's current choice of undefined term for people they want to attack but that haven't broken any terror laws (or any other actually).

matternew• 11 years ago

``EU plans to regulate hormone-damaging chemicals found in pesticides have been dropped because of threats from the US that this would adversely affect negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)''

They shouldn't drop them, we should regulate freely and be removed from TTIP. Being involved in TTIP isn't a privilege or in any way desirable, it's an undemocratic exercise in futility. So, to me, being ejected is a win-win scenario.

reimertz• 11 years ago

Do people want TTIP? Nope.(http://goo.gl/FD145h) Do people want pesticides? Nope. (https://goo.gl/AQNdZv)

So what is the problem?

glandium• 11 years ago

So what is the problem?

People.

danbruc• 11 years ago

Do people want TTIP? Nope.

That's (sadly) (possibly) not true. I thought it would be scandalous if Europeans didn't want TTIP and they just ignored the people and continued negotiating. But then I found this chart [1] and in almost every country the majority is for a trade agreement. I don't know if the numbers are wrong, if people are uninformed or if they just don't care, but if the numbers are correct then it all is just democratic, the majority wins, whether I or you like it or not.

[1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/01/29/is-europe-on...

taejo• 11 years ago

Those survey results show people who are "for a free trade and investment agreement between the EU and the USA" -- not those who are for this trade agreement; the objections to TTIP are arguably not about the freedom of trade and investment.

hhjj• 11 years ago

They support a free trade agreement, it doesn't specifically tells about TTIP that may not be a free trade agreement since anyway almost nobody knows what's in it.

inDigiNeous3• 11 years ago

In Finland at least this agreement and it's harmful effects are widely known, at least relatively when talking about pushing new laws.

And there have been numerous demonstrations against the agreement, and petitions calling to not let it pass. But they just keep pushing it.

chki2• 11 years ago

I'm a citizen of Germany (and consider myself to be Eu-Citizen as well) and I'm in favor of a trade agreement. Of course you have to debate about certain points but I would personally live in the US or in Europe and would e.G. accept both food regulations. I think there are many people in the US and in Europe with a similar mindset.

allendoerfer2• 11 years ago

I think so, too.

My concern is that regulation can not advance because it would brake the treaty by losing the unification of standards.

The EU can not agree with Washington either, because it is not responsible in most cases. My understanding is, that the EU and the US are organized in the direct opposite way: In the US, Washington is responsible for the military and so on while every state has its own laws for protecting the environment or license plates and stuff like this. The EU tries to agree on standards for these things and has very limited rights in topics like foreign policies.

And I would hate to lose in a secret court against Phillip Morris.

tomelders2• 11 years ago

Genuine question: what trade agreements do we already have in place? Im not clear on what's wrong with the way things are right now.

Istof• 11 years ago

but perhaps they need to develop new production methods to avoid the use of pesticides, otherwise, there might not be enough food for everybody? try to grow a garden if you haven't yet

motbob• 11 years ago

The article uses numbers pretty dishonestly.

"[T]the health costs of EDCs to Europe are between £113 billion and £195 billion (between €160 and €277 billion) every year."

There is no mention that pesticides/herbicides are a very small percentage of that number. It doesn't matter whether it's "still bad" that it's a small percentage. Arstechnica willingly led me to believe that the impact of pesticides/herbicides was in the hundreds of billions of Euros.

These numbers also, notably, came out long after the 2013 negotiations mentioned. What was the scientific consensus on EDCs in 2013?

Tosh108• 11 years ago

Further down the article there's an indirect reference:

“I would recommend that pregnant women and children eat organic fruits and vegetables and avoid using plastic containers and canned food, especially in the microwave, because containers are usually treated on the inside with substances and compounds that can leak into the tomato soup and may act as endocrine disruptors,” he said.

inDigiNeous3• 11 years ago

So,you think it's only the money or cost that matters? How about the fact that this means that pesticides will contain more harmful ingredients and might destroy parts of the agriculture? Oh yeah, but you can't really see immediate dollar results from that.

cyphunk2• 11 years ago

Collectively the EU bloc represents the larges global economy (18tr GDP). It should be the US forced to accept EU regulations to participate in the EU economy, not the other way around.

adventured• 11 years ago

The US economy is about $1.8 trillion larger than the EU economy presently.

The EU economy is roughly $15.7 trillion (€14.3 trillion), and hasn't grown in seven years. During that time, the US retook the lead in size and added around ~$2.5 trillion to its GDP. The dollar run in the prior year has also lifted the value of the US economy at the expense of the EU economy, by about ~13%.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_European_Union

cyphunk2• 11 years ago

thanks for updating my outdated data :)

tim333• 11 years ago

While I'm against the TTIP, the "the health costs of EDCs to Europe are between £113 billion and £195 billion" mentioned in the Ars article seems to be from the Guaridan article "(£113bn-£195bn)" http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/06/health-co...

that says "Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that interfere with the human hormone system, and can be found in food containers, plastics, furniture, toys, carpeting and cosmetics."

no mention of pesticides in their opening bit. I'm guessing the percentage exposure coming from pesticides is very small so the financial figures in the Ars article are misleading.

PythonicAlpha• 11 years ago

The problem about "TTIP" and "free trade treaties" is, that they are continuously used to support the interests of big corporations -- and thus, lowering health, environmental and other standards is one of the big targets of those treaties.

I lately saw a documentation about the trade treaty of the US with Mexico. They said, that standards where lowered in both countries.

Take two or more countries and make today a "free trade treaty" between them, you get the lowest common denominator, since the big corporations are at the head of the table.

TTIP starts to reduce standards even before it is signed.

parennoob• 11 years ago

EU regulations would have banned 31 pesticides containing endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) that have been linked to testicular cancer and male infertility.

Obvious criticism of sweeping trade treaties aside, this is another blatant case where the health and well-being of males takes a back seat to political considerations.

I'll bet my bottom dollar that if these chemicals caused, say, ovarian cancer, Governments on both sides of the Atlantic would be racing to ban them and get political brownie points.

joering2• 11 years ago

Just after the official launch of the TTIP negotiations on 13 June 2013, a US business delegation visited EU officials to demand that the proposed regulations governing EDCs should be thrown out in favour of a further "impact study."

May I please know the names of those scumbags, or at least how can I find out? I want to know more about those brainacs, perhaps place a few phonecalls, express my disgust.

EU dropped plans for safer pesticides because of TTIP and pressure from US

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