The Corporate Scramble for Europe: Big Oil and the Transatlantic Trade Deal (TTIP)
By Colin Todhunter
Global Research
December 01, 2015
If sanctioned, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) would be the biggest trade deal ever seen. Yet the public continue to be kept in the dark about it. Large corporations have been granted privileged access to officials and have been allowed to shape the talks agenda from the outset. Throughout the process, organisations representing the public and civil society have been sidelined. The public has had to rely on leaks or resort to freedom of information law and heavily redacted documents to try to understand what is happening behind closed doors.
High-minded platitudes referring to protecting the integrity of industry and the sensitive nature of negotiations have been used in an attempt to prevent public scrutiny and secure the continued crucial influence that big business has held in the talks.
According to a recent report (Friends of the Earth, Corporate Europe Observatory, War on Want et al) public services in the EU are under threat from the proposed trade deal, which could endanger citizens’ rights to basic services. The study showed how the EU’s Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) deal with Canada and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) could lock public utilities into irreversible commercialisation and remove governments’ ability to regulate services.
Exposing systemic collusion between big business and European Commission officials in drawing up CETA and TTIP, the report highlights how negotiators are doing the work of the EU’s most powerful corporate lobby groups in pushing an aggressive corporate agenda of far-reaching market opening in the public sector.
The consequences include proposals for excessive investor rights, which mean corporations could sue governments for implementing regulations that affect their profits, potentially leading to multi-billion euro taxpayer payouts in compensation. Even the fear of such action could lead governments to shelve plans in the first place. TTIP could eventually make it impossible for national governments to implement decisions for the common good.
Big business has successfully lobbied against the exemption of public services from CETA and TTIP as both agreements apply to virtually all services. This effectively limits the governmental authority exemption to a few core functions, such as law enforcement, the judiciary or the services of a central bank.There is also the real danger that the EC is following industry demands to lock in present and future liberalisations and privatisations of public services. This could threaten the growing trend of remunicipalisation of water services, energy grids and transport services.
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