The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) Trojan Horse. Selling out Europe to US Corporate Plunder
By Colin Todhunter
Global Research
September 30, 2014
Do people in Europe want the likes of Monsanto determining policies in secretive meetings in Brussels? Would they like Unilever, Kraft or Nestle determining what is allowed in their food? Do they want big business removing or weakening health and safety standards and undermining consumer and workers’ rights?
In other words, do they want their parliaments to be sidelined by powerful corporations that determine policies behind closed doors with bureaucrats and officials in Brussels?
Decades of hard work to ensure policies are open to democratic accountability and to guarantee ordinary people’s rights are in danger of being swept away at the behest of wealthy private concerns.
The great corporate heist continues today in Washington. Shrouded in secrecy and granting privileged access to powerful corporations, the 7th round of negotiations on a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) will take place amid growing civil society protests at the dangers of the proposed deal for democracy and essential regulations in the areas of public health, safety, the environment and the financial sector.
Dozens of civil society groups from all across Europe have denounced EU plans for ‘regulatory cooperation’ as well as the continued secrecy surrounding the talks. While EU negotiators have repeatedly claimed that protection levels are not under threat and that standards will not be lowered as a result of the TTIP talks, these statements have been consistently disproved by documents leaked from the negotiations.
In particular, the implications of the proposals for regulatory cooperation at the horizontal level or on specific sectors, such as the EU proposals on chemicals and financial regulation, all suggest that current protection levels (and the possibility for legislators to improve these in the future) will be undermined through the TTIP.
The leaked EU proposal for horizontal cooperation in the field of regulation bears strong resemblance to proposals tabled by a handful of powerful corporate lobby groups.
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