Image above: In Brussels at European Union office, after stick and carrot treatment, Belgium’s Prime Minister Charles Michel called the deal an ‘important step’. From original article.
Belgium has reached an agreement with its regional powers to back a landmark free trade deal between the EU and Canada.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was supposed to sign the agreement today at a summit in Brussels, but cancelled his trip after the small Belgian region of Wallonia stalled the negotiation process by rejecting the deal.
“Belgian agreement on Ceta. All parliaments are now able to approve by tomorrow at midnight. Important step for EU and Canada,” tweeted Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel.
Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, said he welcomed the news, but would only contact Mr Trudeau “once all procedures are finalised for EU signing Ceta”.
Belgium was not able give its assent to the deal, which has taken seven years to negotiate, without the backing of the French-speaking Wallonia region.
Wallonia, which is smaller than Wales and home to just 3.5 million people, voted 46 to 16 against the deal because of fears local workers would be laid off if the agreement leads to cheaper farming and industrial imports.
The deal’s proponents say it would yield billions in added trade through customs and tariff cuts and other measures to lower barriers to commerce.
Paul Magnette, the president of Wallonia, said he was sorry he made Canada and Europe wait, but insisted “what we achieved here is important”.
“We always fought for treaties that reinforced the social and environmental standards, protect the public services and that there is no private arbitration,” he told reporters. “All this is achieved as of now.”
Alex Lawrence, the spokesman for Canada’s trade minister, said hours before that the country was prepared to sign the deal whenever Europe is ready.
And Mr Trudeau told the Canadian Parliament: “We are confident that in the coming days we will see a positive outcome for this historic deal.”
Europe’s failure to sign Ceta was highlighted during the UK’s EU referendum campaign as one reason Britain would be better off outside the union.
But it has also been underlined as a sign that the UK will have difficulty organising its own free trade deal with the EU if it leaves the single market after Brexit talks.
“I am sorry for all the other Europeans we made wait and for our Canadian partners. But if we took a bit of time, what we achieved here is important, not only for Wallonia but for all Europeans,” said Mr Magnette.
Image above: EU-Canada free trade agreement: opponents stage protest march in Paris. From (http://athavaneng.com/?p=261039).
"It's time for a fundamental shift toward international agreements that put people and the planet before corporate profits. That's the message from Europe today."
Dealing what campaigners say is the final "death blow" to the pro-corporate Canada-European Union trade deal, negotiations collapsed on Friday after representatives from the Belgian region of Wallonia refused to agree to a deal that continues ignore democracy in favor of multi-national corporations.
Canada's International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland reportedly walked out of talks with the Wallonia delegation, which had ruled to maintain their veto against the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) after the parties reached a stalemate over the controversial Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) system.
"We made new significant progress, especially on the agriculture issues, but difficulties remain, specifically on the symbolic issue of arbitration, which is politically extremely important," Wallonia president Paul Magnette told the regional parliament. ISDS permits companies to sue governments over perceived loss of profits due to regulations or other laws.
Magnette had told reporters Thursday that the delegation had particular concerns over "matters affecting U.S. companies in Canada which will benefit from the system."
Campaigners who have led the fight against CETA and its sister trade deals—the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)—rejoiced over the news, saying the planned October 27 signing ceremony now looks "improbable."
"Canada's trade minister may be 'very, very sad', but there are millions of people in Europe who will be very, very happy," said Mark Dearn, senior trade campaigner with the UK-based War on Want.
And while many were happily toasting Magnette and the Wallonia delegation, critics of the deal also emphasized the growing movement against these anti-democratic agreements that helped lead to CETA's downfall.
"This major setback for CETA is not just because of Wallonia alone," said Maude Barlow, national chairperson of the Council of Canadians. "There is deep, widespread opposition to CETA and many millions of people agree with Wallonia's stance."
"Thousands across Europe and Canada spoke up and took action to make this happen," added Barlow, who is currently in Germany campaigning against CETA. "This collapse of attempts to reach a deal on CETA shows governments should listen to people instead of trying to push these deals through against the wishes of the people they're elected to represent."
As Dearn further explained, "Since talks first started on CETA back in 2009, the deal has sat alongside TTIP [referring to the U.S.-E.U. agreement] as an example of how not to do a trade deal—absolute secrecy, zero input from public interest groups, and sheer contempt for the very valid concerns of people across Europe."
"Today we have seen the European Commission's chickens come home to roost," he continued. "If the Commission fails at yet another trade deal, the fault lies wholly with its anti-democratic approach."
Speaking from the negotiations in Belgium, Sujata Dey, trade campaigner with the Council of Canadians, agreed. "It's time to take a long hard look at CETA and what this breakdown means for corporate-led globalization, including for other controversial deals like the [12-nation TPP]."
"It's time for a fundamental shift toward international agreements that put people and the planet before corporate profits," she added. "That's the message from Europe today."
Friday's talks were held as a last-ditch effort to save the trade deal. After they fell apart, an emotional Freeland told reporters, "I've worked very, very hard, but I think it's impossible," referring to the impasse. "It's become evident for me, for Canada, that the European Union isn't capable now to have an international treaty even with a country that has very European values like Canada."
Image above: Members of the Confederal Group of the European United Left hold posters with the slogan ‘STOP TISA’ (Trade in Services Agreement) during a voting session at the European parliament in Strasbourg, France. Photo by Vincent Kessler. From orifginal article.
[IB Publisher's Note: Another acronym another corporate/bankster trade deal to suck the marrow out of what is left of individual people's wealth. Welcome TISA to your comrades NAFTA, TTP and TTIP.]
The latest release follows a series of others by the pro-tranparency publication and comes just days ahead of the next round of TISA negotiations set to begin Monday in Washington, DC.
The leaked documents included in Friday's release include three draft chapters from the agreement—covering "Financial Services," "Localization Provisions," and "Bilateral Market Access." The chapters are from June of this year and bring the number of documents related to the TISA negotiations published by Wikileaks up to 70 total.
Along with the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the TransAtlantic Trade and Investement Partnership (TTIP), TISA is actually the largest of the "Three Big T's" of pending international agreements that seek to further shape the global economic and legal systems in favor of major corporations and elite interests.
TISA is the largest of the three deals, and according to World Bank figures cited by Wikileaks, services that would be covered by the massive agreement comprise around 75% of the EU economy, 80% of the US economy and the majority of economies of most countries.
However, notes Wikileaks, "despite its importance both the US Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have thus far given no position on the TISA Agreement."
In a joint statement, those unions said the wide scope of "the deregulatory agenda and attack on democratic governance" found in the TISA chapters "has been exposed" and criticized European Union governments for attempting to hijack control of every level of governance from the municipal to national levels of partner countries.
Their review of the chapters found clear evidence that European countries are demanding deeper liberalization of public services both within the EU and beyond.
"The EU position ignores the potential danger of exporting aggressive privatisation policies to the developing world, which have already been shown to be the cause of social and political instability in many EU countries," said Public Services International (PSI) General Secretary Rosa Pavanelli in a statement.
As Deborah James, Director of International Programs of the Center for Economy and Policy Research (CEPR) in Washington, DC, offered in her analysis of the leaks:
The leaked EU “requests” include asks that Costa Rica and Peru subject services offered at the subnational (local) level to the TISA liberalization rules. Unless the EU can demonstrate that all services offered in every municipality in these countries are already open to foreign suppliers, these are demands that would lock in any privatization of public services at the local level and open those services to competition from foreign services providers ― which the EU has constantly claimed it is not asking for.
The EU’s demands also include access to postal services in Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, and Turkey, and in several developed countries participating in the talks. Many countries maintain cross-subsidization programs that are an important part of enabling national communication from rural areas.
If countries make commitments in this sector, then they would have to provide the same subsidies to foreign corporations as their own domestic firms, and would not be able to renationalize the sector if privatization was found to have adverse impacts.
The EU’s demands also include access to sanitation, sewage, and other environmental services, which are often administered on a local level; telecommunications (including broadcasting); retail and distribution services; shipping; air and maritime transport; energy and mining services (which are extremely sensitive particularly in Latin America); and others.
In addition, the EU is requesting more commitments on financial services in nearly every country.
Fred van Leeuwen, General Secretary of Education International (EI), said that in addition to TISA's concerning contents, the secrecy surrounding how the deal is being negotiated remains troubling.
"These leaks give a clear indication of the dangerous direction of the TiSA negotiations," The fact that citizens and civil society are still obliged to rely on leaks for getting a sense of the direction of the negotiations is deeply unsatisfactory."
And Ron Oswald, General Secretary of the International Union of Food Workers (UIF), indicated that organized labor should really only have one set of demands at this point.
"It’s time to halt the negotiations, publish the secret texts and ensure the widest possible public debate to expose the full extent of the threat these treaties pose to democracy and the labour movement," Oswald said.
And as CEPR's James declared, "Globalization’s cheerleaders are all handwringing about the widespread opposition to trade pacts. But what they don’t acknowledge is that people around the world are not rejecting 'trade,' they are rejecting corporate control over our lives.
People want to live in a democracy; they want quality, accessible public services; a well-regulated financial sector; and decent jobs for all ― the opposite agenda of the deregulation, locked-in privatization, and antidevelopment fundamentals of the secret proposed TISA, according to today’s explosive leak." .
In a recent column, The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman shows himself to be as good a spokesman for the world's elites (with whom he often communes) as anyone on Earth. He asks one simple question about Republican presidential candidate and billionaire real estate magnate Donald Trump: How?Friedman's column-length answer is a catalogue of Trump's puzzling views about NATO and ISIS, his poor command of the major issues, his contradictory statements and his strange embrace of tax avoidance.
What's missing, of course, is the centerpiece of Trump's appeal: his criticism of major trade deals which have devastated entire industries in the United States and destroyed the middle-class jobs that go with them. To the defenders of globalism--and Friedman is one of globalism's fiercest defenders--Trump's criticism is nothing short of heresy.
But disaffected, downwardly mobile American workers are the ones keeping the race very close, a race that few thought would ever be close just a few weeks ago. So strong is the fear of globalism and all that it represents among a certain class of Trump supporters that they readily dismiss mainstream media critiques of his fitness for office and his understanding of policy. Those supporters want to protect what little they have left.
And, some want to go back to retrieve what they and their communities--often small and rural ones--have lost to the globalist onslaught in the last two decades. In this desire they are not being irrational.
Now here's the dirty secret about the top four U.S. presidential candidates who regularly appear in national polls. None of them actually rejects globalism. (I'll come back to this later.) At this point I'm finally obliged to say what I mean by the amorphous term "globalism."
A friend recently put it into historical perspective and included the resource angle that regular readers must have already suspected I would mention.
With the discovery and then exploitation of fossil fuels on an ever growing scale, societies everywhere were faced with figuring out how to govern a world with ever increasing energy surpluses. Those surpluses made so many new things possible and in doing so led to rapid social and technological change.
We tried laissez-faire capitalism, communism, fascism, democratic socialism and finally globalism which I'll define as the management of worldwide economic activity and growth by large multi-national corporations which have no particular allegiance to any one country or people. Our belief has been that this arrangement is the most rational and efficient.
Therefore, trade deals which bring down barriers both to international trade and to the movement of capital and technology across borders are believed to encourage global economic growth. That growth supposedly will ultimately lift the world's poor into the middle class and enrich everyone else while doing it.
Around the time that the fall of communism made possible the uniting of the world's economies into one great global system, we were also discovering that this system was doomed to failure for environmental reasons.
And, climate change is just one of a thicket of interrelated threats including resource depletion, pollution and overuse of groundwater, ocean pollution, overfishing, soil degradation, and toxic pollutants in the air, water and soil.
One million humans living as we do today would not likely undermine the habitability of the planet, for humans at least. When 7 billion live in this way, our combined effect has made us the dominant force on the planet so much so that we have created a new geologic age named after us: the Anthropocene.
It is now clear that globalism as an engine for an ever growing world economy will lead to catastrophic climate change and other untoward results that will destroy the underpinnings of modern society. In other words, globalism is a suicide pact.
The idea that we can expand globalism to any size we choose was discredited long before now. One version of this fantasy was that the Earth would be able to accommodate U.S.-style consumerism worldwide. But we know that if all residents of the planet consumed like Americans, we would need four Earths to sustain them.
Therefore, the destination offered by globalism no longer features prosperity and stability for all, but a ruinous decline. And yet, our politics and our public discourse speak as if we can still go there.
Trump in his rejection of current trade treaties is saying that we need to go back to something else. He says he wants to "make America great again," which, of course, means America's greatness is somewhere in the past.
As another friend quipped, implied in Trump's platform is the idea that we can get into a time machine and go back to a past that is more to our liking.
So, it's no surprise that Trump's critics are saying he is backward-looking. The future, those critics say, is an ever more connected global society. But, in such a discussion we are left with only two destinations:
We can try to go back to a past which we cannot hope to reconstruct and which, even if we could, would send us in a direction which is considered the opposite of progress.
Or, we can go forward toward globalism's dream of a connected worldwide sphere of material prosperity (and the inevitable ruin this trajectory implies). In our broad public discourse there is no third non-globalism destination for which we have a description and a justification because any such attempt at describing that destination is labeled backward-looking, as merely going back to the past. And, who wants to be accused of that? The accusation tends to end the discussion.
Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential candidate, has a lot in her platform that working people should like. But her call for increased spending on renewable energy, drastic cuts in defense spending and broader protection of human rights probably won't go down well with many whites whose jobs depend on the old fossil-fuel-burning industrial economy, who think military spending is synonymous with security, and who perceive non-whites as competitors in the job market.
Like Trump, Stein would replace current trade deals with new ones that are "fair." Again, we have no explicit rejection of globalism as a system. We will somehow survive that system if only we embrace the "Green New Deal" plan which she proposes.
Bernie Sanders, Clinton's opponent in the Democratic primary, sounds a lot like Stein. He would mitigate the worst aspects of globalism without really challenging its legitimacy. But Sanders did something which Clinton by temperament could not or by choice would not do. Like Trump, Sanders embodied the anger of those injured by globalism.
This is why he consistently polled higher than Clinton in one-to-one matchups with Trump. (Compare Sanders' and Clinton's polling numbers.) Sanders was the candidate who not only displayed his anger at globalism, but also (unlike Trump) had a detailed plan for addressing it. That plan appealed to many Trump voters who could not register that appeal when asked about a Clinton-Trump matchup.
But they could register their approval when asked about a Sanders-Trump contest, and they account for Sanders' runaway margins in polls which show him attracting voters who would otherwise support Trump in a contest with Clinton.
It would be political suicide for any serious candidate for the presidency of the United States to announce that economic growth as we know it is over and that we will have to organize our society based on other principles. Just what those principles might be has been articulated by such people as Herman Daly, the dean of the steady-state economists. But then, Daly isn't running for anything.
Critical to how we proceed is to understand what is actually slowing down economic growth. Climate change will certainly over time become a huge detriment to economic activity and, if unchecked, is likely to disrupt our modern technical society to such a degree (particularly when it comes to growing food) that it will not survive intact.
Many of the theories about slow growth revolve around financial and demographic constraints. What needs to become part of the discussion are energy limits (see here and here) and pollution limits, particularly on greenhouse gases.
We are now waiting for our politics to catch up to this reality. Donald Trump, the exit of Great Britain from the European Union, and threat of exit by movements in Italy, Greece and Spain, all point to the same problem. Globalism as a system has no future. The pain it has inflicted so far has been on the middle and lower classes.
At some point, that pain will spread to the highest reaches of society. Will we have to wait for that in order to get definitive movement toward a third destination?
Jared Diamond in his book Collapse pondered our predicament. Elites in past societies that have collapsed insulated themselves from the consequences of environmental and resource constraints so that they perceived no need for drastic changes.
If Thomas Friedman's column represents the thinking of today's elites, then they are truly well-insulated. Even Friedman who is more broadly informed and nuanced in his thinking shows how he himself is insulated when he writes that "income gaps are actually narrowing, wages are rising and poverty is easing."
A minor beneficial move in the statistics after so many years of moves in the opposite direction is hardly the stuff that matters to people who are hurting.
The elites and Friedman can't understand Trump's appeal because they don't have much contact with those who are suffering from globalism's many side-effects. Whether or not Trump actually understands those injured by globalism, he successfully embodies their rage.
And, it is that rage which is propelling his campaign to the amazement of elites out of touch with America's middle and lower classes.
Unfortunately, the answer to globalism's dead end cannot be found in the current U.S. presidential campaign. But the loud cries of its victims are audible to all those who are willing to hear them. And those victims may end up deciding who will be America's next president.
P.S. I am indebted to Bruno Latour, the French philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist of science for his recent lecture "Why Gaia is not the Globe" which inspired this piece.
Video above: Trump speaks about this June about globalist trade deals damaging American economy in Monessa, Pennsylvania. From (https://youtu.be/FI9ZIDSlyhk).
• Kurt Cobb is an author, speaker, and columnist focusing on energy and the environment. He is a regular contributor to the Energy Voices section of The Christian Science Monitor and author of the peak-oil-themed novel Prelude. In addition, he has written columns for the Paris-based science news site Scitizen, and his work has been featured on Energy Bulletin (now Resilience.org), The Oil Drum, OilPrice.com, Econ Matters, Peak Oil Review, 321energy, Common Dreams, Le Monde Diplomatique and many other sites. He maintains a blog called Resource Insights and can be contacted at kurtcobb2001@yahoo.com.
Image above: Europeans demonstrate against American corporatism of TTIP. From original article.
France wants to halt thorny EU-US trade talks on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) as President Francois Hollande underlined there would be no deal until after President Barack Obama leaves office in January. Matthias Fekl, the French minister for foreign trade, has said his country will call for an end to the deal.
France has been sceptical about the TTIP from the start and has threatened to block the deal, arguing the US has offered little in return for concessions made by Europe. All 28 EU member states and the European parliament will have to ratify the TTIP before it comes into force.
The statements came just a couple of days after German economy minister Sigmar Gabriel had said talks for TTIP had de facto failed. Gabriel, who leads Germany’s centre-left Social Democratic party and is vice-chancellor in the coalition government, said Europe mustn’t submit to the American proposals.
Mr. Gabriel’s statement is in contrast with the position of Chancellor Angela Merkel who supports the deal. Meanwhile, the US-German conflicts are growing. US courts and authorities took a hard line against the Volkswagen Group, Germany’s largest car manufacturer, in relation to its exhaust scandal. In a deal that does not include all damage claims, VW is required to pay up to 13.6 billion euros.
There is a growing chorus in Germany saying that the country should orientate more to Asia. This perspective shared by the organizers of the anti-TTIP lobby, including the German Trade Union Federation (DGB), the Left Party and the Greens.
The fact that former British Prime Minister David Cameron – an outspoken proponent of TTIP – is no longer involved in negotiations is another major setback for the deal, which at this point is believed by many to be dead in the water.
TTIP negotiations have been ongoing since 2013 in an effort to establish a massive free trade zone that would eliminate many tariffs. After 14 rounds of talks that have lasted three years not a single common item out of the 27 chapters being discussed has been agreed on.
The United States has refused to agree on an equal playing field between European and American companies in the sphere of public procurement sticking to the principle of «buy American».
The opponents of the deal believe that in its current guise the TTIP is too friendly to US businesses. One of the main concerns with TTIP is that it could allow multinational corporations to effectively «sue» governments for taking actions that might damage their businesses.
Critics claim American companies might be able to avoid having to meet various EU health, safety and environment regulations by challenging them in a quasi-court set up to resolve disputes between investors and states.
In Europe thousands of people supported by society groups, trade unions and activists take to the streets expressing protest against the deal.
Three million people have signed a petition calling for it to be scrapped. For instance, various trade unions and other groups have called for protests against the TTIP across Germany to take place on September 17. A trade agreement with Canada has also come under attack.
These developments take place against the background of another major free trade agreement - the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) - hitting snags on the way to being pushed through Congress. The chances are really slim
The likely failure will be a great setback undermining the US credibility in the Asia Pacific region and the world. According to Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, for America’s friends and partners, ratifying the trade pact was a litmus test for US credibility and seriousness of purpose.
Both deals have been problematic, primarily because they contain clauses that would allow corporations to sue sovereign nations and are seen as a US attempt to assert political, diplomatic and corporate influence.
As illustrated above, even Americans reject them, blaming the North American Free Trade Agreement for the exodus of American manufacturing to cheaper destinations. But the failure to push through both agreements will put into doubt the US status of global superpower.
Student loans are up. So too are food stamps and health insurance costs. In the meantime, labor force participation, home ownership and median family incomes have plummeted. The US government's $19 trillion debt is a huge problem.
Long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have exacted an enormous price - immense financial expense, estimated to be as high as $6 trillion (£3.9tn). The detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, as well as the NSA and Wikileaks spying scandals, have undermined the belief in American values and American diplomacy.
The defense expenditure is huge, but its effectiveness is questioned. «We’re in a dramatic crisis now. There is no question that we’re capable against the threats on the counter-terrorism side, but we’ve reached a point where we’re in fact—not heading towards—but we’re already hollow against a high-end threat, said House Armed Services Committee majority staff director Bob Simmons speaking before an audience at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) on June 21.
We lack the capacity and capability that we need to effectively deter on the high-end.
Among the foreign policy disasters in the Middle East, the rise of the Muslim extremists in several nations has created a crisis for all of the West, including the United States but most immediately and especially for refugee-swamped Europe.
The West is reaping the results of America’s foreign policy failures as it struggles to cope with hundreds of thousands of refugees pouring out of Syria and the Middle East.
>There is scant evidence that this century the US has achieved any progress pursuing its foreign policy goals. And while the US has stagnated, some countries, like Russia, China and many others, have prospered. This combination of decline at home and rise abroad has reduced America’s international power markedly.
At the turn of the century few argued when the 20th century was dubbed the «American Century». Over the past 16 years, America's fortunes have changed with dizzying speed. The safer bet is that the 21st century will not be America’s. The TTIP’s rejection by European leaders and grass roots’ protests against the agreement testify to the fact. .
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday that the U.S. Senate will not vote on the 12-nation, corporate-friendly Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) this year, buoying progressive hopes that the trade deal will never come to fruition.
Responding to the news, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—whose opposition to the TPP was a hallmark of his presidential campaign—said: "This is good news for American workers, for the environment, and for the ability to protect public health."
McConnell told a Kentucky State Farm Bureau breakfast in Louisville that the agreement, "which has some serious flaws, will not be acted upon this year."
Grassroots groups have led a concerted campaign to prevent a vote during the so-called "lame-duck" session of Congress, after the November election and before President Barack Obama leaves office in January. The White House recently vowed to wage an "all-out push" in favor of such a vote.
"We never thought we would agree with Mitch McConnell on something, but we do agree on not bringing the TPP to a vote in the lame-duck session," said Adam Green, Progressive Change Campaign Committee co-founder, on Friday. "There's widespread, bipartisan opposition to the corporate-written TPP and an unaccountable, lame-duck Congress voting on it."
However, The Hillreports, "McConnell said that while the trade agreement won't get approved in its current form, it could pass next year with some changes."
"It will still be around," said the Republican from Kentucky. "It can be massaged, changed, worked on during the next administration."
Both Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton say they're against the deal, but that opposition isn't guaranteed. And that's why opponents need to keep the pressure on.
Indeed, added Sanders: "This treaty is opposed by every trade union in the country and virtually the entire grassroots base of the Democratic Party.
In my view, it is now time for the leadership of the Democratic Party in the Senate and the House to go on the record in opposition to holding a vote on this job-killing trade deal during the lame-duck session of Congress and beyond."
To that end, Reuters notes that earlier this month, Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan "said he saw no point in bringing up the TPP deal for a vote in any 'lame duck' session of Congress later this year because 'we don't have the votes.'"
Image above: Germans protest TTIP trade deal. From original article.
In the latest blow for Obama's global trade agenda, German Vice Chancellor and Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel said that free trade talks (Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP) between the European Union and the United States have failed, citing a lack of progress on any of the major sections of the long-running negotiations.
"In my opinion the negotiations with the United States have de facto failed, even though nobody is really admitting it" ZDF quoted the minister, according to a written transcript of the interview to be aired on Sunday. “[They] have failed because we Europeans did not want to subject ourselves to American demands.”
He added that in 14 rounds of talks, the two sides haven't agreed on a single common item out of 27 chapters being discussed. Among the stumbling blocks is a US objection to opening public tenders to European companies. “For me, that goes against free trade," Gabriel previously commented regarding the issue.
But more than just disagreement on general principles, Gabriel singled out the US as the party making strong demands with no concessions: "We mustn't submit to the American proposals," said Gabriel, who is also the head of Germany's center-left Social Democratic Party.
Gabriel accused Washington of being "angry" about the deal that the EU struck with Canada, known as CETA, because it contains elements the U.S. doesn't want to see in the TTIP.
Despite strong misgivings among many EU member states over the TTIP, especially by farmers in the European block, both Washington and Brussels had pushed for a deal by the end of the year.
As AP reports, Sigmar Gabriel compared the TTIP negotiations unfavorably with a free trade deal forged between the 28-nation EU and Canada, which he said was fairer for both sides.
As AP adds, Gabriel's ministry isn't directly involved in the negotiations with Washington because trade agreements are negotiated at the EU level.
But such a damning verdict from a leading official in Europe's biggest economy is likely to make further talks between the EU executive and the Obama administration harder. Surprisingly, Gabriel's comments contrast with those of Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said last month that TTIP was "absolutely in Europe's interest."
European critics of the TTIP have claimed that the treaty is dangerous as it could place the interest of international corporations above those of the nations they operate in, and undermine European standards for labor and environmental protections. Germany, where support for the TIIP has plunged over the past year, has seen a number of popular protests demanding that the TTIP never be implemented.
A recent survey, conducted by YouGov for the Bertelsmann Foundation, showed that only 17 percent of Germans believe the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is a good thing, down from 55 percent two years ago.
Even in the US, support for Obama's trade agenda has tumbled, with only 18% supporting the deal compared to 53 percent in 2014.
The European public has been unhappy with TTIP as the contents of the deal remain largely secret. However, recent leaks suggest that it will affect food safety laws, environmental legislation, banking regulations and open the EU for GM crops.
Opponents of the deal have been staging protests in a number of European cities. The most recent one took place in Berlin last weekend, with activists calling for a nationwide demonstration on September 17th.
With Gabriel saying the TTIP is effectively dead, Germany joins France, whose president Hollande said in early May that the "TTIP is doomed" adding that France "will never accept" challenges to its farming and culture in exchange for better access to U.S. markets.
"That's why at this stage, France says no," the Socialist leader said at a conference on left-wing politics. French Trade Minister Matthias Fekl then said that negotiations "are totally blocked" and that a halt to talks "is the most probable option."
"Europe is giving a lot ... but receiving very little in return," he concluded. Which, incidentally, is precisely how the US wanted it. It remains to be seen if the US will offer concessions to Europe now that the TTIP debate is all but finished, or if the US will demand strict adherence to rules that now clearly benefit mostly US corporations.
Image above: American negotiators hidden agenda. From original article. Greenpeace Netherlands has obtained 248 pages of leaked Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiating texts [1], which will be published on Monday 2 May at 11:00 CET. The documents unveil for the first time the US position and deliberate attempts to change the EU democratic legislative process.
The classified documents represent more than two-thirds of the overall TTIP text as of April, at the 13th round of TTIP negotiations in New York. They cover 13 chapters addressing issues ranging from telecommunications to regulatory cooperation, from pesticides, food and agriculture to trade barriers.
Jorgo Riss, director of Greenpeace EU, said: “These leaked documents confirm what we have been saying for a long time: TTIP would put corporations at the centre of policy-making, to the detriment of environment and public health. We have known that the EU position was bad, now we see the US position is even worse. A compromise between the two would be unacceptable.”
Greenpeace identified four main issues of concern:
Long standing environmental protection is dropped
The “General Exceptions” rule, enshrined in the GATT agreement of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), is absent from the text. This nearly 70-year-old rule allows nations to restrict trade “to protect human, animal and plant life or health", or for "the conservation of exhaustible natural resources" [2].
No place for climate protection in TTIP
If the goals of the Paris Summit to keep temperatures increase under 1.5 degrees are to be met, trade should not be excluded from CO2 emissions reduction specifications. But nothing about climate protection can be found in the obtained texts.
Precautionary principle is forgotten
The US wants the EU to replace the EU’s hazard approach with ‘risk management’, disregarding the precautionary principle, [3] which is enshrined in the EU Treaty but is never mentioned in the consolidated text.
Open door for corporate lobbying
The leaked documents suggest that both parties consider giving corporations much wider access and participation in decision making.
Jorgo Riss said: “The effects of TTIP would be initially subtle but ultimately devastating. It would lead to European laws being judged on their consequences for trade and investment – disregarding environmental protection and public health concerns.”
A 70-year-old EU rule, which allows nations to restrict trade in order “to protect human, animal and plant life or health," or for "the conservation of exhaustible natural resources,” would end, if U.S. President Barack Obama gets what he wants.
Furthermore, the “Precautionary principle is forgotten”: it’s currently enshrined in the EU Treaty, but Obama wants it gone; it is stated in the EU Treaty as allowing "rapid response in the face of a possible danger to human, animal or plant health, or to protect the environment. In particular, where scientific data do not permit a complete evaluation of the risk, recourse to this principle may, for example, be used to stop distribution or order withdrawal from the market of products likely to be hazardous.”&
Obama wants there to be no ability for EU nations to withdraw from the market “products likely to be hazardous.” All products would be assumed safe, unless proven not to be.
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