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    Corporate Europe Observatory – TTIP reloaded: big business calls the shots on new EU-US trade talks Archived Message

    Posted by johnhol on February 26, 2019, 9:44 pm, in reply to "Nick Dearden - MPs mustn't allow Fox free range to negotiate an ‘America first’ trade deal"

    Begins:

    Two years after the suspension of the highly controversial Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), EU member states and the European Commission are preparing mandates for new trade negotiations with the US. But not much has changed: once again corporate lobby groups roam the corridors of EU negotiators working to set the agenda for the talks, while the European Commission covers over its links with big business.

    In July 2018 US President Donald Trump and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker launched “a new phase in the relationship between the United States and the European Union”. Since then, EU and US officials have been busy preparing new trade talks. Both sides published draft negotiation mandates in January. And EU trade ministers could adopt the EU’s mandates in a Council meeting starting today, 21 February 2019.

    While the Commission insists that “this is a new process, which is unrelated to TTIP”, negotiations could bring in many of TTIP’s most controversial features by the backdoor. Between 2013 and 2016 TTIP met unprecedented public and parliamentary opposition across the EU. Concerns over the trade deal ranged from its threats to public services, the extreme powers TTIP would have handed to corporations to kill public interest laws, to waves of imports of unwanted genetically-modified (GMO) foods and fracked gas into Europe. Now the renewal of trade negotiations between the EU and US are reigniting those fears.

    Return of the TTIP ghosts
    Two years after the suspension of the TTIP talks, many of the much maligned treaty’s ghosts are already back to haunt us. Since the Trump-Juncker meeting, the European Commission has taken several steps to expand imports of controversial US products such as fracked gas and GMO soy. This is reminiscent of the TTIP times, where, to please the US and bring it to the negotiation table, the Commission weakened EU safety standards even before formal negotiations began.1

    Following the massively subsidised construction of new pipelines, terminals and other gas infrastructure, for example, Europe has now become the top buyer of US liquefied natural gas (LNG). This is mostly fracked gas, which is environmentally damaging, climate polluting and has severe social impacts. Imports for US GMO soy to feed EU factory farms have also exploded, and the Commission has just cleared the way for biodiesel made from US soy – even though its own figures say it is twice as bad for the climate as fossil diesel.

    Continues:
    https://braveneweurope.com/corporate-europe-observatory-ttip-reloaded-big-business-calls-the-shots-on-new-eu-us-trade-talks

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