This article is plagiarised from lots of articles I have recently studied. I have grave concerns that if it goes ahead not only will we be giving huge areas of Government to businesses....often foreign businesses....but we will be placing our NHS in their hands to privatise making profit come before patients.
TTIPThe Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)is an attempt by the US and EU to renegotiate thousands of trade tariffs and reduce the regulatory burden on exportersTalks between the two sides officially started in 2013, but preparations for the deal have been ongoing for decades, largely in secret and with privileged access granted to representatives from big business. They cover a wide range of policy areas from chemicals regulations to employment policy; data protection to agriculture and it is the biggest focal point for lobbying efforts now in Brussels.As part TTIP businesses can sue governments or public sector bodies for any loss of profits. TTIP may turn out to be the worst trade agreement in decades according to critics. The problem is not so much with the agreement’s trade provisions, but with the most controversial element of TTIP the “corporate court” system, formally called:
ISDS(Investor State Dispute Settlement) which severely constrains environmental, health, and safety regulation; and even financial regulations with significant macroeconomic impacts.
This system allows multinational corporations and other foreign “investors” to sue governments for enacting regulations which damage their profits. Proponents argue that this offers investors, like small business, protection against “arbitrary” government action.
In particular, foreign investors would be given the right to sue governments in private international tribunals when they believe government regulations contravene TTIP’s terms (6,000 + pages). Previously such tribunals have interpreted the requirement that foreign investors receive “fair and equitable treatment” as grounds for striking down new government regulations – even if they are non-discriminatory and are adopted simply to protect citizens from newly discovered egregious harms.
Even regulations protecting the planet from greenhouse gas emissions are vulnerable.
The “Most Favoured Nation” provision ensures that corporations can claim the best treatment offered in any of a host country’s treaties.
According to Corporate Europe Observatory: Discussions have sparked concerns that the trade deal will lead to attacks on environmental protections, safety at work regulations, laws to defend public health & food safety and will unleash oil sands (fracking) thereby fatally undermining climate efforts.
Regulatory cooperation procedures have already been used to delay, water down and prevent legislation in the public interest.
The origins and impacts of TTIP's proposals for regulatory cooperation shows that the process has been dominated by big business right from the start. Some examples are the weakening of EU ambition on the management of hazardous electronic waste, the lack of supervision of the insurance giant AIG in the years leading up to the 2008 financial crash, the free pass offered to US companies on the Safe Harbour agreement that allowed them to ignore rules on the protection of personal data, and delayed or weakened proposals on animal testing, ozone-depleting substances, and aviation emissions.
The favoured approach of the EU - to ensure laws are similar on both sides of the Atlantic - is exactly the kind of “regulatory cooperation” that has already resulted in lower standards.
That sets up a race to the bottom.
HUGE corporations and the seriously wealthy will be the big winnersThat’s the implication of a study which shows that billions of pounds have been won by giant companies like Mobil, EDF, Enron, Suez and Cargill, which have sued governments under similar treaties for taking action they believe to be “unfair.”
The success rate of cases brought by such corporate giants is around 71% — far greater than the success rate of smaller companies and investors.
This means corporate courts act to redistribute income from the public purse to the richest people in the world.
Some $6.7bn has been won in 48 cases, with another $1bn being won by super-rich individuals.
The biggest sums have been won by well-known extractive and energy companies — with Occidental, Mobil, EDF, BG Group, Enron and Chevron winning cases, especially against countries like Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina.
Another big winner is the ISDS legal industry including a selection of corporate law firms, which have made an incredible $1.7bn in over 214 cases.
A recent Friends of the Earth report showed that legal costs for such ISDS cases average over $8m, exceeding $30m in some cases, while 80% of the legal costs end up in the pockets of the parties’ lawyers. Elite law firms can charge $1,000 per hour, per lawyer.
The biggest losers of all are the public. (In the cases studied by van Harten,) $10bn has haemorrhaged from the pockets of developing world governments.
But this will only be the tip of the iceberg if TTIP and its sister agreements like
CETA (the EU-Canada agreement) are agreed.
Most cases to date have been won outside Europe and the US. TTIP and CETA will open far more lucrative cases up to far more business.
The idea that TTIP is about hard-done-by small business is clearly untrue. TTIP is a vehicle for channelling wealth from the public to the 1%.Joseph E. Stiglitz Professor at Columbia University, recipient of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in economics states:
What was intended to be a global free trade regime has given way to a discordant managed trade regime. Trade for much of the Pacific and Atlantic regions will be governed by agreements, thousands of pages in length and replete with complex rules of origin that contradict basic principles of efficiency and the free flow of goods.
However even outside the Eurozone, our democracy is threatened. TTIP typically negotiated by the EU in secret with corporate interests, threatens a race to the-bottom in environmental and other standards. Even more ominously, it would give large corporations the ability to sue elected governments to try to stop them introducing policies that supposedly hit their profit margins, whatever their democratic mandate. It would clear the way to not only expand the privatisation of our NHS, but make it irreversible too. Royal Mail may have been privatised by the Tories, but it was the EU that began the process by enforcing the liberalisation of the natural monopoly of postal services. Want to nationalise the railways? That means you have to overcome European commission rail directive 91/440/EEC and jump through more hoops!
THE GUARDIAN….NHS Feb 2016
TTIP has come under further fire after campaigners accused the UK government of blocking access to legal advice that shows its impact on the health service.Campaigners warned that the legal documents could reveal the extent to which private health companies can sue the government using a secret tribunal system if a Whitehall policy change were to hit their profits.The business secretary, Sajid Javid, said in answer to a freedom of information request that disclosing the legal documents would make civil servants cautious when they “need space in which to seek candid advice from their lawyers”. He said: “They are less likely to seek such advice if there is an expectation that it will subsequently be disclosable.”
Nick Dearden director of ‘Global Justice Now’ which has campaigned for greater transparency in trade negotiations, said the decision would fuel concerns that NHS trusts could come under attack from private contractors using the ISDS tribunal system.
He said: “If this trade deal is supposed to benefit all of us, why has it been so secretive?
The documents we have seen so far have mostly come from Wikileaks or after intense pressure from campaign groups.“After this move by the business secretary, the suspicion must be that it is a power grab by large companies keen to sweep away trade barriers and that the NHS is among the most vulnerable,” Critics have accused Brussels of conducting secret negotiations covering food safety law, environmental legislation, banking regulations and a separate tribunal system that allows businesses to bypass the civil courts.
The UK government must be allowed to expand the NHS without facing a legal challenge.
The EU claims that the deal would bring a boost of £100bn a year to the UK.
However much stronger evidence is needed to back up its claim .
4 minutes on youtube tells the tale.youtu.be/E2AMNmigWzQ
Last week a Canadian newspaper reported that the EU had approached the new administration in Ottawa to revise a trade deal between the EU and Canada (CETA) that will be presented to the EU parliament for ratification in mid 2016, with a view to the deal becoming law in early 2017.
Brussels wanted the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, to strip out the ISDS tribunal and replace it with the new international courts system, putting pressure on the US to follow suit.
