Greenpeace leaks TTIP texts, reveals strained negotiations

Re: Good old EU

Of course the trade deals will be much quicker - the US dictates and the UK politicians write it down as is.

Re: Wrong driver

It increasingly seems to me, that America got it's freedom from goverment, and choose corporations as the new masters of the country instead.

Re: Wrong driver

European standards have also been the "gold standard" for industrial safety systems, which are closely interlinked with electro-technical standards. I've designed a number of machine control systems in Canada, and the relevant government approved safety standards simply gave CSA (Canadian standard) numbers to European standards. The equivalent US standards were either non-existent or out of the dark ages. US companies hoping to export machinery to most places had to meet European standards or find their products unsaleable abroad.

European safety standards put industrial safety on a sound scientific/engineering basis compared to the "we've always done things this way" conventions that I saw when I first started my career. The standards let you buy products that worked in a known way and were to be used according to clear guidelines (two hand controls, light curtains, safety relays, door switches, emergency stops, etc.) from multiple suppliers instead of getting God knows what that someone cobbled together himself.

European companies came to dominate the industrial control market because their stuff was simply a lot better than most of the stuff coming from the US (software excepted). Europeans standards being the cutting edge (rather than being non-existent) had a lot to do with that, at least in the safety field.

Re: Software patents

Yes, it permits *everything*, via a 'Panel' to settle trade disputes.

The complainant gets to choose the panel that decides, and there's no requirement that the panel be confined to the legally valid ones. Document 15. One the panel decides, then they are obligated to fix whatever law is needed.

Perhaps an example makes is clearer: When the EU Patent office tried to legalize software patents. It claimed that the ruling of the EU Patent court meant that it had to legalize pure software patents. Only the EU Patent court isn't a real court, its an office under the EU Patent Office! So really they were pretending to have the power to change laws because they rejected the law themselves!

In the new treaty, they're trying the same trick. Instead of negotiating the exact trade treaty terms, they want a mechanism which will decide the future terms of trade via resolution dispute. Leaving the other terms so broad as to cover anything 'trade' related.

So the resolution mechanism REQUIRES changing the law, rather than REQUESTING changing the law on penalty of trade sanctions.

Quote: [The Party complained against shall take any measure necessary to comply promptly and in good faith with the panel ruling.]

These panels are really corporate lawyers, so 3 corporate lawyers have a secret meeting, agree a result, and then the laws have to be changed to suit that result. Regardless of the national and laws and pesky democracy, parliaments etc. And regardless that the negotiators of the treaty haven't been handed the powers they're now trying to sign into law.

So software patents? Yes. GMO in everything yes? No labelling of bad stuff? Yes. Protected Corporate monopolies? Yes. Creation of new IP rights? Yes. Censorship of bad reviews? Yes. Anything goes if 3 corporate lawyers meeting in secret decide it is a matter that affects US-EU trade.

Now of course the negotiators doing this don't hold the powers they're creating in the treaty! But after a few years, and lots of obsfuction, who would be in a position to sue to declare the treaty illegal?

Re: Secret treaties, silenced majority

This is the same Cecilia Malmström that publicly stated that she does not get her mandate from the citizens of Europe. So yet another unelected mandarin.

@SolidSquid

Was that a typing error, when they wrote 'draft', did they not mean daft?

@SolidQuid RATIFY

@" Surely the whole point of that kind of document is that at least one side is pushing to have that particular wording signed off on?"

Yeh the *text* will be agreed, and then it will be handed over for 'ratification'. The word itself will try to imply its no longer negotiable. For TPP they even did this 'signing ceremony' by the needles*. Full of symbolism as if it was being signed into law, and the actual law making process was just a formality and not the real process.

* Needles, because the negotiators are needles in the surveillance haystack, they'll be the most watched, most shaped and most tasked to ensure the wanted outcome of negotiations occur. One of the benefits of secret negotiations is it limits discussion to a few known needles, so far fewer phones to tap, meetings to spy on, emails to read, people to influence, discussion points to head off...

Playing devil's advocate here

American telcos and Internet firms believe the EU is crimping their ability to compete on a level playing field, while on the other side, Europeans believe America wants to dismantle their privacy protections.

But

In last week's article where so EU joker was saying we should all login to the Internet with our state issued ID cards there was the comment

The European Commission has noticed that only four per cent of the most used internet platforms come from the EU. And it’s noticed some dangers to competition from dominant platforms, too:

Perhaps there is a correlation here. Perhaps very few popular Internet sites are of EU origin because the legal framework here leads people to think "We can't do that, it might be illegal somewhere" whilst the US mind set leads to an approach of "Hey, lets just try it and see what happens"

Re: So would it breach TTIP

Unless it's cheaper and "legal", in which case it's full steam ahead and consequences be damned, especially on all the supermarket/corporate owned farms where profit is king.

Re: now I want to leave the EU

Any country which leaves the EU will still be part of TTIP. You don't honestly think the Pacific nations were all part of some cosy little EU equivalent, do you? No, the smaller ones go strong-armed in and once some acquiesced, the rest followed so as not to be frozen out of trade deals. The response was "a shite deal is better than no deal".

At least the EU is big enough to have some leverage and now that the information is out in the open, we might see not only some stronger negotiating but enough countries realising the perils might end up putting the kybosh on it. France and Germany are already making noises, even before this leak.

I do wonder if this leak is deliberate to increase EU negotiating strength.