On the February 26 & 27, there was a conference on the pending free-trade agreement between the USA and the EU, known as TTIP. It was the most interesting two days I've spent in a long time. About 500 people from all over Germany showed up, and there was the odd visitor/speaker from Spain, the UK, the USA, and France there as well. There could have been others, but I didn't run into them.
The EU, or better, the European Commission (EC), is pushing hard to get the negotiations over with this year. In October last year, over a quarter of a million people showed up in Berlin to protest the agreement, and despite strong opposition, a citizen's initiative collected over 3 million signature on a petition to the EC to stop the negotiations. Of course, none of this has stopped anything and the 12th round of negotiations took place in Brussels last week as well. While I am aware that most of my Europeans friends and acquaintances are familiar with this proposed treaty, with the negotiations on the transpacific agreement completed and the clown car and circus of the primaries blaring at full volumne, I'm not sure how many of my American compatriots are, so here's the deal and why you should care.
The last big agreement of this sort was NAFTA, which I'm sure just about everyone has forgotten, but they shouldn't have. Despite all the hype of the government at that time about benefits and economic growth, the impact to the American worker couldn't have been more devastating: more than a million jobs lost, unions busted, wages depressed, and job security thrown out the window along with most regulation and legal restrictions on irresponsible industrial activities nullified.
No, NAFTA didn't cause the financial meltdown in 2008 nor is it solely responsible for global warming, but I can assure you that unlabeled Frankenfood, Nestle's plundering of the Great Lakes while Flint's children are poisoned, and a $15bn lawsuit against the US (which they have little chance of winning ... so pony-up taxpayer) because the people shutdown Keystone XL are the result. But, NAFTA was only a dress rehearsal for the real thing which TTP and TTIP are bringing to us now.
The pro-TTIP propaganda is the same as it was with NAFTA: economic benefits beyond belief for all, which is anything but the case. Truth be told, this is a treaty by big business and for big business and this time they're not going to let little things like national soverignty, the will of the people or elections of any kind get in their way. Why do I think so? Well, how about the fact that
- the negotiations are conducted by non-elected governmental appointees
- all negotiations are conducted in complete secrecy
- elected officials (members of Congress, the EU or EU-member-state parliaments) have no access to the text of the agreement except under certain limited and restrictive conditions
- anyone who does get access to any part of the agreement is forbidden to talk to anybody about anything they read
- the treaty, being a matter of international law, supercedes any national law of any signatory country
just to name a few of the most disturbing.
I'm sure there are many of you who are saying, "So what? The big guys do what they want and we have to see how we manage to get along", but what is most unsettling is the fact that the agreements stack the deck against the little guy, so if you think you have to put up with crap now, just wait. And for my European readers, I'd like to remind you that the handling of the Greek affair was also a bit of prototyping for what is in store for all of us once the agreement is through.
So, it would seem that this post is running over, so even though I don't like to do so generally, I'll have to pick up on this next time as well. Do come back ... it gets better.
No comments:
Post a Comment