TTIP Not Dead: Opposition by France, Germany to Trade Deal is ‘Tactical Retreat’
- TTIP Not Dead: Opposition by France, Germany to Trade Deal is ‘Tactical Retreat’
by http://sputniknews.com/
As many in Germany and France have called to put an end to talks on the implementing the unpopular Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), Radio Sputnik discussed with the director of Global Justice Now, Nick Dearden, if the agreement is dead.
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The ongoing multi-year negotiations for the TTIP, the most wide-ranging international commerce-deregulation treaty in history, have stumbled in the face of enormous resistance, Dearden told Loud & Clear’s Brian Becker.
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“We already have a free trade area with the US, more or less,” he noted. “This [TTIP] is about giving whole new rights to big business, big operations, to allow them to further trample over our democracy, our public services, our public protections, our climate regulations.”
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Cooperation between the US and the EU rests on sharing economic sectors, he said, observing that Europeans are “particularly interested in doing business with big banks and the financial sector” and that Americans are more focused on agriculture.
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Now that many in France and Germany have all but disavowed the TTIP, “the two sides [the EU and the US] find it very difficult to agree on how much they can give away to achieve what they want from it.”
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The ongoing talks on the unpopular treaty are not only “bringing to light difficult negotiations, where each side is betting for different corporate interests,” but also revealing a deep public discontent with the policy of making crucial international decisions behind closed doors.
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Still, the TTIP is not completely moribund, the analyst stressed, suggesting that recent developments are just a tactical retreat. Increased effort will now be put on the Canada-EU Trade deal (CETA), Dearden opined, “which is just as bad as TTIP.”
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