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EU ministers demand complete restart of the controversial trade deal that has sparked mass protests across the continent. European Union ministers today admitted that a giant EU-US trade deal is dead in its current form, with drastic change needed to salvage any hope of a deal going ahead.
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership [TTIP] has sparked a widespread backlash and now lies in tatters in the wake of massive protests across the continent.
Austrian Economy Minister Reinhold Mitterlehner said that the pact now has, "such negative connotations", that the best hope was to "completely relaunch with a new name after the US elections. Mitterlehner also demanded "more transparency and clearer objectives." Negotiations for the free-trade zone have so far been held behind closed doors.
Slovak economy minister Peter Ziga, was similarly pessimistic, saying that a "new start or some new approach [was] needed, while EU trade commissioner " Cecilia Malmstroem said the likelihood of a deal was "becoming smaller and smaller", as she entered the talks.
Several EU representatives blamed US intransigence for the gridlock. The deal now has "only a small chance of success unless the United States starts to give a bit of ground," Belgian Finance Minister Didier Reynders said.
Public services, especially the NHS [National Health Service], are in the firing line. One of the main aims of TTIP is to open up Europe's public health, education and water services to US companies. This could essentially mean the privatisation of the NHS. The European Commission has claimed that public services will be kept out of TTIP. However, according to The Huffington ost, the UK Trade Minister Lord Livingston has admitted that talks about the NHS were still on the table
[...] The EU has admitted that TTIP will probably cause unemployment as jobs switch to the US, where labour standards and trade union rights are lower. It has even advised EU members to draw on European support funds to compensate for the expected unemployment. Examples from other similar bi-lateral trade agreements around the world support the case for job losses. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the US, Canada and Mexico caused the loss of one million US jobs over 12 years, instead of the hundreds of thousands of extra that were promised
(Score: 5, Interesting) by julian on Sunday September 25 2016, @09:22PM
This was barely a "trade" agreement. It's another attempt to "harmonize" the (lack of) regulations on businesses across the Atlantic. Here in the USA we give businesses huge amounts of leeway and freedom to operate even when their rent-seeking behavior is detrimental--and the corporations that influence our government would like the rest of the world to operate this way too. Thankfully, some people in Europe still believe that the economy is a tool to serve humanity, not the other way around.
Frankly I'm glad the EU and US can't cooperate. Anything they agree on isn't going to be good for the average citizens of either region.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 25 2016, @10:01PM
The economy is the way things work.
Not the way you want it to work.
Not the way you think it should work.
Not the way some influential thinkers thought it might work.
Black markets? The real economy. Jurisdiction shopping? The real economy. Smuggling? The real economy.
Frankly, every time you have independent, mutually respecting sovereign jurisdictions, without harmonisation? You're giving the cryptofascist paper tiger running dog bourgeois oppressor overlord class enemies of the lumpenproletariat a set of walls to hide behind. And they do. And they will.
Not that there's anything wrong with that - just saying, it's part of the deal and you should either make your peace with that, or start looking for ways to get those treaties signed.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Monday September 26 2016, @03:28AM
Black markets? The real economy. Jurisdiction shopping? The real economy. Smuggling? The real economy.
Now let me get this clear: you are saying that capitalism is organized crime? Makes sense, when you point it out. So I guess we will just have to change "how things work", and make the "economy" illegal. Then we can start a whole new area of opportunity, "economic bounty hunters", or as I would like to call them, "privateers"! We just give them a letter of some sort, a "letter of Marque", and they could keep the spoils of any economy they managed to plunder! Full employment at last, and the freedom of the high seas of international finance!! Arrrgh!
The Crimson Permanent Assurance! [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 26 2016, @04:22AM
Nope, not the point at all.
The point is that any attempt to arrange an economy based on wishful thinking about how things ought to work, and how people ought to behave, and how lovely it would be if people would just stop acting in their own interests for a while, is exactly that: wishful thinking.
The examples from history are numerous and ubiquitous, where relevant documentation exists. Whether we're talking about smugglers off the cornish coast, the black market for food items in WWII, bootleggers in Prohibition (or today, for that matter), or the entire miserable, misbegotten War on Drugs, these things are reality.
Now, given that arranging one's affairs to best advantage in tax terms is explicitly legal, and given that international sovereignty combined with varying tax codes creates gaps that can be exploited, and that different trading rules offer cunning traders favourable opportunities for extracting more from markets than they would otherwise be able to, one should fully expect these things to happen.
The corollary is that one should not expect to be rid of these things unless one could develop some sort of treaty or accord to rationalise transnational concerns. I take no position on the desirability of that treaty, but merely observe that the same people who rail against the exploitative ultrarich and their diabolical plan to squeeze the (metaphorical) balls of the workers like so many lemons, often tend to rail just as hard against the kinds of treaties that might actually have a hope of introducing normalisation.
In short, if you dislike globalisation, you should probably resign yourself to the ultrarich such people usually profess to despise, taking full advantage of global fragmentation.
I know I certainly would, if I were ultrarich.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 26 2016, @11:48AM
Balls. The ultra-rich are the prime mover behind globalization.
Captcha: brettonwoods
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Monday September 26 2016, @06:53AM
Criminal activity is how humans really work, not thi regulated bullshit with all the laws.
Murder? Real humanity!
Rape? Real humanity!
Rekless driving? Real humanity!
Killing the rich to distribute wealth more evenly? Real humanity!
Personally I prefer some enforced ground-rules to ensure a level of fairness.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Monday September 26 2016, @09:42AM
So, why didn't the USA just drop the ISDS paragraph from the negotiation?
They knew it was unacceptable to other sovereign governments, where the multinationals do not always overrule the voice of the citizens.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RamiK on Sunday September 25 2016, @10:55PM
Focusing just on the TTIP is a straw man when so many agreements failed as well. There were medical relieve bodies that failed to pass appropriation committees. Malaria and Zika mosquitoes extermination that can't be agreed on... Syria's intervention... Climate change resolutions and regulatory work...
It's similar to Milton Freedman's arguments against the FDA's over-regulation: We cheer for the bad things that got stopped. But we're missing all the good stuff that could have happened.
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