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posted by janrinok on Friday June 12 2015, @11:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the no-last-minute-changes-please dept.

Ars Technica reports that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreement debate and vote due to be held at the EU Parliament on Wednesday 10th June were postponed at the last minute following an MEP revolt over the back-door inclusion of the controversial Investor-State Dispute Settlement clauses:

Things began yesterday, when an e-mail was sent to MEPs on behalf of Martin Schulz, the President of the European Parliament. It informed them that the text on TTIP agreed by the European Parliament's trade committee (INTA) a fortnight ago would not be voted on as previously agreed. The reason given was that there were so many amendments to the text—more than 200—that it was not possible to consider them in the plenary session. Schulz was therefore asking the INTA committee to re-work the text, taking into account some of the amendments, and discarding others.

Although the European Parliament vote on the TTIP text was cancelled, the plan was to continue with the debate today. But in yet another surprise, early this morning the MEPs voted by an extremely narrow margin—183 in favour and 181 against—to postpone the debate as well. The earliest that these could now take place is July, although they may be pushed into autumn.

Underlying these moves is a growing discontent among the left-wing S&D group with the INTA committee's compromise text, particularly the way it left open the door for the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism. One amendment to the committee's text, which called for the European Parliament to "oppose the inclusion of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) in TTIP," was gaining support among S&D MEPs.

ISDS is a mechanism by which commercial entities can extract financial compensation from governments who have made any of their activities, or planned future ventures, illegal. The inclusion of ISDS clauses in the NAFTA trade agreement has lead to Canada being sued by an oil company for $250million after various provinces banned fracking, Mexico being sued by a waste disposal company for $16.7million for keeping a dump site closed due to concerns over water supply contamination, as well as the US being sued by a fuel company for $1billion after California banned the use of a fuel additive also over water supply contamination concerns, along with hundreds of other suits against all three nations.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @05:05AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @05:05AM (#195656)

    > NAFTA pretty much destroyed Mexico's economy,

    More like failed to produce promised results. [typepad.com]

    How much of the benefits of NAFTA were mitigated by externalities like the re-routing of cocaine from the carribbean (due to DEA 'successes') overland through Mexico and a general level of public and judicial corruption that retarded corporate growth on the whole is hard to say.

    > at the same time seriously disrupted that of the US.

    That seems accurate to me.