(Actually, yesterday's)
The Dutch chapter of the environmental activist group Greenpeace on Monday disclosed a trove of documents from the talks over a proposed trade deal between the European Union and the United States.
The documents, Greenpeace said, showed that American trade negotiators had pressed their European counterparts to loosen important environmental and consumer protections, along with other provisions.
NYT
I guess Greenpeace didn't like Obama's remarks about negotiations being kept quiet until after the US presidential nominations were decided.
But American and European trade officials, while not denying the validity of the materials, insisted on Monday that the documents — 248 pages, which Greenpeace said amounted to two-thirds of the latest negotiating text — merely represented negotiating positions, and that the criticisms were off base.
Damage control. Triage.
Today’s shock leak of the text of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) marks the beginning of the end for the hated EU-US trade deal, and a key moment in the Brexit debate. The unelected negotiators have kept the talks going until now by means of a fanatical level of secrecy, with threats of criminal prosecution for anyone divulging the treaty’s contents.
[...]
The European Commission slapped a 30-year ban on public access to the TTIP negotiating texts at the beginning of the talks in 2013, in the full knowledge that they would not be able to survive the outcry if people were given sight of the deal.
[...]
The documents show that US corporations will be granted unprecedented powers over any new public health or safety regulations to be introduced in future. If any European government does dare to bring in laws to raise social or environmental standards, TTIP will grant US investors the right to sue for loss of profits in their own corporate court system that is unavailable to domestic firms, governments or anyone else.
[...]
The leaked texts also reveal how the European Commission is preparing to open up the European economy to unfair competition from giant US corporations, despite acknowledging the disastrous consequences this will bring to European producers, who have to meet far higher standards than pertain in the USA.
According to official statistics, at least one million jobs will be lost as a direct result of TTIP – and twice that many if the full deal is allowed to go through.
Independent
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
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