Honesty Should Count for Something

I was recently granted a rare glimpse behind the official façade of the EU when I met with its Trade Commissioner in her Brussels office. I was there to discuss the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the controversial treaty currently under negotiation between the EU and the USA.

  Independent

You know, the one that Obama wants the election season to pass so he can get it done quietly.

[T]he European Commission is carrying on the TTIP negotiations behind closed doors without the proper involvement European governments, let alone MPs or members of the public. British civil servants have admitted to us that they have been kept in the dark throughout the TTIP talks, and that this makes their job impossible.

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As Trade Commissioner, Cecilia Malmström occupies a powerful position in the apparatus of the EU. She heads up the trade directorate of the European Commission.

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In our meeting, I challenged Malmström over the huge opposition to TTIP across Europe. In the last year, a record three and a quarter million European citizens have signed the petition against it.

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Malmström acknowledged that a trade deal has never inspired such passionate and widespread opposition. Yet when I asked the trade commissioner how she could continue her persistent promotion of the deal in the face of such massive public opposition, her response came back icy cold: “I do not take my mandate from the European people.”

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TTIP offers a glimpse of the nightmare that the European Commission has in store for each one of us. Cecilia Malmström has shown the contempt with which she and her fellow commissioners view the European people. We have been warned.

Hey, welcome to the 21st century. There are overlords, and there are peons. Guess which one you are.

Such a Deal

The Office of the United States Trade Representative, the agency responsible for negotiating two massive upcoming trade deals, is being led by former lobbyists for corporations that stand to benefit from the deals, according to disclosure forms obtained by The Intercept.

  Unofficial Sources

I know; you’re shocked.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a proposed free trade accord between the U.S. and 11 Pacific Rim countries; the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is a similar agreement between the U.S. and the E.U.

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Critics say the deals will provide corporate interests with sweeping powers to challenge banking and environmental regulations.

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Many of the former clients of the trade officials now negotiating these agreements stand to gain immensely.

Sharon Bomer Lauritsen and Christopher Wilson both represented biotech companies. As economist Joseph Stiglitz has argued, the TPP could restrict competition in the pharmaceutical industry by undermining government regulation of drug prices and by creating new rules to obstruct the introduction of generic drugs.

Robert Holleyman represented software companies. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the TPP “contains DRM [Digital Rights Management] anti-circumvention provisions that will make it a crime to tinker with, hack, re-sell, preserve, and otherwise control any number of digital files and devices that you own.”

Of course, it’s hard to discuss these deals, because the people formulating them are meeting in secret.

The contents of the trade deals are secret and therefore still veiled from scrutiny by the public and even most members of Congress. Only trade officials and select corporate representatives have been able to review them.

And Obama wants to fast track the deals so that Congress doesn’t have time to review them properly when it comes time to vote.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.