Leaked TTIP documents cast doubt on EU-US trade deal

Posted by George Freund on May 5, 2016

Protesters wear masks of Barack Obama and Angela Merkel as they demonstrate against TTIP free trade agreement. Reuters

Greenpeace says internal documents show US attempts to lower or circumvent EU protection for environment and public health

Arthur Neslen in Brussels Sunday 1 May 201618.00 BST

Talks for a free trade deal between Europe and the US face a serious impasse with “irreconcilable” differences in some areas, according to leaked negotiating texts.

The two sides are also at odds over US demands that would require the EU to break promises it has made on environmental protection.

President Obama said last week he was confident a deal could be reached. But the leaked negotiating drafts and internal positions, which were obtained by Greenpeaceand seen by the Guardian, paint a very different picture.

“Discussions on cosmetics remain very difficult and the scope of common objectives fairly limited,” says one internal note by EU trade negotiators. Because of a European ban on animal testing, “the EU and US approaches remain irreconcilable and EU market access problems will therefore remain,” the note says.

Talks on engineering were also “characterised by continuous reluctance on the part of the US to engage in this sector,” the confidential briefing says.

These problems are not mentioned in a separate report on the state of the talks, also leaked, which the European commission has prepared for scrutiny by the European parliament.

These outline the positions exchanged between EU and US negotiators between the 12th and the 13th round of TTIP talks, which took place in New York last week.

The public document offers a robust defence of the EU’s right to regulate and create a court-like system for disputes, unlike the internal note, which does not mention them.

Jorgo Riss, the director of Greenpeace EU, said: “These leaked documents give us an unparalleled look at the scope of US demands to lower or circumvent EU protections for environment and public health as part of TTIP. The EU position is very bad, and the US position is terrible. The prospect of a TTIP compromising within that range is an awful one. The way is being cleared for a race to the bottom in environmental, consumer protection and public health standards.”

US proposals include an obligation on the EU to inform its industries of any planned regulations in advance, and to allow them the same input into EU regulatory processes as European firms.

American firms could influence the content of EU laws at several points along the regulatory line, including through a plethora of proposed technical working groups and committees.

“Before the EU could even pass a regulation, it would have to go through a gruelling impact assessment process in which the bloc would have to show interested US parties that no voluntary measures, or less exacting regulatory ones, were possible,” Riss said.

The US is also proposing new articles on “science and risk” to give firms greater regulatory say. Disputes over pesticides residues and food safety would be dealt with by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s Codex Alimentarius system.

Environmentalists say the body has loose rules on corporate influence, allowing employees of companies such as BASF, Nestle and Coca Cola to sit on – and sometimes lead – national delegations. Some 44% of its decisions on pesticides residues have been less stringent than EU ones, with 40% of rough equivalence and 16% being more demanding, according to Greenpeace.

GM foods could also find a widening window into Europe, with the US pushing for a working group to adopt a “low level presence initiative”. This would allow the import of cargo containing traces of unauthorised GM strains. The EU currently blocks these because of food safety and cross-pollination concerns.

The EU has not yet accepted the US demands, but they are uncontested in the negotiators’ note, and no counter-proposals have been made in these areas.

In January, the EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmström said [pdf] the precautionary principle, obliging regulatory caution where there is scientific doubt, was a core and non-negotiable EU principle. She said: “We will defend the precautionary approach to regulation in Europe, in TTIP and in all our other agreements.” But the principle is not mentioned in the 248 pages of TTIP negotiating texts.

The European commission has also promised to safeguard environmental laws, defend international standards and protect the EU’s right to set high green benchmarks in future.

But the new leak will not placate critics of the deal, who have pointed to attempts by fossil fuel firms and others to influence its outcome, as a sign of things to come.

The EU negotiators internal note says “the US expressed that it would have to consult with its chemical industry on how to position itself” on issues of market access for non-agricultural goods.

Where industry lobbying in regulatory processes is concerned, the US also “insisted” that the EU be “required” to involve US experts in its development of electrotechnical standards.

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The Plight of Indian Farmers: From Militarism and Monsanto’s GMO to Gandhi and “Bhaskar Save”

By Colin Todhunter

Global Research, May 06, 2016

Region: Asia

Theme: Biotechnology and GMO, Global Economy, Poverty & Social Inequality

US Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders recently tweeted: “It is no mystery why Monsanto fights against our right to know about GMOs in food – business is booming for this huge chemical company.” 

Supporters of GMO are fond of telling everyone that this technology will ‘feed the world’ and those who oppose it are below the standards of common decency. But Sanders hits the nail on the head by implying commercial interests and huge profits take precedence over concern for the public good. Labelling would lead to consumers rejecting food containing GMOs.

Monsanto makes huge annual profits, and, as its front men, CEO Hugh Grant and VP Robb Fraley are amply rewarded. Grant brought in just under $12m in 2015. Fraley raked in just under $3.4m. In January 2015, Monsanto reported a profit of $243m (down from $368m the previous year).
In the meantime, millions of India farmers live on a knife-edge thanks to them having been encouraged to experiment with the Monsanto’s GM cotton. Read about the case of Bharat Dogra here whose shift to GM cotton as a result of heavy pressure from company sales agents proved disastrous. His case is not a one-off. A strong link has been discovered between economic distress among Indian farmers and the planting of Monsanto’s GM cotton.
With a legal obligation to maximise profits for shareholders, Monsanto seems less concerned with the impacts of its products on public health (whether in Argentina or the US) or the conditions of Indian farmers and more concerned with roll-outs of its highly profitable disease-associated weed-killer (Roundup) and its GM seeds.
The negative impacts on health or the debt that Indian farmers find themselves getting into appears to be of concern to rich transnational companies only when it becomes a public relations nightmare. If the issue can be successfully managed through slick PR and an assortment of media and scientist mouthpieces to confuse the issue or attack and smear critics, it’s business as usual.
And to ensure it remains ‘business as usual’, part of the message is that there is no alternative to the chemical-intensive, GMO model of farming. Despite talk by company bosses of GMO being just being one option from a mix of possible options that include for example organic and agroecology, the companies they head or their associates have done everything possible (including bribery and fakery) to ensure their model dominates by smearing certain scientists, capturing trade bodies and negotiations, incorporating themselves within government policy and regulatory agencies, using the concept of ‘commercial confidentiality’ to justify a lack of transparency and by funding universities, media outlets and research with the ultimate aim of privileging their model of agriculture ahead of others, which they or their supporters seek to attack, discredit and marginalise (see this).
The industry and its supporters attempt to wrap themselves in ‘free market’ ideology, while failing to acknowledge that any concept of ‘freedom’ that they attempt to associate with ‘the market’ has long been discredited. In terms of farmers ‘choosing’ to adopt GMO for instance and letting ‘the market decide’, this is little more than rhetoric. A combination of monopoly, financial incentives and coercion put paid to that notion (see this, this, this, this and this). Moreover, we don’t have markets that are ‘free’ but an economic system protected by legislation that enshrines private property as being sacrosanct and allows by various means for the flow of wealth to move from consumers and workers to owners of capital who run cartels and conspire to destroy competition and rig the system to their advantage (see this).
Unfortunately, for the environment and our health, we have ended up with a model of industrialised food and agriculture dominated by green revolution ideology and technologies (and wedded to and fuelled and driven by powerful commercial and geopolitical interests), which include hybrid corporate seeds to be doused with chemicals and an over-reliance on other external inputs from large, rich corporations, ranging from machinery and antibiotics to growth hormones and GMOs.
Rather than present a range of studies and practical examples that indicate alternative approaches are both viable and should play a leading role when it comes to feeding the world sustainably, which have been outlined many times before (for example, see this), it would be interesting to look at the experience of one farmer from India as recently reported in The Hindu.
Prem Singh runs a farm in the drought-hit Bundelkhand area of Uttar Pradesh, where many farmers have committed suicide in the past few decades. While water shortages are one of the problems faced by the people in the region, this is not the case on Singh’s farm, where farming revolves around crop rotation, agricultural biodiversity and organic agriculture. The farm also conducts research for improving soil fertility (see this on improving soil health in the US and the subsequent eradication of synthetic fertilisers, while maintaining/increasing productivity) and seed development.
Singh believes that if his formula of sustainable farming were to be implemented across India, national food security, ecological balance and the prosperity of a farmers’ families could be ensured.
The green revolution and the powers behind it played a big role in dismantling the traditional structure of farming and pushed the farmer to the mercy of unsustainable methods, which also harmed environment. In the area where Singh farms, there has been three recent consecutive droughts, with bouts of unseasonal rains and hailstorm.
The outside know-how of ‘experts’ was forced on farmers who were then forced to abort traditional and more sustainable methods, eventually leading them into debt-traps.
Singh says: “Every time a farmer commits suicide, the government says he was burdened by debt. What is the key reason for the debt? The farmers are dying because they follow the schemes of the government. This is the real injustice.”
In Bundelkhand, there were 17 major droughts during the last century, 10 of them caused by deficient rainfall. But the traditional water-recharging methods, numerous ponds and natural harvesting techniques of people then mitigated the scarcity.
With 60 years’ hands-on farming experience, Bhaskar Save was able to describe how the green revolution in India destroyed traditional farming, which, among other things, was much more drought resistant, and how water-guzzling cash crops led to water shortages and groundwater depletion. Vandana Shiva has also outlined the devastating impact of the green revolution on both food security and water resources along with the degradation of soil, including its diminished capacity for storing water.
As with Save, Singh says the steps taken by the government over a period of decades have nullified the work of his ancestors because the crops previously grown did not require much water. With the green revolution, though, underground water began to be extracted heavily to sustain the thirst of the seeds, whereas local seeds were tested and adapted to fight drought.
At the centre of it all, says Singh, was “the ruling class’s apathy towards farmers manifested in their lack of representation in policy formation.”
Singh’s philosophy and practices reflect those of the late Bhaskar Save, whose farm in Gujarat was both an inspiration and a model for sustainable, productive farming. Save argued that restoring the natural health of Indian agriculture is the path to solve the inter-related problems of poverty, unemployment and rising population. He went on to state that farming should require a minimum of financial capital and purchased inputs and minimum external technology. Agricultural production would increase, without costs increasing, poverty would decline and the rise in population would be spontaneously checked (based on the belief poverty itself leads to high birth rates).
Whereas Prem Singh and Bhaskar Save provide a glimpse into what things could be like, not only in India but elsewhere too, the transnational agribusiness companies have an investment in maintaining the status quo.
This is because their business models and practices grow out of and drive a political and economic system run by oligarchical interests. These companies are instrumental in pushing for corrupt, anti-democratic trade deals like TTIP and fuel and profit from a model of globalisation that encourages unnecessary massive environmental destruction, the production of bad food, unsustainable farming practices and the use of health-damaging inputs. The system moreover thrives on an urban-centric model of development centred on resource-depletion, over-consumption and an economic neoliberalism underpinned by imperialist wars.
It all begs the question: what future humanity?
A future based on uncontrolled urban sprawl, worklessness, massive inequalities (and subsequent political repression) and conflict over finite resources, which continues to push the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation, as well as the appropriation of all facets of life from water and land to forests, seeds and food by powerful corporations.
Or a future that adheres to a model based on certain Gandhian principles, such as indigenous capability and local self-reliance, wherein people limit their needs, live within the limits imposed by the environment and work with the natural ecology rather than by forcing it to bend to the will of profiteering industries.

“… Gandhiji called the so-called modern society a nine-day wonder. Poverty has been aggravated due to cumulative environmental degradation on account of resource depletion, increasing disparities, rural migration to urban areas resulting in deforestation, soil erosion, loss of soil fertility, desertification, biological impoverishment, pollution of air, water and land on account of lack of sanitation, chemical fertilizers, pesticides and their biomagnification, and a whole range of other problems.” T N Khoshoo: ‘Mahatma Gandhi: An Apostle of Applied Human Ecology‘

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Colin Todhunter, Global Research, 2016

The TTIP Leaks. The 248 Pages Reveal a Hidden Economic, Social and Environmental Agenda

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark

Global Research, May 06, 2016

Region: Europe

Theme: Environment, Global Economy, Intelligence

The monstrous Siamese twin of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), has been in a growing puddle of dispute after 248 pages of its content were leaked.[1]
The organization behind the measure, Greenpeace Netherlands, had done its best to shed light on a document that remains obscured, clandestine and hidden.  The TTIP leaks were initiated prior to the commencement of the 13^th round of TTIP negotiations between the EU and the US held in New York (Apr 25-29).  According to the organisation, the final document will consist of 25 to 30 chapters with extensive annexes.
The leaked and hefty portion constitutes roughly half to two-thirds of the text under negotiation, providing more than a decent snifter as to what European and US diplomats are up to.  They have met 13 times over three years in situations that were far from transparent.[2] Topics traversed are bound to worry any individuals with even the slightest leanings to democratic representativeness.  “Whether you care about environmental issues, animal welfare, labour rights or internet privacy, you should be concerned about what is in these leaked documents.”[3]
A few pointers from the leaks are worth noting.  None of the chapters in the released portions make reference to the principle of General Exceptions permitting states to regulate trade “to protect human, animal and plant life or health” for “the conservation of exhaustible natural resources”.  The omission suggests who, and what the negotiators are really barracking for.
Similarly to the TPPA, matters of climate change get short shrift, notably in the chapter covering National Treatment and Market Access for Goods.  Showing yet again that a privileged corporate interest is inherently hostile to the commonweal, trade is deemed a domain outside the impact of climate change.
Overwhelming floor room is given to corporate agents who are noted in the negotiations as important partners in the determination of foreign policy. While that position has been clearly articulated by US negotiators, the EU remains coy about industry influence.  The strongmen and women of capitalism are never far away. Little wonder, then, that popularity for such an arrangement is as low as 39 per cent in Germany and 50 per cent in France.
Those at the European Commission, a body that has been historically indifferent to concepts of sovereignty, has taken the view that they were open all along, the true doyens of transparency.  EU trade commissioner Cecelia Malmström seemed to find the fuss over the leaks amusing.  “In the past year, the European Commission has opened up the negotiations to make our positions on all matters in the negotiations public.  After each negotiation round, we publish round reports as well as our position papers and textual proposals.  So the positions of the EU are well-known and nothing new.”[4]
Malmström is certainly right in so far as the Commission has been spouting fact sheets, making assumptions that these are perfect in conveying pictures of accuracy to constituents across Europe.  As aspirational as they are, such publications only give a sense about some of the essential fault lines in the negotiations.  For one, they show that Malmström’s stance that no “EU trade agreement will ever lower our level of protection of consumers, or food safety, or of the environment” seems unduly confident.
The leaks sent ripples through various parliaments in Europe.  France’s François Hollande decided on Tuesday to make his opposition clear.  “We will never accept questioning essential principles for our agriculture, our culture and for the reciprocity of access to public [procurement] markets.”  France’s trade secretary, Matthias Fekl, even went so far as to suggest that the agreement, in its current form “would be a bad deal,” one which needed to be suspended.[5]  Even prior to the release by Greenpeace, German Deputy Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel had suggested that negotiations had moved into a glacial state.
Such sentiments do little to deflate such ideologues as US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, who puts such suspicions down to matters of misunderstanding.  “I think,” she explained to the German magazine Der Spiegel, “we have to do a better job of educating our peoples about the importance of trade.”[6]  In this cosy universe of commercial dealing, trade is all, trade is good – why fight it?
The “TTIP,” pushes Pritzker, “is a geostrategic choice to strengthen the trans-Atlantic bonds between two regions that share the same values and standards.”  She proves deaf to questions about concerns of re-enforcing corporate market power at the expense of accountability, insisting on altering “rules and regulations that are standing in the way of doing more business together.”  US President Barack Obama similarly intoned on his recent visit to the UK that the TTIP would eliminate “regulatory and bureaucratic irritants and blockages to trade”.[7]
To that end, the Commission has attempted to give the impression that pitfalls can, in
http://www.globalresearch.ca/wp-admin/post.php?post=5523792&action=edit&message=10ime, be papered over with the good sense of compromise.
As diversely opposed as the parties are, movement, of the negative sort, is possible.  Positions can, as was all too evident in the TPPA negotiations, bend.  In some cases, they can be abandoned altogether.  That remains the greatest danger: the document continues to flicker, and it will take more than Gallic opposition, Germanic scepticism, and general European stubbornness, to sink it.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

[1] https://www.ttip-leaks.org/

[2] http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/05/03/french-president-says-non-to-ttip/

[3] https://www.ttip-leaks.org/

[4] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/ttip-leak-trade-deal-greenpeace-eu-us-tpp-is-this-the-end-a7012976.html

[5] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36191577

[6] http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/ttip-interview-with-us-commerce-secretary-penny-pritzker-a-1089072.html

[7] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/ttip-leak-greenpeace-trade-deal-eu-us-tpp-ceta-health-environment-a7014731.html

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Dr. Binoy Kampmark, Global Research, 2016