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Comment by abpavel | Hacker News Reader

It's especially frightening for us Europeans, that TTIP can overrule existing local legislature, and that officials representing EU states only have access to the full text of 600 pages for 2 hours every thursday, accompanied by two security guards beside you at all times, behind closed doors, after the metal detector where you have leave all your electronics and recording devices behind. Oh, and you're not allowed to take any notes, not even with a pencil. Good luck with booking a slot! If another representative is interested in reading a couple more pages this week, you'll need to wait till next week.

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Just to make one thing clear: Before the treaty comes into force it needs to be voted on by the Euroepan parliament and national parliaments. Before the votes the treaty will be published. What is a highly guarded secret are the current drafts, not the final agreement.

It's actually not really different from how most laws are written, especially those proposed by the government. While those are in the drafting phase MPs usally don't have access at all.

That doesn't make me feel any better. This treaty and the debate around it have become very public, and continuing to deal in private where even lawmakers are restricted from seeing it can be absolutely nothing other than trying to avoid controversy and public debate.

By the time this is in its final form, many countries (like the US) would have basically already voted for approval, meaning a public debate will be too late and all but meaningless.

Yeah. Make them public. Every populist party in every member state would have a wonderful time catering to tin foil hats and making everyone with half a clue miserable.

This is not how negotiations work. You don't make preliminary talks public. Many of the things in those talks are outrageous and no one believes they will be in the final draft. It's how you negotiate. You ask for X, then the opposing side tells you no, BUT if you manage to do Y, then we can do a scaled back version of X. You tell them no, BUT if they do X and Z, you will make Y happen. All sides make concessions and sh... stuff gets done.

Making the above process public will tie the negotiators hands.

Why not. If I can argue as a leading party, that my populous would never consent to this or that feature of the treaty, I gain enormous leverage.

And seen another way. If any majority of people inside a democracy does not want to have a feature it is the politicians job to listen to the people and do their bidding. Politicians are there to server the people not to rule them.

You have time for that. After the draft is published. People are saying that this is NEGOTIATED in private. Which is how negotiations work. What will be proposed as a draft depends on many variables. Accepting the draft and making it into laws takes many steps, the final one being approval from every member's parliament.

We don't have time for that in the USA, for the TPP, which seems analogous to the TTIP. Our "representatives" will get one vote, up or down, on the entire TPP, no debate. During TPP "negotiations", corporations got access to the drafts. It wasn't negotiated strictly in private. Corporations are the only stakeholders, and US citizens have had zero say.

Well I do not see, why corporations then get an early say in the "negotiations" when the people are not able to do so via their elected representatives. Because, as you can clearly see, my representative might have the right to read some of it, but he has no right to alter the "negotiations".

The people negotiating on my behalf are so far removed from my actual vote, that I could not possible call this democratic.

So no, when the final draft is released, we will have the european parliament get some short amount of time (easily too short to really grasp implications), no real debate, but a fast vote. Then this will have to be implemented into national laws (without another parliamentarian debate on a national basis).

Let's see, what you have to say then in regards to this process.

I say there is enough time, you say there isn't.

What is left to say?

Wow. What an elaborate argument. How grown up. Someone could label your statement as a kille phrase.

I now see how you do "discourse" and can understand why you do not fear TTIP "discourse". As yours and the so called "discourse" are equally non existent and on the same level.

Please. I beg you to refrain from an answer, as I write this just for the afterworld. I do not try to feed you, the troll.

It is pretty ignorant to label someone as troll because you do not agree with him.

And just FYI, this style of "discourse" is exactly the reason why TTIP negotiations should not be made public. A politician can rip apart through all the logic here and the public will eat it up.

Human inventiveness is infinite, can take us to the moon and land supercomputers in our hands... but apparently making smart business and transparent democracy compatible is just too damn difficult.

Human stupidity is infinite, not our inventiveness.

Einstein's words, not mine.

So you accept oligarchial rule because you don't trust your fellow man?

What a sad world you live in.

How did you come with this dichotomy?

He probably didn't say that. As http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/04/universe-einstein/ points out, the original saying was attributed to a "great astronomer", then followed by "To-day we know that this statement is not quite correct. Einstein has proved that the universe is limited." These later got merged.

In any case, you are making a fallacious argument from authority. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority#Appeal... :

> A common example of the fallacy is appealing to an authority in one subject to pontificate on another - for example citing Albert Einstein as an authority on religion when his expertise was in physics.

In fact, I don't care that Einstein told it. Or didn't.

I quoted it because it sums my thesis pretty well. People are very, very stupid. You cannot count on them not being swayed by some pretty words and blowing the whole treaty out of the water with some misguided protests.

Perhaps if you frequent HN, you don't know how stupid people are, because you only talk to the the smartest 10%.

Are you one of these "Dark Enlightenment" people who want to go back to unvarnished rule by an elite and stuff like that?

People being stupid (short-sighted, narrow-minded, self-centered, ignorant) includes people in power. If you're not a fan of democracy, you should just say so rather than dance around it.

Do the smartest 10% cherry pick misquotations in order to defend their arguments via a logical fallacy?

>This is not how negotiations work.

You mean it's not how oligarchs want it to work. Proponents of unpopular policy proposals want to govern people, but they don't want to have to explain themselves to the people they propose to govern.

>You don't make preliminary talks public.

Just because it doesn't always happen, does not mean that it never happens, shouldn't happen, or can't happen.

>Making the above process public will tie the negotiators hands.

Which is the point of democratic processes. It is exactly what people want. I'm not sure what they're worried about anyway, in the US the proletariat has been convinced to go along with all manner of political and economic policy that goes against their best interests; they beg for more of it.

It worked almost like that in the USA with the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Text of the TPP totally kept secret, even from the US Senate and House. Before our "representatives" got a chance to read the treaty, someone forced a vote on trade authority. Now, there's a short period to read a long treaty, which is being changed by the "legal scrub" process, and there's one opportunity to vote on it, no debate on the provisions, very little debate overall. In short, TPP is getting rammed through in the USA. All objections are getting overridden, hard.

Well, that's the least charitable way to frame it. A more accurate way to frame it:

* The United States Congress does not really get line-item veto on giant international trade agreements that affect dozens of countries, all of whom also must ratify the treaty.

* Trade promotion authority is simply the authorization for the administration to negotiate the treaty.

* By the time TPP is ratified by Congress at the end of 2016, it will have been public for over a year, and we'll have change-bars for the "legal scrub" stuff Techdirt is so worried about.

My real objection to US concern over TPP is that TPP has minimal impact on US domestic law. If you're a New Zealander, or, worse, Vietnamese, I totally understand how the TPP is problematic. The idea that a treaty that mostly serves to normalize global trade rules around the ones already in place in the US has been "rammed through in the USA" seems pretty arrogant to me.

> The United States Congress does not really get line-item veto on giant international trade agreements that affect dozens of countries, all of whom also must ratify the treaty.

Its not a treaty. If it were a treaty, it would have to be ratified by a 2/3 vote in the Senate, and could, indeed, not be modified on a line-item level. What is put before Congress is a regular US law, not a treaty ratification, that needs a mere majority, but in both houses, and which just happens to be intended to implement an non-treaty agreement negotiated by the executive.

The US Congress does, really, have line-item authority over regular US laws.

> Trade promotion authority is simply the authorization for the administration to negotiate the treaty.

No, its not. Its a (without binding effect, since Constitutionally the Congress cannot bind its own future actions) commitment as to how Congress will apply its powers after such negotiations. The power to negotiate with foreign powers and submit whatever it wants to the Congress after such negotiations is inherent executive power that requires no authorization.

> The US Congress does, really, have line-item authority over regular US laws.

I don't think legality was the issue. The issue is that there are dozens of countries that need to vote on the same exact text for it to have an effect.

Surely the US Congress could modify it but then the other players will at best ratify a different version and at worse change items here and there themselves.

In both cases, what you get is not an international trade agrement. You may as well vote "no" or not even try to negotiate a deal.

> In both cases, what you get is not an international trade agrement. You may as well vote "no" or not even try to negotiate a deal.

Right, which is the exact point of this whole tiresome conversation about negotiations.

People who don't want TPP (or TTIP) to become law have figured out that it's easier to attack the process than to attack the substance[1], and the outcome would be the same.

[1] Not because the substance is unassailable, but because talking about it requires informing the listener, whereas invoking fears of secret cabals does not.

The content of both includes and provides for secret extra-national cabals... So that might be where some of the fears come from.

> The US Congress does, really, have line-item authority over regular US laws.

Except that, in this case, only if they first vote to change their own rules, which were set when TPA was passed. So they dig themselves a small hole, which they can jump out of without help. Nothing unconstitutional about that. Congressional-Executive Agreements are a pragmatic solution to a coordination problem, using constitutionally provided tools to solve a problem whose complexity was not envisaged by the authors.

Fun fact: the U.S. avoids entering into treaties which override our laws, despite explicit constitutional language which says that they would. Best to change laws by statute, so everyone is clear, and everyone doesn't have to do a bunch of supremacy analysis. We'll even pass implementing legislation for treaties that in other nations are self-executing.

> My real objection to US concern over TPP is that TPP has minimal impact on US domestic law.

That is a mischaracterization. There is plenty in the TPP that sucks if you are a citizen of the US as opposed to a corporation.

Many people in the US are trying desperately to stop the TPP. We simply don't have a lot of voice.

I think (or at least hope) the main cause for concern in the US not that it will make the law worse, but that it takes the law out of our hands, so any problems with current law become almost impossible to fix. When there's an over-broad law, it's possible (and sometimes it even actually happens) for Congress to recognize the mistakes in the original law and dial things back a bit. But once it's in a treaty, Hollywood kind of has DC over a barrel.

This "negotiations must be secret to work" principle seems an odd argument to make.

In the UK, for example, our national laws go through several stages of development in Parliament. Over the course of many months or years there will often be thousands of comments contributed by MPs, Lords, civil servants, independent subject matter experts, special interest groups, and the general public.

There are no draconian restrictions on seeing or discussing the work in progress of the kind we're talking about here. No-one is wearing tin foil hats. No-one is spending their entire working lifetime fending off crazy theories from everyone with half a clue.

And yet, as you say, stuff still gets done.

You are comparing domestic and international legislation...

What is international legislation?

No, I'm demonstrating that if an entire programme of complex proposals can routinely become law after open debate among thousands of participants with often conflicting views and preferences, the idea that a single trade agreement can't be hammered out without resorting to secrecy and subterfuge by a small group of mostly unidentified participants is absurd.

It is a very different playing field. In one case you have agenda for the UK, in the other you have for the UK and Romania. Local forces will escalate the tension and break up all talks.

And yet, again, we have both bilateral and multilateral negotiations going on all the time in international relations, without the same level of controversy that the likes of TPP and TTIP have attracted.

Discussions in the UN about issues as big as imposing sanctions or going to war have taken place with more transparency than we're seeing here. National politicians who have defied public opinion on such matters have sometimes paid a heavy price for it at the next elections.

I mean, seriously, we're talking about a bilateral trade deal here, not the fate of humanity. Yes, each party has some internal political structure and local variations, but the point of both the EU and the US is to have regulated, harmonious local variations so the whole can still function effectively.

Please tell me, if everything is above board, what is so secret about this kind of a deal that it justifies obstructing not only the public but their elected representatives from watching it develop? For that matter, why should those elected representatives not then block the entire thing on principle, if they are only to be asked to rubber stamp the results without substantial scrutiny or a meaningful opportunity to actually represent the interests of their electorates?

The UN example is especially apt. Are you sure you are not arguing my point?

Also, this is getting very tiresome. Representatives have enough time to familiarize themselves with the draft and decide what to vote. This whole "the secret cabal is making treaties without you" is nothing more than sensationalist FUD. Only the negotiations are in secret. As they should be.

Are you sure you are not arguing my point?

I'm not even sure what your point is any more. Looking through your comments in this thread, your argument appears to be that negotiations on international agreements must happen in secret, because reasons.

Representatives have enough time to familiarize themselves with the draft and decide what to vote.

We've already seen procedural technicalities used to set up end-runs around proper scrutiny by elected representatives, in the context of international agreements in the recent past. This has been done both in the US and the EU.

Even if those elected representatives do have ample time for scrutiny, if they have no meaningful opportunity to actually represent their electorates by advocating substantial changes as appropriate, the scrutiny is of very little value.

True or false? "When they are called on to scrutinise and approve TTIP, the directly elected representatives of people in the US and the EU member states will have available to them an effective mechanism to change the substance of the proposal in areas they do not believe to be in the interests of those they represent."

How can every country's MPs change the agreement? How does this work in practice? Have you thought this through?

Individually they can't, of course, but consulting them as a group is reasonable for something you expect every country to implement. Without the backing of the elected national government, you have no democratic mandate to change national laws or update national policies to reflect your international agreement.

One reasonable process might be having each country send their appointed representatives to negotiate initially, then bringing back a first attempt at consensus for proper and open scrutiny by national authorities. Then you send your delegates back to attempt to resolve any show-stopping issues and prepare final wording. Finally you ask each country's national government to ratify the final agreement. If really necessary, the national scrutiny/delegate negotiations cycle can be repeated first, though if that is happening it suggests the attempted scope of the agreement is too broad to be practical.

This way you would have a chance for people who were actually elected to influence the outcome usefully, without resorting to ongoing line-by-line revisions by thousands of individual MP, MEPs, US senators, etc. You just have to recognise that your delegated negotiators are not sent with the authority to make major policy decisions but only to reach a consensus that all parties can accept on areas where you are already broadly in agreement.

If they aren't able to do that, such that they can come back with a proposal that each country can clearly favour overall with no deal-breaking terms, then again they probably shouldn't have been trying to form such a complicated agreement about such controversial areas between so many different parties in the first place.

And how do you think every country came up with their agendas for the negotiations?

Are you absolutely sure that you know how the current process works? Or you just read some articles here and there and concocted the story in your head?

And how do you think every country came up with their agendas for the negotiations?

I don't know, and I don't think you do either, because it was done in secret with no open, democratic debate. You can tell this from the fact that many elected representatives who participate in the normal democratic processes are among those complaining about a lack of access.

TTIP -- and many corporate-backed international trade agreements -- are deliberately designed to use the excuse of "international negotiations" to get concessions from multiple states that wouldn't survive scrutiny through the legislative process in many of the target states, so legislators in all the states can use the "we don't really want this bit, but its necessary because the rest of the agreement is good, and we can't change one jot or tittle of what has been negotiated" defense to their citizens. Its a product of the same type of corporate-government backdoor influence peddling that domestic legislative transparency provisions like sunshine and open-meeting laws are designed to prevent.

No doubt we will be hearing much more of this in the UK over the next few months, given that EU rules have frequently been used as an excuse in a similar fashion. It's one of the arguments in favour of the UK leaving.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm a little surprised that the out campaign hasn't made more of TTIP itself as a textbook example of the democratic deficit they complain about. Various people in reply have pointed out that the current UK administration would seem likely to support a similar trade deal with the US directly anyway and in practice it may be other EU states putting the brakes on parts of TTIP, so possibly raising the issue would backfire.

> No doubt we will be hearing much more of this in the UK over the next few months, given that EU rules have frequently been used as an excuse in a similar fashion.

Perhaps to some extent (and, being a citizen of neither the UK nor any other EU state, I really don't have much invested in the Brexit debate), though the situation with the EU -- which has directly accountable organs and many of the same kinds of accountability and transparency provisions that are common in national government -- seems different (in general, more like the US federal/state situation, where overlapping powers mean that there are multiple levels at which an interested party can attempt to achieve the same kind of goal and the can, to an extent, forum-shop for the most friendly authority, but still be subject to the same general type of exposure through the legislative process, even if the details are different at different levels.)

There's probably also an argument that without the EU, more of Britain's affairs would be subject to topic-specific, specially-negotiated-through-opaque-process, deals.

FYI, a large part of the controversy over both the EU in general and TTIP in particular is that only Members of the European Parliament are directly elected by the public. The other powerful elements of the EU administration are effectively appointed in various ways, being only indirectly (often through several levels) accountable to the average citizen.

MEPs do have some real power, particularly since the Lisbon Treaty, but in practice that power is often like a veto: they can decline to approve some pretty big deals, but unless there is a credible risk of throwing something out in its entirety, MEPs don't necessarily get much input into the details.

At the moment, it looks like TTIP may be one of those cases. MEPs, and very recently some of the national equivalents, have only been given access to the current proposed text at all if they agreed to very restrictive conditions. Everything else is being done by people who aren't directly accountable to the public, and in most cases aren't even readily identifiable.

This is one of the reasons critics of TTIP will advocate striking the whole thing down. Some really do think it should be thrown out on principle as an affront to democracy, but others are playing a more strategic game, knowing that if the European Parliament starts to look like it actually might flex its muscles in that way, those promoting TTIP will be forced to open it up to full MEP scrutiny and get them back on side before there is any chance of the deal being successful.

> FYI, a large part of the controversy over both the EU in general and TTIP in particular is that only Members of the European Parliament are directly elected by the public. The other powerful elements of the EU administration are effectively appointed in various ways, being only indirectly (often through several levels) accountable to the average citizen.

Its interesting that that would be controversial about the EU -- isn't that true of many national governments within the EU (most certainly including the UK) -- as well, that the only directly-elected body at the level of the national government is the Parliament, and there are all kinds of other powerful offices and bodies, and the people in those offices and bodies are all appointed in various ways, being only indirectly accountable to the citizenry?

Yes, it's also true at national government levels, and the systems do sometimes get criticised on similar grounds as a result.

I'd say at least for the UK the main difference is that there is still a real prospect of holding the appointed parts of the government to account at the next election. Technically, we elect local MPs, with all the usual objections about first past the post. In reality, the party a prospective MP represents is the dominant factor in who wins, except in a few rare cases with perhaps an overriding local issue or protest vote. Consequently the PM (the first indirectly appointed role, normally determined by who can command majority support in Parliament) and government ministers (the next tier, effectively appointed by the PM) are still strongly accountable to the electorate in practice. If they do unpopular things, the MPs from whom the administration as a whole derives its power, and most of the officials as MPs themselves, will face the consequences at the next election. (This doesn't apply to the same extent for government ministers who are Lords rather than MPs, but appointments to the entirely undemocratic House of Lords is a whole issue in itself.)

This is quite different to the executive of the EU, where Commissioners sent by member states are infamously often failed but high profile national politicians who are either being given a pat on the back by a friendly administration or shipped out of the way for a while because they're too dangerous to keep around back home. Which mandate each Commissioner is given then depends on the President of the Commission, who in turn is decided through such a complicated process that I won't even try to describe it here. If you as a citizen don't like the way an incumbent European Commissioner is handling their brief, there is no real prospect of influencing them to change it. Even in the face of overwhelming public opposition to some policy, by the time the people have voted to change the balance of power in enough places that either the Commissioner is no longer appointed by their home state or the European Parliament can bring down a Commission, the term of office would probably be up anyway.

Whether on purpose or not, you're moving the goalposts.

By the time a law arrives at the first public comment stage, even in the UK, it has already been the subject of a lot of conversation and negotiation behind closed doors. MPs do not have cameras in their offices and public file servers. Bills introduced for consideration do not spring fully-formed from the forehead of one MP, surprising everyone around them. They are talked about at length before even being drafted.

Of course, but the point isn't really what happens before the first useful draft is available, it's how much more happens afterwards, and in particular, how much realistic scope there is for scrutiny and public opinion to be taken into account and the details amended before anything becomes law.

> continuing to deal in private where even lawmakers are restricted from seeing it can be absolutely nothing other than trying to avoid controversy and public debate

Indeed, they just don't want us little folks to disturb their dealings.

They say it's a free trade deal of sorts, but actual free trade could be arranged overnight: just stop intervening in trade, and it will be free.

I get the feeling that the tone on HN has changed a bit. Are intelligent people finally waking up to doubt their "representatives'" or governments' good intentions?

It's difficult to see how they could make it any clearer that they're working against our interests. Going full police state on us would do it, but there's not much room in between.

If the deal is done in secret, people'll complain that its secret.

If the deal is not done in secret, people'll complain about the draft terms before it is finalized.

> If the deal is not done in secret, people'll complain about the draft terms before it is finalized.

That little bit there is called democracy. Without transparency, it's called fascism.

And the issue with that is...?

"complain" just means negative feedback which should be taken into consideration since a draft is a version which is still being worked on. Isn't that how it should really be?

Complain is a very mild word. Proposals will be shred to pieces by local politicians looking for quick score and media always on the look for a sensation. Nothing will ever get signed if proposals are made public.

If you can shred something to pieces then maybe it shouldn't be signed? And if it was good then they wouldn't be able to shred it to pieces.

Sounds like you'd be afraid of public discourse.

That is unbelievably naive, or immature. One of the two, I'm not sure which.

Public discourse isn't the same as what happens when the media spins a narrative about a piece of legislation. You and I both know they don't need truth to make a story.

And small-time politicians looking to make a name for themselves will always impede the process, regardless of whether or not it's a good process.

Having the public voice their dissent is good. Letting a piece of legislation get ripped to shreds because some small-name representative has a hard-on for one of the bill's co-creators is not.

So? Let the publicity stunts happen. You don't have to pay too much attention to them. You can take valid critizism on board.

Look, the thing has to be made public to be voted upon anyways and at that point the small time poltician with a hard-on as you put it can also start his show.

You shouldn't be afraid that some idiots talk crap about something you work on if you really believe in it. Just follow through and see if it gets public support in the end or not.

You just completely ignored how the real world works. It might seem sound and logical in your head - and to be honest, it is - but it is just not how it works out in reality.

You seem to think we live in this perfect world where only rational things happen and everyone is well read and educated. Unfortunately, we do not and please open your eyes already. Thank you.

So can you tell me with some proper arguments why what I said doesn't work? I'd be more likely to believe you if you said more than "this is not how the real world works". Thanks.

This is not meant as an insult, really. You genuinely don't understand how politics works at all.

It's not just some idiot talking crap about something you're working on. This isn't a college project. It's someone putting your entire past, present, and future on television and the radio making false claims about you. It's someone making your personal information known publicly so you can receive threats. If you don't have the same dollars as the other guy, it's someone controlling the public narrative to paint you as Satan himself.

It's so much more in depth than taking valid criticism. YOU don't have to pay attention to them, as the person fronting the bill. But the 300,000,000 other people in the US will.

And then, right or wrong, good or bad, you lose. Again, not an insult, but yours is an unbelievably naive view of how politics works.

What you've described is the case about any law or policy. And yet people debate them. Details of them. On the floor of congress, around the dinner table, on talk radio, on TV news, all the time. In public. And people don't whine and cry and complain about how mean voters are. Why should the corporate policymakers who write the TPP/TPIP get a special shield? Are they particularly sensitive and fragile as a class? Or are they writing laws that wouldn't survive a fraction of a second in public because they are corrupt and anti-citizen?

If you think people would get upset about trade policy, maybe you should look at issues that ARE debated in detail like abortion, gay marriage, gun control. People are murdered over these issues. Trade policy barely registers on the scale.

Really? People debate the negotiation of international treaties? Can you point 2 or 3, please, since my memory is not what it used to be.

Again -- "People currently do not do this, ergo they should not" is not an argument.

If you have a proposoal that is so vulnerable and weak that it can't handle being in the public eye, or (in this case) the process that crafts it ensures it is so obviously corrupt and blatantly anti-citizen, then it shouldn't ever be allowed to become law.

The bill being "torn to shreds" is a feature, not a bug -- the citizenry of every involved country would all be a lot better off if the TPP and TTIP were subject to the same scrutiny as any other law and invariably torn to shreds.

I don't think you've read the comments you are replying to.

Negotiators make proposals which might seem outrageous. Nobody thinks they will get drafted. It is a step towards getting a concession from the opposing side. Just like in the movies. One side starts at 4000, the other at 1,000 and they meet at 2,500.

If they had to negotiate in public, they would no longer be able to argue this way, you are correct. They would also be unable to make concessions and compromises which are bad for the voting citizens of the country. And they would have to be clear about what their policy objectives are.

You keep saying "but... but... it would be different from how it is now!" all over this thread (and are frequently rude and condescending). And everyone else is saying "yes, exactly, that's the point". Different is not bad. You need to go a step further and explain why transparency would /not be better/, pointing out that having our laws drafted by corporate interests with near zero citizen input in secret is the way we currently choose to do things is not good enough.

No, this is not what I am saying. I'm saying that you have unrealistic expectations. You expect the general populous, the media and the opportunistic politicians to act in a perfectly rational way. In this world of yours, taking things out of context, twisting them, playing on people's emotions, narcissism and fear cannot block the ALMIGHTY logic.

Taking the condescending approach is much saner than the alternative when everybody is very naive.

> taking things out of context

Who gets to establish the context in the first place?

I would rather have naive Carter than condescending Kissinger represent me.

Perhaps your opinion will change when you try to negotiate something of significance, on a large scale.

Perhaps you would like to answer my question rather than make a snide remark about President Carver?

If you don't treat people with respect in a discussion they won't respect you. If you act childish as you have people will treat you like a child, as we have.

The community's general response to you has been very kind considering how you are acting, I think to its credit.

I have of course said nothing of the sort about rational actions and neither has anyone here. I expect nothing of the sort from any of those groups, of course, and neither does anyone. It must be convenient to be able to tell everyone you disagree with what they are thinking and then argue against the position you've invented. What you've done is typically called a "straw man" and is generally associated with arguing in bad faith.

It seems you've decided you have the answer (and surprise, it's the status quo) and anyone who disagrees with you is naive and stupid, so there isn't much point in continuing this discussion for either of us.

> If the deal is not done in secret, people'll complain about the draft terms before it is finalized.

You say this like it is something bad. That's the point of transparency.

It's like that old comic I just remembered, it depicts a guy in a ladder painting "Cofee" sign for a coffee shop and below him the owner is looking up at the typo and frowning and the painter said: "Jeez man, at least wait until it dries out!".

>If the deal is not done in secret, people'll complain about the draft terms before it is finalized.

Well yeah. Treaties that run against the interests of the people are supposed to be avoided, not shoe-horned through.

>If the deal is not done in secret, people'll complain about the draft terms before it is finalized.

Yeah, that's the point in having drafts, so you can revise them based on feedback from the stakeholders.

Make no mistake, "the people" aren't stakeholders in treaties like ACTA, TTIP and TPP. Corporations are the stakeholders.

Yeah, the whole point about popular sovereignty is that people get to complain -- and have their complaints feed into the process of making rules which will bind them. So, people getting to complain while the deals is being negotiated about draft terms that bother them is a feature, not a bug.

1) They promised they would give at least a year for people to see the final draft before voting on it. Looks like they might vote on it this summer already, and the final draft is not even out yet.

2) The Parliament can vote it down or up, which means there's a 90% chance it will pass, unless there are large protests all over the EU, like it happened with ACTA. However, this time they need to be even bigger because ACTA was mostly about copyright, so the EU Parliament didn't care that much about it. This is about trade and they care much more.

This is kind of like tying a guy to a stake above a fire pit and telling them "Don't worry, I might not light the tinder at your feet with this flaming torch I'm holding. Certainly don't try to do anything about it now because this is the way these things work. I'm sure you'll be just fine in the end."

Most law are written after years of public debates in parliaments (for those countries which has one), by a larger number of public inquiries and studies, and by appointed politicians talking about it in public speeches, conferences, personal website, news papers, social media and so on. The process is so connected to bureaucracy that we recognize it as the definition for it, with the majority of time spent in public discussions or waiting for the next report to finish.

We have had close to nothing of those things regarding this treaty and the changes it propose, so the process for TTIP is completely different from how most laws are made. If we compared its process to the recent work done in EU to draft network neutrality laws, we see almost no comparable aspects at all.

I can only talk about Germany, as this is the country I know best. I suspect it's not too different in most others.

Most laws are not passed after a long public debate in parliament, certainly not years (that would make for really slow legislation). In fact, almost all laws see almost no debate at all. As an example, just today the federal parliament passed a law without plenary debate at all and with no votes against to streamline electronic communication with the patent and trademark office. The law was introduced in November and voted through all required phases as just a single line-item every time. That is not an exceptional example.

Sure, these are mostly low-profile, low-impact laws so not really comparable to TTIP.

But extremely fast lawmaking is also not unheard of. For example, the "Finanzmarktstabilisierungsgesetz" during the financial crisis was first introduced to parliament and the public on 14th October 2008 and already went in full force by 18th October 2008. And that was certainly not your regular change of traffic rules but introduced hundreds of billions euros of liability. Of course that drew a lot of criticism.

I'm not saying everything went well with TTIP (certainly it didn't). But if you talk to anyone in the EU commission they will tell you that they have been really caught off guard with the public interest which hadn't been anticipated at all. It was not that they purposefully hid the negotiations from the public to reach their goals but rather did what felt natural to them. The EU has negotiated dozens of similar treaties (though smaller and lower-impact) with nobody voicing interest in the process.

When was the last time you heard about trade agreements with Singapore, Japan, Ecuador, Kazakhstan, the East African Community, Thailand, Morocco, India, etc.? All those are currently being drafted or have just been finalized without any public debate at all. Many of those contain clauses similar to the ones criticized with TTIP.

Of course we should ask critically why they saw it that way and hope that it will change in the future to more open negotiations. But saying TTIP was created in an exceptional never-seen-before process is really stretching reality.

Drafting the net-neutrality laws is the exception rather than the norm here learned after years of public debate on certain topics.

This kind of procedure is clearly there to fight democracy. I think the TTIP should not be adopted whatever its content, just because of this non democratic procedure. The people who have initiate this procedure should be investigated. Maybe a law should be adopted to punish these nasty people.

> Maybe a law should be adopted to punish these nasty people.

I don't think you should punish people with ex post facto laws, and in many countries you can't.

TTIP may violate some of the principles behind our democracies. Laws already exist to cover for example treason...

There may already be a law on the books in some countries.

Regarding the US, these treaties will probably effect more harm to the protections and government as defined by the Constitution than any army. So at what point does that count as "levying war"? Or are we going to pretend that "war" doesn't include economic weapons?

(I suspect this might be easier in other countries, that use a less restrictive definition of treason)

Do you genuinely think it would be reasonable, just and workable to extend the definition of war to drafting a proposed trade agreement that you don't like?

This is more than a agreement to not levy tariffs on each others trade. Since it includes a loss of sovereignty for the US government it should be directly incompatible with the US constitution..

Also, the "nasty people" believe that such laws do not apply to them. This belief is not entirely unfounded. The laws may technically apply to them, but they are somehow never enforced when it really counts.

What is really puzzling me is how the procedure for this got approved, and by whom. Who is telling MP's and MEP's that they have to follow these rules? And how are they bound by them?

The guys pushing ttip i guess

They're probably allowed to do it however they please, after all they wrote the document and are free to "license" it however they want

What puzzles me is that TTIP is even in consideration anymore with these measures and all the secret keeping in place. If it truly were that good for us WHY on earth would you take these measures?

Short answer: Two-level game theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-level_game_theory

"coordination" is the argument for secrecy.

As there will be single-issue opponents in each of the parties, any multi-parties negotiation will fail if it happens in public.

I was wondering whether this was a joke/exaggeration. Turns out it's not: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/10/surreal_world_of_the...

Thanks for bringing our attention on this.

They should send someone in who has a photographic memory. In two hours he/she can browse those 600 pages, and later someone else can type them out. And this may all be done for a good hourly fee.

I'm skeptical about the existence of that kind of photographic memory.

It's rare but it does exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Peek

You'd have to find an MP with that same ability.

While it is unlikely that a natural eidetic currently serves in parliament, memory is something that can be trained and improved.

So you take a willing MP, teach them about mnemonics, memory palaces, chunking, and list-ordering narratives, and you could likely smuggle out a few dozen pages every week.

I've had two students in six years who could perfectly reproduce the information on a textbook page after one look at it, even if they had no understanding of the material.

They should pass an emergency law that requires all documents containing suggested content for national legislation be published in full, made available to the public via government websites (or national equivalents). Wording not published could not be included in any legislation.

Anything short of that makes a mockery of the idea that we have any sort of democracy. A democracy where the demos aren't allowed to read the treaties before they are ratified, what a ridiculous perversion of a notion that is.

Of course the politicians involved could instead come out and say "this is how it is, we don't care about democracy; we're in charge and you can all put up with what we say". At least then you could respect their honesty.

Having to spy on people to discover details of legislation proposed for your own country, that's a dictatorship.

They should also be in a public revision control system.

I don’t just want to see the material, I want to see who added/removed what and when.

That would be very neat.

> A democracy where the demos aren't allowed to read the treaties before they are ratified, what a ridiculous perversion of a notion that is.

That would be ridiculous, but TTIP will be published when people agree on what it should be, then it'll be voted on. See here: http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/in-focus/ttip/about-ttip/pr...

When you think "X is ridiculous" consider that maybe X is not actually true.

>That would be ridiculous, but TTIP will be published when people agree on what it should be, then it'll be voted on.

And as usual with treaties in the EU system, the people will be told, "vote for this treaty, or you're a fascist."

As an American, I am very familiar with the feeling of disenfranchisement I get every elections cycle. The two major parties field a wide variety of candidates, and methodically weed out all of the ones for which I have even an inkling of affinity. In the end, I am left with a choice between the stupid douche and the turd sandwich. I still technically have a choice, but my options have been severely curtailed, down to the point where the best selection criterion is which one makes me less nauseous.

In this case, the electorate is left with a choice between getting all of the multiparty treaty or none of it.

The bread is nice and springy, sliced to just the right thickness. The lettuce, tomato, and onion are all delicious and salubrious. The sauce is tangy, and a tiny bit sweet. But the turd inside is vile, odorous, and steaming. And you get the bill, and find that you already paid $100 for that sandwich, whether you eat it or not.

Now, had the public been given a chance to participate in the negotiations and debate, someone might have suggested, "Hey, how about we make a sandwich that doesn't have a giant, steaming turd in it?" And the designated negotiators look up, twitch their clubbed antennae, flex their mouth-parts in astonishment and horror, and brush down their shiny black carapaces with the knobby combs on their foremost pair of legs. Then they respond, "But the ball of dung is the only essential part of the whole sandwich!"

And that's when you realize that the world is run by dung beetles 1.8m long, who have absolutely zero understanding about why we humans don't just squeal with delight and scarf down the poop, with gusto, whenever it is handed to us.

That was a glorious post :)

> dung beetles 1.8m long, who have absolutely zero understanding about why we humans don't just squeal with delight and scarf down the poop

You know how they say "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity", right?

The next level of understanding is that the aphorism has it backwards.

Instead, it should say something like: "Do attribute to malice that which looks like stupidity and is harmful to the people's interests". That would be accurate.

It's not that they don't understand what they're doing. You don't get to be a high-ranking politician by being stupid, let alone one of the people telling Congressmen how many minutes they're graciously allowed to look at TTIP..

Why don't they just send someone with X-Ray vision to stand outside the building and read the documents and type them out? Problem solved.

.... in a basement, in a bathroom, past a sign that says "beware of the leopard".

> It's especially frightening for us Europeans, that TTIP can overrule existing local legislature

That should be nothing new, since the EU has been doing that for ages. Just ask the Britons who would prefer to continue using their traditional measures instead of French measures. Just ask those European states whose people would prefer to retain capital punishment.

Let me just speak on behalf of all English schoolchildren educated after that blessed year 1971 when decimalisation was introduced.

Oh thank God that we don't have to use those bloody traditional measures any more. Best, idea, ever! Have you any idea what it's like to try and do base 12 and base 16 calculations when you're 10? Without a calculator??

Presumably there's some alternate universe out there where the British Empire still rules the globe, and the world was forced to convert to imperial - in that universe you have a legitimate complaint. Not in this one.

His point is valid (people should be governed in the way that the want, not as some body millions of miles away from the decides), but the examples are the worst ever.

What's frightening is the amount of ignorant fearmongering on issue.

It's embarrassing that even this site has succumbed to it.

How can that be seen as reasonable in any way, shape, or form?

Yeah, the prospect of the loss of national sovereignty must be terrifying for EU members.

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