TTIP trade deal could be re-launched under a different name, say EU ministers
independent.co.uk
independent.co.uk
AFAIK, TTIP was leaked and that's the only way european citizens knew about it.
Why is it legal? Because all I see is corporations trying to make a sweet deal with governments, and the loosing side is always the people.
That's the only incentive I see to make deals secret.
How can my representative be really productive in analyzing such a deal? Why all the barriers to understand the document?
I didn't find out the time it's supposedly be public for debate, but if you're doing a deal for the people, you want people to negotiate, not just accept the deal as it is, which, as history taught us, it will be a really tight timeframe for debate and it's approved few days before a major holiday when people are distracted.
Our representatives must have our [all citizens] best interest at heart. I don't see how this is in our best interest.
And I didn't event talked about the deal itself, only the procedure which seems flawed.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Trade_and_Invest...
CETA was public for more than two years before it went for signing. Naturally nobody cared until the last 6 months.
I think they will not be done this way going forward, because these deals took ten years of negotations, and now they fail. It doesn't work anymore.
https://www.quora.com/Why-are-trade-agreements-like-the-Tran...
tl;dr: two reasons: if each minor step in the negotiations is made public, lobbyists and NGOs will constantly bug the negotiators. Furthermore, if one side publicly states which lines it will never cross in the negotiations, it loses leverage because the opposite side now knows on which points they can expect less resistance, and will use this knowledge as a tactical advantage.
As the user walterbell posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12569891 :
5-min video on the major trade agreements and ISDS, https://youtube.com/watch?v=M4-mlGRPmkU
Sorry but a large treaty like this cannot be completely negotiated completely behind closed doors. Negotiators need to deal with it.
This is why TTIP, no matter the content, is undemocratic. As is CETA.
It really isn't ...
Sometimes what's right and what's popular aren't very similar. (but I'm not defending the TTIP)
It's something like saying my house actually burned down because it's made of wood, not because I let a kid play with matches.
States' rights is a sham of an argument for the Civil War, and, too often, many other abhorrent practices today.
http://celdf.org/community-rights/
These people are ridiculous. Invoking the American revolution and then railing against "state and federal preemption" which was, in fact, very clearly set out by the Federalists who won most of what they wanted while writing the Constitution.
The states have all rights not explicitly given to the federal government in the constitution. Local communities are given all of their rights by the state. That's it. Trying to change that means burning down the constitution. Communities have no independent rights. They're clearly and deliberately misconstruing history to make woo woo "progressive" arguments.
The basic problem is that the activists are idiots who haven't taken the time or gotten the education to understand the problems they are trying to solve. National attention has no time for complex nuanced arguments, so the only arguments you hear are from fools. This applies to more or less every liberal cause in America, most of which I support in spirit.
Too true. However, I'd say this actually applies to just about every social-political cause, period. Conservative and liberal. All nuance and depth of understanding is lost for emotional, myopic, black-and-white tribalism meant to divide the populace, fire up the troops, and get them firing at each other.
I'd like to rephrase: the defining societal problem of the 21st century is going to be the failure to recognize that we've solved all of the big black and white issues with blunt tools which fit into the Christian good vs. evil narrative but we will keep trying to solve the grey-area issues with those same dumb tools. The failure is one of lacking appreciation for subtlety and nuance in the definition and solution of our problems.
Good vs. evil, clear cut rights and wrongs are issues of the past.
This whole thing tries to use the fact that no southern states voted for Lincoln to frame it like secession was actually just because they felt their voice wasn't being heard. What that ignores is that slavery was the main(almost only) economic driver in the south. The election was about slavery. The north was done with it. The vote was a signal to the wealthy and powerful of the south that the north was going to abolish slavery and there was nothing they could do about it. Sucession was their last attempt to keep the massive amount of money being made via slavery.
It's absolutely the case that the South was motivated to secede by the issue of slavery. It is not the case that the North was, they were motivated by the preservation of the Union. Lincoln said as much. Abolition was used by the Union as a weapon, not as a cause unto itself.
It's seen as revisionist to question the moral character of the US Civil War, but you have a President who said explicitly that he would preserve slavery if it would preserve the Union, and abolition that exempted Northern states.
Slavery was (partially[1]) abolished in the US not because there was some high-minded federal government that thought it was the right thing to do, but because abolitionists worked hard for generations to compel it. The fact that a war was fought over it only speaks to the fact that slavery was so entrenched in the Southern states that it considered the progression toward abolition an existential threat.
[1] Slavery was never fully abolished in the US, and we should be careful not to forget that. It's no mistake that the amendment to restrict slavery to punishment for crime also coincided with the beginning of a trend of criminalizing activities and lifestyles of former slaves and their descendants.
It's a bit like admonishing the protestors for protesting TTIP before it was enacted. Probably could have chosen slightly more accurate words, but my point was still made.
The war happened overwhelmingly _because_ slavery was going to be abolished.
This isn't a minor detail, it's actually quite important.
> perpetuating the seeming belief that the civil war had nothing to do with slavery
Don't put words in my mouth, that's not what I said and I would appreciate it if you'd be a bit more intellectually honest here. The South seceded because they were convinced Lincoln would work to end slavery. They did not secede because abolition actually happened.
In what way is "work to end slavery" not completely identical, but just different words, to "work towards abolition".
You may think you are just arguing pedantically, but this exact language is leading people to believe that the civil war had nothing to do with slavery. Just because it hadn't yet happened does not mean it can be an important, or even primary motivator.
> The war happened overwhelmingly _because_ slavery was going to be abolished.
That's not the same as "working toward abolition."
> this exact language is leading people to believe that the civil war had nothing to do with slavery
[citation needed]
> Just because it hadn't yet happened does not mean it can be an important, or even primary motivator.
I said that a desire to keep the institution of slavery was the primary motivation. That is not the same as them reacting to abolition, which would violate causality.
Please try to be more civil rather than slinging around insults and accusations.
One example is Uber. Everyone I know who uses it loves it, it's cheaper, more reliable, the service is better as well. Despite all of it there are protests because it hurts one group (taxi drivers) a lot. It really is a problem when special interest group can force their way at the cost of the public just because they are louder and organized enough to take the matter to the streets.
That's true, but I think that's only part of the problem. I always interpreted it as a precedent to circumvent existing regulation* in a demand-constrained market.
The market for on-demand-personal-transport-by-car doesn't necessarily equate to taxi companies (it USED to be, pre-disruptive-tech) and in that way it's a competitive advantage to Uber, because it does not (or did not) need to conform to that regulatory context. Had Uber been a taxi startup that launched the app there would be no such problem, though it's unlikely they would have been successful. It's true that taxi companies might try to influence regulation to their benefit and perhaps the Uber model is simply more suited to today's world. But I think it's wrong to state that taxi drivers are simply some small minority trying to stifle innovation because it benefits them, there's more fundamental issues at work in this case. And as a somewhat ambiguous precedent you can see politicians flailing with the idea, not having a ready made response. Uber was not outlawed simply because of taxi drivers.
* I'm blindly assuming that's the case in most countries.
Arguably, this is Uber's business model. Circumventing the public by ignoring their laws (some terrible ones that prevent competition, but others that do things like ensure transportation access for disabled people), and then worming their way out of it by buying politicians, intimidating journalists, and with slick marketing campaigns.
On the balance, I find it hard to believe that a street protest is more threatening to the outcome of trade negotiations than the wealth, organization, and political influence of corporations seeking sweetheart deals.
just one example:
In many european countries a driver needs a special insurance for human transportation. In case of an accident this insurance goes into effect, not having this is really bad for all people involved.
In case of ttip:
In europe we got high standards and good laws to protect people(consumers, workers, ...). Dont blame me for this, but this is not the case for the usa.
You don't have to look far for evidence - just turn on the TV. One good example that comes to mind is how anti-EU groups like to take benign, reasonable EU directives and paint them as proofs that EU is a dictatorship run by stupid bureaucrats. And then you have the whole population getting outraged over "straightening of bananas" or "labeling water", even though the whole thing is a purposefully manufactured piece of bullshit.
Now try to negotiate openly, when some group or another rallies public against you over every other issue.
I sympathize with the negotiators. I understand a need for having some room to discuss things before the mass idiocy ensues.
For example imagine asking for some kind of legal jurisdiction on cigarettes and plain packaging, in being able to sue the government. Very unpopular, but it represents lots of jobs. Not that I like this. But its worth asking, just it wouldn't be very publicly promising. Though imagine foreign countries blocking American ones with simple plain packaging..
It's just good to scope what can be put on the table. But its a bit silly when it comes out that such a thing was asked for, even though its likely to be thrown off the table.
Something weird happened last year where I understood it a bit more on why these negotiations happen in private. There was a proposal over a treaty in banning ivory trade - this is great! Then looking over the clauses it meant the government had to enforce confiscating ivory from everyone's households, however old it is - and that's a bit weird. So they didn't adopt lots of provisions of the treaty. Initially it looked really strange on why the EU rejected an outright ivory ban.
If there is something "meta" about a specific deal, the public can and will acknowledge that.
The implication you're making is that the general populace is too stupid to understand complex issues and should mindlessly accept the decisions of their politicians without any insight at all(let alone input).
Exactly the same considerations apply when making laws without our own countries, yet most of us would probably consider having our representatives working entirely behind closed doors very suspicious and many of us think freedom of information laws are an essential part of our democratic processes.
I was under the impression that most or all similar documents were only made available at a mature stage (eg after first official draft is ready, passed legal, translated etc).
Scandal and conspiracy helps sell newspapers.
Are there any of those? All the protests I see are by the people against the industries
That's a common argument, but it doesn't really stand up. National legislatures manage to negotiate and pass laws just fine through open negotiations, even though many of them have hundreds of participants representing a range of political parties, as well as often having a local representation aspect. In many cases, there is some sort of multi-stage process, with a balance between completely open debate to establish principles and general approval on the one hand and smaller sessions with particularly interested representatives hammering out the fine details on the other, which seems to work reasonably well.
While we're addressing common fallacies about secret trade negotations, the idea put forward by others here that you can't tell what is really on the table unless everything is done in secret is also dubious, because it means trade negotiators can put things on the table that don't have the support of those they allegedly represent. Those people are then presented with a fait accompli where their only options are to accept in its entirety or strike the whole thing down, often after many years and a small fortune have been spent working on the deal. What benefit came from all those secret TTIP negotiations if ultimately it's clear that the EU members aren't going to accept such a one-sided deal or give up what the people considered unacceptable concessions anyway?
The idea that the secrecy prevents lobbyists representing special interest groups from influencing the deal is so implausible that I won't bother countering it, except to observe that these controversial international trade deals often seem to include wording that is remarkably similar to statements previously given by exactly the kind of lobbyists and SIGs we're talking about.
We're supposed to be talking about professional politicians and negotiators here, and we're supposed to be talking about making deals for the mutual benefit of both sides. If the professionals can't identify areas of common ground and work with a more transparent process for negotiation than doing the entire thing behind doors and then presenting a single final result with the people or their elected representatives having nothing but a power of veto, I contend that the deals being made probably aren't worth much anyway and certainly have no democratic mandate.
I don't understand how the demonstrations are preventing getting anything done?
If it's a small minority protesting, it won't change anything. If it's a mass demonstration, maybe there's a reason for it. Maybe the deal shouldn't be done.
A fundamental reason as to why we should elect, and delegate to those who do.
But that deal is a draft.
Therefore it follows that anyone who can negotiate from a position of secrecy or absolute power (dictatorship) is in a better position to achieve his goals during a negotiation.
You might laugh at this but I believe this is exactly how the EU commission thinks about this. Maybe they will try later again in a more dictatorial manner since secrecy has failed, who knows.
The other extreme would be that you negotiate from a position where you are constantly attacked by NGOs and your own people, which certainly doesn't help with creating trust that you can follow through on anything you sign. You can certainly place your signature on a document but it means nothing because you can't execute.
This was actually a problem during the Cold War crisis between JFK and the Soviet leaders. The Soviets were hard to convince that JFK could follow through because he was so heavily opposed by his senior military staff. They actually believed that there was a real possibility that JFK would be disposed by a military coup so they thought a war between the Soviet Union and the US was imminent and acted accordingly.
But how is this any different from signing a deal that you've happily made in secret, only to find that the people you claimed to represent won't honour that deal because something in it was unacceptable to them and rejecting it in its entirety is the only possible action you've left them that doesn't accept the unacceptable element?
a) They let their people vote on it before ratifying the finalised treaty (maybe let them even vote multiple times until the result is right, the EU likes doing that)
b) They know for some reason or another that they will be able to enact it (they control media, the courts and the men with guns which definitely helps)
How is it any different? Well both parties start out a negotiation not knowing what the other sides limits are in certain areas, having society not interfere allows you to not give away this information to the other side.
If the negotiators are acting in the interest of their own people then you could assume that they will know quite well how far they can go.
So hopefully the result of such a negotiation will be a treaty that is acceptable to your population and beneficial in the way you wanted it to be.
My problem is not that there are secret negotiations, but instead that it is an immense uphill battle against mainstream media and politicians to get them not to ratify a treaty they have negotiated.
In most cases they do not allow us to vote on it, and the media acts as if they are directly controlled by politicians. And if they let us vote they'll repeat it indefinitely until they get the result they want as I wrote before.
To me the EU acts like a dictatorship that monitors it's populations closely and responds (only where absolutely necessary and often with lies - see their lies that there definitely wont be an EU army before the Brexit vote) to ensure that they wont revolt. But they certainly have their goals and they try to bring them about no matter what. You cannot vote if you want to achieve this goal, they wont even tell you what their goal or vision exactly entails. (except for some utopian phantasy nonsense, but they've dialled down on that since it is obvious that no one buys it anymore)
Unfortunately, having society not interfere may also mean that you do not have that information yourself, even if you think you do.
If the negotiators are acting in the interest of their own people then you could assume that they will know quite well how far they can go.
Right, but that's a big "if". International trade agreements are like a textbook example of the principal-agent problem. It is extremely common for the negotiators to be adopting positions heavily influenced by special interest groups and business communities, with little if any regard for the effects on the actual people of the country those negotiators ostensibly represent. In the case of the EU, that issue is magnified further, because the EU itself can be (and often has been) used in a similar way.
But I cannot prove this, that's why I'm also listing a few reasons for secret negotiations that could be acceptable for those who are inclined to give the EU the benefit of the doubt.
Indeed. That alone, makes me not want to even take a look at the text and dismiss it right away as negative for the vast amounts of the population.
- Oh, why did you put that button in here? What do you mean "temporary"?
- Why are you wasting time browsing that "documentation" site instead of writing code?
- What is this "class" thing? We're egalitarian company!
- Is this Ruby? Everyone knows websites are best done in PHP!
Usually you'd like to have a chance to at least finish a basic prototype in peace, before gathering customer feedback.
Besides, the public didn't find out the TTIP details as it was a "prototype", but more like a "release candidate."
It's more like the heads of two partially rival companies decide they need to develop a new product, one ostensibly important enough that the companies future depend on it, or the rivals would not have a reason to do it. Enormous resources are poured into the project while stock owners, employees and nost of the board are kept in the dark. After a long time which have much contributed to the sense of urgency being much higher the board and stock owners get to vote.
There will likely be a strong tendency to ratify such a plan no matter the quality, not only because of sunk cost fallacy, but also in the sense of urgency and importance the construction of the process conveys.
No stock owners - or board - in their right minds should ever allow such a project to start, if they had the power to do so.
If producing a prototype is not possible, then if something is important enough to be negotiated for years, the decision to ratify it must be prescribed to take at least as long time as the negotiations themselves took. Otherwise the negotiators clearly are expecting to manipulate the ratification by construction.
This is why this analogy is wrong. If a country doesn't accept the TTIP it'll be fine. There's no cost incurred.
What about all of the time, money and resources invested in futile negotiations?
There's also the opportunity cost. It takes a lot of time to conduct these kinds of negotiations, and during that time trade is still happening. If the pursuit of a bad deal wastes a lot of time while a better deal, even on a smaller scale or with more limited scope, would have been possible, then all of the trade that could have happened under that better deal has been undermined.
How can you possibly compare the outcome of 10 years of negotiations that get amended a little and then voted Y/N with "a basic prototype"?
The devil, as always, is in the fine print - a cynic might read that to mean "TTIP has gotten such a bad reputation we would rather wait a few more years so the public forgets all about it, then try again."
In fact, I am tempted to quote Lovecraft here, except that a few years hardly count as "eternal".
I am not against any trade deals, but against this particular deal with those particular conditions because of some particular reasons.
I found him so over the top that I wanted to confirm my hunch experimentally, and made a list of the 150 most prominent words in his opus. It is unsurprising:
I'm surprised words like 'mongrel' aren't featured more prominently in that word cloud. His blatant racism really detracts from some of his otherwise great stories. It's particularly annoying in the Call of Cthulhu where it's almost like from the author's perspective the true evil isn't the monstrous, cyclopean abomination but non-WASPs.
Also, I think you're spot on with adjectivitis. It explains exactly what I don't like about his stories.
Does anyone find Metallica over the top? How about Slayer? Cannibal Corpse?
It's the form- it's supposed to be over-the-top. And btw, that's not in an ironic way.
A lot of the stuff that was in there got reused in TTIP.
"Despite the rumours and assertions by several Member States that TTIP is dead, the fight for safeguarding citizens’ rights and freedoms via so-called “trade agreements” is far from over ... Greenpeace Netherlands has released another batch of crucial and worrying documents ... EU privacy and data protection standards are endangered and diminished in 6 out of the 9 analysed documents ... Exceptions for “essential security interests” are a Damocles sword over every single part of the agreement ... TiSA can limit the access and transfer of software source code."
No. Occidental is a US company, the trade deal was US-Ecuador bilateral investment treaty ("BIT"):
http://kluwerarbitrationblog.com/2012/12/19/icsids-largest-a...
Such kind of penalties are planned by TTIP too, and I don't see the major EU leaders rejecting that approach.
Also, don't forget there's at least CETA and TISA, and CETA is to be signed very soon. More demonstrations are needed if EU citizens want to attempt to affect anything!
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/ttip-ceta-tisa-trade-dea...
Unfortunately, 13 years of unpopular wars have taken their toll. There are now two generations of politically-active Europeans who were not invested in the Cold War, and see the US fundamentally as a big bully. Couple that with tight economic times (which, many feel, have been foisted upon us by reckless American finance), waves of unwanted migrants generated by US foreign policy, and the self-inflicted loss of influence of "Airstrip One" Britain over EU matters, and you have a situation where US negotiators likely found themselves surprised by European pushback on all sorts of topics.
It's true an Asia deal is probably a bigger deal to the US, but not because Europe is unattractive but rather because they need to get in before China (which would explain why Japan is so eager despite it being unpopular with the citizenry)
TTIP was (and still is) a US-led effort. The only voices asking to keep it going are US negotiators' and Obama's. That wouldn't happen if they really thought the EU was in disarray.
> the failure of EU banking and financial institutions
Well, at least we did not have Lehman and Merryll Lynch... the powerless "EuroBundesbank" is a bit of a mess, but nothing that can't be solved by a better German government.
> a collective that seems to only be able to solve their bleak demographic future by pulling in eastern European basket-cases that no one really wants to have in the union
Those countries were brought in under pressure from the US and the UK, eager to solidify the Cold War victory and water down EU institutions. Other countries didn't object because hey, more markets close-by with cheap highly-educated workforce and internal industry in disarray, ready for the picking! Politicians naively thought their national champions would expand there, while they actually wanted (and got) to delocalize with minimal fuss. Nobody had any interest in some "bleak demographic future", it was just profit all the way down; and I can assure you that most industries still want those countries in (to the point where the only serious talk for post-Brexit plans is about ways to grant Eastern-European workers easy access to British companies). Among other things, they're the only ones still taking Christianity seriously, something that European elites still somewhat value.
Europe has been in serious trouble before; compared to the last century or even the one before, this decade is barely a blip.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/ttip-latest-...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/ttip-latest-...
So it's a murky situation from the beginning. I think the TTIP is an attempt to have a common ground to end up with something instead of nothing. Of course there are huge interests at stake here, and I want to be the devil's advocate for once to try and understand the real philosophy of the treaty without the cynicism and a more strategic view in mind.
That's the standard rationalization we've been fed form EU comission as well. But when that "something" means that we give up on our EU consumer protection laws to benefit american corporate profits it's actively harmful and against the values of people actually living in EU.
Could you elaborate on why it's actively harmful?
Also, what does actively harmful mean? What is the difference between actively and passively harmful?
> values of people actually living in EU.
People vote for representatives who vote for/against the TTIP.
I am sure that most people like me do not have a clue about what is ttip