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Comment by dash2 | Hacker News Reader

One way to solve that would be to have a period in which politicians had to justify their plans, including the kinds of trade deals they would negotiate, to the electorate. Then we could all vote for the politician we preferred. We could call it an "election campaign".

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That's the big problem with TTIP: those who negotiated it (on the EU side at least) weren't elected representatives. In fact, elected representatives only very recently received very limited access to the negotiation documents themselves. In Germany, access was granted to members of parliament only January this year. Even so, they weren't even allowed to carry electronic devices or pen-and-paper notebooks.

This is why TTIP, no matter the content, is undemocratic. As is CETA.

Fair point, but then surely it is the EU that is undemocratic rather than TTIP.

Elected representatives could not negotiate the deal themselves because it is way too technical. So the actual negotiators were given a mandate by the elected representatives. Elected representatives then get to decide whether they will vote for the deal. TTIP is dead because it's become clear the deal will not get approval from all representatives, in part because of public disapproval. In conclusion, TTIP _is_ democratic.

If the deal is too technical to negotiate how can the elected representative possibly decide if they should vote for it as they by definition can't understand it?

> Elected representatives could not negotiate the deal themselves because it is way too technical.

It really isn't ...

Could you elaborate?

Sounds nice except that politicians are in no way bound by their electoral promises, and they certainly take liberties with them to get elected, and they can't possibly plan for everything that can come up during their terms.

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