If this is defeated won't individual deals between each country have to be struck? That seems likely to have a worse outcome for Europe as countries will be played against each other.
The EU fought hard to get two legal precedents :
1) that international treaties preceed the constitutions of member states (and any and all other laws).
2) that the European Commission would be allowed to agree to international treaties on behalf of member states.
There is nobody that can stop this that isn't already in power and Volcker can push this through without ratification by any kind of elected body. Stopping it can only be done in the United States, where it actually has to pass parliament ("congress").
At least now we know why there is no "democratic" in the "European Union" name.
Just because something might not be a democratic process doesn't mean we can't fight against it and book a win against it.
I can understand the rationale for keeping the negotiations largely secret. This is a very big negotiation, and in general, all sorts of demands or proposals are put on the table in the beginning. Many of these proposals have no chance of getting ratified, but they would still be lethal ammunition for any EU-hating party.
Which does not change the fact that the current way the treaty is negociated is probably too secret.
This process isn't undemocratic in the least. It's just that the decisions are complex. I'm not strongly in favour of TTIP in its current form, but the more I know about it, the less I believe all the fear mongering.
There seems to be a gut reflex of "I don't understand it, so it must be undemocratic!!"
Explanation/Clarification is not something a voter is entitled to. He can demand it, and usually the media is giving it to him, if at all.
There is also a very good disincentives for politicians to explain "too much". Essentially, when talking to an audience of millions of people, everything you say can be used against you in a court of public opinion. Everything can and will be understood wrongly. That is also partly why effective politicians aren't particularly eager to "tell the truth".
Companies would be able to demand compensation from countries whose health, financial, environmental and other public interest policies they thought to be undermining their interests, and take governments before extrajudicial tribunals. These tribunals, organised under World Bank and UN rules would have the power to order taxpayers to pay extensive compensation over legislation seen as undermining a company’s “expected future profits”.
taken from: http://mondediplo.com/2013/12/02tafta . From my understanding this is basically an incentive for national governments to make their (consumer) laws as accordant with each other as possible. One problem I see with this implementation is that this will result in an accordance (of national laws) on the lowest common denominator, ie. the weakest form of consumer protection. In this specific case this would mostly mean levels of consumer protection as seen in the USA and this is in my opinion not in the interest of the general consumer (but that's a discussion of its own).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_deficit_in_the_Europ...
And yes it passes the parliament, however
1) treaties can be adopted without a parliamentary "yes" (has happened many times in the past, because it didn't even used to be asked at all)
2) parliament can say yes or no, but cannot change anything.
3) looking at the contents of previous treaties, it is blatantly obvious that the rules introduced using this instrument would never have passed parliament using other means.
An example of this would be, well, and example of this would be TTIP itself, if the contents are what they're rumored to be, which seems like. Other examples include, for example, the copyright directive [1].
Because any country with "Democratic" in the name is usually a totalitarian undemocratic communist dictatorship? :P
1) The national constition is the highest part of the German law, not EU law. The courts cooperate in many ways and co-exist, but EU law is not above the Constition / Grundgesetz. (See for example http://www.bpb.de/nachschlagen/lexika/177026/grundgesetz-und...)
2) The TTIP has to be ratified by the member states. (See for example http://www.bmwi.de/DE/Service/suche,did=630990.html)
Now, the full text should be understood when it's time for things to actually be ratified or signed into law.
This thing changes so many parts of European law that we took decades to agree on, that the effort to make it "fly under the radar" seems comical.
http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2013/11/tti...
Interesting, the canonical examples have been removed from the Wikipedia TTIP article.
The first example is Vattenfall vs. Germany. The former, an energy provider, sued and won against the latter, for the decision to phase out nuclear energy.
The second is Philip Morris vs. Australia, because of the decision to require plain packaging on tobacco products.
I can't certainly argue against an agreement made against two parties, but the problem here is that TTIP is made in secret, between arguably corrupted representatives of populations which wouldn't certainly agree with such decisions.
(1)=I've rephrased this from http://blogg.uio.no/jus/smr/multirights/content/the-ttip-inv...
Vattenfall suing the German state makes sense considering the business impact the change had. Add to that, Vattenfall is wholly owned by the Swedish state so the TTIP should have no impact what so ever on their dealings.
Please give a pair of two EU countries, one of which is better of because it has struck a deal concerning free trade with the United States in the last two decades that was denied to the other country. I'm curious.
Education, same.
This is what should be exported to the rest of the world? Who are you kidding? The only thing USA could export is guns and dirt bikes.
I'd say this post is deliberately offensive. More importantly for HN it is simply inaccurate.
Otherwise, even without malicious intent on part of a member state, a country like china would just go shopping around the 26 member states and ask who's giving them the best conditions and then do all their trade through them...