TTIP is bad for the EU and UK, yet it seems that Obama is desperate to push this onto us.
I for one am against it. What’s the dope in the US? For or against?
TTIP and TTIP Guardian
Is this just an undemocratic way for big business to circumvent democracy and sue governments for any decision they don’t like?
Well, if it’s just the TTIP, what’s the big deal?
This looks very much like a race to achieve the lowest standards,
So tougher US banking regulations, along with very much weaker enforcement will be undermined by the EU rather laissez faire approach.
When it comes to products and substances, our tighter regulations will be undermined by the lower standards in the US.
As for Health Services, well we have had direct competition fro Euro-providers for years, there are quite a number of models in Europe, and since the UK is part of it - at the moment - I think it is less of a threat in terms of medical provision than it appears.
I do think that there may well be an effect on the structure of the UK medical institutions - thing is the US still has that huge overhead through the medical insurers and I really do not imagine it is compatible. Indeed the reverse might even be true, that UK medical providers without the insurance overhead might well prove to be a sobering moderating force.
I also think that this is only one stage of the process, and that arguments will arise from non-level trade arrangements and there will be an ongoing snagging of specific interests.
Our farm subsidies would be a major problem, the UK pays huge sums to meet EU requirements and I just do not think that this type of price support would be acceptable to the US, it has long been a barrier to agricultural trading.
Other state provision might be compared to US providers, however given that some of these have literally walked away from active contracts - like Wackenhut did at HMP Coldingly I think there would be some trepidation.
[QUOTE=OP’s Linked Article]
So I don’t know about you, but I’m scared. I would vote against TTIP, except… hang on a minute… I can’t. Like you, I have no say whatsoever in whether TTIP goes through or not.
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I don’t know how things stand in Europe, but in the US, you do have a say. Call your Senators and tell them not to approve this treaty. Make sure they know you are a voter, and that you will encourage everyone you know not to vote for their reelection if they allow this treaty to pass. That is, if for some reason you didn’t already vote for a Senator whose judgment on these matters you trusted last election.
Honestly, I’m pro-free trade, but these “trade deals” we’ve been negotiating recently are more about spreading government espionage and making it even more illegal to share copyrighted bits than anything having to do with free trade.
I think we’ll have to wait and see what this deal actually says though, before we start with the scare tactics. At least, if you’re like me and approve of free trade in general, but disapprove of the fine print tacked onto the last few trade deals we’ve made.
I thought it wasn’t price support any more, rather maintenance payments to meet assorted environmental and land management requirements.
Are there really no subsidies to agriculture in the US?
We do have some say in the TTIP, through our MEPs and the ultimate decision-makers, the national governments meeting as the EU Council of Ministers. The problem is that the negotiations are not being conducted openly and transparently, and it looks as though the EU Parliament is being railroaded. Plus, of course, some national governments are all for letting corporate interests have their way; and the prospect is that the detailed work on developing common standards across the whole area might be captured by the corporate interests forcing policy changes through the specialist tribunals, rather than through a public policy process (at least EU common standards go through a public process, even if it’s often corporate pressures on the Commission that set the agenda and take the initiatives).
But the relative secrecy of the negotiating process doesn’t inspire confidence.
I agree, it is the lack of openness and transparency that is adding to the problems. There is a lot of distrust of the EU in the UK at present and this is only adding to that. Particularly after Obama’s comments the other day which, paraphrasing, was accept TTIP or get to the back of the queue.
Lots of them, but it’s one of those things in which “it’s OK if I do it, it’s wrong if you do”.
Obama’s comments presume that UK voters do in fact want Britain to be part of a free trade agreement with the US.
Given that, he seems to be saying, your chances of getting such a free trade agreement are much better if you stay in the EU and become parties to the TTIP, the process for which is already far advanced. If the UK leaves the EU, it’s back to square 1 as far as putting a separate free-trade agreement in place is concerned. And a free trade agreement with the UK alone is obviously going to be a lower priority for any American administration than a free trade agreement with the EU.
These comments are reasonable enough in themselves. They’re self-evidently true, in fact. But they rather lose their force to the extent that UK voters are indifferent to, or actively hostile to, a free trade agreement with the US in general, or the TTIP in particular. If that’s your stance, then Obama’s points would suggest that the rational strategy is to vote to leave the EU.
According to Wikipedia, the 28 governments will have to approve or reject the negotiated agreement in the EU Council of Ministers, at which point the European Parliament will also be asked for its endorsement. The EU Parliament is empowered to approve or reject the agreement.
The Council, I expect, will decide with qualified majority voting - 55% of EU countries vote in favour (i.e. 16 out of 28) and the proposal must supported by countries representing at least 65% of the total EU population.
As someone who believes in open and accountable government I am against the EU .I had not heard of TTIP until now and have just read an article about it (thanks for the link Patrick) It looks to me that it is another organisation that will exclude the public from any decision making about matters that seriously concern them. When we come out of the EU I want to see trade agreements made openly, as for other matters such as banking and the environment they are matters for government to decide upon based on what is best for the UK
Seeing as the US hasn’t been any more open and the UK Government’s track record on the issue is spotty at best, I imagine post-Brexit UK will sign up to TTIP anyway.
I believe that when the UK leave the EU it would be foolish for the government to enter any agreement that gives foreign powers the right to determine the future of the UK. the electorate has had enough of foreign intervention into our sovereignty. Obama’s intervention into the IN OUT campaign has raised three questions with the public.
Would Americans allow a foreign power to determine their economy?
Would Americans allow a foreign power to determine their legislation?
Would Americans allow a foreign power to determine their ecology?
I believe the answer to all three would be a very loud HELL NO
The people of the UK have had enough of successive governments giving away our democratic rights to self determination. As I have already stated I believe that when the public vote to leave the EU the government would be foolish to enter any other agreement that would see the peoples right to self determination to be given away.
Well, if you consider that the TTIP gives up sovereignty over economy, legislation or ecology, then the answer to the question, would the US do any of these things?, appears to be yes, it would, all of them, since it seems to be quite keen to progress the TTIP and to become bound by it.
If, on the other hand, you don’t think the TTIP does any of these things, then you might be quite happy for the UK to become bound by it. But what Obama is saying is, if you want to become bound by it, the fastest and surest route to that is to remain in the EU, and if you leave the EU that’s going to set you back a long way. Which, as I said before, seems reasonable and probably true.
You might take the view, of course, that, yes, the TTIP (or some other trade agreement with the US) is a desirable thing, but not so desirable that it is worth the dilution of sovereignty involved in participating in the EU, and therefore the UK is better off leaving the EU and suffering the consequences of a long delay in securing a US trade agreement, and the risk when it is achieved it won’t be on the terms that are hoped. That’s a reasonable stance to take, if that’s your view, but I do think you need need to be realistic in acknowledging that those are real consequences, and you will have to bear them.
I agree that the US would not give up those rights, and it is highly hypocritical of Obama to try to get us to do so too. As you say we have give up enough. The main problem as I see it is that there is no guarantee that a UK government would not accept TTIP even if we left the EU.
We may be stuck between a rock and a hard place as I don’t. for one instant, believe that Cameron et al have the best interests of the British people at heart.
It worries me in all of the EU debates that we are not referred to as anything but markets and customers, surely there’s more at stake than just money?
You have democratic rights to self determination?
Common people having rights, that is so last milennium.
I can’t remember who said it but British attitudes to the EU were described along the lines of that the whole idea of European solidarity, peace and harmony, etc. leave the British cold. The only thing that interests them is the Single Market.
This is the problem with modern neo-liberal politics. Underlying it all is the basic assumption that what is good for business is good for the everyone with no deeper consideration of other factors.
Personally every time I hear that a new tax-dodging multi-national has said we should stay in it tips me further towards wanting an exit. Maybe then we can stop them paying their tax in Luxemburg.
With this government?
Much of the tax evasion happened in tax havens that are British Overseas Territories, where EU law does not apply, so I don’t think that makes sense.
Taxation is (rightly) something that EU Member States guard with extreme jealousy and the EU has next to little power in that field. Anything that is agreed is done by and enforced by the Member States.
They’ve probably moved somewhere else lately, but in the last few years a lot of the scandals of the type “oops I just realized I had this little piggy here I hadn’t paid for” we’ve had in Spain have involved Jersey or Gibraltar. The last one has been Switzerland, very traditional.
Agreed on the idea that so long as we keep having decision-makers who view people as nothing but a cog+consumer combo, we’ve got a Problem. Another thing that scares me is how many confuse the indices with the reality they represent; you know, the kind of thinking that leads to things such as making sure your warehouses are as empty as possible on the last day of your reporting cycle but expecting the factories to be able to work full-tilt on the next day, because “stocks are passive, and passive is bad”.
We keep on being told how much our economy would suffer - we hear very little about the other things, such as our self esteem, our ability to rule ourselves, our right to make our own decisions good or bad.
I suspect strongly that the reason that TTIP has taken such a long time to negotiate is the very reason why many UK citizens are hacked off with the EU.
Imagine how those negotiations would have taken place, a collective agreement of EU national governments according o various principles along with maybe 10-15 different EU national self interested perspectives - so the EU would have been arguing within itself, and there would be all sort of internal campaigning to get the majority vote in this measure or that definition, and then taking it all back to the US which then makes its own position clear, and having to then take the whole lot back again to the EU where they bitch about it all among themselves.
Obama stated that the US prefers to do a deal with a single trading bloc, but it isn’t really a single bloc at all, its an arrangement that is a compromise of all the constituent parts of the EU.
Now imagine the UK working on a deal, one set of national interests with ministers who do not have to refer back to a collective for an authorised approach. That would reduce the negotiations by magnitudinal factors.
And remember, we can do this right across the world with any nation we would want, rather than have to take our opinion back to the EU collective to permission to continue.
The EU is just one expensive talking shop, each EU nation has a right to work on matters in its own interest, but then that just drags out the EU internal dialogue, and absolutely none of it whatsoever is actually democratically accountable to the electorate - I just do not get any sort of vote on what the EU is working on, I do not get to vote for the EU president, nor even the party that person represents.
So here we have what seems to be a fundamental trade deal, not one jot of which has been debated in the UK public arena, I can’t make any judgement if its fair or equitable, and I can’t fire questions at those making the deal.
So tell me why I would want to remain in the EU? Its not about trade, its about the other things.