TTIP TALKS: what's cooking?

8 / 24

8 TTIP talks: What’s cooking? - Perspectives on Food & Farming
Proceedings of the Conference
Introduction and welcome
Keynote: Regulatory convergence
Trade is no longer, and has not been for a long time only
concerning tariff lines, but issues that concern our everyday
lives - it’s about food, it’s about consumer protection, it’s
about environmental legislation, all those things that are dear
to us.” Ska Keller, MEP
Ska Keller Vice Chair of the Greens/EFA group and Member of the Com-
mittee on International Trade (INTA) welcomed conference attendees and
speakers.
In her introduction, Ska Keller pointed out that trade should no longer be
purely in the realm of trade and trade negotiators because it affects a much
broader set of political outcomes that are important for EU citizens. She went
on to highlight the very important aspects of transparency and democracy,
and that decision makers and people should be granted better access to
documents relating to the trade deal.
The negotiations themselves take place behind closed doors. Ska Keller
explained that the European Parliament is not fully involved in the process
Only 13 out of 751 MEPs are allowed to read some of the negotiation
documents, which are not even the key negotiating texts1 .
Ska Keller expressed her sincere hope that this conference will shed some light
on this obscure trade agreement and what is actually at stake for food and
agriculture and what can we do about it.
Robert Weissman, President of Public Citizen2 (USA)
explained that he will focus on regulatory convergence.
The starting point is to understand that the TTIP project
is not a traditional trade project, it does not have to do
with traditional norms of trade, that is reducing tariffs,
but is about eliminating non-tariff barriers to trade
(NTBs). Robert Weismann explained, “the things that
trade negotiators call NTBs are what we call consumer
protection, environmental protection, programmes for
protection of privacy and national services.” In reality this
means, actually evading the regulatory standards and the
core mission of government, in the name of advancing
trade.
The Investor-State-Dispute-Settlement (ISDS) is one
example that has received a lot of attention. The
main idea is to create special rights for large foreign
corporations that exceed the rights of domestic investors
and domestic citizens, and empower them to enforce
those rights in special outsourced, privatised courts.
Because of the costs associated with ISDS litigation,
it is only the large multinational corporations that in
principle can use ISDS. Potentially, large agro industrial
corporations, hampered with regulations that limit their
ability to access export markets can openly challenge
regulation. This will have a significant impact on food and
agriculture.