Leaked EU Policy Papers Show TAFTA/TTIP's Huge Challenges -- And Some Subtle Signals

from the harder-than-they-thought dept

After last Wednesday's debate, the European Parliament passed a resolution on the subject of NSA surveillance, which included the following mild wrist-slap:

Expresses, while confirming its ongoing support for transatlantic efforts in the fight against terrorism and organised crime, serious concern over PRISM and other such programmes, since, should the information available up to now be confirmed, they may entail a serious violation of the fundamental right of EU citizens and residents to privacy and data protection, as well as of the right to private and family life, the confidentiality of communications, the presumption of innocence, freedom of expression, freedom of information, and the freedom to conduct business
But instead of postponing the imminent TAFTA/TTIP negotations, as some MEPs had called for, it limited itself to the following rather feeble action:
Instructs its Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs to conduct an in-depth inquiry into the matter in collaboration with national parliaments and the EU-US expert group set up by the Commission and to report back by the end of the year
And so the TAFTA/TTIP talks will go ahead as planned. We already knew roughly what will be discussed during those negotiations, but no details. That's now changed, thanks to the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy getting hold of the European Commission's initial position papers on TAFTA/TTIP. These aren't exactly top secret -- the US side will receive a copy ahead of the first round of talks -- but they wouldn't normally have been released, and so they offer a unique opportunity to see the thinking here, at least from the EU side.

In essence, the 65-page document tries to flesh out the general idea of "promoting regulatory compatibility/convergence", which is supposed to deliver all those benefits that TAFTA/TTIP advocates have been touting. But once you get down to the nitty-gritty, as revealed by the papers, things turn out to be rather more difficult. The biggest problem, noted by many commentators, is that there aren't really many trade barriers that can be removed, because trade is already pretty free between the US and EU. That throws the emphasis on non-trade barriers -- things like differing local standards that make it hard to sell the same product in both the US and EU.

But as the position paper makes clear, it's going to be extremely challenging bringing these into line. In some areas, that's because the approaches of the two sides are so different as to be totally incompatible. That's the case for chemicals, for example, as the document itself admits:

Both industry associations and governments are aware that neither full harmonisation nor mutual recognition seem feasible on the basis of the existing framework legislations in the US and EU: REACH (Regulation (EC) 1907/2006) and TSCA (Toxic Substances Control Act) are too different with regard to some fundamental principles.
The best that EU advisers can come up with is the idea of "Promoting alignment in classification and labelling of chemicals", which is hardly going to generate billions of extra trade activity.

There's more scope for compatibility in the area of pharmaceuticals, but even here among the relatively few options are things like "allowing the exchange of confidential information and trade secret information between EU Member States/EU institutions and FDA." Of course, that could be achieved more easily by making all key health and safety data for drugs freely available, as the AllTrials campaign is seeking to bring about.

The really revealing section concerns "SPS" -- "sanitary and phytosanitary" issues. Behind that rather mysterious name lies a huge range of economic activity, including agriculture and food. And that, of course, means GM organisms -- already flagged up as one of the key areas that is likely to be problematic. That's because former USTR Ron Kirk stated quite bluntly:

"For us, everything is on the table, across all sectors, including across the agricultural sector, whether it is GMOs or other issues," Kirk said.
But in Europe, GMOs are often regarded as "Frankenfood", which is probably why the European Commission was careful to insist in its Q&A on the negotiations:
Basic laws, like those relating to GMOs or which are there to protect human life and health, animal health and welfare, or environment and consumer interests will not be part of the negotiations.
However, the policy paper does contain a few hints about how that apparent contradiction might be resolved, such as the following:
This chapter -- as part of the FTA discussions within the TTIP -- will seek to build upon the key principles of the World Trade Organization (WTO) SPS Agreement, including the requirements that each side's SPS measures be based on science
"Based on science" sounds reasonable, but it is actually the key concept that US has been using in order to export its food standards to the world. Here, for example, is the US 2013 Report on Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Barriers to Trade:
Underlying these cross-cutting SPS trade barriers (and many of the other unwarranted SPS barriers described in section IV) is the disturbingly common failure by some U.S. Trading partners to base their SPS measures on science
The inclusion of this phrase in the European Commission's position paper looks like a signal to the US side that it will cave on GM foods if the "based on science" argument is invoked as a justification -- after all, no reasonable person could be against science, could they? That readiness to capitulate seems to be confirmed by another carefully-chosen phrase later on, in a section headed "Marking and labelling" where we read:
consideration should be given to measures to inhibit the use of markings that may mislead consumers
Again, that sounds pretty innocent, until you compare it with the following statements made by Monsanto. The first comes during its campaign against dairies that labelled their products as free from the genetically-engineered recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST) hormone when it claimed that:
certain milk labels and promotions that differentiate milk based on farmer use of POSILAC bovine somatotropin are misleading to consumers
More recently, during the heated battle in California to label foods that contained GM ingredients (which was defeated by massive lobbying from GM producers), Monsanto wrote:
Proponents of the California labeling proposal are misleading people about the safety of food in the marketplace, and their opinions are in stark contrast with leading health associations and government agencies.
"Misleading" here actually means "telling people the facts about what their food contains", and the appearance of this particular phrase in the EU document suggests that the European Commission is willing to allow companies like Monsanto to use the same loaded term to fight GM labelling in Europe too once TAFTA/TTIP comes into force. Presumably this will be offered as a concession in return for other items that are more important to the Commission than preserving European citizens' right to know what is in their food.

Aside from these subtle signals, the other striking element in the document is the constant insistence on transparency, as here, for example:

The EU considers that transparency and predictability of the regulatory and standard-setting process is key to trade and growth in general.
For negotiations that are taking place behind closed doors, with no chance for citizens to follow what's going on, or to offer input, that's deeply ironic, of course. We're fortunate that there are civic-minded people with access to TAFTA/TTIP documents who are prepared to leak them so that we can see some of what is going on. Let's hope the example of Ed Snowden inspires more such leaks, since there seems precious little hope of the EU or US publishing those documents, or treating the 800 million-strong public they purport to represent with anything but arrogance and contempt in this regard.

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Filed Under: eu, tafta, ttip


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  • identicon
    fuck the NSA, AND EU, 9 Jul 2013 @ 11:39pm

    fooking traitors

    the whole fucking lot of democratic nations is fucking bullshit
    we need a world wide revolution versus all this fucking jerks that send democracy to a committee.

    FUCK PEEPING TOMS

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Guardian, 9 Jul 2013 @ 11:41pm

    who the fuck runs the eu?

    looks like the 330 million USA is running the world
    time for the fucking pitchforks

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 10 Jul 2013 @ 3:25am

      Re: who the fuck runs the eu?

      EU is mostly run by "experts". The commission is the main body for writing directives and they have larger departments to handle the job of advising. When a directive is getting written the eggheads are making an initial proposal, the commissaire will present to the parliament who will negotiate with the commissaire on the final proposal. On the way from the draft to the final proposal, several "external experts" (hell, lets call them by their real name: Lobbyists) will give their input on what they can accept whether by trying to influence the parliamentarians to vote yes/no or proposing specific snippets of wording. The end-result of this often ends up in a 3-way between council, commission and parliament. Ultimately it results in compromise directives most do not love and the national parliaments will have to make new laws upon it. The other main way is politicians in the council, on account of national parliaments' wishes, are getting to an agreement and the countries following that.

      There are several other procedures, all involving the commission or parliament to some degree.

      Bottomline is that the commissions "experts" are among the main lawmakers in EU and the parliaments lobbyists are the second wheel on that gig.

      Council decissions are harder to lobby, but it happens too.

      Ultimately EU is ruled by mostly "experts" with strong input from lobbyists and a little from politicians.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • icon
        Seegras (profile), 11 Jul 2013 @ 5:45am

        Re: Re: who the fuck runs the eu?

        If you define "experts" as "law experts", and sometimes "social engineering experts", then yes.

        But the EU is not run by any experts with any scientific background.

        link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 10 Jul 2013 @ 12:34am

    It certainly seems that the EU parliament (and most politicians) require a new dictionary as I can't seem to find the definition for Transparency that they seem to be using in any dictionary I own or online.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 10 Jul 2013 @ 3:59am

      Re:

      The "transparency" is probably something EU is working for to some degree since ACTA fell after some of the most abusive procedures to avoid any transparency towards even the parliamentarians who had to accept it ultimately. That the parliamentarian responsible for the procedure retired for concious reasons and there were clear opposition from the people and a minority of the lobbyists. Ultimately ACTA fell because it had been made toxic far before the protests and the majority of the lobbyists were unable to hijack the procedure even though they tried very hard.

      You can't get USTR to commit to any real transparency because of their extremely shady "tiered openness", which is why the second-best thing is making it look like you are working for transparency in vague terms to at least try to force a footnote or two into the deal.

      Transparency as being defined in this note is the bare minimum for the parliament to reluctantly accept it. In reality it is just a way to hide the underlying problems that marred ACTA: A commission far too concerned with proving that they could deliver a yes, USTR and their letting industries draft USTRs initial proposals and a fear of the public and how the leaked drafts were completely ruining the publics and the parliaments trust in the process.

      USTR and the commissions way of solving these problems are by making leaks have extreme consequences and by claiming everything they do is transparent even though it is a straight up lie. The only point of contention is subduing the european parliament, but that should be easy for the commission given the procedural tricks they can use...

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 10 Jul 2013 @ 2:32am

    i found it quite strange that there is no mention of Hollywood and the entertainment industries in the article. seeing as how every other 'trade agreement', every other 'negotiation' has included something they want, it's a bit unusual and unnerving. are those industries going to throw their demands in at the last minute, so that the 'negotiators' just wave them through, being so pissed off at the length of time taken to sort out what to keep from the people and what not? or have they got what they want already included under some other industry protecting-people destroying crap?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 10 Jul 2013 @ 4:10am

      Re:

      Well, the negotiation mandate from EU has a clause making audio-visual deals harder to get through. Initially France wanted an outright exception of audio-visual culture from the negotiations, but it ended up as a hard to decipher phrasing about need for respect of non-english culture that will make demands from Hollywood harder to get through, even though they have a hole for it in terms of IPR.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 10 Jul 2013 @ 6:26am

    Wow

    "the fundamental right of EU citizens and residents to privacy and data protection, as well as of the right to private and family life, the confidentiality of communications, the presumption of innocence, freedom of expression, freedom of information, and the freedom to conduct business"

    I wish we Americans had all those rights (or even just a few).

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Seegras (profile), 11 Jul 2013 @ 5:48am

      Re: Wow

      I wish these right were not just be written down but respected as well.

      The situation in the USA seems to be about the same, in that respect...

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 12 Jul 2013 @ 9:26am

    tafta is still around?? News to me.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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