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Leaked TAFTA/TTIP Chapter Shows EU Breaking Its Promises On The Environment
By Glyn Moody of TechDirt
Leaked TAFTA/TTIP Chapter Shows EU Breaking Its Promises On The Environment
As far as trade agreements are concerned, the recent focus here on Techdirt and elsewhere has been on TPP as it finally achieved some kind of agreement -- what kind, we still don't know, despite promises that the text would be released as soon as it was finished. But during this time, TPP's sibling, TAFTA/TTIP, has been grinding away slowly in the background. It's already well behind schedule -- there were rather ridiculous initial plans to get it finished by the end of last year -- and there's now evidence of growing panic among the negotiators that they won't even get it finished by the end of President Obama's second term, which would pose huge problems in terms of ratification.
One sign of that panic is that the original ambitions to include just about everything are being jettisoned, as it becomes clear that in some sectors -- cosmetics, for example -- the US and EU regulatory approaches are just too different to reconcile. Another indicator is an important leaked document obtained by the Guardian last week. It's the latest (29 September) draft proposal for the chapter on sustainable development. What emerges from every page of the document, embedded below, is that the European Commission is now so desperate for a deal -- any deal -- that it has gone back on just about every promise it made (pdf) to protect the environment and ensure that TTIP promoted sustainable development. Three environmental groups -- the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth Europe and PowerShift -- have taken advantage of this leak to offer an analysis of the European Commission's real intent in the environmental field. They see four key problems:
The leaked text fails to provide any adequate defense for environment-related policies likely to be undermined by TTIP. For example, nothing in the text would prevent foreign corporations from launching challenges against climate or other environmental policies adopted on either side of the Atlantic in unaccountable trade tribunals.
The environmental provisions are vaguely worded, creating loopholes that would allow governments to continue environmentally harmful practices. The chapter lacks any obligation to ratify multilateral agreements that would bolster environmental protection and includes a set of vague goals with respect to biological diversity, illegal wildlife trade, and chemicals.
The leaked text includes several provisions that the European Commission may claim as "safeguards," such as a recognition of the "right of each Party determine its sustainable development policies and priorities" but none would effectively shield environmental policies from being challenged by rules in TTIP.
There is no enforcement mechanism for any of the provisions mentioned in the text. Even if one were included, it would still be weaker than the enforcement mechanism provided for foreign investors either through the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism or the renamed investment court system.
The environmental groups have produced a detailed five-page document (pdf) that goes through each of these points in turn, and it's well-worth reading. But it's striking that the central problem is Techdirt's old friend, corporate sovereignty, aka investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS):
Nothing in the text would prevent foreign corporations, on either side of the Atlantic, from challenging climate or other environmental policies via an "investor-state dispute settlement" (ISDS) mechanism or via the European Commission's proposed "Investment Court System." Both enable foreign investors to challenge environmental policies before a tribunal that would sit outside any domestic legal system and be able to order governments to compensate companies for the alleged costs of an environmental policy. While the Commission claims that its new investment "reforms" would protect the right to regulate, States could still be "sued" if foreign investors considered that a policy change violated the broad, special rights that the Commission’s "reformed" investment proposal would give them.
In other words, at the heart of the European Commission's philosophy is the implicit acceptance that investors' rights take precedence over the public's rights -- in this case, those concerning the environment. Everything in the leaked sustainable chapter is couched in terms of aspirations -- the US and EU are encouraged to do the right thing as far as sustainable development is concerned, but there are few, if any, obligations or enforcement mechanisms. When it comes to protecting investors, on the other hand, everything is compulsory, backed up by supranational tribunals that can impose arbitrarily large fines, payable by the public. Although it is true that governments are given the "right" to legislate as they wish when it comes to the environment, investors are given the "right" to sue those governments black and blue if they attempt to do so.
Nor is this mere theory. Research carried out last year by Friends of the Earth Europe shows that of the 127 known ISDS cases that have been brought against 20 EU member states since 1994, fully 60% concern environment-related legislation. In other words, if the European Commission's proposals or something like them became part of the final TTIP agreement, it would almost guarantee a torrent of litigation aimed at blocking or neutering environmental legislation on both sides of the Atlantic.
This is an important leak because it reveals, once more, that a central problem of TAFTA/TTIP is the corporate sovereignty that is inherent in ISDS -- the fact that companies are allowed to place the preservation of their future profits above any other consideration, such as the environment, health and safety or social goals. The EU's sustainability chapter -- an area that is widely recognized as increasingly important in a world where lack of sustainability poses all kinds of problems -- is framed entirely in outdated, 20th-century terms: boosting trade and maximizing profits are the only metrics that matter. The European Commission's willing embrace of that approach confirms both its contempt for the 500 million Europeans it supposedly serves, and the fact that, far from protecting the environment, TAFTA/TTIP is shaping up to be a very toxic trade deal.
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What does Volkswagon and the EU have in common Alex?
Right nmewn. And the last answer on the board is .... the Daily Double.
Under the category Screwing the Plebes ..... the answer is "Big Assed Time"
But first let us pause for a moment for a message from our Organic, Natural, Gluten Free Sponsor, Monsanto.
BTW, is this fucking thing UN Agenda 21 compliant?
I thought so... everybody's been bought.
I've been wrong on a few things in my life but I never thought I would have to live in a world where people were so gullible as to think people once elected to positions of power & responsibility, could not be bribed or turned to the "darkside" (which is probably a razzzist statement according to the likes of Melissa-TamponEarring-Harris...lol).
It certainly doesn't offer much "hope" for democracy.
So...I've decided to buy an island ;-)
Wait wait wait wait wait ... Who is "Melissa-TamponEarring-Harris"?
Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck .... never mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uRgdWMpcPE
Those people on MSNBC are crazy.
There's a special place on the Crazy Train for them.
That's making my nads shrink. Maybe that's the goal. No more white kids? Are they really that dumb or is MSNBC a put on?
WHAT!?!?!?! COMMUNISTS LIE!? No WAY!!!!
You'll need a wall to protect against those rising ocean levels. </sarc>
lol...it's a very tol island ;-)
The situation we have now is that if the organized crime cartels that rule the world now kill someone who knows too much, nothing happens. There is no investigation, there is no liability and if anyone has the effrontery to investigate, like Michael Hastings of Philip Marshall, they get bumped off and the homicide becomes a suicide or an accident. Or, as in the case of former FBI confidential informant Darlene Novinger, from the lingering after effects of exposure to anthrax in 1994.
When you have the right to kill with impunity, as Lord High Executioner Obama has, the TPP is just bureaucratic window dressing. The Nazis under Hitler did not need a TPP type law in countries they occupied, they had SS death squads, Nazi People's Court judges who sent enemies to the gallows or the guillotine and informers everywhere to rat you out. Obama substitutes the NSA and "dirtboxes" for the role of informer.
http://stewwebb.tumblr.com/post/77468036616/fbi-whistleblower-darlene-no...
Former FBI Operative Darlene Novinger who was my friend since 1991 and we did many radio interviews together as co-guests during the early 1990s to mid 1990s died July 27, 2003 from cancer related to a anthrax attack she suffered in 1994. There were 28 of us Whistleblowers and Witnesses who suffered anthrax attacks between 1994 and 1997 14 survived and several have died since of…
"The Nazis under Hitler did not need a TPP type law in countries they occupied"
They did not need them, but they were implemented, nonetheless. The death squads were reserved for those who wouldn't comply with those statutes.
if those greenwashing machines are against it , normally i would be for it. so methinks that they aren't getting their slice of the pie. when i read the word sustainable, i can only thik of agenda 21 , which is masked human slaughter. so who are ya to believe?
"For example, nothing in the text would prevent foreign corporations from launching challenges against climate or other environmental policies adopted on either side of the Atlantic in unaccountable trade tribunals."
Given that NGOs will be representing people at the UN, NGOs need to challenge policies.
http://en.unpacampaign.org/
https://atokenmanblog.wordpress.com/2015/10/26/return-of-the-city-state/
In the end, there is no mechanism left to challenge anything in the environmental legislation taking place at COP 21 (which nobody will read anyways.)
How can NWO globalist treaties survive in an era when NO ONE will stand by their word? This and things like climate change treaties are masturbatory fantasies.
It's everyone for themselves going forward...
Once these treaties are signed, there is no 'get out' clause and the parties have no legal way out of them... kinda' like Greece.
Legal smegal... all it takes is for one strong leader to say 'Bugger Off!'
What are they gonna do? It's all a very thin veneer before the frailty is exposed.
Oh, like Tsipras. Right.
...of that nuclear armed superpower, Greece? lol
That's kinda' my point. If the US wants out of a treaty, they just ignore it. If South Sudan wants the US off their land, they should get nukes?!?
Welcome to the International order.
Exactly.
Supranational governments run by megacorporations.
Resistance is futile
South Sudan? LOL Nice try with the Straw Man argument, but = FAIL. Try again!
Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua...
Need more?
And what fallacy? The US has military bases all over Africa, and everywhere else.
http://www.converge.org.nz/abc/pr37-1721_files/image002.jpg
At this point, it appears that you're arguing with yourself. Go back and read what I've posted above. I can't help you anymore.
Pffft. Whatever.
Your reading comprehension SUCKS. Work on it, Bud! It's important! Cheers.
If we uncover new scientific knowledge that requires a rewrite of laws then no corporation should prevail over science. These trade agreements are a form of odious debt. The people can overturn these deals just like odious debt.
If we "uncover" new scientific knowledge?
LOL.....
The global communist have so thoroughly corrupted 'science' as to make that prospect ridiculous.
It's all heads they win, tails we lose from here.
Nevermind the worn out buzzwords, TAFTA is not to be conflated with a UNFCCC "agreement". Yeah, Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) can pretty much be pulled out of one's ass, like Putin did at the UN one month ago, and torts for loss and damages will be threatened by SJWs until the cows come home.
But you're dead wrong by orders of magnitude in suggesting that at this point the RoW gives a flying fuk about a spoiled bunch of elitist zionist cunts and their trade issssssues.
All roads lead to PARIS
Fuck you John Kerry. And the presstitutes that fawned all over you in Peru at COP20? Fuck them too.
<< no surprise
<< surprise
That cooked goose looks just like you!
Surprise! Surprise!
Everbody acting pious and falling into line on an issue, yet acting to undermine it in practice? Sounds like a Brave New World to me.
PS i predicted a dirty happening the day france had to pass the surveillance law. a man got decapitated that day, the medias were all over it, the law was only bashed in the blogs.
to pass TTiP they will need a bigger thing to happen, to distract the folks. im curious. betting on a scool-shooting or trainaccident with at least 80 murdered, we ll see.
a lot of EU laws regarding standarts of toxins etc are postponed, they know, when TTiP is through, they dont have to worry anymore. the goverments will have to ask the companies, if they agree with new laws, if not, they ll have to adapt, until the companies agree.
(if you re depressed, listen all them witches - elk blood heart:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAla2f8EPSg
On the day the Canadian parliament was to hear C-51 (anti-terror bill) one bearded man with mental issues murdered a soldier on Capitol Hill and stormed the building. He was killed by an old man with a pistol. The bill would probably not have passed. The House was cleared, the Hill was locked down, the media was put into over-drive, and the bill passed the next day.
It doesn't take much, and it is taking less and less every year.
The current EC is already less green than the previous one and is already rolling back some environmental protections in order to favor big industry.
The EC commissioner for trade Malström had said that she does not take her mandate from the European people. She is right of course. She takes it from big cooperations and lobbyists. TTIP will lead to a complete erosion of labor, social and environmental rights. It is a corporate and rogue capitalist takeover of a continent.
More on the corporate and lobbyist wheelings and dealings when it comes to influencing the EC and EU: corporateeurope.org
If you are in the EU, you can still sign this: stop-ttip.org
Quote: Nothing in the text would prevent foreign corporations, on either side of the Atlantic, from challenging climate or other environmental policies via an "investor-state dispute settlement" (ISDS) mechanism or via the European Commission's proposed "Investment Court System." Both enable foreign investors to challenge environmental policies before a tribunal that would sit outside any domestic legal system and be able to order governments to compensate companies for the alleged costs of an environmental policy.
Many environmental polices have turned out to be "transfer of wealth" schemes that provide either minimal or no environmental protection, accounting for the apathy in allowing secret unaccountable trade tribunals to come to fruition. Do I smell a conspiracy here? (i.e. Legislate poor environmental laws that make way for trade laws that run roughshod over environmental laws.) When it comes to protecting environment nothing else could do it like limiting population numbers. Moratorium on immigration. Enhensed automation to make it easier for an ageing population to be supported by a diminishing number of workers. Corporations didn't do so bad on their own eliminating lead from gasoline albeit slow in stopping the sale of cigarettes to children.