We were pleasantly surprised yesterday to learn that the European Commission has taken major steps towards respecting the rights of citizens to see what is being negotiated in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). It published the EU negotiating texts for eight chapters of the agreement, including Sanitary and Phytosanitary Standards (SPS – on food safety and animal welfare), Technical Barriers to Trade (which could deal with such issues as food labeling), as well as chapters on state-owned enterprises, subsidies and government to government dispute resolution. The Commission committed to releasing draft proposed texts for 16 more TTIP chapters, as well as accompanying fact sheets and position papers related to each chapter. This is a big deal. It means that civil society groups and legislators can go beyond parsing proponent claims about TTIP to see exactly what’s on the table in TTIP, at least from a European perspective.
The European Union’s Ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly, issued her recommendations to the Commission yesterday for transparency measures to govern the negotiating of EC trade and investment agreements. Ms. O’Reilly said that of the EU TTIP negotiating texts she reviewed, only those concerning market access tariffs and quotas contained commercially sensitive information that justified an EC decision not to release the proposed market access chapter. She recommended that the Commission require the U.S. to justify why each and every of the consolidated EU-U.S. draft negotiating texts should not be made public.
But the Obama Administration, through the US Trade Representative (USTR), has refused numerous requests from public interest groups and elected officials to make the draft U.S. negotiating proposals public. Earlier this week, Senator Bernie Sanders wrote to USTR Ambassador Michael Froman about the lack of access for Senate staff, save for the staff of two committees, to retain draft negotiating texts to be able to analyze and comment on them after each negotiating session. Currently USTR negotiating texts are available for members of Congress to consult, but not reproduce or even take notes on, only in a guard-secured USTR reading room. Senator Sanders noted that “major corporate interests . . . are actively involved in the writing of the TPP [Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement], while, at the same time, the elected officials of this country, representing the American people, have no or little or no knowledge as to what is in it.”
The USTR is seeking fast-tracked Trade Promotion Authority to approve TTIP, TPP and other trade agreements, such as the Trade in International Services Agreement. Fast track would allow the Obama Administration to continue to negotiate these agreements in secret. Only when the negotiations were completed would the final agreed texts be presented to Congress and the public – for a simple up or down vote. No amendments, no public input. IATP’s new web page, Trade Secrets, outlines the threat to democracy from fast track approval.
At IATP, we’re poring through those texts now, in consultation with colleagues in Europe. Our early analysis of the SPS text raises concerns that the agreement could serve to weaken already fragile food safety rules in the US and undermine progress in the EU. Article 6 of the proposed SPS text would require that any agreements on food safety apply in all jurisdictions of EU and U.S. We’re concerned that this could threaten U.S. state level progress on issues like neonicotinoids (which have been banned in Oregon because they gravely weaken bee immune systems and bee pollination of agricultural plants). These proposals might even be used to undermine rules in EU member states on GMOs and toxic chemicals that go beyond European wide restrictions.
Still, the release of the EC proposed TTIP texts is a considerable victory for the citizens’ movements that have been pushing for transparency in the trade talks since their inception. The fact that EU negotiating texts and meeting reports have been steadily leaking out of the EU no doubt influenced the decision to officially release the negotiating texts, but there is no denying that the EC transparency initiative is a welcome step.
There is also no denying that the US is light years behind the EU on this issue. No publishing of draft negotiating texts or any indication that USTR would consider similar measures appear likely in the future. USTR insists that it meets with Congress all the time, so apparently that should be enough. As a Democratic congressional aide said of the 1600 meetings that USTR claims to have had with Congress about TPP, “Sixteen hundred meetings is great. So is one copy of the deal.”
At a packed press conference (video) yesterday morning, a dozen prominent members of Congress, along with allies from unions, faith, environmental and food and farm groups spoke out loudly against the Obama administration’s proposal for fast track authority. There have been several articles in the media lately asserting that fast track will slip right in with the new Congress, a rare example of agreement among the parties. The press conference’s broad coalition, which represents tens of millions of Americans, is already mobilizing people across the country to demand a different approach to legislating on trade agreements. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who led the event, insisted that an up or down vote on these complex trade deals is simply not acceptable. Rep. Keith Ellison, head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, added complaints about the existing procedure, in which members of Congress can see the negotiating texts, but can’t bring in advisors or even take notes.
But transparency is only the tip of the iceberg. It’s what’s under the surface, the contents of the trade deals and their impacts on our economies, environments, and food systems that can really do damage. The legislators and their allies spoke of closed factories and lost opportunities. Rep. Marcy Kaptur spoke of the closure of a windshield wiper plant in her district after the passage of NAFTA. She visited the factory workers in Mexico who “won” the jobs U.S. workers had lost, but were paid too little to emerge from poverty. Sister Simone Campbell, president of NETWORK, a Catholic social justice organization and a leader of the Nuns on the Bus, spoke of the devastation on rural economies in Central America in the wake of the Central American Free Trade Agreement that continues to drive migrants to the U.S.. She called for “trade for the 100%” rather than the lopsided and opaque process we have today.
Trade for the 100% is possible, but not under the current system. The increased transparency, at least from the EU side, is an important step forward. That the simple release of negotiating texts is such a big deal says a lot about how far reaching these agreements can be on so many aspects of our lives and economies. We’ll be digging into these new texts this week. Look for more on the “devil in the details” on food safety in the TTIP proposals next week.
