The #NoTTIP Times 3

WE ARE WINNING!Read the latest arguments against TTIP and be sure to join the growing global campaign against corporate power grabs posing as trade deals.

#NoTTIP TIMES 3

#NoTTIP campaign ramps up pressure on secret deal

Illustration: Angula Berria

An attempt is underway to resurrect the most controversial element of TTIP – corporate courts. Technically known as the Investor-State Dispute Mechanism (ISDS), these corporate courts would allow foreign corporations to sue our government for passing laws which damage their ‘legitimate expectations’ to profit.

In secret courts, not open to ordinary citizens and presided over by corporate lawyers, big business will be given privileged access to the law, placing its ‘right’ to make profits above the genuine human rights we should all enjoy.

We’ve seen again and again examples of these courts being

used, in other trade agreements, to sue governments for trying to protect their people and the environment. This includes challenging government attempts to put cigarettes in plain packaging, raising minimum wages, phasing out dangerous chemicals and holding oil companies to account for their human rights abuses.

Unsurprisingly the people of Europe have rejected these corporate courts. In a recent European Commission consultation, which attracted the biggest response of any such consultation in history, 97% of respondents rejected the idea of corporate courts.

So it’s scandalous that the Commission has refused to drop this section of TTIP immediately. Instead, they are trying to come up with a series of reforms that will make the system less toxic.

The Commission will put forward suggestions in coming weeks and months to make these corporate courts more ‘palatable’ by including the right of countries to appeal and introducing more transparency. No proposal we have seen would stop the sorts of totally unjust cases we’ve seen in the past. And nothing changes the fact that this system gives foreign corporations huge new powers over governments.

To date, the party block which the Labour Party sits in has opposed these corporate courts. We need to make sure they are not won over by any reforms the Commission suggests in coming months.

Tell your MEP and MP to oppose any ISDS system. European citizens have said they don’t want it. They need to be dropped immediately.

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Nick Dearden GLOBAL JUSTICE NOWNo to corporate courts

US Senator Elizabeth Warren on corporate courts

“ISDS would allow foreign companies to challenge U.S. laws — and

potentially to pick up huge payouts from taxpayers — without ever

stepping foot in a U.S. court. Here’s how it would work. Imagine

that the United States bans a toxic chemical that is often added to

gasoline because of its health and environmental consequences. If a

foreign company that makes the toxic chemical opposes the law, it

would normally have to challenge it in a U.S. court. But with ISDS, the

company could skip the U.S. courts and go before an international

panel of arbitrators. If the company won, the ruling couldn’t be

challenged in U.S. courts, and the arbitration panel could require

American taxpayers to cough up millions — and even billions — of

dollars in damages.”

Welcome to the third edition of the #NoTTIP Times. It is less than a year since the first #NoTTIp Times was published, and since then we have seen thousands join our campaign. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is getting a hammering as more and more people – on both sides of the Atlantic - become aware of what it is and what it means for us. Our message is to keep up and increase this pressure, raise awareness and create a movement that will defeat this attempt by corporate

interests to co-opt our democracy in order to maximise their profits at our expense. For those of you who are discovering about TTIP for the first time, it is one of a number of trade deals that have either been agreed or are being negotiated at the moment. A deal between the USA and the EU, it is being negotiated mostly in secret, although our international campaign has managed to bring some of it into the public domain. TTIP could: Give new powers for corporations to sue governments. Lead to more privatisation of public services like the NHS and education. Weaken workers’ rights and put millions of jobs at risk. Reduce environmental protection and food safety regulations. Be a blueprint for future trade deals globally. So read on, read the latest arguments against TTIP and be sure to join the growing global campaign against corporate power

Perhaps more than any other issue, the European Commission’s (EC) drive to deregulate financial services highlights how TTIP is geared to the interests of transnational capital.

After the 2008 economic crisis, there were global calls to improve banking and finance regulation. Lack of regulation was not the cause of a crisis with systemic roots, but the unparalleled crash led to a raft of new rules geared to limiting financial risk-taking.

The international “Basel III” Accord seeks to ensure banking transparency, risk management and bank leverage ratios. In 2014, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision found the EU’s reforms to be “materially noncompliant”. With its 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, the US was categorised as “largely compliant”.

Now, the EC, backed by the finance industry on both sides of the Atlantic – including City UK, in London - is using TTIP to push back against financial regulation in the name of competition.

Through its focus on “financial services” and “financial sector investors”, TTIP targets savings, bank and insurance services, trading in stocks and derivatives, tax advisory services, hedge funds, private equity funds, and credit ratings agencies, among others. The EC also wants ISDS to be applied to financial regulation.

‘Over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives’ were a key part of a financial web which enabled “sub-prime” mortgages to be given to people who could not afford to pay for them. Credit ratings agencies were complicit in making the whole system look healthier. Their positive ratings attracted pension funds obligated to make prudent investments - which subsequently lost billions. And bank size was a critical element due to the risk-taking (‘systemic moral hazard’) incentivised by being ‘too big to fail’ and having the safety net of a taxpayer bailout.

The EC is twisting its deregulation push into an argument for financial stability. It says “inconsistencies” in financial regulation are “barriers to trade and investment” which “undermine… global financial

stability”. But the US government is concerned that Wall Street will use TTIP’s ‘regulatory cooperation’ to bypass Dodd-Frank.

US envoy Anthony L. Gardner said: “We keep on getting asked about this and we keep on giving the same answer. Somehow, that does not seem to be sufficient, as the Commission keeps on pushing for this issue when they know what the answer is.”

By unpicking financial regulations, TTIP threatens to recreate the conditions which precipitated the economic crash of 2008, and the subsequent wave of ‘austerity’ and privatisation which hit the poorest the hardest and consolidated the power of the 1%.

We must stop TTIP from permitting states – taxpayers - to continue protecting financial institutions at any cost.

As Prof Michael S Barr, a Dodd-Frank Act architect, says: “The last thing that the US (and the EU) needs is to enable the financial industry to have another bite at the apple.”

FANCY ANOTHER ECONOMIC CRISIS?Mark Dearn WAR ON WANT

US Senator Elizabeth Warren on corporate courts

Between 2011 and 2015, more than 80 patented drugs are set to lose their patent protection, which could mean a drop of more than $120 billion in revenue for the companies that manufacture them. This “patent cliff” represents the greatest potential loss that the pharmaceutical industry has ever experienced and TTIP is one of the many trade treaties through which the industry is trying to soften the blow to its bottom line.

Generic medicines are legal, identical and safe copies of patented drugs produced once patents expire. They play an essential role in the global healthcare system, providing affordable treatment to people for whom brand name drugs are simply too expensive.

TTIP has a host of objectionable proposals for the pharmaceutical industry:

1. Allowing companies to extend their monopoly as a concession for the time it takes to get approval from other regulatory agencies. This is called patent-term extension.

2. Limiting the disclosure of clinical trial data (also called data exclusivity), which is essential for the production of generics. 3. An unprecedented expansion of the rights of investors through ISDS to sue governments in unaccountable international trade courts for a perceived harm to their profits.

4. An attempt to set a global standard for patent law, which would dilute the EU’s standards and pressure other nations to follow suit.

Pharma only invest R&D dollars for conditions that affect wealthier markets, and as a result the health needs of poorer people are largely ignored. In the last 50 years, we’ve had two new drugs for TB ( a disease that kills 1.5 million a year) and 14 new drugs for hay fever because 95% of people living with active TB live in low and middle income countries.

The reality of the situation is this: medicines today are only available for those who can afford it, and this needs to change. The only way it can change is with concerted public policy that aims to strike a balance between health innovation and health access. No one wants pharma companies to sell their products at a loss or for the government to be the only one that can bring about any meaningful progress in treatment. There are many solutions to the problem of access to medicines, but what we DO know is that eroding the ability to manufacture and distribute affordable drugs under the guise of protecting intellectual property is simply NOT the way forward.

An end to affordable medicines

Mikhail MenezesSTUDENT STOP AIDS

When BBC Scotland published a leaked copy of the EU’s initial services offer this February, people were able to see for themselves the many sectors that will be irreversibly opened up to US corporations if TTIP goes through. At the same time, the government launched its latest propaganda offensive asking the public to believe that the NHS is safe from TTIP. So what do we really know?

1. The first thing that is completely clear is that health services, including hospital services, medical services and dental services are all included in TTIP. The EU’s draft offer says this explicitly, and the EU trade commissioner has confirmed that she has no intention of excluding them. The only sector that has been excluded from the TTIP talks is audio-visual services, as the result of dogged insistence by the French.

2. The NHS is open to attack under the new investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) rules that TTIP will introduce. As the chief EU negotiator has confirmed, US corporations will win the power to challenge health policy decisions just as they will be able to challenge any other public policy decisions that affect their bottom line. Slovakia has already lost a multi-million Euro case to Dutch insurance company Achmea for reversing its earlier health privatisation. According to the report commissioned by the UK government from the London School of Economics at the start of the negotiations, we will be hit by many such cases here too.

3. Pro-TTIP politicians argue that the NHS could be protected by a safeguard on services supplied ‘in the exercise of governmental

authority’ that was first introduced in the 1994 General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). Yet this safeguard is worthless in protecting public services in the modern era, as it defines them narrowly as services supplied (a) not on a commercial basis, and (b) not in competition with any other service supplier. It was confirmed years ago that this safeguard does not apply to the NHS. In recognition of this, the EU adopted a cross-cutting ‘public utilities’ exemption, but it later admitted this was no defence either. Trade lawyers have made clear that public health systems will remain exposed as long as health services are in the deal.

4. Individual EU member states can register their own national reservations for particular services in the schedules drawn up by the negotiators. Yet the UK government has a reservation in place only for ambulance services and for ‘residential health services other than hospital services’ – and even these are now under attack. Demanding a government carve-out for the NHS is a mistake, as the EU can always bargain away any such reservations in the future.

As if TTIP wasn’t bad enough, the EU has made the same liberalisation offer in the shadowy Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), currently being negotiated with an even wider range of countries. The only correct response to the threat this poses to public services is a complete rejection of the logic that subordinates our needs to the profit imperative of big business. No TTIP! No TiSA! No to any of the EU’s free trade deals!

THE NHS: IN OR OUT OF TTIP?

Jon HilaryWAR ON WANT

Illustration: Kieran Mullin

Pics: [email protected]

We went to Brussels recently to lobby, learn, protest and demand the EU STOP TTIP! Here’s some pics of our time there…

STOP

TTIPTHESE ORGANISATIONS BACK THE NO TTIP CAMPAIGN 15M London Assembly 38 Degrees 38 Degrees Haringey 350.org Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) Barnet Alliance for Public Services Bring Back British Rail Christian Ecology Link Community Food Growers Network CWU Debt Resistance UKDIGS Hackney Renters Disabled People Against Cuts European Greens in London Farms not Factories Food and Water Europe Frack Free Sussex Friends of the Earth, England, Wales and Northern Ireland Genetic Engineering Network Global Justice Now Global Women’s Strike GMBGreen Party GreenNet Greenpeace IOPS London Jubilee Debt Campaign Keep Our NHS Public Left Unity

Lewisham People Before Profit London Federation of Green Parties Low Impact Living Initiative New Internationalist magazine Occupy London Open Rights Group OurNHS People’s Assembly Against AusterityPlatform Power for the People Public and Commercial Services union Reclaim the Power Red Pepper Restless Development Rising Tide UK Roj Women’s Association STOPAIDS Student Stop Aids Campaign SumOfUs The Landworkers’ Alliance UK Uncut Trade Justice Movement Unite Universities Allied for Essential Medicines UK University and College Union (UCU) War on Want We Own ItWomen’s International League for Peace and Freedom Young Friends of the Earth Young Greens

Mark DearnWAR ON WANTTTIP’S

RECIPE FOR RUINTake some hormone-fed beef rinsed in acid, rub in a dash of genetically modified oil from pesticide-soaked crops, and if you like your steak extra-luxurious, a dab of butter laced with antibiotics. Sound appetising? All this and more could be on offer at your local eatery, courtesy of TTIP’s agenda to trash our food safety standards.TTIP’s assault on food is directed at EU standards that safeguard human and animal health and protect the environment. These include good hygiene practises in food production, animal welfare and the prevention of non-medicinal use of hormones and antibiotics, the use of GMOs or cloned meat, and banning dangerous pesticides and herbicides.TTIP’s threat to food safety is so great that Jamie Oliver is getting involved. Oliver met Business Secretary Vince Cable in March. He was told not to worry because TTIP would not impact our food standards.

“Vince and his team tell me today this can’t happen which is nice to hear BUT food is still on the negotiating table and that does mean technically anything can still happen... We must keep watching this space very very carefully,” he said.Oliver is right to be worried. The divergence between EU and US approaches is stark – and US industry is not lobbying to increase US standards to force an expensive change in production methods. In the EU, the ‘farm-to-fork’ approach ensures good hygiene at every stage of food production. Unlike in the USA, meat is not bathed in harsh chemicals to make up for bad hygiene practises. The ‘precautionary principle’ is paramount to EU policy-making. It means business must prove to government that a product poses no threat to human health or the environment. In the USA, a product is presumed safe, and for it to be banned government must prove that there is a threat to human health or the

environment.The EC repeatedly states that our food standards are protected. But in 2008 it attempted to have

chlorinated chicken permitted in the EU. In 2013, it succeeded in changing legislation on lactic

acid-washed beef. And right now, it is once again trying to undermine

farm-to-fork by ensuring chicken bathed in peroxyacetic acid can enter

the EU. Added to this, a leaked TTIP chapter makes clear that boosting

trade is paramount above food, animal and plant health regulations, while port entry inspections will also end.

Students Against TTIP (SATTIP) is a newly formed network which brings together students in the fight against TTIP. Our objective is to establish local university groups and strengthen them by coordinating strategies and actions at the national level.

As students, we are primarily interested in protecting our right to define the society we are inheriting. We are opposed to the deal in its entirety, for it will water down indispensable regulations and erode hard won political gains, such as our treasured labour rights and democratic accountability.

The idea to form a national student movement was conceived during a trip to Brussels, where UK activists gathered to demonstrate against TTIP and lobby their local MEPs. The trip highlighted just how many autonomous groups exist across the UK, and how much enthusiasm and passion for change lies in our generation. It seemed like the logical progression was to find a way to connect these pockets of activism and create a more powerful, united student movement.

A few weeks later SATTIP was formed and the network has been growing rapidly since. We have active groups on various university campuses including Manchester, Leeds, Warwick, Middlesex and Aberdeen. There are also emerging groups forming at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London, Sussex, and University College of London (UCL).

At SATTIP we believe in the collective power of the people and our ability to defeat TTIP and other corporate-driven agreements that aim to undermine our democracy, social, health and environmental standards. The pressure of our unified voices can pave the way for major social change and economic justice. Whatever your background, skill set or age group - if you are fired up by the secrecy of this abominable corporate bill of rights, then we would love to hear from you.

If you want to get involved, come to our next meeting, start your own on-campus group or simply stay in the loop with our events, please email us at: [email protected]

Maia Kelly & Emilie SchultzeSATTIP UKSTUDENTS

SAY NO!

Cooking up a storm: TV chef Jamie Oliver recognises the threat posed to food by TTIP

PREDICTED INCREASE IN CO2 EMMISION DUE TO TTIP

#NOTTIP

MILLION TONNESFIRST, DO NO HARMSamuel Lowe FRIENDS OF THE EARTH

If global temperature rise is to be kept below 2 degrees and the most severe impacts of climate change mitigated, around 80% of known fossil fuel reserves must be left in the ground.

Knowing this, it seems preposterous that the EU would be explicitly pursing a trade deal that would undoubtedly lead to even more money being poured into fossil fuel extraction and associated transport infrastructure.

Yet, if TTIP goes through as envisioned this is exactly what is going to happen.

The EU has made it clear that one of the key aims of the TTIP negotiations is to push the USA to reduce or remove current restrictions on the export of crude oil and shale gas. Fluctuations in the oil price notwithstanding it seems likely that increased demand from the EU would further the expansion of fracking in the USA and facilitate the export of tar sand oil, mined in Canada and refined/transported via the USA, to the EU

The necessary infrastructure investment required to facilitate the transport of liquefied shale gas across the Atlantic is considerable and decidedly long-term. A 2014 report by the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate confirmed that high-carbon investment over the next 15 years will only serve to lock in the risks of dangerous climate change. Not only would the inclusion of an energy chapter in the TTIP fail to adequately address issues of energy security in the EU in the short-term, it will also create bigger, potentially catastrophic, problems in the future.

Of course, an acronym-heavy trade deal will never be the first port of call for decisive climate action. But it is at the very least reasonable to expect that, at a time of planetary emergency, trade deals do no further harm to the climate.

MP’S WARNING

On 10 March the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) published a report on the environmental impacts of TTIP. The report warned that TTIP could initiate an “unacceptable” race to the bottom in environmental regulation.The EAC warned that investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) could render EU member states’ right to regulate “meaningless” as corporations would be able to sue governments over lost profit. This would have a chilling effect on future environmental regulation, including measures to combat climate change and prevent fracking. It also said that “harmonisation” of environmental standards between the USA and EU threatens to undermine the “precautionary principle”. The precautionary principle is central to protecting the environment and public health in Europe. It dictates that when business tries to bring a product to the market, it must first prove that it will do no harm; in the USA, it is the government which must prove a product will not harm public health or the environment.The Chair of the EAC, Joan Walley MP (Labour), said: "The focus in TTIP has been on its potential for boosting transatlantic trade, but that must not be at the expense of throwing away hard-won environmental and public-health protections”.

Illustration: Bhoomica Patel

More than 1.6 million people from across the EU have signed up[ to say NO to TTIP in a European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) and the number is rising every day.

ECIs are intended to be a way of allowing ordinary EU Citizens a voice in the European Parliament. They ECI demands that 1 million people from across the EU must sign, and a threshold number of people in at least seven different countries must be reached.? The threshold is proportionate to population.

The targets must be met within a year. If all those criteria are reached, the EU Council is then obliged to meet with the organisers of the ECI, hold a public hearing on the issue and then announce their course of action having deliberated on the demands placed on them.

The EU Council refused the ECI on TTIP from the outset in September last year, a decision that’s now being challenged in European courts. Various groups from across the continent then started a ‘self-organised’ ECI

on 6 October. It reached its 1 million target before Christmas last year – in record time. In April, it had reached 1,663,438 and achieved the threshold in 12 countries.

It’s easiest to sign the ECI online and takes a minute or less to complete. With our partners across the EU we have declared an intention to reach 2 million signatures by 6 October 2015. This will send a powerful message to those who think it’s a good idea to negotiate away our democracy to the powerful

1% of the population who own and control big businesses and financial institutions.

So sign up today and spread the word through social media and in any way you can, to contacts in the UK and especially in other EU countries.

Sign up today:

https://stop-ttip.org/

In December 2013, representatives from a handful of European countries met in Brussels to discuss TTIP. We were there to find out more about the deal and work out how to build a Europe-wide campaign. We met again in February 2015 but this time 200 people were involved from 150 organisations and 25 European countries.

Germany and France have strong coalitions to stop TTIP, with hundreds of local authorities opposing TTIP and daily media

coverage in Germany. Italy has built a coalition with over 200 organisations which ran a month of anti-TTIP events in October. Despite a media blackout on TTIP in Finland, activists have coordinated flash mobs and art installations around the country. Hungarian campaigners are organising summer universities on TTIP. In Romania, the TTIP campaign has been led by anti-fracking groups and is gaining momentum. There is huge resistance to TTIP across Spain and a strong campaign to stop the

deal. Activists in Luxembourg secured a hearing on TTIP in their parliament.

The UK campaign to stop TTIP has inspired many of our European comrades. Our UK Day of Action on 12 July was the model for the European Day of Action on 11 October. The 150 people who took part in the no TTIP Train in February (asee report elsewhere in this paper) has inspired other countries’ campaigns to bring activists to Brussels in the future.

While each country must focus on shifting the position of its MPs and MEPs to oppose TTIP, we are working closely together to share our ideas and information. We will mark the end of the European Citizens’ Initiative together in October and coordinate our campaigns on why TTIP is bad for the climate at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 21) in Paris in December.

Guy TaylorGLOBAL JUSTICE NOW

Polly Jones GLOBAL JUSTICE NOW

EUROPE SAYS NO TO TTIP

JOIN 1.5 MILLIONNumber of chemicals banned in US cosmetic industry = 11Number of chemicals banned in EU cosmetic industry = 1328Can you guess which standard TTIP lowers all Make Up to?

Illustration: Kayley Hutchinson