
TTIP trade deal could be re-launched under a different name, say EU ministers - breitling
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/ttip-latest-eu-deal-dead-must-be-relaunched-transparency-say-ministers-a7325276.html
======
erhardm
What really bothers me, as citizen of an european country, why is it possible
to have secret deals? If I don't know about such deals how can I call my
representative to oppose them? Or encourage them to take the deal if it's a
good one.

AFAIK, TTIP was leaked and that's the only way european citizens knew about
it.

Why is it legal? Because all I see is corporations trying to make a sweet deal
with governments, and the loosing side is always the people.

That's the only incentive I see to make deals secret.

~~~
cperciva
There are no secret trade deals. What there are is closed-door trade
_negotiations_ , because it's impossible to get anything done if every time
you open your mouth you have street protests from the industries you're
considering removing protectionist measures from.

~~~
SturgeonsLaw
I understand the reasoning, but if your requests trigger street protests then
maybe it's time to reconsider those requests.

~~~
colechristensen
When America abolished slavery it didn't trigger a protest, it triggered a
civil war.

Sometimes what's right and what's popular aren't very similar. (but I'm not
defending the TTIP)

~~~
icantdrive55
(It was more about states rights, over federal rights. I don't think they
really cared about slavery--unfortunately.)

~~~
bobwaycott
No. Not at all. Not even in the slightest. This states rights bullshit started
in the South as a defensive move to toss a more palatable, quasi-theoretical
veneer on what was an unmitigated Southern revolt against the United States
because of overt distaste at losing federal support and protection for
continuing the practice of slavery. This exposed Southern dependence upon it
as a basis for its economy and entire way of preferred life and wealth
accumulation. Theorists such as John C. Calhoun and other notable Southern
politicians began doing that thing that all politicians do, whereby issues are
clouded behind intentional euphemisms that detract people from the core
issues. Oh, sure, the South was worried about and fought for states' rights—
_states ' rights to continue the practice of slavery_ in open defiance to what
had been decided at the federal level over 60+ years of negotiations that
continued to threaten Southern dependence on slave labor. Post-Reconstruction,
this nonsense persisted to attempt to save face as the South reintegrated with
the Union and federal government, and to shore up defenses for the
establishment of Jim Crow. Today, this states' rights shit continues to get
thought time in those who wish to continue the practice of defending
indisputable discriminatory practices, engaging in revisionist history that
needs to go away, and in those who, for whatever reason, refuse to accept that
the Civil War never would have happened if slavery did not exist, was not
defended throughout the South, and if Southern whites and their social,
political, and economic leaders had read the writing on the wall, and admitted
to the grave injustice they'd perpetuated against a whole group of people
based solely on the color of their skin—and then began working to change the
firmly entrenched racism that to this day continues to remain embedded in
Southern thought and culture.

States' rights is a sham of an argument for the Civil War, and, too often,
many other abhorrent practices today.

~~~
julianj
I see what you're saying. I don't disagree that there have been actions taken
by states under the guise of state's rights that could be considered horrible.
However, the true concept of states rights is more than something randomly
invented by southerners. This idea is based on the 10th Amendment of the
Constitution.

~~~
bobwaycott
The comment I was responding to, and the particular matter I was addressing,
had little to do with the 10th Amendment. Nor did I suggest the concept of
states' rights as separate and important from those enumerated by the
Constitution to the federal government was a concept invented by Southerners.
I was quite specifically responding to the revisionist nonsense that the Civil
War was a fight over states' rights, and a war of Northern aggression, as
Confederate apologists today continue to like to suggest.

------
krylon
> European Union ministers today admitted that a giant EU-US trade deal is
> dead _in its current form_ , with drastic change needed to salvage any hope
> of a deal going ahead.

The devil, as always, is in the fine print - a cynic might read that to mean
"TTIP has gotten such a bad reputation we would rather wait a few more years
so the public forgets all about it, then try again."

In fact, I am tempted to quote Lovecraft here, except that a few years hardly
count as "eternal".

~~~
StavrosK
Offtopic, but does anyone else find Lovecraft too over-the-top? I know that
many people like him, but it gets tiresome that everything is nameless,
frightful, indescribable, hideous, hellish, monstrous, indescribable, etc.
He's not very subtle at all with his descriptions, even a house that was
previously established as super creepy gets an "abominable" when referring to
it.

I found him so over the top that I wanted to confirm my hunch experimentally,
and made a list of the 150 most prominent words in his opus. It is
unsurprising:

[https://i.imgur.com/pUUzFCJ.png](https://i.imgur.com/pUUzFCJ.png)

~~~
BjoernKW
Someone once said that Lovecraft suffered from adjectivitis. I'm fond of his
writing and have read pretty much all of his stories but I get the point.
Especially when reading several Lovecraft stories in quick succession they can
seem repetitive.

I'm surprised words like 'mongrel' aren't featured more prominently in that
word cloud. His blatant racism really detracts from some of his otherwise
great stories. It's particularly annoying in the Call of Cthulhu where it's
almost like from the author's perspective the true evil isn't the monstrous,
cyclopean abomination but non-WASPs.

~~~
StavrosK
Yeah, I saw the word "nigger" show up in the diagram, so I went and had a
look. In "The Rats in the Walls" the author has a cat called "Nigger-man", but
that was a proper name so I removed it (I removed all proper names).

Also, I think you're spot on with adjectivitis. It explains exactly what I
don't like about his stories.

------
walterbell
Related analysis of TiSA, Sep 20, [https://edri.org/tisa-leaks-set-alarm-
bells-ringing/](https://edri.org/tisa-leaks-set-alarm-bells-ringing/)

 _" Despite the rumours and assertions by several Member States that TTIP is
dead, the fight for safeguarding citizens’ rights and freedoms via so-called
“trade agreements” is far from over ... Greenpeace Netherlands has released
another batch of crucial and worrying documents ... EU privacy and data
protection standards are endangered and diminished in 6 out of the 9 analysed
documents ... Exceptions for “essential security interests” are a Damocles
sword over every single part of the agreement ... TiSA can limit the access
and transfer of software source code."_

------
acqq
> Under a similar trade deal the government of Ecuador was ordered to pay
> German oil company Occidental $2.3 billion for, apparently legally,
> terminating a contract.

No. Occidental is a US company, the trade deal was US-Ecuador bilateral
investment treaty ("BIT"):

[http://kluwerarbitrationblog.com/2012/12/19/icsids-
largest-a...](http://kluwerarbitrationblog.com/2012/12/19/icsids-largest-
award-in-history-an-overview-of-occidental-petroleum-corporation-v-the-
republic-of-ecuador/)

Such kind of penalties are planned by TTIP too, and I don't see the major EU
leaders rejecting that approach.

Also, don't forget there's at least CETA and TISA, and CETA is to be signed
very soon. More demonstrations are needed if EU citizens want to attempt to
affect anything!

[http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/ttip-ceta-tisa-trade-
dea...](http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/ttip-ceta-tisa-trade-deals-brexit-
laim-fox-about-to-take-its-place-a7218281.html)

------
lumberjack
So the US negotiators don't want to concede anything. So then one questions
what they had in mind to __convince __the EU negotiators to go on with the
deal...

~~~
toyg
US elites got used to a very sweet state of things in transatlantic relations
post-1989, and it got even better after 9/11\. Steamrolling Europeans was
almost too easy, because Euroelites had been fully co-opted by the American
way.

Unfortunately, 13 years of unpopular wars have taken their toll. There are now
two generations of politically-active Europeans who were not invested in the
Cold War, and see the US fundamentally as a big bully. Couple that with tight
economic times (which, many feel, have been foisted upon us by reckless
American finance), waves of unwanted migrants generated by US foreign policy,
and the self-inflicted loss of influence of "Airstrip One" Britain over EU
matters, and you have a situation where US negotiators likely found themselves
surprised by European pushback on all sorts of topics.

~~~
evgen
Possibly. An equally likely situation is that US leadership can see that the
EU is falling apart. The UK is already headed out the door, the failure of EU
banking and financial institutions given the current massive debt problems,
and a collective that seems to only be able to solve their bleak demographic
future by pulling in eastern European basket-cases that no one really wants to
have in the union makes an EU trade deal less important. Why waste time
dickering with a declining EU when you can get a better return on your efforts
by improving trade with Asia and Africa?

~~~
toyg
_> An equally likely situation is that US leadership can see that the EU is
falling apart._

TTIP was (and still is) a US-led effort. The only voices asking to keep it
going are US negotiators' and Obama's. That wouldn't happen if they really
thought the EU was in disarray.

 _> the failure of EU banking and financial institutions_

Well, at least we did not have Lehman and Merryll Lynch... the powerless
"EuroBundesbank" is a bit of a mess, but nothing that can't be solved by a
better German government.

 _> a collective that seems to only be able to solve their bleak demographic
future by pulling in eastern European basket-cases that no one really wants to
have in the union_

Those countries were brought in under pressure from the US and the UK, eager
to solidify the Cold War victory and water down EU institutions. Other
countries didn't object because hey, more markets close-by with cheap highly-
educated workforce and internal industry in disarray, ready for the picking!
Politicians naively thought their national champions would expand there, while
they actually wanted (and got) to delocalize with minimal fuss. Nobody had any
interest in some "bleak demographic future", it was just profit all the way
down; and I can assure you that most industries still want those countries in
(to the point where the only serious talk for post-Brexit plans is about ways
to grant Eastern-European workers easy access to British companies). Among
other things, they're the only ones still taking Christianity seriously,
something that European elites still somewhat value.

Europe has been in serious trouble before; compared to the last century or
even the one before, this decade is barely a blip.

------
soufron
It's also due to the US elections. The same thing happened last time.
Negotiations will come back under a new name - and probably a slightly
different scope and form, after the new administration has been designated.

~~~
douche
Yup. Obama is sliding into lame-duck territory, with a Congress that won't
agree with him on anything. Chances of successfully sliding anything in before
January are not good, and then it will be a more-or-less different regime
involved.

------
Silhouette
Original source without the strange Google link:

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/ttip-
latest-...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/ttip-latest-eu-
deal-dead-must-be-relaunched-transparency-say-ministers-a7325276.html)

------
mynameislegion
This redirects here, can someone change the URL?

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/ttip-
latest-...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/ttip-latest-eu-
deal-dead-must-be-relaunched-transparency-say-ministers-a7325276.html)

~~~
wanderr
Or better yet link to another article without advertising modals and auto
playing videos.

------
jokoon
The issue people are failing to see, is that usually, countries are
negotiating against each other, for their own perceived interest. The much
valued "rule of law" only applies within countries, not internationally. There
are no "international law" for trade.

So it's a murky situation from the beginning. I think the TTIP is an attempt
to have a common ground to end up with something instead of nothing. Of course
there are huge interests at stake here, and I want to be the devil's advocate
for once to try and understand the real philosophy of the treaty without the
cynicism and a more strategic view in mind.

~~~
izacus
> So it's a murky situation from the beginning. I think the TTIP is an attempt
> to have a common ground to end up with something instead of nothing.

That's the standard rationalization we've been fed form EU comission as well.
But when that "something" means that we give up on our EU consumer protection
laws to benefit american corporate profits it's actively harmful and against
the values of people actually living in EU.

~~~
witty_username
> our EU consumer protection laws to benefit american corporate profits it's
> actively harmful

Could you elaborate on why it's actively harmful?

Also, what does actively harmful mean? What is the difference between actively
and passively harmful?

> values of people actually living in EU.

People vote for representatives who vote for/against the TTIP.

------
sztwiorok
can someone summarize ttip in 3 short points?

I am sure that most people like me do not have a clue about what is ttip

~~~
walterbell
5-min video on the major trade agreements and ISDS,
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=M4-mlGRPmkU](https://youtube.com/watch?v=M4-mlGRPmkU)

~~~
feelix
My god, this is brilliant

------
cm2187
A roadkill of brexit... With the loss of support of the UK.

