bilaterals.org logo
bilaterals.org logo

EU-US (TTIP)

In February 2013, US President Barack Obama used his State of the Union address to announce the launch of negotiations towards a comprehensive free trade and investment agreement between the USA and the European Union. The first round of negotiations, held in July that year, represented the realisation of a dream long held by the business lobbyists of the TransAtlantic Business Dialogue, who had pressed for a free trade agreement between the EU and USA since the 1990s. Yet the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) seeks to be more ambitious than any previous trade deal, encompassing a vast range of issue areas in order to reengineer the social and economic landscape on both sides of the Atlantic in favour of capital.

Given that most tariffs between the EU and USA are already at minimal levels, the central focus of the negotiations is the removal of regulatory barriers to trade. This deregulation will contribute 80 per cent of the total corporate gains from TTIP, according to official calculations, yet the ‘barriers’ to be removed include some of the most important rules and standards that safeguard public health, labour rights and the environment. Negotiators are also keen to remove rules that protect local economies and jobs from unfair competition, with potentially devastating consequences. The official assessment undertaken for the European Commission in 2013 calculated that TTIP will lead directly to the loss of at least one million jobs in the EU and USA combined.

Where the negotiations are unable to complete this deregulatory agenda, TTIP seeks to harmonise regulations. Any proposed new regulations in the future could be screened in order to minimise their impact on private sector activity. If national governments do still introduce any new laws or regulations on corporate activity, TTIP will include provisions for an investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism to allow foreign investors to sue the host country in their own privileged court system for any resulting loss of future profits.

The EU and USA have seen their global economic importance diminish since the Second World War, so that they now represent around half of world GDP rather than three quarters, as before. In geopolitical terms, TTIP is an attempt to restore the transatlantic alliance in response to the challenge of emerging economies such as Brazil, India and China. Frustrated at no longer being able to impose their will unchallenged in the multilateral forum of the WTO, the EU and USA have identified TTIP as their opportunity to devise together a template for all future trade deals around the world.

The other geopolitical target of TTIP is Russia. The negotiation of increased exports of oil and gas from the USA to Europe is explicitly designed to break the dependence of Central and Eastern European states on energy supplies from Russia, with US negotiators speaking openly of TTIP as the ‘economic NATO’ that will allow Washington to isolate Moscow as it did in the Cold War. Yet TTIP will thereby condemn Europe to decades of dependency on fossil fuels from North America, just when the reality of climate change demands an immediate transition to clean energy sources. Despite its admission that TTIP will lead to millions of tonnes of extra CO2 emissions, the European Commission is still using the negotiations to press for unrestricted access to US energy supplies.

There is now an unprecedented movement of mass opposition against TTIP in Europe. Anti-TTIP platforms have been established in every one of the 28 EU member states, and the self-organised European Citizens’ Initiative against TTIP and CETA raised over 3.3 million signatures in its first year alone. US labour and environmental groups are also raising their voices against TTIP, even if the debate in the USA has been more focused on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) instead. The EU-US trade negotiations are fast becoming a toxic political issue at national and international levels alike, as citizens recognise that the fight over TTIP is a fight for our very future.

Following strong public outcry and the election of Trump in the US, the talks were put on hold in 2017.

In July 2018, the US President and the EU Commission President agreed to relaunch trade talks on a "TTIP light" deal, after Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs on European cars. The EU has been mandated to negotiate a limited agreement (on the removal of tariffs on industrial goods, excluding agricultural products, and on conformity assessment) while the US aimed for a larger deal that includes agriculture.

Contributed by John Hilary, War on Want in March 2016; updated in July 2019

Photo: Friends of the Earth Europe



TTIP: Why we are asking for an immediate suspension? With a sense of urgency !
Human rights organizations have joined the broad Belgian coalition of the trade union confederations, mutuality’s, consumer organizations and environmental and development umbrella NGOs and are asking for an immediate suspension of the TTIP negotiations.
TTIP: MEPs pave way for plenary vote by retabling June amendments
International Trade Committee MEPs on Monday paved the way for a plenary vote on the European Parliament’s draft recommendations for Transatlantic Trade and investment partnership (TTIP) negotiators, by retabling the June plenary amendments which had been referred back for reconsideration.
"TTIP free" zones
List of pages where you can find out which cities/towns/regions have declared themselves as TTIP-free, by country
’Nein Danke’ — smaller German firms see US trade deal as threat
Small and medium-sized companies known as the ’Mittelstand’ that account for 89 percent of Germany’s exporters are skeptical of the trade deal being hammered out between Brussels and Washington.
Parliament’s trade committee to vote on TTIP Monday
The European Parliament on Monday will again struggle to advance the giant EU-US trade deal, after a compromise blew up between the two legislature’s biggest political parties in early June.
TUC General Secretary calls time on ‘zombie trade deals’
TUC General Secretary, Frances O’Grady, will call time on ‘zombie trade deals’, when she addresses the European Commission Trade Policy Day in Brussels today (Tuesday).
Dim prospects for TTIP talks under Luxembourg EU presidency
The chances for a conclusion to negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) this year are poor, Luxembourg‘s foreign minister said in an interview with a German newspaper published Monday.
SYRIZA says Europarliament must reject TTIP
According to SYRIZA, ISDS undermined economic democracy by treating the rights of peoples and their elected representatives as equal to the rights of an economic oligarchy, essentially amounting to an exemption for large multinationals from democratic controls and continuing a conversion of western democracies to states where elections cannot bring about changes to economic policy.
Luxembourg MEPs called upon to vote ’no’ on TTIP
A Luxembourg platform calling for plans for a US-EU trade partnership to be abandoned has urged the Grand Duchy’s MEPs to vote against the proposals put forward by the European Commission.
Germany’s most powerful trade union grouping to join protest against trans-Atlantic trade pact
A powerful grouping of German trade unions says it will help organize protests this fall against a planned trans-Atlantic free trade pact.