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News from the movements

Brexit UK risks copying EU’s Sahara flaws
10-Mar-2020 WSRW
The UK Government is in the final stages of entering into a new trade agreement with Morocco including the territory of Western Sahara, without consideration of recent EU and British court rulings, or of the people of the occupied land.
What Deputy PM Somkid didn’t say: disasters loom large as Thai government eager to join CPTPP
3-Mar-2020 FTA Watch
FTA Watch and Thai civil society slammed government’s attempt to push Thailand into CPTPP FTA while the country have no negotiating power; risking negative impacts on Thai small farmers, rights over seeds and breeds, and access to medicine.
Pacific shouldering burden in unbalanced PACER-Plus Trade Deal
27-Feb-2020 PANG
The Pacific Island Countries (PICs) are taking on disproportionate binding commitments in exchange for false promises of benefits from the regional free trade deal known as PACER-Plus.
There’s nothing “mini” about the US plan to unravel Europe’s precautionary principle
26-Feb-2020 IATP
US trade negotiators, Agriculture Secretary, and American farm interests have all been crystal clear: the precautionary principle must go, and now is the time to finally axe it.
PACER-Plus development assistance analysis: No new money but still with strings attached
26-Feb-2020 PANG
What the development assistance arrangement results in, is aid money, tightly controlled by Australia and New Zealand to flow to areas that will make Forum Island Countries uphold their commitments on market access, ultimately benefiting the two metropolitan Parties.
PACER-Plus labour mobility analysis: Unbound promises and an annual meeting
26-Feb-2020 PANG
PACER-Plus itself achieved little by way of actual improvements for Pacific Islander workers to access the labour markets of Australia and New Zealand.
CETA: "Fake news" and "Canada bashing"?
24-Feb-2020 Council of Canadians
Many are getting the message that being against CETA is not being against Canadians or European friendship but about being against a blueprint for trade that usurps power from democratic bodies and gives it to large multinational companies.
Health, environment and climate are not negotiable
20-Feb-2020 S2B Network
More than 100 Civil society organisations demand a stop to trade talks that will further endanger EU rules on health and the environment and aggravate the climate crisis. A change of course is needed.
Questions and answers on the EU-US trade talks
19-Feb-2020 S2B Network
What are the reasons for the EU to talk trade with the US again and what would be the consequences?
Swiss communists support “STOP Palm Oil” referendum against the FTA with Indonesia
13-Feb-2020 Peoples Dispatch
The Swiss parliament ratified a Free Trade Agreement between the European Free Trade Association and Indonesia, allegedly without addressing the environmental concerns regarding Indonesian palm oil production.
Canada using CETA to attack European food safety rules, new documents reveal
12-Feb-2020 Council of Canadians
New documents reveal that Canadian regulators have been using the agreement to weaken European food safety regulations.
The EU-Indonesia FTA sustainable impact assessment report and why it is so hard to find
12-Feb-2020 bilaterals.org
The sustainable impact assessment report of the free trade agreement between the European Union and Indonesia is not easy to find. Yet some of its findings are quite worrying.
EU-Vietnam: 68 Civil Society Organisations urge MEPs not to ratify the new trade and investment agreements
11-Feb-2020 S2B Network
The undersigned organisations from Europe (1) call on the Members of the European Parliament not to ratify the free trade and investment agreements between the European Union and Vietnam.
Resisting RCEP from the ground up: Indian movements show the way
10-Feb-2020 GRAIN
The six year long mobilisation led by farmers movements and trade unions have made it amply clear that rural India cannot be taken for a ride any more.
Important differences between the final RCEP electronic commerce chapter and the TPPA and lessons for e-commerce in the WTO
10-Feb-2020
The US Mexico Canada Agreement extended the TPPA’s digital trade rules to provide even more extensive guarantees the already-dominant technology corporations. The RCEP puts a break on those developments.
New EU negotiating mandate for trade agreements with ACP countries turns EPAs into CETAs
7-Feb-2020 bilaterals.org
The new mandate is much more far-reaching than the 2002 version as it incorporates everything that the EU has been pushing in its FTAs since CETA including ISDS, digital trade, far reaching IPR.
CETA puts pressure on precautionary principle, glyphosate implicated
6-Feb-2020 Arc2020
The changes joint committees are allowed to make to the CETA-text are in effect very far-reaching and at the same time binding, so they take up the role of legislator.
NGOs urge European Parliament to postpone consent to EU-Vietnam trade deals
5-Feb-2020 Human Rights Watch
Despite Vietnam’s failure to meaningfully meet repeated requests for human rights improvements, a large majority in the International Trade Committee (INTA) voted in favour of granting swift consent to the agreements.
Post-Brexit EU-UK trade deal based on CETA would be bad news
3-Feb-2020 CEO
The EU-UK trade talks begin with the UK objective to use the corporate-friendly EU-Canada agreement CETA as a template. This is not a good start for democracy nor the public interest.
The China trade deal: Phase one of what for US farmers?
3-Feb-2020 IATP
What does what we know of the so-called Phase One deal mean for US agribusiness exports to China and, down the value chain, for US farmers?