[CTC] Statements on #TTIPLeaks

Mon May 2 14:22:18 PDT 2016

From Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, Public Citizen and IATP…

Arthur Stamoulis
Citizens Trade Campaign
(202) 494-8826

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Monday, May 2, 2016
Contact: Dan Byrnes, (202) 495-3039 <tel:%28202%29%20495-3039> or daniel.byrnes at sierraclub.org <mailto:daniel.byrnes at sierraclub.org>
View as webpage <https://content.sierraclub.org/press-releases/2016/05/sierra-club-statement-leaked-transatlantic-trade-deal-text>
Sierra Club Statement on Leaked Transatlantic Trade Deal Text
Environmental, climate protections undermined in leaked text
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Today, Greenpeace Netherlands released <http://www.greenpeace.org/eu-unit/en/News/2016/TTIPleaks-confidential-TTIP-papers-unveil-US-position/> nearly 250 pages of leaked negotiation texts from the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), revealing for the first time the U.S.’s position to undermine environmental and climate protections. The text, which fails to mention the words “climate change,” shows the deal would grant broad rights to corporations to undermine climate policies. The text also indicates that the U.S. is holding exports of natural gas as a bargaining chip to use to extract further commitments from the EU on services and investment. These documents reflect the deal’s text as of last month’s round of TTIP negotiations in New York.
In response, Ilana Solomon, director of the Sierra Club’s Responsible Trade Program, released the following statement:
“This Transatlantic trade deal is heading in the wrong direction and would put President Obama’s trade policy on the wrong side of history. The U.S. should be leading on climate action, not using trade rules to allow dirty fuel corporations to pollute more. This leak, along with the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, shows the immediate need for a new model of trade that protects working families and healthy communities.”
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More information:
Read the Sierra Club’s report on the impacts of investment rules in the TTIP and the Trans-Pacific Partnership on our climate here: sc.org/climate-roadblocks <http://sc.org/climate-roadblocks>  
“Climate change” is not mentioned once in the 248 pages of text, despite the fact that the text includes rules that would restrict the tools that the U.S. and EU could use to tackle climate change.
Under the National Treatment terms of the leaked text, the U.S. Department of Energy would be required to automatically approve the export of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to the EU – the world’s third largest LNG importer. A note accompanying the text, however, indicates that the U.S. is holding exports of natural gas as a bargaining chip to use to extract further commitments from the EU on services and investment.  
Both the U.S. and the EU have proposed “regulatory cooperation” rules that would undermine climate and environmental protections if they are deemed harmful to trans-Atlantic trade or investment. The U.S. has proposed that governments on both sides of the Atlantic should be required to review proposed regulations before enactment to pursue compliance with “international trade and investment obligations.” The EU has proposed similar language. The U.S. additionally proposes that corporations be allowed to “petition” a government for the “repeal of a regulation” on the basis that it “has become more burdensome than necessary to achieve its objective,” given its “impact on trade.”
An EU proposal in the leaked text would allow environmental labels and standards to be deemed “technical barriers to trade.” This could threaten labels designed to protect our environment, such as energy efficiency or climate footprint labels.
The text includes trade rules that have been used against “buy-local” policies that create local clean energy jobs and support clean energy entrepreneurs. At least 23 U.S. states have such programs. The EU has already successfully challenged <https://www.sierraclub.org/sites/www.sierraclub.org/files/Ontario-FIT-Briefing-Paper-Final.pdf> such programs at the WTO based on rules that TTIP would replicate, providing an additional forum for such challenges.  

About the Sierra Club
The Sierra Club is America’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization, with more than 2.4 million members and supporters. In addition to helping people from all backgrounds explore nature and our outdoor heritage, the Sierra Club works to promote clean energy, safeguard the health of our communities, protect wildlife, and preserve our remaining wild places through grassroots activism, public education, lobbying, and legal action. For more information, visit www.sierraclub.org <http://www.sierraclub.org/>.
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Sierra Club | 85 2nd St San Francisco, CA 94105 | sierra.news at sierraclub.org <mailto:sierra.news at sierraclub.org>
To subscribe, email media.assistant at sierraclub.org <mailto:media.assistant at sierraclub.org>
www.sierraclub.org/pressroom <http://www.sierraclub.org/pressroom>
http://www.foe.org/news/news-releases/2016-05-greenpeace-netherlands-releases-explosive-documents <http://www.foe.org/news/news-releases/2016-05-greenpeace-netherlands-releases-explosive-documents>

Friends of the Earth, U.S. news release

Greenpeace Netherlands releases explosive documents on just concluded U.S.-Europe trade talks

For Immediate Release: May 2, 2016

Expert contact: Bill Waren, (202) 222-0746, wwaren at foe.org <mailto:wwaren at foe.org>
Communications contact: Kate Colwell, (202) 222-0744, kcolwell at foe.org <mailto:kcolwell at foe.org>
Greenpeace Netherlands releases explosive documents on just concluded U.S.-Europe trade talks

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Greenpeace Netherlands released leaked documents comprising approximately half of the draft negotiating text for the massive U.S.- European Union trade deal as of the time of the start of last week’s negotiations in New York City on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreement <http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/press/releases/2016/Greenpeace-Netherlands-releases-TTIP-documents/>. The leaked documents show that the TTIP deal between the two largest economies in the world presents an across-the board threat to environmental and climate action in both the U.S. and Europe. The leaked documents also confirm that the TTIP would establish institutions and procedures to quash environmental regulations before they can even be promulgated.  

Bill Waren, senior trade analyst at Friends of the Earth U.S. had this comment:

We now have documentary proof that the U.S.-EU trade deal promises climate disaster by ramping up U.S. oil and gas production and exports to Europe. Sensible regulatory safeguards, such as those related to food safety and toxic chemicals, among many others, would also be stymied. Industry-friendly, cost-benefit analysis would hamstring new environmental initiatives. For example, insecticide safety standards would be lowered if the undervalued “benefit” of new regulations protecting the bees is outweighed by the “cost” to corporate profits, thus threatening the pollinators necessary for our food system.

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Friends of the Earth fights to create a more healthy and just world. Our current campaigns focus on promoting clean energy and solutions to climate change, ensuring the food we eat and products we use are safe and sustainable, and protecting marine ecosystems and the people who live and work near them.

http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/pressroomredirect.cfm?ID=5880 <http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/pressroomredirect.cfm?ID=5880>

Leaked TTIP Documents: Threats to Regulatory Protections

Statement of Robert Weissman, President, Public Citizen

Note: Today, Greenpeace Netherlands leaked negotiating texts of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement, the proposed trade deal between the United States and Europe. The leaks include 13 of 17 consolidated texts, as well as a European Union memorandum on the negotiating state of play. This statement provides a preliminary analysis of one of the leaked chapters, Regulatory Cooperation.

Europe, beware. The leaked TTIP text confirms that the United States is trying to export its failed regulatory model. If the United States succeeds in its project, Big Business will gain enormous power to block, slow, undermine and repeal European regulations.

The leaked text makes clear that there are serious issues requiring analysis in particular sectors, but also that the Regulatory Cooperation chapter poses a major threat to health, safety, environmental, labor, consumer, civil and political rights, and other regulatory protections. The U.S. proposals in the Regulatory Cooperation chapter seek to export many of the worst features of U.S. rulemaking.

There is a lot to recommend about the U.S. regulatory process in theory, but in practice, the U.S. rulemaking process now evidences a massive tilt to favor the interests of regulated industries. It is far too slow; regulators are bogged down in seemingly endless analytic requirements that are themselves biased to favor the interests of regulated parties. Its veneration of “cost-benefit analysis” provides a pseudo-scientific cloak to industry’s apocalyptic claims about the costs of the next regulation and operates at loggerheads with application of the precautionary principle.

In the days ahead, Public Citizen will issue a more detailed analysis of the draft Regulatory Cooperation chapter. These are among our top line concerns from the U.S. proposals in that chapter:
Regulatory Delay – Paralysis by Analysis: Article X.13 would require parties to provide detailed and expansive justifications for their decision to issue a regulation, including consideration of regulatory alternatives. This is an inherently unequal obligation, because there is no burden to provide justification for doing nothing. In practice, the need to provide detailed justification for issuing a rule dramatically slows U.S. rulemaking.
Corporate-Biased Cost Benefit Analysis: Article X.13.1.c would require parties to conduct detailed cost-benefit studies of regulations and regulatory alternatives. It is important to understand that the U.S. understanding of the phrase “anticipated costs and benefits” is fundamentally different than the European conception of regulatory impact assessment. In the United States, cost-benefit analysis is an extremely technical concept involving extensive data collection and elaborate modeling, and it is generally understood to be a near-absolute decision-making criterion. Its highly technical nature obscures the fact that cost estimates frequently rely on regulated industry-provided data and are excessive, and that non-quantifiable or indirect benefits are frequently not captured.
One-Sided Analytic Requirements: Article X.13.2 would require parties to assess the impact of regulations on small businesses, a formal assessment under U.S. in certain circumstances that imposes extensive delay. It is also a one-sided required analysis, both under U.S. law and the U.S. TTIP proposal, because the specially required analysis looks to burdens (“adverse economic impacts” in the TTIP proposal) but not pro-competitive or other benefits to small business.
Look Back, Not Forward: Article X.16 would require parties to undertake retrospective reviews of regulations. This is, again, an inherently uneven process, because the instruction is to search for rules to revise or repeal, not for regulatory shortcomings or gaps requiring new initiatives. In practice in the United States, the obligation to undertake regulatory reviews demands valuable time and resources from agencies, and interferes with their ability to conduct forward-looking activity.
Trade Over the Public Interest: Article X.9 would impose a requirement for parties to consider trade effects of proposed regulations, and implicitly to justify any detrimental effects on trade. This is admittedly a soft requirement, but is notable inserting purely commercial considerations into regulatory decision-making and should be viewed as precursor to more robust demands in this area to follow.
Taken in their entirety, the U.S. Regulatory Cooperation proposals are affirmatively hostile to the precautionary principle. The precautionary principle counsels taking protective action in the face of uncertainty. The U.S. cost-benefit standards, demands for consideration of alternative regulatory approaches, and expansive analytic requirements also counsel for inaction in the face of uncertainty. Moreover, U.S.-style cost-benefit analysis places a premium on industry-provided cost estimates while effectively discounting benefits from action to prevent possible harm.

There is no need to overstate this tension; it is in fact possible to take precautionary action in a cost-benefit framework, as the United States sometimes does – but it is also the case that U.S.-style cost benefit is generally discordant with precautionary approaches.

The U.S. proposal notably does not include a requirement for judicial review of regulatory impact analytic requirements. This feature is central to the U.S. rulemaking process, but U.S. negotiators have recognized its incompatibility with European institutional arrangements.

It remains to be seen how a regulatory cooperation chapter will intersect with the investment chapter. But irrespective of the intersection with the investment chapter, Europeans should be aware that, if the U.S. Regulatory Cooperation proposals are accepted and TTIP is approved, it is only a matter of time before the United States and U.S. corporations begin advocating judicial review of European compliance with the provisions of the Regulatory Cooperation chapter.

Judicial review is an inherent part of the logic of the U.S. system, and there is no doubt that U.S. corporate interests will insist that judicial review is required to enforce the terms of the Regulatory Cooperation chapter.

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http://www.iatp.org/documents/leaked-ttip-text-shows-us-negotiators-push-to-lower-food-safety-standards-farmer-protectio

Leaked TTIP text shows U.S. negotiators push to lower food safety standards, farmer protections
Corporate fingerprints evident in U.S. trade negotiating positions

MINNEAPOLIS – Today, Greenpeace Netherlands released draft negotiating texts, including U.S. proposals, for several chapters of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). An initial reading of the text by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) shows the heavy influence of corporate agribusiness in the negotiations, with a strong push to lower trade restrictions and public health regulations affecting food production over locally led approaches to sustainable agriculture and fair food systems. The texts provide compelling evidence in support of demands by civil society on both sides of the Atlantic of the need for a more transparent process that fully involves affected sectors.

Karen Hansen-Kuhn, IATP’s Director of Trade, Technology and Global Governance, noted, “Food and farm groups have been weighing in since the inception of the talks on the rules needed to ensure that efforts to rebuild our food systems from the ground up are not undermined by the trade deal. Instead we see evidence that TTIP is following the lead of multinational corporations: weakening the use of the precautionary principle in setting food and plant safety standards; undermining food labeling rules; and eliminating preferences for local producers in public procurement programs.”

IATP Senior Policy Analyst Steve Suppan commented, “The text shows the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) protecting corporate interests by shielding environmental, health and safety data used in TTIP risk assessment as confidential business information, preventing peer scientific review. The end result of the U.S. proposal would be increasing the burden on governments to justify food safety rules while placing no burden on industry to demonstrate that its products—including new kinds of GMOs, food or agri-nanotechnology products—are safe.”

“Our fears about agriculture in TTIP have sadly been vindicated every step of the way. The EU and the U.S. are busy horse-trading the lives of small dairy and meat producers and processors over car parts and other goods each side is willing to liberalize, said Shefali Sharma, Director of the IATP Europe office. “Many products that are key to local livelihoods and food systems are slated to have duties slashed either immediately, after TTIP comes into force, or in stages. These negotiators are trading off some vulnerable sectors behind closed doors at the expense of farmers and consumers.”

IATP Advisor Sharon Anglin Treat noted that, “The Regulatory Cooperation and Coherence texts proposed by EU and U.S. negotiators confirm both parties are seeking to use this international agreement to reach far into domestic policy decision-making in a way that undermines democratic processes on each side of the Atlantic. This would make it far more difficult to protect consumers, workers and the environment from pesticides and toxic chemicals, or even to inform them about food ingredients.”

IATP has prepared analyses of these issues based on past leaks of draft text, including:

Following Breadcrumbs: TPP Text Provides Clues to U.S. Positions in TTIP <http://www.iatp.org/documents/following-breadcrumbs-tpp-text-provides-clues-to-us-positions-in-ttip>, by Karen Hansen-Kuhn
TACD’s recommendations on the proposed food safety chapter in TTIP <http://www.iatp.org/blog/201603/tacd%E2%80%99s-recommendations-on-the-proposed-food-safety-chapter-in-ttip>, by Steve Suppan, with the Trans-Atlantic Consumer Dialogue
10 reasons TTIP is bad for good food and farming <http://www.iatp.org/documents/10-reasons-ttip-is-bad-for-good-food-and-farming>, by Shefali Sharma
States’ Leadership on Healthy Food and Farming at Risk under Proposed Trade Deals <http://www.iatp.org/documents/states%E2%80%99-leadership-on-healthy-food-and-farming-at-risk-under-proposed-trade-deals#sthash.BVwSac5j.dpuf>, by Sharon Anglin Treat
- See more at: http://www.iatp.org/documents/leaked-ttip-text-shows-us-negotiators-push-to-lower-food-safety-standards-farmer-protectio#sthash.qZANivx4.dpuf

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