The EU-US Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Is 'Utterly Anti-Democratic'

The platform of No Transat! — [a group that] congregates several dozen associations, unions and political movements — last Tuesday denounced the “lies” of the European Commission and the United States concerning the negotiations on the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) during its visit to a model apartment presented as the “future of Europe.”

“According to the European Commission, this treaty would constitute a way out of the current crisis,” highlighted the members of the group. “But the current multiple problems have a common denominator: the decline of economic democracy. The TTIP will reinforce the power and the impunity of multinationals, and the numerous merger and acquisition transactions that will be signed will distance the workers even more from the decision-making places.”*

The members of No Transat! also worry that the TTIP will exacerbate competition, “which would then justify the decline of the hard-won social gains of the past to maintain the competitiveness of firms.”* Moreover, “the harmonization of sanitary and environmental norms will likely endanger European citizens, for these norms will be set lower.”*

“The TTIP is utterly anti-democratic. It paves the way of a globalist logic, where local living spaces are subjected to global governance and where the authority of non-elected experts takes precedence over other considerations,”* in summary.

To illustrate their desiderata, a model apartment was set up as the “future of Europe,” [a future that] would authorize the commercialization of hormone-treated meat or bleach-treated chicken, entail a substantial increase in the price of prescribed drugs and health care due to the subjugation of the health care system to privatization, and expand exponentially the surveillance capacity on citizens — which we denounce.

*Editor’s note: The original quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.