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TTIP talks ‘still far from deal,’ says EU official

Chief negotiator reacts to leak by Greenpeace

TALKS to establish a US-EU free-trade zone (TTIP) are unlikely to conclude under Barack Obama’s presidency, chief European Union negotiator Ignacio Garcia Bercero announced yesterday, after Greenpeace Netherlands leaked secret texts from the negotiations.

Mr Bercero said: “There is still a lot that needs to be done before this negotiation is ripe for conclusion.”

He added that deep divergences remain on several issues, including market access for European firms and protection for the agriculture sector.

Greenpeace Netherlands executive director Sylvia Borren explained her organisation’s decision to publish the documents in its possession, declaring: “Democracy needs transparency.”

She said that they “make clear the scale and scope of the trade that citizens of the United States and the European Union are being asked to make in pursuit of corporate profits.

“It is time for the negotiations to stop, and the debate to begin.”

Ms Borren questioned rhetorically whether citizens should be able to act “when we have reasonable grounds to believe our health and well-being is at risk or must we wait until the damage is done?”

She insisted that “environmental protection should not be seen as a barrier to trade but as a safeguard for our

health and the health of future generations.

“We call on the negotiators to release the latest complete text to facilitate that discussion and we ask that the negotiations be stopped until these questions, and many more, have been answered.”

The documents released by Greenpeace comprise about half of the draft text as of April 2016, prior to the start of the 13th round of TTIP negotiations that concluded in New York last Friday.

Initial analysis indicates that there are four aspects of serious concern from an environmental and consumer protection point of view.

These include fears that longstanding environmental protections appear to be absent and that there is no reference to the “general exceptions” rule enshrined in the GATT agreement of the World Trade Organisation.

Climate protection would also be harder under TTIP and the EU-preferred precautionary principle could give way to the “risk-based” US approach that seeks to manage hazardous substances rather than avoid them.

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