Trade Agreement represents the sovereignty of Capital

international | anti-capitalism | opinion/analysis Monday May 25, 2015 17:47 by Ruared - Republican Network for Unity

Nathan Stuart with a short piece on the transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Nathan is an RNU student activist from Armagh, currently living and studying in Belfast. He has been heavily involved in numerous campaigns on student, socialist and republican issues.

The transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is a proposed free trade agreement between the European Union and the United States, which represents an unprecedented threat to democracy and the general good.

The trade agreement seeks to increase corporate power and weaken the control of the governments of the members of the EU in regulating the market, this would severely hinder their ability to alter the market for the benefit of their citizens.

The actual process in which the talks have been carried out this far have been utterly deceptive and has only the interests of wealthy corporations at its heart. Of the 590 secretive closed negotiations that have taken place so far, a shocking 92% have been with representatives of companies whose sole motivation is the unhindered accumulation of profit.

We do not need to point to the privileged access of corporate interest to speculate on the goal of this trade agreement as the US and EU have been quite open in that regard as both have acknowledged the goal of the TTIP is to remove regulatory ‘barriers’ which restrict the potential profits to be made by transnational corporations.

The barriers that are to be removed are the social standards and environmental regulations that protect both the people and the world we live in. Labour rights, digital privacy, food safety rules, the regulation of toxic chemicals and even banking safeguards put into place due to the recent economic crisis caused by unregulated banking and bankers that engaged in the most immoral, indefensible practices.

The agreement also allows companies from the US and Canada to actually sue for damages if they believe that they have suffered loss of profit because of laws and measures of the EU and its individual member states. This would enshrine in law the rights of companies to accumulate profit regardless of the wishes of the nations that are set to sign this agreement. An unprecedented attack on the sovereignty of those nations that are members of the EU and the living standards of the people that live under EU’s jurisdiction.

Public representatives have had no involvement whatsoever in the actual drafting of this free trade agreement and have no powers to amend the final draft which is set to be announced before 2016. Another worrying prospect of the TTIP is that should it come into effect public assets such as hospitals, waste collection, transport etc once privatised will be much more difficult to return to the hands of the public. Placing clearly the interests of the wealthy few before the struggling millions.

Revolutionary Republicans hope that the immorality of this agreement will be highlighted as much as possible, that we send a message to the EU and the US that they may pander to corporate billionaires but we will protect the rights and protections that we hold dear. Profit is not our God, the immense wealth of a few business men thousands of miles away is not our concern. Our interests lie now, as they have always, with the working class.