TTIP – The Corporate Power Grab

Date: 11 February 2015

Guest blog by Laura Harrisson who came on the #noTTIP Train to Brussels with us last week.

In a world already assaulted by cold-hearted climate change and clenched in the icy grip of a financial crash, a job crisis and the vicious escalation of inequality; we’re starting to feel a new type of chill. Insidious de-regulatory measures – the privatisation of parts of the NHS and prison service, the rinsing of beef in lactic acid, parliamentary votes in favour of introducing GM crops in the UK – are creeping into to our political –economic landscape. They’re slowly suffocating our self-sufficiency, stifling public policies and paving the way for a big freeze of our democracy.

Corporations are preparing to take on the role of Zeus. A secretive, omnipotent force playing God with human rights. Their thunderbolt will be the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), an alleged free-trade deal between the world’s two richest trading powers the EU and USA. This would not only reduce tariffs between EU and US but also would undermine sovereignty and democracy, remove regulatory barriers and standardise rules so that companies can access each other’s market more easily. Public agency and ownership will be immobilised by the bitter conditions of a power transfer to big business. Corporate fat cats know this. Right now they are sitting behind closed doors, celebrating their stealth and basking in the glow of their own greed, looking forward to the day when capital flows out of the public domain and easily into their pockets.

If TTIP were indeed a weather system, people would be battening down their assets; erecting walls of sandbags to protect our public services – the NHS, water systems, food labelling. We’d be building shelters to defend our privacy, our digital rights, our food systems and global health. But TTIP is treacherously technical. From its cleverly difficult name ‘The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership’ to the fact it’s only been discussed in secret, people have been turned off from talking about it. A tornado of a trade deal, whose scale and power will interlock EU and US economies and deface our social, environmental and health regulations, has barely emerged in public conversation.

Like a raging storm, once TTIP is unleashed the destruction will be catastrophic. Our food welfare standards will be left in tatters. EU food regulations will be harmonised with the USA’s lower safety laws – allowing 8000 new additives into our diets along with bleached chicken, hormone-fed cattle, genetically modified organisms and pesticides. Provision for animal welfare will be weakened; painful injections of breast tissue in cows, the use of antibiotics as growth promoters. Any tariff protections that countries have – to protect their infant, local or indigenous industries – will be removed. There will be no way that small businesses will be able to contend with corporate giants.

It certainly won’t just be European countries left hammered by this hurricane. The production of generic medicines –legal, identical and safe copies of patented drugs are an essential aspect of increased access to medicine in developing countries. They force down costs of patented drugs for diseases such as HIV – helping prevent health emergencies in many countries. Under TTIP big pharmaceutical companies could extend their patents, limit the disclosure of data from their trials which is essential for the production of generics. Worst of all, they could use a clause called the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) to sue governments for millions using the argument that government measures to promote access to medicines will negatively affect future earnings on their patented drugs or other investments in the EU.

But amidst the brewing of TTIP, a sweeter breeze of public scepticism is spreading throughout Europe and the USA. I felt it sweep through the crowd that gathered in Brussels to lobby MEPs demonstrate at the European Commission and protest outside the TTIP negotiations. It was invigorating. There’s a movement, diverse in its composition: environmental activists, IT specialists, NHS workers, small business owners, global health campaigners and farmers, prepared to do everything to make sure TTIP isn’t the storm that breaks Europe’s Levees. Over a million people have signed petitions against TTIP and we’re seeing growing number who are disenchanted by globalisation and their deceitful political leaders. Corporations have done an excellent job at subversively engineering a world founded on materialism, debt and free flowing capital. We cannot let them perpetuate this by flattening governments, stripping away obstacles to profit and shifting power to forums that are unamenable to public challenge. What we need is more protection from the powerful corporations and their predatory practices that have contributed to this mess – not less.

The new Syriza Government in Athens has made its opposition to TTIP known and the Greens are resolutely No TTIP. Labour are swinging dangerously on the fence and we are not going to see David Cameron, whose allegiance lies with the corporate elite, protecting Britain’s sovereignty any time soon. Nor will we see UKIP, who masquerade as the people’s voice against European bureaucracy, stand up and speak out about the trade deal. Both parties demonstrating the duplicity of right wing Euroscepticism. It is down to us to make our voices heard in opposing the massive corporate power grab that is TTIP. If we continue to campaign hard and we educate ourselves and those around us about the contents and the impacts of TTIP, we can beat it. Democracy is often not granted from above, it is made from below.

This article first appeared on foodispolitical.wordpress.com. Photo: Jess Hurd