And they call this free market. US government bullying for benefit of the corporations and not even for the US people. This is going back to middle ages , the landlords and the peasants.
TTIP Documents Revealed
71–80 of 94 posts
Re: TTIP Documents Revealed
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The U.S., for example, demands that statutory prohibitions on products to protect human health should only be allowed to be passed if it has been scientifically proven that these products really are harmful. Sounds like a reasonable argument.
In a way the US is regulated by a high risk of expensive lawsuits with really high amounts of compensation if they harm someone. So a company will not release a product that might be harmful because they could end up paying hundreds of million dollars of compensation to harmed people. These kinds of lawsuits don't exist in Europe, in the worst case a company will pay $10,000 to a single person. But there are other pr…
> In a way the US is regulated by a high risk of expensive lawsuits with really high amounts of compensation if they harm someone. So a company will not release a product that might be harmful because they could end up paying hundreds of million dollars of compensation to harmed people.
This is purely in theory, in particular for some industries and products.
C8 made lots of $$$ to DuPont, and it took 50+ years to be banned.
You can't prove, in a strict sense, that C8 caused harm to any given person. Also, you don't know that a product like C8 is harmful when you release it.
A company will release a harmful product very gladly, as long as it has a pool large enough of scientists, lawyers and PR professionals to keep the ball rolling for a long [enough] time.
Re: TTIP Documents Revealed
#73Why would the EU comprise citizens' health to sell a few more cars? Is it American investors on both sides?
This is not an EU against USA thing.
It's more a corporations against the people thing. The problem those treaties solve is that they lock future legislative changes at the national level.
After signing it, how are you going to change it? It will be very hard and we will accept it because it's like "things work in the real world".
Re: TTIP Documents Revealed
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
What would those MPs lose if they leaked the text? It seems like a vote-winning action...
My guess would be that they'd be gently shunned, so would probably be weighing up the relative merit of some (possibly short term) popularity against longer term merit of being able to effectively collaborate with party & peers.
What I don't get is why you would make your peers your enemy. Making the US bargaining side your enemy makes sense, but what problems would your peers have with that? Especially long term.
Re: TTIP Documents Revealed
#75The estimated benefit of TTIP is 400,000 jobs and 0.5% GDP for the EU. Not much. Apparently, the few selected MoP in Germany who were given access to the drafts had a few hours to look at a 1000+ pages, in English legalese, with a dictionary but no internet access. Apparently, the drafts were full of certain spelling errors. The assumption was that they were personalized and injected on purpose such that photographs…
>The estimated benefit of TTIP is 400,000 jobs and 0.5% GDP for the EU. My support for most post-globalisation trade liberalisation treaties tends to be lukewarm. However, this can't really be called "not much". 400,000 jobs against a working population of ~300M is a decrease in unemployment by .13 percentage points. 0.5% increase in GDP is still ~70B that otherwise wouldn't be there.
Estimates vary wildly. According to a Techdirt [1] article, the mentioned 0.5% is pure marketing.
Besides, you can't decontextualize the gains from the losses, both economical and cultural.
I can imagine for example, in worst case scenario, billions transferred from EU to tax havens because of the ISDS, and job losses because of [partial] loss of protection of Geographical indications.
[1]=https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140417/09391926947/tafta...
Re: TTIP Documents Revealed
#76> The U.S. government concurrently has criticized the fundamental prevention principal of the EU Consumer Centre which protects 500 million Europeans from consuming genetically modified food and hormone-treated meat. Good for the EU. If only our government showed the same care for its own citizens.
Yeah, reading that my first assumption was that US citizens suddenly would also be against the details of TTIP.
Re: TTIP Documents Revealed
#77That overzealous secrecy around TTIP is a shame. It doesn't look like such a bad piece of legislation. The overall theme seems to be some deregulation on EU side (as generally EU is the over-regulated side) and bringing regulatory standards closer together. The IP protections are the most concerning part so far IMO? I don't know much about that kind of negotiations, the secrecy might as well be the right strategy to…
"generally EU is the over-regulated side"
We usually call it consumer protection here and most of EU citizens like the way it is.
Re: TTIP Documents Revealed
#78The estimated benefit of TTIP is 400,000 jobs and 0.5% GDP for the EU. Not much. Apparently, the few selected MoP in Germany who were given access to the drafts had a few hours to look at a 1000+ pages, in English legalese, with a dictionary but no internet access. Apparently, the drafts were full of certain spelling errors. The assumption was that they were personalized and injected on purpose such that photographs…
That's the opposite of a 'democracy'.
Re: TTIP Documents Revealed
#79The estimated benefit of TTIP is 400,000 jobs and 0.5% GDP for the EU. Not much. Apparently, the few selected MoP in Germany who were given access to the drafts had a few hours to look at a 1000+ pages, in English legalese, with a dictionary but no internet access. Apparently, the drafts were full of certain spelling errors. The assumption was that they were personalized and injected on purpose such that photographs…
What would those MPs lose if they leaked the text? It seems like a vote-winning action...
I suspect it's illegal and punishable in some way. There are definitely German MPs who would be congratulated rather than shunned for exposing this.
But if only selected MPs can see the text at all, maybe they've been selected carefully.
Re: TTIP Documents Revealed
#80> The U.S. government concurrently has criticized the fundamental prevention principal of the EU Consumer Centre which protects 500 million Europeans from consuming genetically modified food and hormone-treated meat. Good for the EU. If only our government showed the same care for its own citizens.
> The U.S., for example, demands that statutory prohibitions on products to protect human health should only be allowed to be passed if it has been scientifically proven that these products really are harmful. Sounds like a reasonable argument.
Science doesn't prove things. It provides likelihoods and most likely explanations.
So the real question is: should something only be banned when it's 99.5% certain that it's harmful? Is 50% chance of it being harmful okay? Or 80%? And why?
The EU prefers to err on the side of safety. The US prefers to err on the side of profit. I don't see why the US approach would be better.