Agreement Tafta / TTIP: 248 pages confidential soon unveiled by Greenpeace – The Express

If Greenpeace has decided to publish this confidential document, is that these 248 pages “confirm health threats, environment and climate,” said Sunday the Dutch branch of the NGO. It states that it could obtain the two-thirds, or thirteen chapters of the negotiating text of the free trade agreement Europe / USA, also known as TTIP to his supporters or Tafta for its opponents.

Since June 2013, Europe is negotiating with the United States a free-trade treaty to create a single market of 820 million consumers. The agreement, which met widespread criticism, then remove the commercial and regulatory barriers.

Few efforts of Americans

The text would soon be unveiled, according to Le Monde , the basis for negotiations between the United States and the European Commission, during a meeting in New York from 25 to 29 April. So we find there the American point of view so far remained very secret and the EU, which is a little less, since the European Commission regularly makes public its negotiating mandate. The disclosure of these documents, even European parliamentarians did not have access, should be at 11 am on the internet.

But the journalists of World have already unveiled Sunday night, some data in this document. It is learned that Washington offers little room for negotiation, facing Europeans that multiply the proposals (recognition of designations of origin and geographical provenance particular). A situation that puts the skyline of an agreement. Both sides sought an end to the summer 2016, but the document recalls that the “high ambition” treaty must take precedence “on speed” negotiations. Negotiations which could therefore continue after the end of term of Barack Obama. Le Monde however said that since April 29, when this document was published, discussions yet advanced.

Against the “precautionary principle”

In this disclosure, the NGO Greenpeace expressed interest allow “finally to millions of citizens better understand what trades on their behalf. ” She said Sunday that the text provides for the abolition of a rule allowing nations to “regulate commerce” to “protect the life, health of humans, animals and plants.”

It ensures that according to these rules, trade is not subject to CO2 emission reduction targets, forgetting at the same time the “precautionary principle”. This principle prevents the distribution or withdraw from the market products that could be hazardous, even if the scientific data do not allow a full risk assessment. After the next announcement of his release, the NGO has projected certain phrases of this document in the German Parliament.

Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel pleaded April 24 to defend the proposed free trade agreement EU-US, despite increasing opposition to it on both sides of the Atlantic.

In France in particular, the political class has been extremely reserved as a whole on whether to sign the controversial treaty. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Manuel Valls has himself expressed doubts about the possibility that France would sign the Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement.