‘Crafted By and For Big Business’: TTIP Under Fire Across Europe
(COMMON DREAMS) Deirdre Fulton, January 18, 2016 — A new UK coalition is sounding the alarm over how the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), currently under negotiation between the U.S. and EU, would force European small businesses into unfair competition with U.S. firms with lower standards and lower costs.
“Together with thousands of our counterparts in other European countries, we are concerned that many European businesses risk being wiped out by unfair competition from U.S. corporations if TTIP is allowed to go through,” reads the statement from Business Against TTIP, launched over the weekend.
“TTIP will enable some of the world’s biggest corporations to undermine EU social and environmental standards,” it continues. “Under its investor protection rules, TTIP will also give U.S. firms unprecedented powers to sue the UK government when any new laws affect their profits.”
Noting that “the overwhelming majority of British businesses do not export at all to the USA,” the statement declares: “TTIP has been designed by and for the largest corporations that trade and invest across the Atlantic, not the majority.”
These assertions are backed up in a new report issued Sunday by the London-based War on Want, entitled, Rough Trade: The Threat of TTIP to Small Businesses in the UK (pdf).