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Latest from key partners

New TTIP Report Reveals Corporate Takeover of Meat

July 12, 2016 Shefali Sharma

By Shefali Sharma, European Director IATP, 12.07.2016 The Institute for Trade Policy’s European Office, along with international group Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), German member of Via Campesina—Arbeitsgemeinschaft bäuerliche Landwirtschaft e.V. (AbL) and PowerShift launched their new report Selling Off the Farm: Corporate Meat’s Takeover through TTIP with a panel discussion and a press briefing at the European Parliament on the 12th July. Some key findings from the report: Many new agricultural and food technologies are being developed or already utilized with limited or no regulation. TTIP will make rulemaking in the public interest much more difficult in the future for technologies such as gene editing and cloning. Labour and environmental regulations related to the meat industry are inadequate on both sides of the Atlantic and need to be strengthened. Trade unions and environmental campaigns have achieved incremental gains; however, TTIP is likely to make it difficult to improve regulations. The chilling effect of TTIP’s (de)regulatory cooperation provisions will make it increasingly challenging in the future to effectively regulate impacts of the meat industry on climate change […]

Latest from Brussels

Huge TTIP Leak – How Does Agriculture Fare?

May 3, 2016 Peter Crosskey

Another leak has rocked the TTIP negotiations. The full extent of the demands from the US side for sacrifices to EU standards – especially in agriculture – are revealed. However – and despite the spin – major differences between the two sides are also exposed. Peter Crosskey has the details, with special reference to agriculture. […]

Latest from Brussels

TTIP Leak – Citizens lose on both Sides of Atlantic

April 25, 2016 Karen Hansen-Kuhn

The EU is being asked to give up a lot in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), especially its relatively higher standards on food and chemical safety. It’s also asking for a lot in return, including the massive opening of U.S. public procurement to bids by EU firms. A new leaked memo from the European Commission shows just how much they want to open up those markets. It’s a bad tradeoff for both sides. […]

Main stories

TTIP to follow CETA’s geographical carve up?

March 29, 2016 Peter Crosskey

European negotiators have struck a clumsy compromise to protect about one in 10 of the EU’s Geographical Indicators (GIs) during transatlantic trade talks with the Canadians. Protected geographical terms have long been a bone of contention on the other side of the Atlantic, as ARC2020 reported earlier in its TTIP coverage. Classified by some as a technical barrier to trade, the EU’s extensive register of geographical indications (GIs) has often been held up as an example of unfair practice by traders up and down north America. On February 29, the European Commission released a summary of the final text of the Comprehensive European Trade Agreement with Canada (CETA), which is widely regarded as a TTIP testbed. Had the details been in the public domain earlier in the negotiating process they would have sparked howls of protest: the current document, however, represents a fait accompli with a sting in the tail. There are over 1,400 EU geographical indications, many of them wines and spirits that were bundled into the existing EU-Canada Wines and Spirits Agreement, which […]

Latest from EU Member States

250,000 people protest against TTIP in Berlin

October 11, 2015 ARC

250,000 took it to the streets on 10. october in Berlin for a huge ‘Stop TTIP and CETA – For a Fair World Trade!’ demonstration. Together many people from all walks of life protested against the free trade agreements between the EU and the US and Canada. […]

Recent updates

All you ever wanted to know about TTIP…

June 25, 2015 Oliver Moore

Arc2020 has this week updated our briefing notes on TTIP. This means you can be fully informed with all of the major aspects, controversies and issues related to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, especially from an agri-food perspective. We explain the background – the spin about jobs and growth, in essence, and then begin to unpack all the main problems we see with this corporate power grab. These notes feature the work and publication of key organisations on both sides of the Atlantic including Friends of the Earth Europe, the Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy, Corporate Europe Observatory. We unpack the threat of lowered standards and regulations; corporate influence on negotiations especially ‘investor-state dispute settlement’ (ISDS) and similar regulatory chill developments; the relationship between bad diets and trade deals; lack of transparency, and also the good news – the fact that we are making progress. Here are some of the highlights you will find if you pop over to the briefing notes page: Poland had to pay E2 Billion in an ISDS settlement trying […]

Latest from Brussels

ttip: EP vote postponed – US Congress rejects fast track

June 12, 2015 Oliver Moore

BREAKING (12/06/2015, 20.30 hrs): House Rejects Trade Bill, Rebuffing Obama’s Dramatic Appeal First comment from IATP: Following months of intense public opposition to Fast Track, the House of Representatives today defied the Obama administration’s trade promotion package. The debate over Fast Track blurred party lines. “It took real courage for those Democrats and Republicans who stood up to the President and Republican leadership and opposed the free trade package. They defended working families, farmers, natural resources, the environment and most importantly, democratic principles,” says Juliette Majot, President of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP). “This is a clear rejection of the free trade agenda that favors big business over workers, farmers, consumers, and our environment. It’s time to bury this failed approach. I just hope the administration is really listening to what was said today, and what citizens groups around the world have been saying for years. We need very different rules that enhance local economies and jobs and advance efforts to rebuild our food system so it is fair and sustainable,” according […]