{"id":204594,"date":"2015-11-30T15:19:45","date_gmt":"2015-11-30T15:19:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=204594"},"modified":"2015-11-30T16:52:55","modified_gmt":"2015-11-30T16:52:55","slug":"big-oil-ttip-and-the-scramble-for-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/big-oil-ttip-and-the-scramble-for-europe\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Oil, TTIP and the Scramble for Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/strong>If sanctioned, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) would be the biggest trade deal ever seen. Yet the public continue to be kept in the dark about it. Large corporations have been granted privileged access to officials and have been allowed to shape the talks agenda\u00a0from the outset<\/a>. Throughout the process, organisations representing the public and civil society have been sidelined. The public has had to rely on leaks or resort to freedom of information law and\u00a0heavily redacted documents<\/a>\u00a0to try to understand what is happening behind closed doors.<\/p>\n

High-minded platitudes referring to protecting the integrity of industry and the sensitive nature of negotiations have been used in an attempt to prevent public scrutiny and secure the continued crucial influence that big business has held in the talks.<\/p>\n

According to a\u00a0recent report<\/a>\u00a0(Friends of the Earth, Corporate Europe Observatory, War on Want\u00a0et al<\/em>)\u00a0public services in the EU are under threat from the proposed trade deal, which could endanger citizens\u2019 rights to basic services. The study showed how the EU\u2019s\u00a0Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement<\/a>\u00a0(CETA)\u00a0deal with Canada and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) could lock public utilities into irreversible commercialisation and remove governments’ ability to regulate services.<\/p>\n

Exposing systemic collusion between big business and European Commission officials in drawing up CETA and TTIP, the report highlights how negotiators are doing the work of\u00a0the EU\u2019s most powerful corporate lobby groups in pushing\u00a0an aggressive corporate agenda of far-reaching market opening in the public sector.<\/p>\n

The consequences include proposals for\u00a0excessive investor rights<\/a>, which mean corporations could sue governments for implementing regulations that affect their profits, potentially leading to multi-billion euro taxpayer payouts in compensation. Even the fear of such action could lead governments to shelve plans in the first place.\u00a0TTIP could eventually make it impossible for national governments to implement decisions for the common good.<\/p>\n

Big business has successfully lobbied against the exemption of public services from CETA and TTIP as both agreements apply to virtually all services. This effectively limits the governmental authority exemption to a few core functions, such as law enforcement, the judiciary or the services of a central bank.<\/p>\n

There is also the real danger that the EC is following industry demands to lock in present and future liberalisations and privatisations of public services. This could threaten the growing trend of remunicipalisation of water services, energy grids and transport services.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0leaked EU document<\/a>\u00a0also shows the EC proposing an EU-US Regulatory Cooperation Council.\u00a0Existing and future EU regulation would then have to go through a series of investigations, dialogues and negotiations in this body. This would move decisions on regulations into a technocratic sphere, whereby policies could be presented to the public as \u2018done deals\u2019, all worked out behind closed doors between pro-business officials and business leaders. There would also be compulsory impact assessments for proposed regulation, which will be checked for their potential impact on trade.<\/p>\n

As if all of this were not bad enough, Deidre Fulton writes on the Common Dreams website that newly obtained heavily redacted documents reveal that EU trade officials gave US oil giant ExxonMobil access to confidential negotiating strategies considered too sensitive to be released to the European public. The documents have been by seen by \u00a0The Guardian<\/a>\u00a0newspaper.<\/p>\n

Director of War on Want John Hilary says the documents offer:<\/p>\n

“\u2026 an extraordinary glimpse into the full degree of collusion between the European Commission and multinational corporations seeking to use TTIP to increase US exports of fossil fuels. The commission is allowing the oil majors to write the proposed energy chapter of\u00a0TTIP\u00a0in their favour.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Guardian goes on to state that officials asked one oil refinery association for ‘concrete input’ on the text of an energy chapter for the negotiations, as part of the EU\u2019s bid to write unfettered imports of US crude oil and gas into the trade deal.<\/p>\n

The documents also show that at a September 2013 meeting, EU trade officials gave a briefing on the state of TTIP talks to two trade groups and 11 oil and gas companies, including Shell, BP and ExxonMobil.<\/p>\n

According to The Guardian, the\u00a0EU is pressing for a guarantee that the US will allow free export of oil and gas to Europe, an undertaking that would require a $100 billion infrastructure investment.<\/p>\n

War on Want campaigner Mark Dearn says:<\/p>\n

“A\u00a0key aim of TTIP\u00a0has been to destroy regulations that prevent high-polluting tar sand crude oil from entering Europe\u2026 [an] agenda that promises a high-carbon future unmasks the spin of rich country promises to\u00a0phase out fossil fuels by the end of this century, highlighting the corporate nature of the deal and its devastating consequences for climate change.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dearn concludes:<\/p>\n

“Far from being a simple case of European interests versus US interests, the lines of demarcation in\u00a0TTIP\u00a0are between the mutually exclusive interests of transnational big business and people and the planet; if the deal passes, the former wins and the latter lose.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

TTIP is too often presented by officials and sections of the corporate media as constituting a well thought out recipe for job creation and economic growth. This depiction forms part of the neoliberal globalisation paradigm that sanctifies the notion of \u2018free trade\u2019. In reality, however, what we actually have is trade and markets that are anything but \u2018free\u2019: markets are\u00a0rigged<\/a>, commodity manipulated<\/a>\u00a0and nations coerced<\/a>,\u00a0destabilised<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0attacked<\/a>\u00a0in order that powerful players gain access to resources and markets under the banner of free trade and democratic freedoms.<\/p>\n

The TTIP is a mandate for corporate plunder and, given recent revelations, for major polluters. It represents a pro-privatisation agenda that enshrines the privileges of the world\u2019s most powerful corporations at the expense of ordinary people, the environment and the climate.<\/p>\n

The ultimate aim of TTIP is to draw\u00a0Europe\u00a0closer to the\u00a0US\u00a0and divide the European continent by side-lining\u00a0Russia.\u00a0If events surrounding\u00a0Ukraine\u00a0tell us anything, it is that the US has driven a wedge between\u00a0Europe\u00a0and\u00a0Russia\u00a0to prevent closer economic alignment between the two.\u00a0TTIP is another piece of the global jigsaw that aims to\u00a0cement\u00a0US hegemony<\/a>.<\/p>\n

By using TTIP, it is now clear the US is attempting to drive its fossil fuel energy into Europe.\u00a0At the same time, Washington is attempting to force Russia out from the European energy market. Russia has already had to abandon its South Stream pipeline project to Europe. Furthermore, by\u00a0pushing for a pipeline<\/a>\u00a0to supply dollar-denominated energy from Qatar through Syria and on into Europe, the US can strengthen the dollar while further driving Russia from Europe. In the meantime, to remove Assad who is regarded as a barrier to this project,\u00a0US-backed<\/a>\u00a0war and destabilisation has resulted in 250,000 Syrians being killed.<\/p>\n

TTIP is clearly not about improving the lot of ordinary hundreds of millions of Europeans, just like events in Ukraine and Syria are not intended to benefit the mass of ordinary folk in those countries.\u00a0Ultimately, TTIP must be viewed within the context of the wider geopolitical chess board that serves rich corporate interests.<\/p>\n

Colin Todhunter is an independent writer. His website is here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0If sanctioned, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) would be the biggest trade deal ever seen. Yet the public continue to be kept in the dark about it. Large corporations have been granted privileged access to officials and have been allowed to shape the talks agenda\u00a0from the outset. Throughout the process, organisations representing the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1214,"featured_media":204599,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,1622,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-204594","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-featured","9":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1214"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}