EU officials were quick to downplay Sigmar’s statement, saying they hoped to “close this deal by the end of the year.” But Gabriel isn’t the first to cry foul on the TTIP, which, if enacted, would establish the world’s largest free trade zone between the United States and the EU’s 28 member states. In May, French negotiators threatened to block the agreement. U.S. negotiators have also reportedly been angry over the passage of a similar agreement between Canada and the EU, which included protections U.S. negotiators don’t want included in the TTIP. [...]
“The fact that TTIP has failed is testament to the hundreds of thousands of people who took to the streets to protest against it, the three million people who signed a petition calling for it to be scrapped, and the huge coalition of civil society groups, trade unions, progressive politicians and activists who came together to stop it,” writes Kevin Smith of Global Justice Now, an organization that has worked to fight TTIP in the United Kingdom.
While the TPP has become a lightning rod for labor and other progressive organizations in the United States, the TTIP has slipped mostly under the radar stateside. That’s partially because talks over it, which began in 2013, have taken place almost entirely behind closed doors. Among the proposals unearthed are provisions to open European public services to U.S. businesses and to scale back online privacy protections. European groups have also raised the concern that the deal could send jobs from their continent to the United States, where trade unions and labor protections are weaker than in the EU.
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