As expected, in the wake of this week's important leak of the US negotiating position for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) talks, many European politicians are starting to distance themselves from the deal.

The UK prime minister, David Cameron, however, told the House of Commons that TTIP was not dead, but admitted it would take “political courage to get it over the line.”

As Ars reported earlier in the week, the chairman of the European Parliament's important trade committee, Bernd Lange, indicated that he thought the negotiations would probably fail. Although the official European Commission line is that everything is fine, the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that there are doubts at the highest levels of the Commission that TTIP will ever be agreed.

TTIP's failure has been made more likely by two new statements from top politicians in France. The Guardian reported that "François Hollande said on Tuesday he would reject the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership 'at this stage' because France was opposed to unregulated free trade." That confirms a comment made earlier by Matthias Fekl, the minister responsible for representing France in TTIP talks, who warned that a halt in TTIP talks "is the most probable option."

In Austria, the country's chancellor released a statement similar to that of president Hollande. Werner Faymann said: "at the moment, this trade agreement is certainly unacceptable. The justified concerns of the population that exist must be taken seriously. Private arbitrators are not necessary between developed jurisdictions, and therefore [ISDS is] to be rejected in TTIP. And the erosion of our hard-won social, environmental, and food safety standards is unacceptable."

In Germany, which has been at the forefront of the fight against TTIP, the concerns are even more widespread. The socialist partner in the current coalition government there, the SPD, stated: "The SPD will not accept any reduction of consumer, environmental or labour protection. The same applies to the precautionary principle, which is anchored in EU law, and [ISDS's] private arbitration tribunals. Otherwise, the agreement will be rejected by the SPD."

German MPs used the enforced transparency brought about by the latest leaks to call for improved official access to the negotiating texts. These are currently only made available in a reading room under stringent and inconvenient conditions. Ideally, the MPs want negotiating texts to be translated into German and made available to the public. If that isn't possible, they want the reading room access improved in various ways.

A new survey conducted yesterday for German television shows the public's view of TTIP deteriorating even further than the scepticism already apparent a couple of weeks ago. According to the public opinion poll, 70 percent of those interviewed believe that TTIP will bring disadvantages rather than advantages for Germany, while 17 percent believe the contrary.

The weakening of consumer protection is the chief concern among correspondents: 79 percent fear that TTIP will weaken those standards, while 16 percent have no worries on this score. An overwhelming majority—83 percent—think that it is wrong that the negotiations have been kept secret until now, with only 13 percent viewing that approach as justified.

Against the background of this deep and widespread European view that TTIP should be rejected or at least put on hold, David Cameron's unflagging enthusiasm is something of an outlier, although both Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italy's Prime Minister Matteo Renzi are still supporting TTIP at the moment. Cameron's argument for completing the TTIP negotiations is economic: he told the Commons that it "could add tens of billions of pounds to our economy and bring jobs and investment to our country." However, this claim is based on the best-case outcome considered in a 2013 study. It also fails to take into account the costs of TTIP.

As The Independent reported recently, the UK government commissioned another study in 2013 that looked at the impact of including ISDS in TTIP, although it has kept very quiet about its conclusions. In case you were wondering, the the report says: "Ultimately, we conclude that an EU-US investment treaty that does contain ISDS is likely to have few or no benefits to the UK, while having meaningful economic and political costs."