Jeremy Corbyn’s public commitment that a Labour government will veto the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is a significant step towards ending the controversial EU-US trade deal, and a major blow for the European Commission on the eve of the UK referendum.

Corbyn’s pledge comes at the end of a disastrous month for TTIP, in which a stunning leak of the agreement’s draft chapters revealed the full threat that it poses. In the ensuing uproar, French president François Hollande and German vice-chancellor Sigmar Gabriel have each raised the possibility of abandoning the EU-US agreement altogether. With general elections in both France and Germany next year, no politician wants to be left defending the indefensible.

Yet Corbyn’s statement is the first outright rejection of TTIP from a major European social democratic party, and it sends a clear message that the political elite cannot continue to ignore the will of the European people as they have done up to now. Over 3.4 million citizens from all 28 EU member states have now signed the European Citizens’ Initiative opposing TTIP and the parallel EU-Canada deal CETA, in what is recognised as the largest such movement in EU history.

Corbyn: Labour would veto TTIP

Two new official studies of the EU-US deal have underlined why it is so universally unpopular. A report from the European Parliament’s policy department entitled ‘TTIP and Jobs’ has predicted that more than a million EU citizens will be forced out of work as a direct result of TTIP, including over 150,000 in the UK. Shortly afterwards, the official TTIP impact assessment published by the European Commission confirmed that a minimum of 600,000 Europeans will lose their jobs as a result of TTIP, and twice that many if the full deal goes through.

The 394-page assessment also noted that the EU and USA will emit an extra 21 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere if TTIP is concluded, directly undermining commitments coming out of last year’s Paris Agreement on climate change. The authors kept their strongest warning for the section on the public health impacts of TTIP, where they noted that the increased consumption of cheap alcohol, tobacco and processed foods that will result from the deal is in direct contradiction of the human right to health.

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The only person in denial of all the bad publicity surrounding TTIP is the EU trade commissioner responsible for driving it forward, Cecilia Malmström. The woman who famously said that she ‘does not take her mandate from the European people’ told this week’s EU Business Summit in Brussels that she has no intention of submitting TTIP or CETA to public approval, commenting: ‘We can’t have local referenda on all trade agreements if we want to be serious.’

The 6 reasons why we should be scared of TTIP Show all 6 1 /6 The 6 reasons why we should be scared of TTIP The 6 reasons why we should be scared of TTIP The NHS Public services, especially the NHS, are in the firing line. One of the main aims of TTIP is to open up Europe’s public health, education and water services to US companies. This could essentially mean the privatisation of the NHS. The European Commission has claimed that public services will be kept out of TTIP. However, according to the Huffington Post, the UK Trade Minister Lord Livingston has admitted that talks about the NHS were still on the table Getty The 6 reasons why we should be scared of TTIP Food and environmental safety TTIP’s ‘regulatory convergence’ agenda will seek to bring EU standards on food safety and the environment closer to those of the US. But US regulations are much less strict, with 70 per cent of all processed foods sold in US supermarkets now containing genetically modified ingredients. By contrast, the EU allows virtually no GM foods. The US also has far laxer restrictions on the use of pesticides. It also uses growth hormones in its beef which are restricted in Europe due to links to cancer. US farmers have tried to have these restrictions lifted repeatedly in the past through the World Trade Organisation and it is likely that they will use TTIP to do so again Getty The 6 reasons why we should be scared of TTIP Banking regulations TTIP cuts both ways. The UK, under the influence of the all-powerful City of London, is thought to be seeking a loosening of US banking regulations. America’s financial rules are tougher than ours. They were put into place after the financial crisis to directly curb the powers of bankers and avoid a similar crisis happening again. TTIP, it is feared, will remove those restrictions, effectively handing all those powers back to the bankers Getty/Bloomberg The 6 reasons why we should be scared of TTIP Privacy Remember ACTA (the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement)? It was thrown out by a massive majority in the European Parliament in 2012 after a huge public backlash against what was rightly seen as an attack on individual privacy where internet service providers would be required to monitor people’s online activity. Well, it’s feared that TTIP could be bringing back ACTA’s central elements, proving that if the democratic approach doesn’t work, there’s always the back door. An easing of data privacy laws and a restriction of public access to pharmaceutical companies’ clinical trials are also thought to be on the cards AFP/Getty Images The 6 reasons why we should be scared of TTIP Jobs The EU has admitted that TTIP will probably cause unemployment as jobs switch to the US, where labour standards and trade union rights are lower. It has even advised EU members to draw on European support funds to compensate for the expected unemployment. Examples from other similar bi-lateral trade agreements around the world support the case for job losses. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the US, Canada and Mexico caused the loss of one million US jobs over 12 years, instead of the hundreds of thousands of extra that were promised Dave Thompson/Getty Images The 6 reasons why we should be scared of TTIP Democracy TTIP’s biggest threat to society is its inherent assault on democracy. One of the main aims of TTIP is the introduction of Investor-State Dispute Settlements (ISDS), which allow companies to sue governments if those governments’ policies cause a loss of profits. In effect it means unelected transnational corporations can dictate the policies of democratically elected governments AFP/Getty

Worse still, Malmström is trying to undermine the democratic process still further by preventing MPs in the national parliaments of Europe from having a vote on whether to ratify the EU-Canada deal. Against the express will of EU governments, the unelected trade commissioner is arguing for that decision to be taken in Brussels alone – although she has postponed making the call public until after 23 June, for fear that it will play badly in the UK referendum.

Three weeks from today, we will know the result of that referendum. If the British people vote to leave the EU, it will be in large part due to the contempt for the democratic process shown by unelected bureaucrats such as Cecilia Malmström.

Jeremy Corbyn has listened to the people and rejected TTIP. The leaders of Europe would do well to follow his lead.