The European Union's proposal for a chapter on energy and raw materials in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement was leaked on Monday, just as the fourteenth round of talks between the EU and US got underway in Brussels.

However, the EU's plans have been criticised by the European wing of Friends of the Earth. Its economic justice programme coordinator Paul de Clerck said: "The EU's leaked proposal on TTIP and energy is in complete contradiction with Europe's commitments to tackle climate change, and the Paris agreement. It will flood the EU market with inefficient appliances, and consumers and the climate will foot the bill. The proposal will also hinder measures to promote renewable electricity production from wind and solar."

Green MEP Claude Turmes told the Guardian: “These proposals are completely unacceptable. They would sabotage EU legislators’ ability to privilege renewables and energy efficiency over unsustainable fossil fuels. This is an attempt to undermine democracy in Europe.”

Ars asked the European Commission to respond to the criticisms, but at the time of publication the commission hadn't got back to us with comment.

Friends of the Earth put forward a number of areas of concern in a detailed analysis of the leak. The EU calls for "industry self-regulation of energy efficiency requirements for goods where such self-regulation is likely to deliver the policy objectives faster or in a less costly manner than mandatory requirements,” it said.

The group claimed that this would undermine the EU's energy efficiency policies, flood the market with "cheap-to-build and expensive-to-run" products, and is contrary to evidence that "self-regulation is not effective in order to achieve public interest objectives."

Another issue the group raised is a requirement that “each Party shall ensure that operators of transmission systems in its territory grant access to their systems to entities of the other Party for the transport of gas and electricity. Such access shall be granted on commercial terms that are reasonable, transparent and non-discriminatory (including as between types of energy).”

In practice, this suggests the EU and US would be unable to encourage clean energy production by giving preferential access to the electrical grid.

A call in the leaked chapter for the European Union and US to "agree on a legally binding commitment to eliminate all existing restrictions on the export of natural gas in trade between them" would encourage more fracking in the US, according to the Friends of the Earth's analysis. Similarly, the environmental group suggested that "to reduce or eliminate trade and investment distorting measures in third countries affecting energy and raw materials" would "pressure countries around the world to abandon protections against destructive fossil fuel extraction, logging, and mining."

The suggestion that the EU is prepared to sacrifice key climate change and renewable energy policies for the sake of obtaining an agreement with the US seems to be part of a wider willingness to compromise.

Last week, over 65 civil society organisations warned European Parliament president Martin Schulz that the European Commission was "failing to comply with Parliament’s 2015 Resolution on the EU-US trade agreement (TTIP). In crossing Parliament’s 'red lines,' the European Commission’s TTIP proposals endanger public health, the environment, and democracy."

An article in EUobserver on the current round of TTIP talks provides a possible explanation for this shift in negotiating stance. It writes: "The EU still hopes to reach one of the biggest bilateral trade deals in history before US president Barack Obama leaves the White House in January. But they still have to find common ground on a number of issues and swing public opinion, and the bloc is about to lose a major free trade defender—the UK, which could be less focused on working for an EU deal while it would have to negotiate its own trade agreements after Brexit is effective."

The commission hopes to have a first draft of the TTIP text by the end of the summer, an EU source told the publication.

This would allow the so-called "end-game negotiations"—the hard haggling over the really difficult issues—to take place later this year. That still seems an ambitious target given the slow pace of progress so far. Originally, the plan was to finish TTIP by the end of 2015 or even 2014, although that was never realistic.

EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmström said that the main problem was "populism," by which she seems to mean that for the first time millions of people have taken an interest in trade negotiations and expressed their opinions.

Meanwhile, another TTIP leak has been published today by the German investigative site Correctiv.org. Ironically, one of the issues it mentions is how to stop further leaks about TTIP, which apparently continue to annoy the US negotiators. According to the leaked document, the commission apparently plans to bring in more controls for MEPs when they visit the official TTIP reading room. This includes "better control of electronic devices, especially with hidden cameras, a second attendant [that is, guard] with six or more people present, and only giving out three documents at a time."

Updated @ 17.29pm BST, July 11: Commission sources told Ars: "We don't comment on leaked texts. As on previous occasions, the text that was leaked is not the version that will be tabled by the Commission in the negotiations this week. In line with our transparency policy, we will publish the tabled proposals soon after the round, just as we have done many times before. The provisions in our TTIP text on Energy are based on, and compatible with, EU legislation. The EU has every interest in ensuring that the texts it proposes in its trade agreements are compatible with its own rules."