Negotiations for a free-trade agreement between the European Union and the U.S. aren’t even finished yet and already fierce opposition is mounting. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and a similar agreement under discussion with Canada, known as the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), promise significant economic gains for both sides. The complaints, which in Germany focus on matters such as hormones in beef and the adjudication of investment disputes, are small-minded in comparison to the benefits. Europe’s challenge now is to look past petty disputes to the interests of Europeans as a whole.

The combination of the two free-trade agreements would lead to a new common economic area that encompasses 800 million people. For a trade-oriented nation like Germany, but also for the EU as a whole, a free-trade zone with North America would be highly profitable. Germany’s trade surplus with the U.S. was nearly €50 billion ($54.63 billion) in 2014. The new deals would further reduce tariff barriers and simplify the rules governing cross-border trade.

That simplification of rules has generated the most controversy, but only because opponents of the deals don’t understand what they would do—or worse, they misconstrue the deals in public. TTIP and CETA won’t require that Europeans give up their high standards in areas of consumer protection, the environment, security and health. Rather, the trade pacts would reduce the high bureaucratic costs of transatlantic trade.

Opponents also claim that the agreements’ proposal for a forum to adjudicate investment-protection disputes would create a “shadow judiciary,” one that could overrule national laws governing foreign investments. This hasn’t been the case with other similar examples. And Germany should know—it already has more than 130 investor-protection agreements in place around the world. The U.S. only asks for a high level of investment-protection because the EU is a patchwork of regulations with uneven development in the rule of law: Bulgaria and Romania, for instance, have not reached the same level of standards as Germany.

Against these overstated concerns, politicians and voters need to consider the very real benefits of these deals. Small- and medium-size enterprises stand to gain the most. The harmonization of rules and the abolition of double approval procedures and certifications on both sides of the Atlantic will be among the biggest benefits to firms that otherwise lack the resources to navigate complex regulations in foreign countries. The enormous cost savings will open up entirely new opportunities. That’s arguably a bigger benefit even than the elimination of 98% of all tariffs.