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'Public scrutiny'

Response

And it shouldn't come as a surprise that there are areas where the EU and the US have different views.

to set up private investor courts that would allow multinational companies to sue governments

"that was not and is not true".

TTIP would put corporations at the centre of policy-making, to the detriment of environment and public health.

Greenpeace charged today that a massive US-EU trade deal would place corporate interests above the environment and consumer safety, as it released classified documents from the negotiations.The campaign group published 248 pages online to "shine a light" on the closed-door talks to forge a so-called Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which would be the world's largest bilateral trade and investment agreement.said Greenpeace as it presented the documents in Berlin.Both Washington and Brussels want the mega-deal completed this year before US President Barack Obama leaves office, but the agreement in the making has faced mounting opposition on both sides of the Atlantic.In Europe there is deep suspicion thatGreenpeace said" the group argued, having also projected an image of a classified text passage onto the facade of Berlin's parliament building.Irish MEP Luke 'Ming' Flanagan, who has been vocal in criticising what he calls the lack of transparency around the proposed deal, wrote on his Facebook today that the leaked documents showed "exactly why the negotiations need to be out in the open".Flanagan said that the inner workings of the deal "must be exposed" and "brought into the glare of full public scrutiny".Greenpeace said the cache, a snapshot from ongoing talks, represents two-thirds of the TTIP draft text as of the latest round of talks in April, and covers a range of sectors from telecoms to autos to agriculture.They said the confidential documents prove that long-standing environmental protections are being ignored and that, for example, there is no mention at all in the proposed text of global goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.They also said that long-standing environmental protections with regards to trade "appear to be dropped" and that both sides of the proposed deal areFlanagan has previously criticised the European Parliament for not being more transparent during the negotiations, saying that only parts of texts relating to the trade deal "already agreed between the EU and the USA".Recently, he recorded the process of going to view these documents in the Reading Room in the European Parliament."What we - the elected members of the European Parliament - should be looking at are the documents and issues currently being discussed, in particular the stance being adopted on our behalf by the EU negotiators," said Flanagan.In Brussels, Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstroem insisted that the papers "reflect each side's negotiating position, nothing else."It begs to be said, again and again: no EU trade agreement will ever lower our level of protection of consumers, or food safety, or of the environment," Malmstroem said in a blog.The Sueddeutsche - the paper behind the publication of the so-called "Panama Papers" - charged that some political leaders who publicly defend TTIP "either don't know the status of negotiations, or are deliberately leaving the public in the dark".Although the EU had made such a proposal, "the Americans flatly rejected it" and the issue had not been seriously negotiated yet.TTIP is billed as a free-trade deal for the 21st century, focused on harmonising regulations, lowering barriers on investment, opening access to government contracts and addressing new areas like data trade."These leaked documents confirm what we have been saying for a long time," said Greenpeace EU director Jorgo Riss.Source: AFP