Brussels, 02/07/2015 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament's Socialists and Democrats Group (S&D) is very divided ahead of the plenary vote, on Wednesday 8 July, on the Parliament's draft recommendations on the EU-US free trade negotiations (TTIP). A third of its members could vote against the text if the new compromise amendment on investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) is adopted. The amendment is backed by European Parliament President Martin Schulz and is worded convolutedly.
On Thursday 2 July, the European Parliament's conference of presidents decided to add the vote on the draft TTIP recommendations (compiled by Bernd Lange from the S&D Group) to the agenda of the Parliament's plenary session in Strasbourg next week. The vote, which will take place on 8 July, will be preceded by a debate that is likely to be stormy. MEPs from the Parliament's international trade committee paved the way for this vote on 29 June, re-tabling the amendments from the plenary in June that had been returned to committee for assessment given the large number of amendments.
In reality, Schulz was aiming at building a more robust consensus from the Parliament on its demands for reframing the TTIP negotiations, and especially on the controversial issue of ISDS. On Wednesday 1 July, Schulz showed his leadership by trying to tie up a compromise in the S&D Group on an amendment concerning ISDS, which would replace Amendment 115 submitted by the S&D Group at the June plenary session, and which, according to several sources, would be “acceptable” for the Conservatives and Liberals on the right.
During a vote of the S&D Group on Wednesday, 57 of its members supported the Schulz-backed amendment. However, 34 members of the S&D delegation, including all the French, Belgian, British and Dutch MEPs and some Italian and German MEPs in the S&D delegation, opposed it on the basis of the amendment's convoluted wording.
In the compromise amendment, Schulz calls on the European Commission negotiators “to ensure that foreign investors are treated in a non-discriminatory fashion while benefitting from no greater rights than domestic investors, and to replace the ISDS-system with a new system for resolving disputes between investors and states (…) where potential cases are treated in a transparent manner by publicly appointed, independent, professional judges in public hearings”. This new system should also include an appellate mechanism, “where consistency of judicial decisions is ensured, the jurisdiction of courts of the EU and of the member states is respected and where private interests cannot undermine public policy objectives”.
In a press release published on Thursday 2 July, S&D Group leader Gianni Pittella flagged up the unity of his group on the draft TTIP recommendations, giving assurances that “the compromise negotiated by Bernd Lange will oblige the Commission to exclude ISDS from the trade agreement and replace it by a public, democratic and transparent mechanism”. “ISDS is dead”, he stated.
However, for the S&D MEPs who voted against Schulz's compromise amendment, the text on the table does not bring the necessary guarantees on the exclusion of the ISDS mechanism from TTIP. “This compromise is far from a clear and simple rejection of this toxic clause and is in line with the cosmetic reforms proposed by the Commission, leaving the door open to a scarcely reformed ISDS. It endorses an unfair system which gives more rights to investors than to citizens. Our judicial systems in Europe, as in the USA, are perfectly able to ensure the protection of foreign investors and should be the only guarantors of it”, Marie Arena (S&D, Belgium) told EUROPE. “With 99% negative responses against ISDS in the public consultation, we have to conclude that European citizens do not want it”, she added, brandishing the threat of a vote against the resolution, if Schulz's compromise amendment should pass next Wednesday. (Emmanuel Hagry)