Brussels, 11/03/2016 (Agence Europe) - Meeting in Washington on Thursday 10 March, the leader of the main US union group (AFL-CIO), Richard Trumka, and the general secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), Luca Visentini, said that according to the information available to them, the ongoing negotiations for an EU-US free trade agreement (TTIP) were “on the wrong course” and ran the risk of failing to create “the people and planet-centred agreement needed to benefit the working peoples of the European Union and United States”.
“We have consistently made clear that the [TTIP] agreement must not include a private justice system for foreign investors and any supranational obstacles to regulation in the public interest. We have called for broad, precise and enforceable protections for labour rights, public services, and the environment”, Trumka and Visentini say in a joint statement.
The two men agreed that despite the improvements made to the old system of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), the new system of arbitration (a permanent investment court system or ICS) recently proposed by the EU was “still enormously problematic” and “not needed in any transatlantic trade and investment deal”.
“There have been massive investment flows in both directions for decades without any such discriminatory provisions, and they are still unnecessary. Investors should act responsibly and respect international guidelines such as those set down by the OECD and UN”, they state, promising to strengthen cooperation between the AFL-CIO and ETUC in order to hold multinational companies “accountable”.
Trumka and Visentini also stated that labour rights, based on international conventions of the ILO, were “indivisible” and should be enforced at all levels in the US and EU, with economic sanctions in case of breaches. “On these, as with other issues, we do not see our negotiators moving towards the 21st Century agreement that we have been promised, but rather more of the same old corporate-style trade deal”, they regret.
The AFL-CIO and ETUC also deplore the consistent lack of transparency in the negotiations, with the US failing to publish its own proposals. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)
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