Leaked text exposes ‘toxic’ trade partnership

A leaked draft of a trans-Atlantic trade deal reveals how the negotiations continue to favour business interests over the protection of health and of the environment, campaign groups have warned. The European Commission’s restricted access text for the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) shows that the European Union’s proposals for a ‘chemicals annex’ shadow those of the chemical industry.

A leaked draft of a trans-Atlantic trade deal reveals how the negotiations continue to favour business interests over the protection of health and of the environment, campaign groups have warned.
The European Commission’s restricted access text for the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), obtained by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), ClientEarth and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) concludes this approach would hinder the development of stronger controls for toxic chemicals on both sides of the Atlantic.
ClientEarth’s Vito Buonsante said: “TTIP could erase all progress which has been made in the EU to ensure precautionary decision making on chemicals.”
The groups say the draft chemicals annex provides for extensive consultations, creating multiple, additional and unnecessary opportunities for the chemical industry to delay draft rules and laws. This process of ‘paralysis by analysis’ has been used by the US chemical industry to stall stricter workplace controls on hazardous substances like beryllium and silica for a decade and more.
“It is clear that the chemical industry’s agenda is to delay or derail public efforts to establish protections from toxic chemicals to the greatest extent possible on both sides of the Atlantic,” said Daniel Rosenberg, a senior attorney with NRDC. He said “EU officials should be strenuously opposing the industry’s agenda, not eagerly abetting it.”