Regulatory cooperation under the proposed EU-US trade deal (TTIP) will strengthen corporate lobbyists’ hand in attacking public interest legislation and curb the power of elected politicians according to a report released today. “Dangerous Regulatory Duet: How transatlantic regulatory cooperation under TTIP will allow bureaucrats and big business to attack the public interest by Corporate Europe Observatory and LobbyControl challenges European Commission claims that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) currently under negotiation will not result in lower standards and highlights examples that show how regulatory cooperation has already put corporations in the policymaking driving seat and undermined democratic decision-making.
Regulatory cooperation is set to be at the heart of TTIP and will reinforce the means to roll back past and future achievements in environmental policies, consumers’ and workers’ rights. As the US Chamber of Commerce said, regulatory cooperation is “a gift that keeps on giving” but only to big business. This toolbox for corporate lobbyists is a direct threat to democratic principles and our environmental and social protections
TTIP’s regulatory cooperation chapter seeks to align existing and future EU and US standards to ‘reduce unnecessarily burdensome, duplicative or divergent regulatory requirements affecting trade or investment’, restricting the ability of elected representatives to introduce measures and standards in the public interest.
From curbing environmental protection rules, to helping financial conglomerates escape scrutiny; from sidestepping data privacy legislation, to delaying rules on animal testing, the case studies in the report show that lobbyists have made much use of regulatory cooperation to subvert public interest law-making and advance a transatlantic corporate agenda.
The examples highlighted to demonstrate how regulatory cooperation has already facilitated big business priorities over the public interest are:
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The scaling back of EU ambition on dealing with dangerous waste from electronics;
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Insurance giant AIG escaping supervision in the lead up to the financial crash;
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US companies escaping accountability under the Safe Harbour agreement and sidestepping data protection rules;
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Delayed legislation on animal testing, ozone depleting substances and aviation emissions.
From the very beginning of transatlantic regulatory cooperation in 1995, the EU and the US have been hell-bent on including big business in decision making and ensuring policy reflects the priorities of corporate lobbyists. Given the evidence collected so far, it's clear that it facilitates big business exerting its influence often before a proposal is even presented to parliaments. The same corporate lobbyists who pushed for this are now leading efforts to enshrine such procedures into the policymaking rulebook via TTIP
While the EU and US authorities attempt to sell this as a technicality, we’re seeing regulatory cooperation become an increasingly controversial issue in the public debate around TTIP. Concerns about this tool’s ability to drive down standards are well founded and are thus beginning to circulate widely. The solution is clear: this corporate agenda must be stopped with the scrapping of TTIP a much-needed first step
Information background
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is a trade deal currently under negotiation between the EU and the US. One of its stated claims is to make rules of all sorts converge in order to remove impediments to trade. That has sparked fears on both sides of the Atlantic that governments and trade negotiators will roll back achievements in environmental policies, consumer rights, regulations for work safety, and welfare policies.S uch fears do not come from nowhere. Over the past decades, a series of trade disputes between the two parties have revealed significant differences in many crucial areas. It has been shown that trade negotiations tend to resolve these problems by seeking the lowest common denominator – in other words, by lowering standards.But negotiators have routinely asserted that citizens have no reason for concern: TTIP will not result in lower standards, and regulatory cooperation will not give corporate lobby groups a greater say. These claims will be investigated in this report in the light of existing proposals and key past experiences.
Thus far, regulatory cooperation and the preparatory phase of the TTIP talks provide clear evidence of the influential coalition between big business and trade bureaucrats. Fears about the TTIP becoming a tool for a coalition of big business and trade bureaucrats to drive down standards are thus well founded. By rewriting the rules, big business can end up in the driver’s seat.
