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European Parliament postpones debate over transatlantic trade issue

Xinhua, June 10, 2015 Adjust font size:

Following a half hour of stormy debate, the European Parliament (EP), assembled for its plenary session in Strasbourg, has voted to postpone debates scheduled to take place on Wednesday morning around a resolution relating to the "Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership," better known as TTIP.

The EP voted for the postponement with 183 votes in favor, 181 against and 37 abstentions on the basis of Article 152 of the EP Rules of Procedure.

On Tuesday, the President of the EP, Martin Schulz, had invoked Article 175 of the Rules of Procedure against expectations in order to postpone the previously scheduled vote during which the Members of European Parliament (MEPs) where meant to establish their demands regarding the free trade agreement in negotiation with the United States for two years. The EP did not succeed on Tuesday to adopt a shared position on the draft agreement.

EP officials had first indicated to the press that the vote would not be held, but that the debate scheduled for Wednesday morning would be still take place and that Martin Schulz had informed the MEPs of the return of the draft resolution to committee due to a too large number of proposed amendments.

The MEPs which had prepared the resolution had indeed received almost 200 proposed amendments, seriously compromising its chances of being adopted.

The EP does not participate in the TTIP negotiations in progress since 2013, but it will have the power at the end to reject the agreement, as it did in 2012 with ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement between several nations, including Japan, South Korea, the United States, Australia and the European Union (EU), which signed despite the EP vote against it.

"It's panic at the parliament," ironized on Tuesday the French Ecologist MEP Yannick Jadot for whom the initiative of Martin Schulz comes from "political underhandedness" and is motivated by the fact that the EP President can no longer "guarantee to [President of the European Commission Jean-Claude] Juncker and to [German Chancellor] Angela Merkel a favorable vote" on TTIP from the Parliament.

At the heart of the discord: arbitration procedure, known as ISDS. Some fear that in fact this mechanism will allow multinational companies to challenge the public politics of states, against private interests.

This newest dramatic turn of events illustrates the growing disagreement and the increasing divisions at the center of the EU around the TTIP proposal which, if it were signed, would be the biggest trade agreement in the world, affecting nearly 60 percent of world economic production and a colossal market of 850 million consumers.

The European Commission handles negotiations around the transatlantic trade and investment partnership (TIIP, formerly TAFTA) with the U.S.. It was only in November 2014 that Brussels made public the authorization of the negotiations, officially launched in July 2013.

The International Trade Committee of the EP will meet next June 15 and 16 in Brussels to discuss the TTIP draft resolution and proposed amendments. Endit