Roundup: TTIP discussions deeply divide European Parliament

The European Parliament (EP) on Wednesday further adjourned a debate on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, better known as TTIP.

This follows a vote over the trade agreement was on Tuesday being delayed by the president of the EP Martin Schulz.

The latest turn of events illustrates the growing disagreement and increasing divisions at the heart of the EU regarding trade policy.

The TTIP draft treaty, if signed, would be the biggest trade agreement in the world, involving nearly 60 percent of global economic production and an enormous market of 850 million consumers.

The European Commission is handling the negotiations, but the EP must take a position on the subject, just as the United States Congress must decide whether or not to grant U.S. President Barack Obama the powers to engage an accelerated procedure to negotiate the trade agreement.

In case of an agreement between the Commission and Washington, the EP would have the power to reject the deal, as it did in 2012 with ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement between several nations, including Japan, South Korea, the United States, Canada, Australia and the EU, which signed on despite the EP vote against it.

The EP decided Wednesday by 183 votes in favor, 181 against and 37 abstentions to postpone the debate on the draft resolution prepared by the German member of European Parliament (MEP) Bernd Lange (Socialists & Democrats).

The draft resolution had, even so, received 28 votes in favor and 13 against when voted on in a committee. It aimed to define the "red lines" that should not be crossed by negotiators in order to receive approval from the EP.

Against all expectations, Schulz invoked on Tuesday article 175 of the EP Rules of Procedure in order to postpone the vote scheduled for Wednesday. According to the article, a text can be postponed when more than 50 amendments are tabled in advance of the vote in the plenary session.

In this case, the MEPs who prepared the draft resolution received more than 200 amendment proposals, seriously compromising its chances of being adopted. The entirety of the text, therefore, has been returned to the EP Committee on International Trade which will meet next in Brussels on June 15 and 16.

The heart of the discord creating turmoil in the EP can be found the issue of arbitration procedures, referred to as ISDS or investor-state dispute settlement.

Some MEPs fear that such a mechanism will allow multinational companies to challenge national public policies in the face of private interests, and so allow U.S. multinationals to contest national laws in the EU under the guise of free trade, and vice-versa.

In an attempt to respond to these criticisms, the European Commissioner of Trade Cecilia Malmstrom, in charge of transatlantic negotiations, proposed a permanent public court to handle such litigation, but this proposition has clearly not been sufficient.

If the center-right European People's Party (EPP) were to agree to demand a reform of the arbitration procedure, many conservative MEPs, criticizing the "new posture" of the socialists, said they would not be ready to accept the amendment.

The Socialists & Democrats (S&D) group had tabled a new amendment last week demanding the exclusion of the arbitration mechanism.

"Private arbitration courts are dead, but that must be said clearly," rapporteur Bernd Lange said Tuesday in order to justify the socialist amendment.

"We are not at all killing the ISDS, it's simply a reworking," said the co-president of the Greens Philippe Lamberts. He accused the socialists of having aligned themselves with the opposition only after numerous mobilizations by citizens against TTIP.

For several months, civil society, NGOs, Green party activists and parts of the European left have demonstrated their opposition to TTIP.

During a Wednesday press conference, Lange said: "We don't want private arbitration. It is something which comes from the 19th century, which is no longer our era. However, the EPP wishes to reintroduce it by the back door. A significant number of compromises are possible, but not on the question of private arbitration."

Up until now, the European left has been far from showing a united front on the question of TTIP. French MEP Yannick Jadot said he felt Schulz could no longer guarantee to European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and German Chancellor Angela Merkel a favorable vote on TTIP from the Parliament.

In its conducting of negotiations, the European Commission has put forward its wish to stimulate trade, job growth and job creation, as much in Europe as in the United States.

It was only in November 2014 that Brussels made public the authorization of negotiations, officially launched in July 2013, a move that has earned severe criticism regarding respect for transparency in the negotiation process. Endit