Spotlight: EU lawmakers postpone debate due to row over TTIP

The members of the European Parliament (EP) have voted to postpone debates scheduled for Wednesday morning around a resolution relating to a proposed free trade pact with the United States, highlighting their growing doubts about the deal's benefits.

The lawmakers, who gathered in the northeastern French city of Strasbourg for a plenary session, voted for the postponement after a half hour of stormy debate over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

The postponement came one day after a vote over the trade agreement was delayed by EP President Martin Schulz, as the lawmakers failed to reach a unified stance on the draft agreement.

GROWING DISAGREEMENT

The TTIP talks began in July 2013. However, progress has been much slower than originally anticipated. In Europe, the treaty's proponents claimed that it will significantly boost economic growth and create a great number of new jobs.

On the other hand, critics are convinced that the TTIP will undermine the existing protection of consumers and allow large-sized corporations to block regulations that they find disadvantageous.

The latest turn of events illustrates the growing disagreement and increasing divisions at the heart of the European Union (EU) regarding the 28-member bloc's 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 U.S. Congress must decide whether or not to grant U.S. President Barack Obama the power 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, or the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement between several nations, including Japan, South Korea, the United States, Canada, Australia and the EU, which signed it despite the EP's vote against it.

Despite Wednesday's postponement, the draft resolution, prepared by Bernd Lange, a German member of the EP, had received 28 votes in favor and 13 against when being voted 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.

DISCORD ON ARBITRATION MECHANISM

On Tuesday, Schulz invoked 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.

As the draft resolution received more than 200 amendment proposals, it has to be returned to the EP Committee on International Trade that will hold a meeting in Brussels on June 15-16.

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

Some lawmakers 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, European Commissioner of Trade Cecilia Malmstrom, who is 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) was to agree to demand a reform of the arbitration procedure, many conservative lawmakers, criticizing the "new posture" of the socialists, said they would not be ready to accept the amendment.

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

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

"We don't want private arbitration. It is something which comes from the 19th century, which is no longer our era," he said. "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."

Philippe Lamberts, co-president of the Greens, accused the socialists of having aligned themselves with the opposition only after numerous mobilizations by citizens against the TTIP.

"We are not at all killing the ISDS; it's simply a reworking," he said.

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

Up until now, the European left has been far from showing a united front on the TTIP. French lawmaker 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 the 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, in a move that has earned severe criticism regarding respect for transparency in the negotiation process.

Meanwhile, Washington has said it considers the issue of investment arbitration non-negotiable as EU governments have secured some 1,400 investment protection agreements since the 1960s. Endi