US-EU Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement: More Secrecy and More Duplicity Revealed | Global Research

US-EU Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement: More Secrecy and More Duplicity Revealed | Global Research

Current bilateral free trade agreement negotiations are shrouded
in secrecy and are closed to proper public scrutiny (1,2). This is
because they effectively constitute part of the ongoing corporate hijack
of democracy and the further restructuring of economies in favour of
elite interests (3,4,5).

We need look no futher than Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) between the US and EU. European
Commissioner De Gucht claims that “there is nothing secret” about the
ongoing talks. In December 2013 in a letter published in The Guardian,
he argued that “there is nothing
secret about this EU trade deal” and that “our negotiations over the
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership are fully open to
scrutiny” (6).

If that is the case, why then are notes of Commission meetings with
business lobbyists released to Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) under
the EU’s freedom of information law heavily censored?

It appears that the public is not allowed to know the positions held
by the EU (unlike business interests) in these talks, who is being given
access to whom and who is lobbying for what on whose behalf.
High-minded platitudes referring to protecting the integrity of industry
and the sensitive nature of negotiations are being used in an attempt
to subvert democracy, prevent public scrutiny and secure the continued
privileged positions and influence that big business holds in these
talks. The arguments being used to justify the secrecy are thinly veiled
disguises to try to hoodwink us into accepting the legitimacy of these
negotiations.