The US-EU Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA). Devastating Social and Environmental Consequences | Global Research

The US-EU Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA). Devastating Social and Environmental Consequences | Global Research

 The Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) between the US and EU aims to ‘protect’ investment and remove ‘unnecessary regulatory barriers’. Corporate
interests are driving the agenda, the public have been sidelined and
unaccountable, pro-free-trade bureaucrats are facilitating the strategy
(1). 

 

There is growing concern that the negotiations could result in the opening of the floodgates for GMOs and shale gas (fracking) in Europe,
the threatening of digital and labour rights and the empowering of
corporations to legally challenge a wide range of regulations which they
dislike.

One
of the key aspects of the negotiations is that both the EU and US
should recognise their respective rules and regulations, which in
practice could reduce regulation to the lowest common denominator. The
official language talks of ‘mutual recognition’ of standards or
so-called reduction of non-tariff barriers. For the EU, that could mean
accepting US standards in many areas, including food and agriculture,
which are lower than the EU’s.

 

Even the leaders of the US Senate Finance Committee, in a letter to
U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, made it clear that any agreement
must reduce EU restrictions on genetically modified crops, chlorinated
chickens and hormone-treated beef.

 

Food
lobby group Food and Drink Europe, representing the largest food
companies (Unilever, Kraft, Nestlé, etc.), has welcomed the
negotiations, with one of their key demands being the facilitation of
the low level presence of unapproved GM crops.