Why EU’s and US’ new trade deal threatens progressive business
Over the past two years, the United States and the European Union
have been negotiating a new trade agreement, the Transatlantic Trade and
Investment Partnership (TTIP). However, TTIP is not a traditional trade
agreement. It is a regulatory agreement aimed at reducing regulatory
differences between the US and EU. 80 percent of TTIP’s hypothetical
economic benefits would come from eliminating these differences.
The differences reflect legislative progress over the past several
years, such as increased amount of information provided by chemicals
manufacturers about the safety of industrial chemicals. Because the
primary US legislation on industrial chemicals has not been reformed
since the 1970s, differences between the US and EU are vast in this
arena. The European Commission expects chemical manufacturers to be the
second largest beneficiary of TTIP, behind the automobile sector.
Since the start of negotiations, some chemical manufacturers have
been using TTIP to stall the development of stronger measures on toxic
chemicals in the EU, while simultaneously supporting proposed
legislation in the US that would further entrench regulatory differences
between the US and EU.
In the EU, representatives from parts of the chemical and pesticide
industry have used TTIP to fiercely lobby against stronger protections
from hormone (endocrine) disrupting chemicals (EDCs). [1]
The US government has also used TTIP’s regulatory objectives to
pressure the EU from enacting stronger measures for these chemicals of
concern. [2]
But the concerns are not limited to EDCs: in 2014, NGOs uncovered
efforts to use TTIP to effectively erase the no-data, no-market
principle of REACH. [3]
