Dear Member of the European Parliament,
On 10 June you will have to decide on a resolution that could heavily impact the future of European citizens: the resolution on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership TTIP. The draft resolution voted in the INTA Committee on 28 May does not reflect the deep concerns and clear red lines set out by European citizens, many civil society groups and the Members of the European Parliaments who voted 13 committee opinions on this resolution.
Our message to you is clear: either this text is deeply improved during the vote in the Plenary session or you should reject the resolution. We urge you to table (before Wednesday 3 June, 12 AM) and support the amendments below, and vote against the whole resolution if these are not in it.
Indeed, an EU-wide coalition of 375 civil society organisations who share a deep concern about the various threats posed by the agreement addressed a joined letter to the parliament. We call on all MEPs to agree on a strong resolution that makes clear that the European Parliament will reject any future trade or investment agreements that will not serve the public interest and threaten important rights acquired in long democratic struggles in the EU, US and the rest of the world.
To the very least, this requires that the resolution must exclude, unequivocally,
1- Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provision or any system with similar anti-democratic flaws,
2- Regulatory cooperation in its currently planned form
(see below for precise amendment texts and references).
The people lent you your power, don’t steal it and give it away to private interests.
The Board of Fundacja Strefa Zieleni (Green Zone Foundation)
The joint letter from 375 organisations from civil society representing a wide range of public interests including environmental protection, public health, civil rights, agriculture, consumer rights and protection of food and farming standards, animal welfare, social and labour standards, workers’ rights, migrant rights, unemployment, youth and women’s issues, development, public access to information and digital rights, essential public services including education, integrity of financial systems, and others :
http://corporateeurope.org/international-trade/2015/03/meps-must-protect-public-eu-us-trade-deal-threat (available in French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Greek, Danish, Italian, Slovenian, Bulgarian, Czech and Portuguese)
Amendments : we chose to use existing language from previously tabled amendments and committees opinions. Make sure that the text you support is at least as clear and unequivocal as these.
1- ISDS
OPINION of the Committee on Legal Affairs
- Observes that ensuring that foreign investors are treated in a non-discriminatory fashion and have a fair opportunity to seek and achieve redress of grievances can be achieved without the inclusion in the TTIP of investment protection standards or an ISDS mechanism; is of the firm opinion that any TTIP agreement should not contain any investment protection standards or ISDS mechanism as the existing level of investment protection in the EU and the US is fully sufficient to guarantee legal security;
- Calls on to Commission to oppose the inclusion of an ISDS mechanism in the TTIP, given the developed legal systems of the EU and US and the fact that a state-to-state dispute settlement system and the use of national legal and judicial systems are the most appropriate tools to address investment disputes;
- Stresses that the democratic legitimacy of the EUʼs trade policy needs to be strengthened; calls on the Commission to take account of responses to the public consultation it conducted and especially the 97 % of responses opposed to an ISDS;
- Calls on the Commission to ensure that foreign investors are treated in a nondiscriminatory fashion and have a fair opportunity to seek and achieve redress of grievances, while benefiting from no greater rights than domestic investors, and to oppose the inclusion of ISDS in the TTIP, as other options to enforce investment protection are available, such as domestic remedies;
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2014_2019/documents/juri/ad/1060/1060239/1060239en.pdf
OPINION of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety
- Calls on the Commission to oppose the inclusion of ISDS in the TTIP as, on the one hand, this mechanism risks fundamentally undermining the sovereign rights of the EU, its Member States and regional and local authorities to adopt regulations on public health, food safety and the environment, and, on the other hand, it should be up to the courts of the EU and/or of the Member States providing effective legal protection based on democratic legitimacy to decide all expectable dispute cases competently, efficiently and in a cost-saving manner;
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2014_2019/documents/juri/ad/1060/1060239/1060239en.pdf
Amendment 762
(Eric Andrieu, Maria Arena, Agnes Jongerius, Jude Kirton-Darling, Jörg Leichtfried, Emmanuel Maurel, Joachim Schuster, Marita Ulvskog, Theresa Griffin, Richard Howitt, Seb Dance, Clare Moody, Glenis Willmott, Richard Corbett, Paul Brannen, Lucy Anderson, Julie Ward, Siôn Simon, Linda McAvan, Derek Vaughan, Anneliese Dodds, Tibor Szanyi, Elly Schlein, Jan Keller, Renata Briano, Clara Eugenia Aguilera García, Elena Gentile, Sylvia-Yvonne Kaufmann, Petra Kammerevert, Evelyne Gebhardt, Gabriele Preuß, Kerstin Westphal, Evelyn Regner, Josef Weidenholzer, Eugen Freund, Karin Kadenbach, Claude Moraes, Marc Tarabella, Sergio Gaetano Cofferati, Hugues Bayet, Kathleen Van Brempt, Javi López, Soledad Cabezón Ruiz, Mary Honeyball, Afzal Khan, Catherine Stihler, Neena Gill, Ulrike Rodust, Peter Simon, Pervenche Berès, Isabelle Thomas, Sylvie Guillaume, Guillaume Balas, Vincent Peillon, Christine Revault D’Allonnes Bonnefoy, Jean-Paul Denanot, Virginie Rozière, Gilles Pargneaux, Louis-Joseph Manscour, Edouard Martin, Georgi Pirinski, Lidia Joanna Geringer de Oedenberg, Anna Hedh, Udo Bullmann, Soraya Post, Jutta Steinruck, Martina Werner, Paul Tang, Miapetra Kumpula-Natri, Kati Piri, Dietmar Köster, Matthias Groote, Maria Noichl)
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 1 – point d – point xiv
Motion for a resolution (xiv) to ensure that foreign investors are treated in a non-discriminatory fashion and have a fair opportunity to seek and achieve redress of grievances, which can be achieved without the inclusion of an ISDS mechanism; such a mechanism is not necessary in TTIP given the EU’s and the US’ developed legal systems; a state-tostate dispute settlement system and the use of national courts are the most appropriate tools to address investment disputes;
Amendment (xiv) to ensure that foreign investors are treated in a non-discriminatory fashion and have a fair opportunity to seek and achieve redress of grievances, while benefiting from no greater rights than domestic investors; to oppose the inclusion of ISDS in TTIP, as other options to enforce investment protection are available, such as domestic remedies;
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2014_2019/documents/inta/am/1055/1055775/1055775en.pdf
2- Regulatory cooperation
OPINION of the Committee on Legal Affairs
- Calls on the Commission to ensure that the adoption of national legislation continues to be performed exclusively by legitimate legislative bodies of the EU, promoting the highest standards of protection for citizens, including in the areas of health, safety, the environment, consumer and workers’ rights, and public services of general interest;
considers it vital to preserve the sovereign right of the Member States to claim a derogation for public and collective services, such as water, health, education, social security, cultural affairs, media matters, product quality and the right of self-government of municipal and local authorities, from the scope of TTIP negotiations; urges the Commission to ensure that any procedures in the context of regulatory cooperation fully respect the legislative competences of the European Parliament and the Council, in strict accordance with the EU Treaties and do not delay directly or indirectly the European legislative process;
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2014_2019/documents/juri/ad/1060/1060239/1060239en.pdf
OPINION of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety
- Calls on the Commission to ensure that any agreement, be it via the horizontal chapter on regulatory cooperation or any sectoral provisions, does not lead to a lowering of existing environmental, health and food safety standards, and to ensure similarly that it will not affect standards that have yet to be set in areas where the legislation or the standards are very different in the US as compared with the EU, such as, for example, the implementation of existing (framework) legislation (e.g. REACH), or the adoption of new laws (e.g. cloning), or future definitions affecting the level of protection (e.g. endocrine disrupting chemicals);
- Calls on the Commission to limit regulatory cooperation to clearly specified sectorial areas where the US and the EU have similar levels of protection, or where there are reasonable grounds to believe, despite diverging levels of protection, that upward harmonisation could be achieved, or is at least worth an attempt; calls on the Commission to ensure that any provisions on regulatory cooperation in the TTIP do not set a procedural requirement for the adoption of Union acts concerned by it nor give rise to enforceable rights in that regard;
- Calls on the Commission to ensure that all legislators and all stakeholders concerned by regulatory cooperation are involved in any body that may be created to explore future regulatory cooperation;
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2014_2019/documents/envi/ad/1057/1057731/1057731en.pdf
Amendment 546
(Eric Andrieu, Maria Arena, Agnes Jongerius, Jude Kirton-Darling, Jörg Leichtfried, Emmanuel Maurel, Joachim Schuster, Marita Ulvskog)
Motion for a resolution Paragraph 1 – point c – point i
Motion for a resolution (i) to ensure that the regulatory cooperation chapter promotes an effective, procompetitive economic environment through the facilitation of trade and investment while developing and securing high levels of protection of health and safety, consumer, labour and environmental legislation and of the cultural diversity that exists within the EU; negotiators on both sides need to identify and to be very clear about which regulatory measures and standards are fundamental and cannot be compromised, which ones can be the subject of a common approach, which are the areas where mutual recognition based on a common high standard and a strong system of market surveillance is desirable and which are those where simply an improved exchange of information is possible, based on the experience of one and a half years of ongoing talks;
Amendment (i) to ensure that the regulatory cooperation chapter secures the highest level of protection of health and safety including food safety and quality, consumer, labour and environmental legislation and of the cultural diversity that exists within the EU while promoting an effective, procompetitive economic environment through the facilitation of trade and investment; to reject any downward harmonisation of standards, or the mutual recognition of non-equivalent standards; to ensure that regulatory cooperation does not undermine the state’s right to regulate; to ensure that the process of regulatory cooperation is designed in the most transparent and inclusive way possible, involving in particular social partners; negotiators on both sides need to identify and to be very clear about which technical procedures and standards are fundamental and cannot be compromised, which ones can be the subject of a common approach, which are the areas where mutual recognition based on a common high standard and a strong system of market surveillance is desirable and which are those where simply an improved exchange of information is possible, based on the experience of one and a half years of ongoing talks; negotiators should ensure that regulatory cooperation will not translate in a slowdown of legislative processes and that it will not cover sectors excluded from the negotiation nor national or sub-central regulatory acts;
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2014_2019/documents/inta/am/1055/1055773/1055773en.pdf
All documents, opinions and previous amendments can be found here : http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2014_2019/organes/inta/inta_20150528_0900.htm
