International

This week will be tense for the TTIP negotiations. The European Parliament must vote on a motion from the External Trade Committee which, while it does put demands regarding the treaty, at the same time puts not the slightest obstacle in the way of the negotiators continuing their work. For the SP things are clear: we don’t want a single market stretching from here to Tokyo. Within the European single market there’s already enough social dumping and downward pressure on taxes, and we don’t need to add to these by adopting American conditions. That’s why we say an unconditional ‘no’ to the TTIP.

The banner reads ‘Trade Treaty? Stranglehold Agreement!’

The text of the European Parliament motion itself stretches to twenty pages, but the proposed amendments to this text add dozens more. Many MEPs will point to the fact that these include numerous safeguards, preventing the lowering of environmental standards and insisting on the protection of consumers’- and workers’ rights. The same goes for small firms uninterested in the export market. According to the European umbrella group for small and medium-sized businesses, known by its French acronym UEAPME (Union of Craft- Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises), six out of seven fit this description. They too must not be left out in the cold. And with such demands the TTIP negotiations can proceed.

Yet in reality these are all smokescreens. The aims of the TTIP is and remains the same: one big market, first of all with the US, and later with others, all the way to Japan. We have experience of such a common market. In Europe itself the internal market was already in place in the course of the 1990s. Since then we have had to cope with pressure on the labour market and continuing downward pressure on workers’ rights. The merging of companies into huge concerns leaves less space for the small firm, while major corporations seek out the member states with the lowest levels of taxation, because they can serve the European market from any of them.

Within the EU the SP’s approach is to try to tone down the negative aspects of the internal market, looking out for instance for the interests of small firms, workers and consumers. And we are frequently to an extent successful in this. Nevertheless there remains, to take an example, the problem of posted workers from eastern Europe who are by definition always cheaper than Dutch or other western European workers, because their social security and pension rights are based on those prevailing in their own country back home.

As long as the TTIP stands for a single enormous common market, it will be impossible to protect all these rights from giving way to US conditions. Corporations will establish themselves where wages are lowest and fiscal advantages greatest. From the United States too they would be able to serve the entire market and if workers happen to be cheaper there, they will set up shop in the US. That’s what this week is all about: will we allow ourselves to be taken for fools on the basis of false guarantees or do we want to see the negotiations immediately halted? If the motion before us does not call for the latter, we won’t only vote against it, we’ll begin organising still tougher actions against the TTIP. Can we count on your support in this?