International

Scarcely a day before the scheduled debate on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the European Union and the United States, European Parliament president Martin Schulz has removed both the debate and the planned vote to establish the Parliament’s opinion from the agenda of the plenary, sending the report back to the Committee on International Trade, a move agreed by committee chair Bernd Lange. Schulz cited the large number of proposed amendments as the reason for his decision, but the SP’s European Parliament team have their doubts.

SP Euro MP Anne-Marie Mineur questions the decision. ‘The number of proposed amendments is big, but not excessive,’ she argues. ‘There are 116 of them, and last month we voted on a report to which 155 were proposed. The difference lies rather in the political sensitivity of the subject. It seems that the social democrats Schulz and Lange don’t want to bring to light how great are the divisions in their centre-left political group, the S&D. That would put relations with the biggest political group, the centre-right EPP, under too much pressure.’

Public pressure concerning the TTIP is growing strongly. In a short time the number of signatures on the website of the European Citizens’ Initiative has reached over 2.1 million. De term 'TTIPalarm' was a trending topic on Twitter this afternoon.