EU-US trade deal: What is at stake for our environment and climate?

1. EU-US trade deal: What is at stake for our environment and climate? Natacha Cingotti and Mute Schimpf 12 December 2013

2. General concerns that will impact environmental and climate policies • Lack of transparency • Secrecy of the negotiations raises significant question as to who will benefit this agreement, and what will be traded away for the sake of “regulatory coherence” • Limited access contradicts other international negotiations processes • Democracy bypassed • The spectrum of specific rights for corporations to challenge democratically agreed decisions in secret unaccountable courts (ISDS) • Concerns about impacts for established laws and precautionary principle • The risk of a « regulatorychill » and a backwardmovement on environmental issues

3. Impacts on existing environmental safeguards • Aiming for “Regulatory coherence” ? • This is NOT about Trade - Differing regulations and standards defined as trade “barriers” • Example: EU plans to regulate substances that interact with hormone systems of people (endocrine disruptors), including several pesticides. Pesticide industry scaremongering that EU plan for standards will result in 40 % losses of US food exports to EU (to be avoided through TTIP) • All kind of labelling schemes can be targeted (from energy efficiency to GMO labelling) • Acc. to agribusiness, EU’s GMO labelling schemes are not “science-based” = a barrier to US exports • Future legislative effort on dirty energies at stake • Tar Sands, shale gas and fracking

4. What TTIP might mean for future legislations • The spectrum of secret corporate courts looming on environmental efforts: Investor-State Dispute Settlement • ISDS oftenusedfollowingregulatoryattempts on environment and other public interestregulations • Attacks right to regulate, bypassexisting court systems, unaccountable, burden on public finances • Vattenfall I: City of Hamburg pays Company and changes environmentalrequirements • Vattenfall II: CompanyischallengingGermany’snuclear phase out ($ 3.7 Bnasked - pending) • Chevron vs. Ecuador: ISDS used to overturndomesticruling and evadecompliance for land and water contamination) • Lone Pine Res vs Canada: challenging fracking ban (pending) • The corporate rule vs environmental ambition

5. Friends of the Earth Europe’s key demands • No compromise on democracy, safety, and key pillars of EU regulations – such as the polluter-pays and the precautionary principles – through these negotiations Negotiationsshouldexclude: • Any form of investor-to-State dispute settlement mechanism • Any areas dealing with food safety, animal or plant health • To defend democratically agreed safeguards for high consumers standards and block attempts to further weaken rules about genetically modified organisms and bridge to existing movements for local food

6. Useful background information FoEE position paper on EU US trade talks http://www.foeeurope.org/sites/default/files/foee_briefing_ttip_oct13.pdf FoEE and IATP briefing about impacts on food and farming sector in TTIP http://www.foeeurope.org/sites/default/files/foee_iatp_factsheet_ttip_food_oct13.pdf FoEE briefing about investor schemes and energy in TTIP http://www.foeeurope.org/sites/default/files/foee_factsheet_isds_oct13.pdf