The European Commission has been working closely with oil companies and oil refinery operators to increase the use of fossil fuels at a time when the world is seeking to address climate change by replacing them with low-carbon alternatives. The European Commission hopes to achieve this through measures laid down in the energy chapter of the massive EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), according to documents obtained by The Guardian using freedom of information requests.
As revealed by the heavily redacted information, in September 2013 EU trade officials gave a briefing on the state of TTIP talks to two trade groups and 11 oil and gas companies, including BP, ExxonMobil, and Shell. The European Commission also asked an oil refinery association for "concrete input" on the text of an energy chapter, and offered "contact points" with US negotiators in the State Department and Department of Energy to the employers' confederation BusinessEurope.
This close working relationship with European and even US companies contrasts with repeated refusals to listen to the EU public, and continued efforts to keep details of the negotiations secret—despite the potentially wide-ranging ramifications of adopting TTIP. In January last year, the European Commission launched a consultation into investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions in TTIP. Six months after the consultation closed, the Commission finally produced its analysis, which showed that 97 percent of the 150,000 respondents were against ISDS in particular, and many were against TTIP in general. And yet the European Commission ignored this overwhelming rejection, merely offering a slightly reworked version of ISDS. The proposed Investor Court System left the main problem that concerns EU citizens—placing companies above national laws by providing special forums for suing governments—untouched.
Another instance of the European Commission's indifference to the public's views occurred last September. An attempt was made at the time to register a European Citizens' Intiative (ECI) on the subject of TTIP, which would have allowed EU citizens to sign an e-petition against the agreement. Even though the ECI was not binding in any way, the European Commission nonetheless refused to allow even this token expression of democracy. An unofficial ECI went ahead, and on October 7 this year 3,263,920 signatures from EU citizens were handed in to a European Commission.
Alongside the highly controversial ISDS chapter, which Ars will be exploring in greater depth tomorrow, the impact of TTIP on the environment and sustainability is emerging as one of the most problematic issues as far as increased trade is concerned. A little-known aspect of the proposed EU-US agreement is that it is mostly about swapping cars across the Atlantic. Working from the European Commission's own figures, Martin Whitlock has pointed out: "cars form a big part of the E.U.'s case for TTIP. They account for 47% of the increase in exports and 41% of the increase in imports in the best case scenario [for TTIP], with well over three times as many vehicles braving the Atlantic storms in one direction or the other than at present."
It's not just through shipping cars to and fro across the Atlantic that TTIP will increase pollution. Another article in The Guardian points out that the global food system is already responsible for around half of global greenhouse gas emissions, and that "If we are going to deal with climate change, we have to overhaul the global food system. But a new generation of trade deals will amplify emissions from the food system." TTIP is the most important example of that "new generation."
The latest EU documents obtained by The Guardian add to fears that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is taking exactly the wrong approach. They show that, at a time when the world is meeting to agree on ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions drastically, the European Commission inexplicably wants to increase them yet further, and in the worst possible ways.
Listing image by Joe deSousa
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