TTIP Update XLIII

On Monday, I attended an interesting meeting at the Heinrich Böll Stiftung, in Berlin, with the intriguing title of "re:negotiate (ttip)".  This was valuable for two reasons.  First, because I had a chance to hear the arguments advanced by senior figures in the pro-TTIP world (surprisingly weak, even after all this time), and secondly, because I was asked to talk about "TTIP and global data transfer".  That's not something I've written much about here, so this gives me an opportunity to set down what I learned as I prepared for my session in Berlin.

The official negotiating mandate from the European Commission [.pdf], released recently (but very belatedly), does not mention words like "e-commerce, electronic services, telecommunications providers, cloud computing, data protection" at all, which is pretty extraordinary given their importance.  However, the section covering Trade in Services states:

The aim of negotiations on trade in services will be to bind the existing autonomous level of liberalisation of both Parties at the highest level of liberalisatio n captured in existing FTAs, in line with Article V of GATS, covering substantially all sectors and all modes of supply, while achieving new market access by tackling remaining long - standing market access barriers, recognising the sensitive nature of certa in sectors.

"GATS" is the overarching General Agreement on Trade in Services   The above paragraph would therefore seem to require that all kinds of e-commerce and online services should be covered by TTIP.  The Commission's mandate makes another reference to GATS here:

The [TTIP] Agreement will not preclude the enforcement of excep tions on the supply of services justifiable under the relevant WTO rules (Articles XIV and XIVbis GATS).

That's crucially important, because Article XIV includes the following exception:

nothing in this Agreement shall be construed to prevent the adoption or enforcement by any Member of measures:

(c)      necessary to secure compliance with laws or regulations which are not inconsistent with the provisions of this Agreement including those relating to:

(ii)     the protection of the privacy of individuals in relation to the processing and dissemination of personal data and the protection of confidentiality of individual records and accounts;

That seems to provide the basis for the following statement in the European Commission's TTIP FAQ:

Will TTIP mean US data privacy standards prevailing over or undermining EU standards on the same?

No.  The EU and US have long since recognised that we each regulate data privacy in a different way.  The TTIP negotiations are not the right place to address these differences though.  We have already developed suitable ways of handling transatlantic data flows - for example, the Safe Harbour Agreement.  In addition, we are currently in talks with the US on access to data by enforcement authorities.  The aim is to get an 'Umbrella Agreement' on data protection to strengthen our joint efforts to combat terrorism and serious crime.  These talks will not be affected by the TTIP.

Of course, the Safe Harbour Agreement is a joke.  It basically lets US companies take personal data out of the EU, and do what they like with it by "self-certifying" that they are jolly nice people, and that they wouldn't dream of doing anything nasty with all our data, oh no, sir.  But thanks to Edward Snowden, we now know that once the data is out of the EU and across in the US, the NSA can and do access it freely - which is why the European Parliament's LIBE committee called for Safe Harbour to be suspended.

Leaving that big issue aside, there remains a central question: how exactly will data flows be handled in TTIP?  Despite the soothing words from the European Commission, it is by no means clear that European privacy will be preserved.  That's evident thanks to a US Bill that was proposed last year.  It has the significant title "Digital Trade Act of 2013", and it would have required the US negotiators in all future trade agreements to insist on a number of key demands:

It shall be a negotiating principle of the United States in negotiations for a bilateral, plurilateral, or multilateral agreement, and in multi-stakeholder fora, to seek the inclusion of binding and enforceable provisions that promote and enhance Internet-enabled commerce and digital trade, including provisions--

(1) preventing or eliminating barriers to the movement of electronic information across borders, including by encouraging interoperability of data protection regimes and eliminating barriers to accessing, processing, transferring, or storing information;

(2) ensuring transparency in measures affecting the free flow of information within and across borders;

...

(4) prohibiting measures that condition market access or other commercial benefits on localization of data, infrastructure, or investment;

(5) prohibiting any country from imposing measures that require an entity to use computing infrastructure or services in that country or otherwise require an entity to access, process, transfer, or store data in the territory of that country;

Those last two are absolutely key, since they would forbid any country that has a trade agreement with the US from passing laws that require local storage or processing of data. Even though the Bill was not passed, all the indications are that the US negotiators will demand precisely these provisions in TTIP.  That's a problem, because one way to improve the privacy of EU citizens would be to require that their personal data is stored and processed in the EU, and to forbid it being sent abroad. 

Despite what companies like Google and Facebook would have us believe, that wouldn't stop them providing their services here in the EU.  It would simply mean that all EU personal data would be held and processed in the EU, with other data necessary for the services being brought in from the US, say, rather than the other way around.  The Internet's symmetry makes that trivially simple, so to claim that it is impossible to work under this conditions is absurd.

In cases where personal information like physical addresses needs to be sent outside the EU so as to allow the delivery of goods, say, such information could be provided by using Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) systems, that allow users to retain full control of their personal data, while granting highly specific access to parts of it.  Indeed, developing VRM is a huge opportunity for the EU, and should be actively promoted irrespective of its usefulness in the context of TTIP.

Another meeting on TTIP took place yesterday, organised by the S&D group in the European Parliament.  That party's position is absolutely crucial for TTIP: without its support, TTIP will probably not be passed.  So it was no surprise that the new Commissioner for Trade, Cecilia Malmström, appeared here and gave her first official statement on the trade agreement.

Actually, it's stretching it to call it a "statement", because that would imply it had any content.  Instead, it was an extended set of comforting platitudes that boiled down to the same kind of self-certification used in the Safe Harbour agreement.  In other words, it was little more than empty promises that everything would be OK, just don't worry your pretty little heads about it.

One of the most worrisome parts came in the brief and superficial questions and answers that followed her words.  In it,  Malmström tried to allay growing fears about ISDS - which the French government has said it will not accept in TTIP - by pointing to the recently-concluded CETA agreement with Canada.  She claimed that the new and improved ISDS chapter there shows, once more, that there was nothing to worry about, etc. etc.

Of course, ISDS is such a technical area that is hard for most of us to evaluate that claim.  Fortunately, the indispensable Corporate Europe Observatory has carried out a detailed analysis of ISDS in CETA, and found that far from addressing the problems, it actually makes them worse:

In response to these widespread concerns the European Commission and the Canadian government have become increasingly defensive, and have begun a misleading propaganda drive. Their strategy: to appease the public by downplaying the risks of investment arbitration and to divert attention from the fundamental problems of the system by focusing on cosmetic reforms.

But a closer look at these “reforms” in the final CETA text (see Annex 2) shows that they will not “prevent any abuse of the investment protection rules and investor-state dispute settlement systems,” as the European Commission claims. On the contrary, CETA’s investor rights are arguably even more expansive than those in agreements such as NAFTA – most notably by protecting investors’ “legitimate expectations” under the so-called “fair and equitable treatment” clause and on investor-state disputes with regard to financial services (see Annexes 1 and 2). This is not surprising: the “reforms” are an echo chamber of what the business community has proposed to re-legitimise investor-state arbitration while leaving its problematic core intact.

The Annexes referred to provide detailed rebuttals in non-technical language of claims that ISDS has been improved in CETA.  Here's a sample. First, what the European Commissions claims:

Final award: A tribunal can award “only” monetary damages or restitution of property (Chapter 10, Article X.36). According to the EU this means that an order of a tribunal “cannot lead to the repeal of a measure adopted by Parliaments in the Union, a Member State or Canada.”

And here's what that actually means in practice:

This won’t stop governments from “voluntarily” repealing measures when a major lawsuit has been filed or threatened by a deep-pocketed company. Examples of such regulatory chill include the watering down of environmental controls for a coal-fired power plant when Germany settled a claim by Swedish energy company Vattenfall (see Box 2 on page 6) and New Zealand’s announcement that it will delay its plain-tobacco-packaging legislation until after Philip Morris’ claim against Australia’s anti-smoking rules has been resolved. This chilling effect on government regulation is arguably the main function of the global investment regime.

This latest report from Corporate Europe Observatory is an important contribution in the fight against the misleading comments being made by pro-TTIP politicians, both at the European and national levels.  They know that ISDS is in trouble as the public find out more about it, and are trying to fob people off with the promise that things will be better in TTIP, building on the claimed improvements present in CETA.

But there are no real improvements, just some textual fig leaves to give the appearance that concerns have been addressed.  If the European Commission and pro-TTIP politicians like David Cameron really want to save TTIP from massive rejection by the European public - the Stop TTIP petition has now reached 912,000 signatures - the only way to do that is to remove ISDS from TTIP, CETA and the new EU-Singapore free trade agreement completely.  Nothing else will do.

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TTIP Update XLII

The problems of TTIP are so many - total lack of meaningful transparency, the unnecessary inclusion of an ISDS chapter, the threat to Europe's high standards governing health, safety, the environment, labour etc. - that the agreement's supporters have been forced to fight back with the only thing they claim to offer: money.  TTIP, they argue in multiple ways, will take us to the land of milk and honey, boost the GDP massively, and lead to lots of extra dosh for every family in the EU.

But as I've explained, none of this is true.  Even the European Commission's own research shows that the most ambitious outcome - that is, one that is already totally unrealistic given the resistance that TTIP is meeting - would produce a boost to Europe's GDP of 0.5% - just 119 billion euros.  However, as I and many others have pointed out, this is after ten years, and therefore represents a *cumulative* boost to GDP, which therefore works out at around 0.05% GDP boost per year on average.  Here's someone else joining that chorus:

at the end of the simulation period in 2027, GDP would be 0.5 percent higher in a TTIP scenario than the baseline, non-TTIP scenario, implying negligible effects on annual GDP growth rates.

That comes from an important new study by Jeronim Capaldo from the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University in the US.  It also points out the obvious fallacy with the European Commission's claim that EU households would gain 545 euros more every year:

these estimates are misleading since the studies provide no indication of the distribution of income gains: they are simply averages. With EU wages falling as a share of GDP since the mid-nineties, it is far from certain that any aggregate gains will translate into income increases for households living on income from wages (as opposed to capital).

Or, to put it more bluntly, claiming that any benefit from TTIP would be shared out equally among all families in the EU is only going to happen if communism sweeps across the continent - and about as likely.

Capaldo's study begins by pointing out the glaring flaws in the Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model used by the studies invoked by the European Commission.  This CGE approach includes the astonishing assumption that employment will not change as a result of TTIP, because somehow the inevitable job losses in some industries will be magically balanced by job creation in others.  Morever, as I have discussed before, another huge flaw in the CGE approach is that it ignores the costs it brings.  As Capaldo puts it:

the strategy chosen to simulate a “TTIP future” has a strong impact on the results. Ecorys assumes that so-called "Non-Trade Barriers" impose a given cost on trade and that TTIP can remove up to one half of them. CEPR and CEPII borrow this approach, but assume a lower share. These barriers can include what other stakeholders refer to as consumer and environmental regulations. Phasing them out may be difficult and could impose important adjustment costs not captured by the models.

In an effort to avoid these and other problems, Capaldo uses a different model: 

To obtain a more realistic TTIP scenario, we need to move beyond CGE models. A convenient alternative is provided by the United Nations Global Policy Model (GPM), which informs influential publications such as the Trade and Development Report. The GPM is a demand-driven, global econometric model that relies on a dataset of consistent macroeconomic data for every country.

You can read the detailed results in his paper, but his title sums it up pretty well: "The Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership: European Disintegration, Unemployment and Instability".  Using a more advanced model, that does not bake in ridiculous assumptions like no job losses, TTIP is predicted to produce the following chilling consequences for the EU and its citizens:

TTIP would lead to losses in terms of net exports after a decade, compared to the baseline “no-TTIP” scenario. Northern European Economies would suffer the largest losses (2.07% of GDP) followed by France (1.9%), Germany (1.14%) and United Kingdom (0.95%).

TTIP would lead to net losses in terms of GDP. Consistent with figures for net exports, Northern European Economies would suffer the largest GDP reduction (-0.50%) followed by France (-0.48%) and Germany (-0.29%).

Thus, even the paltry 0.5% GDP gains of the European Commission's study prove hopelessly inflated.

TTIP would lead to a loss of labor income. France would be the worst hit with a loss of 5,500 Euros per worker, followed by Northern European Countries (-4,800 Euros per worker), United Kingdom (-4,200 Euros per worker) and Germany (-3,400 Euros per worker).

This contrasts with that illusory 545 euros per household, as claimed by the European Commission.  Instead, a typical UK working family would lose thousands of pounds per year as a result of TTIP, according to this analysis.

TTIP would lead to job losses. We calculate that approximately 600,000 jobs would be lost in the EU. Northern European countries would be the most affected (-223,000 jobs), followed by Germany (-134,000 jobs), France (- 130,000 jobs) and Southern European countries (-90,000).

TTIP would lead to a loss of government revenue. The surplus of indirect taxes (such as sales taxes or value-added taxes) over subsidies will decrease in all EU countries, with France suffering the largest loss (0.64% of GDP). Government deficits would also increase as a percentage of GDP in every EU country, pushing public finances closer or beyond the Maastricht limits.

TTIP would lead to higher financial instability and accumulation of imbalances. With export revenues, wage shares and government revenues decreasing, demand would have to be sustained by profits and investment. But with flagging consumption growth, profits cannot be expected to come from growing sales. A more realistic assumption is that profits and investment (mostly in financial assets) will be sustained by growing asset prices. The potential for macroeconomic instability of this growth strategy is well known after the recent financial crisis.

Even if the UK escapes relatively unscathed on the employment front, losing "just" 3,000 jobs according to the new model, it is hit badly in terms of falling Government tax revenues (down 0.39% of GDP) at a time when the country's national debt is big and getting bigger.  In other words, far from being a panacea, a "once in a generation prize", as David Cameron called it, TTIP would probably fatally wound the European project, not least because it will lead to the economic hollowing-out of the EU - something already predicted in previous models.  Capaldo explains:

increases in trans-Atlantic trade are achieved at the expense of intra-EU trade. Implicitly, this means that imports from the US and imports from non- TTIP countries through the US will replace a large portion of current trade among EU countries.

Capaldo's conclusions make for grim reading:

First, as suggested in recent literature, existing assessments of TTIP do not offer a suitable basis for important trade reforms. Indeed, when a more realistic model is used, results change dramatically. Second, seeking a higher trade volume is not a sustainable growth strategy for the EU. In the current context of austerity, high unemployment and low growth, increasing the pressure on labor incomes would further harm economic activity.

Some will doubtless say this is just one model, and might be wrong.  But exactly the same argument can be applied to the widely-cited CEPR study, and yet the Commission is happy to accept its predictions uncritically, as if its figures were certainties. 

Whether or not you believe that Capaldo's model is superior - and that's a matter for economists to argue about - it would clearly be reckless to pursue the TTIP negotiations without commissioning much more detailed research to explore the agreement's likely impact, and to get a better idea of its real benefits - if any.

To give up national sovereignty because of ISDS's supranational powers, and weaken Europe's high standards in order to remove "non-tariff" barriers, is bad enough.  But to bargain them away in return for a flawed agreement that will harm every economy in the EU, and leave families thousands of pounds worse off, is just beyond stupid.

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TTIP Update XLI

In my last update, I noted that the highly-contested investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) chapter remains the centre of attention, with rumours swirling around that the President-elect of the new European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, would pull a rabbit out of his hat by announcing that ISDS would be dropped.  That didn't happen, and it seems that once more, the UK is to blame.

A group of 14 EU nations - including the UK, Spain, Ireland and Denmark - sent a pointed letter to Juncker on the subject of TTIP and ISDS.  Here's the key part [.pdf]:

One of the issues that has attracted criticism is investment protection.  The Commission is currently analysing the results of a public consultation on this issue and we look forward to the Commission's response.  The consultation was an important step in ensuring that we strike a correct balance to ensure that governments retain their full freedom to regulate, but not in a way that discriminates unfairly against foreign firms.  It is important that the outcome of this consultation runs its course and we carefully consider the views expressed by our stakeholders before reaching firm decisions on the way forward.  The Council mandata is clear in its inclusion of investor protection in the TTIP regotations; we need to work together on how best to do so.

That one paragraph includes a number of very interesting points. First, there's the strange insistence on the importance of the public consultation on ISDS.  We know that the overwhelming majority of submissions were against ISDS, so it's odd to see the UK government and its allies place such great emphasis here.  This suggests to me that we are about to witness a stitch-up - for example, we might see 149,000 of the 150,000 submissions counted as just *1* or something similarly outrageous.  The outgoing trade commissioner, Karel De Gucht, has already hinted some trick along these lines might be adopted.

Then of course we have the line about ensuring "the correct balance" between governments' right to regulated and investors' rights to make profits.  As I've written before, there should be no  balance here, because clearly the sovereignty of governments is paramount: to suggest otherwise amounts to a silent coup against democracy.  But even more ridiculous is the letter's insistence that TTIP must ensure that foreign firms are not discriminated against.  That's downright laugable, because ISDS would give foreign firms extra rights that local firms *don't* have: foreign investors could use national courts and ISDS tribunals, whereas local companies could only use the former.  So it's the national companies who will actually be discriminated against under ISDS: foreign ones will gain huge new powers.

Finally, the letter says that the TTIP mandate [.pdf] is "clear in its inclusion of investor protection mechanisms", but it omits to mention the very important caveat there:

the inclusion of investment protection and investor-to-state dispute settlement (ISDS) will depend on whether a satisfactory solution, meeting the EU interests concerning the issues covered by paragraph 23, is achieved.

Paragraph 23 includes the following key section:

should be with out prejudice to the right of the EU and the Member States to adopt and enforce, in accordance with their respective competences, measures necessary to pursue legitimate public policy objectives such as social, environmental, security, stability of the fin ancial system, public health and safety in a non - discriminatory manner.

So the mandate is clear that ISDS is only included if it meets those requirements, not otherwise.  But there's an even more outrageous twisting of the facts earlier in the letter.  Right at the start, the UK and its mates assert:

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) will add over €100bn to EU GDP and has the potential to transform not just our own economies, but also the global economy.

As readers of this blog will recall, that €100bn figure is the *maximum* likely benefit, in the best of all possible worlds; here it is being put down as a certainty, not ifs or buts.  That's downright dishonest, and shows how desperate the pro-TTIP camp has become: it knows that the supposed arguments in favour of the agreement are weak that it is forced to claim the most extreme outcomes as certainties.  And yet, as readers will also know, that best-case €100bn figure is in 2027, and represents a footling 0.05% average GDP boost each year until then - statistically, that's indistinguishable for zero given the huge number of uncertainties in the econometric model used.  So the letter from the UK and friends is based on the flimsiest of reasoning, and is really quite a disgraceful piece of bullying.

Unfortunately, it seems to have had the desired effect.  Here's how Juncker responded in his speech to the European Parliament:

I took note of the intense debates around investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations. Let me once again state my position clearly, that I had set out on 15 July in front of this House and that you will find in my Political Guidelines: My Commission will not accept that the jurisdiction of courts in the EU Member States be limited by special regimes for investor-to-state disputes. The rule of law and the principle of equality before the law must also apply in this context.

The negotiating mandate foresees a number of conditions that have to be respected by such a regime as well as an assessment of its relationship with domestic courts. There is thus no obligation in this regard: the mandate leaves it open and serves as a guide.

I had thought my commitment on this point was very clear but I am happy to clarify and reiterate it here today as a number of you have asked me do so: In the agreement that my Commission will eventually submit to this House for approval there will be nothing that limits for the parties the access to national courts or that will allow secret courts to have the final say in disputes between investors and States.

I have asked Frans Timmermans, in his role as First Vice-President in charge of the Rule of Law and the Charter of Fundamental Rights, to advise me on the matter. There will be no investor-to-state dispute clause in TTIP if Frans does not agree with it too.

Again, there are lots of interesting details here.  First, the statement "My Commission will not accept that the jurisdiction of courts in the EU Member States be limited by special regimes for investor-to-state disputes."  That's clever, becauses it is trivially satisfied by ISDS actions.  They do not "limit"  jurisidiction in any way - national courts are untouched.  But what ISDS does provide is a *parallel* system that foreign investors can use to have a "second go" at suing governments.  So ISDS is in addition to, not instead of, national courts.  Similarly, ISDS has no effect on the  "The rule of law and the principle of equality before the law".

This issue comes up yet again in the sentence: "there will be nothing that limits for the parties the access to national courts or that will allow secret courts to have the final say in disputes between investors and States. "  But secret courts won't have the final say, they will just be a factor that may well cause governments to change their policies.  The rule of law will still be there, but it will be irrelevant when large sums of money are involved (and remember that they can be very large: the Russian government has been ordered to pay no less than $50 billion by an ISDS tribunal...)

So far the, Juncker has artfully managed to say nothing of any substance whatsoever.  But his passing shot is more significant:

I have asked Frans Timmermans, in his role as First Vice-President in charge of the Rule of Law and the Charter of Fundamental Rights, to advise me on the matter. There will be no investor-to-state dispute clause in TTIP if Frans does not agree with it too

That's a classic passing of the hot potato to someone else, and a delaying tactic to avoid making a decision now.  But it is a very clear insult to the incoming trade commissioner, Cecilia Malmström, who has effectively been told that she does not have the final say here.  The big question is: what exactly does Timmermans think of ISDS, and would he actually veto the chapter after months or years of negotiations?

In any case, the rumours continue to swirl that ISDS will come out before then.  Here's a report from last week on euractiv.com:

The European Commission may have changed its view over including investment arbitration in the EU-US trade agreement TTIP, a move that would be a wish-come-true for Economic Affairs Minister Sigmar Gabriel and others, who fear the measure could lead to companies influencing government policy. EurActiv Germany reports.

The European Commission is considering omitting much-disputed plans for an arbitration procedure, a safety net for investors, from the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) currently under negotiation. An internal document from DG Trade addressed to EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström, revealed plans to strike the passage from the negotiating mandate.

As I've said before, I'll believe that when I see it - the UK will doubtless be working furiously behind the scenes to prevent ISDS coming out.  But there's certainly no question that ISDS is endangered, and that there is still a very real possibility it will be dropped.  Stay tuned....

Full list of previous TTIP Updates.

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TTIP Update XL

There's a rumour going around that ISDS may be coming out of TTIP:

Incoming Commission president Jean Claude Juncker is said to have decided to remove the controversial investor-to-state dispute settlement (ISDS) from TTIP, citing that it is “too late” to win on the issue, and to send a clear signal to EU citizens that he has “heard them" a new news report says

According to the Dutch journalist Caroline de Gruyter, writing for NRC Handelsblad, Trade Commissioner-elect Cecilia Malmström had threatened to resign over Juncker’s plans to exclude ISDS, but to date, this has not happened. The news sheds further light on the tug-of-war taking place within the Commission regarding investor rights in international trade agreements, as was demonstrated in Malmström's parliamentary hearing in September.

Well, that's certainly plausible, but I'd like to see this confirmed before I start rejoicing. And even if ISDS were taken out of TTIP, it's important to remember that the threat of corporations suing nations directly, over democratic developments that harm future corporate profits, will not have disappeared. That's because ISDS is most definitely still in the trade agreement between the EU and Canada, known as CETA. That means that any US company with ‘substantial business activities’ in Canada - that's all that the text of CETA requires - can sue the EU using the new agreement.

And just to make things a little harder, it was announced today that another major EU free trade agreement with ISDS has been concluded:

The European Union (EU) and Singapore have concluded the negotiations of the investment part of the EU-Singapore Free Trade Agreement (EUSFTA). This marks the successful conclusion of the negotiations of the entire EUSFTA, following the initialling of the other parts of the agreement in September 2013.

As that makes clear, it was precisely the chapter dealing with investment - and hence the highly-contronversial ISDS provisions - that was holding up the agreement with Singapore. We finally have that investment chapter (pdf). Two things are striking. First, that once again, any company that has "substantive business operations" in Singapore will be able to use the new agreement - known by the unlovely abbreviation "EUSFTA" - to sue European governments and the EU itself. The other thing that is noticeable is that zero notice has been taken of the 150,000 (mostly negative) submissions to the European Commission's consultation on ISDS.

This isn't the only example of the Commission showing its contempt for the European public and democracy. As I mentioned in a previous update, plans to organise a European Citizens' Initiative, a formal petition against both TTIP and CETA, were blocked by the European Commission, which flatly refused to allow people even this, largely symbolic, way of expressing their views on TTIP and CETA.

However, the organisers realised that they didn't actually need permission from Brussels to run this pan-European petition, and set up the site stop-ttip.org, where people were able to sign in a wide range of European languages. Even though this was only launched last week, it's been a stunning success: at the time of writing, over 637,000 signatures have been gathered (please do add your name if you haven't already.) That's two-thirds of the nominal million that would have been needed for the ECI, but the way things are going, I think the total will go well beyond that - a wonderful answer to the mean-spirited and cowardly actions of the European Commission.

Now, some will say that e-petitions really don't count, since it's so easy to gather names. There's some truth in that, except that people need to know about the e-petition before they can sign it, and so as minimum we can say that two-thirds of a million people now know enough about TTIP and CETA to dislike them. Moreover, the idea that the European public don't really care that deeply about these so-called trade agreements was given the lie by the astonishing "Decentralised Day of Action against TTIP, CETA and TISA", which gave rise to 450 events in 24 EU member states, involving many thousands of EU citizens. Lots of great pictures give some flavour of the depth of support.

However much the European Commission would like to ignore what the little people like you and me think, many among the European public clearly have no intention of meekly accepting what the Commission has stitched up in secrecy behind closed doors. Their anger is not least because of an insulting logic at play here: that you have no right to criticise what's being negotiated until you've seen the final text, because it's not yet finished; but then to be told, once the text is finalised, that you have no right to change anything, because it's finished (as with CETA.) They call that democracy?

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