The TTIP which threatens all EU laws on health and safety as well as the ability of any future government to take back the already partly privatised NHS into public hands, is being promoted by the UK's major political parties as being a cash and job bonanza, but is it true?
Well, according to independent analysis of key documents which make the case for the much-vaunted cash bonanza claims resulting from the proposed EU-US free trade agreement; it is untrue because such claims are overblown and misleading.
But most importantly, not only is TTIP predicted to cost at least one million jobs between the EU and USA, but it will also make it impossible for any future government to repeal the Health & Social Care Act and bring the NHS back into public hands.
Political scientist Dr Gabriel Siles-Brügge from The University of Manchester says Prime Minister David Cameron is wrong to argue that billions of pounds will accrue from the negotiations between the two power blocks.
His co-investigator is Dr Ferdi De Ville from Ghent University in Belgium.
One of the documents, Reducing Transatlantic Barriers to Trade and Investment An Economic Assessment, claims an agreement could amount to €119 billion a year to the EU and €95 billion a year to the US.
That, it says, translates to an extra €545 in disposable income each year for a family of four in the EU, and €655 in the US.
“An impartial reading of these key documents relating to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) shows quite clearly that these huge figures are vastly overblown and deeply flawed,” said Dr Siles-Brügge.
"It’s an overly optimistic view coloured by the political imperatives of the likes of the European Commission and certain member state governments.
David Cameron has latched on to the figures to convince Eurosceptic voters in the UK that membership will create jobs and prosperity. This is misplaced as a disappointing outcome might fuel further Euroscepticism.”
According to Dr Siles-Brügge, there is little chance that key sectors essential for TTIP to work will be able to standardise their markets – the underlying aim of the negotiations.
The EU will not, for example, change its policy on genetically modified organisms and alignment of safety and emissions standards in the car and chemical industries faces very steep obstacles he argues.
Nonetheless, he says, EU calculations assume that almost all sectors will be standardised.
But because the sum of the gains of each sector is actually greater than the parts, the absence of key sectors from the agreement will have a disproportionate impact on their sums.
TTIP talks resumed this week, and a further round of negotiations is scheduled for 16-20 December in Washington.
He added:
“Previous attempts to standardise markets have come to very little, so there’s no reason to expect anything different this time –especially within the stated time frame of two years.
All this rhetoric means that Governments continues to place emphasis on liberalisation of the economy.
Indeed, you could reasonably argue that similar free-market policies in the financial sector are partly to blame for the economic crisis in the first place- so an entirely different approach of ambitious social and ecologically sustainable policies is required – not more of the same.”
Source: Manchester University / Unionsafety
