It is almost the year’s end and negotiations are still ongoing between the US government and the European Commission on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP. This week Cecilia Malmström, the new Commissioner for trade, met with the US Trade representative Michael Froman in Washington after they had agreed the need for a “fresh start” to the talks.
At their outset, negotiations had been predicted to end this month but now even a conclusion before 2016 may seem optimistic. Whatever one thinks of the agreement and its implications for the European Union as a whole, those responsible for the negotiations undoubtedly made mistakes in how it was presented to the European public:
TTIP aint “what it says on the tin”
An awful acronym was chosen, which failed to explain and instead confused the real nature of the negotiations. Contrary to its name, TTIP deals more with regulatory issues than trade, and its stated objective is to align trading standards and regulations between the EU and the US. Former EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy has said that TTIP is less about removing trade barriers and “removing protection” and more about “harmonising precautions that prevent harm to consumers.”
Negotiations around TTIP are too opaque
There was unnecessary secrecy around what was being negotiated - this error was especially flagrant at the beginning of the negotiations when the basic parameters of what was being discussed were being set. Elements of negotiations need to remain secret in order to succeed, but through institutional habit or laziness the EC needlessly held back information from the public which has served to foment a sense of paranoia and injustice around the talks.
Bilateral and multilateral “trade” talks often go on for ever
Given the length of other negotiations (i.e. the Doha Round, etc.) the European Commission was naïve in saying early on that TTIP would be finalised by the end of 2014. This indicates that the EC misjudged the scale and proportions that the talks would take, but it also gave the sense to the public that a deal would be rushed through for cynical reasons.
What is the point of TTIP?
Insufficient political justification has been given to the public on why the talks are important and what they can achieve. The language used so far for TTIP has been waffly and diffusive. In fact, those I know working around TTIP cannot succinctly explain its objectives, partly because the objectives are so wide ranging.
The Commission and new Trade Commissioner are now fast trying to catch up with these mistakes, as what began as a seemingly technical round of negotiations has turned into a polarising political issue.
There is undoubtedly a growing movement against TTIP from interest groups, political movements and the wider public across the EU. Significantly for its prospects, the German public is increasingly opposed to TTIP with a post-Snowden/NSA wariness of relations with the US.
Should agreement ever be reached by negotiators, approval will be required from the 28 Member States and from the European Parliament, where a growing number of even the mainstream political groupings oppose elements of the deal. Negotiations will also need to be approved by Congress as a whole.
There seems to have been political naivety from those involved in TTIP at its inception; a failure to grasp how politically emotive such negotiations could become, and as a result the Commission has lost the public’s trust in the process.
Transparency and openness is essential
TTIP perhaps also serves as wider lesson for the Commission in its communication to the public. Over time the EU executive has become used to only having to justify its activity to a closed network of government representations and policy people in Brussels. Indeed, arguably because of its institutional position at the centre of EU policy, the Commission’s political and press machine has become increasingly sheltered from dealing directly with the public at large - but in this case it needed to justify its activity to the European public as a whole. Had it considered this more carefully, some of its problems could have been avoided.