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Just to make one thing clear: Before the treaty comes into force it needs to be voted on by the Euroepan parliament and national parliaments. Before the votes t

Just to make one thing clear: Before the treaty comes into force it needs to be voted on by the Euroepan parliament and national parliaments. Before the votes the treaty will be published. What is a highly guarded secret are the current drafts, not the final agreement. It's actually not really different from how most laws are written, especially those proposed by the government. While those are in the drafting phase MPs usally don't have access at all.

themartorana 11y ago
That doesn't make me feel any better. This treaty and the debate around it have become very public, and continuing to deal in private where even lawmakers are restricted from seeing it can be absolutely nothing other than trying to avoid controversy and public debate. By the time this is in its final form, many countries (like the US) would have basically already voted for approval, meaning a public debate will be too late and all but meaningless.
- TheLogothete 11y ago
  Yeah. Make them public. Every populist party in every member state would have a wonderful time catering to tin foil hats and making everyone with half a clue miserable. This is not how negotiations work. You don't make preliminary talks public. Many of the things in those talks are outrageous and no one believes they will be in the final draft. It's how you negotiate. You ask for X, then the opposing side tells you no, BUT if you manage to do Y, then we can do a scaled back version of X. You tell them no, BUT if they do X and Z, you will make Y happen. All sides make concessions and sh... stuff gets done. Making the above process public will tie the negotiators hands.
  - sdoering 11y ago
    Why not. If I can argue as a leading party, that my populous would never consent to this or that feature of the treaty, I gain enormous leverage. And seen another way. If any majority of people inside a democracy does not want to have a feature it is the politicians job to listen to the people and do their bidding. Politicians are there to server the people not to rule them.
    - TheLogothete 11y ago
      You have time for that. After the draft is published. People are saying that this is NEGOTIATED in private. Which is how negotiations work. What will be proposed as a draft depends on many variables. Accepting the draft and making it into laws takes many steps, the final one being approval from every member's parliament.
      - bediger4000 11y ago
        We don't have time for that in the USA, for the TPP, which seems analogous to the TTIP. Our "representatives" will get one vote, up or down, on the entire TPP, no debate. During TPP "negotiations", corporations got access to the drafts. It wasn't negotiated strictly in private. Corporations are the only stakeholders, and US citizens have had zero say.
      - sdoering 11y ago
        Well I do not see, why corporations then get an early say in the "negotiations" when the people are not able to do so via their elected representatives. Because, as you can clearly see, my representative might have the right to read some of it, but he has no right to alter the "negotiations". The people negotiating on my behalf are so far removed from my actual vote, that I could not possible call this democratic. So no, when the final draft is released, we will have the european parliament get some short amount of time (easily too short to really grasp implications), no real debate, but a fast vote. Then this will have to be implemented into national laws (without another parliamentarian debate on a national basis). Let's see, what you have to say then in regards to this process.
        TheLogothete 11y ago
        I say there is enough time, you say there isn't. What is left to say?
        sdoering 11y ago
        Wow. What an elaborate argument. How grown up. Someone could label your statement as a kille phrase. I now see how you do "discourse" and can understand why you do not fear TTIP "discourse". As yours and the so called "discourse" are equally non existent and on the same level. Please. I beg you to refrain from an answer, as I write this just for the afterworld. I do not try to feed you, the troll.
  - RodericDay 11y ago
    Human inventiveness is infinite, can take us to the moon and land supercomputers in our hands... but apparently making smart business and transparent democracy compatible is just too damn difficult.
    - TheLogothete 11y ago
      Human stupidity is infinite, not our inventiveness. Einstein's words, not mine.
      - striking 11y ago
        So you accept oligarchial rule because you don't trust your fellow man? What a sad world you live in.
        TheLogothete 11y ago
        How did you come with this dichotomy?
      - dalke 11y ago
        He probably didn't say that. As http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/04/universe-einstein/ http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/04/universe-einstein/ points out, the original saying was attributed to a "great astronomer", then followed by "To-day we know that this statement is not quite correct. Einstein has proved that the universe is limited." These later got merged. In any case, you are making a fallacious argument from authority. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority#Appeal_to_non-authorities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority#Appeal... : > A common example of the fallacy is appealing to an authority in one subject to pontificate on another - for example citing Albert Einstein as an authority on religion when his expertise was in physics.
        TheLogothete 11y ago
        In fact, I don't care that Einstein told it. Or didn't. I quoted it because it sums my thesis pretty well. People are very, very stupid. You cannot count on them not being swayed by some pretty words and blowing the whole treaty out of the water with some misguided protests. Perhaps if you frequent HN, you don't know how stupid people are, because you only talk to the the smartest 10%.
  - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
    >This is not how negotiations work. You mean it's not how oligarchs want it to work. Proponents of unpopular policy proposals want to govern people, but they don't want to have to explain themselves to the people they propose to govern. >You don't make preliminary talks public. Just because it doesn't always happen, does not mean that it never happens, shouldn't happen, or can't happen. >Making the above process public will tie the negotiators hands. Which is the point of democratic processes. It is exactly what people want. I'm not sure what they're worried about anyway, in the US the proletariat has been convinced to go along with all manner of political and economic policy that goes against their best interests; they beg for more of it.
    - bediger4000 11y ago
      It worked almost like that in the USA with the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Text of the TPP totally kept secret, even from the US Senate and House. Before our "representatives" got a chance to read the treaty, someone forced a vote on trade authority. Now, there's a short period to read a long treaty, which is being changed by the "legal scrub" process, and there's one opportunity to vote on it, no debate on the provisions, very little debate overall. In short, TPP is getting rammed through in the USA. All objections are getting overridden, hard.
      - tptacek 11y ago
        Well, that's the least charitable way to frame it. A more accurate way to frame it: * The United States Congress does not really get line-item veto on giant international trade agreements that affect dozens of countries, all of whom also must ratify the treaty. * Trade promotion authority is simply the authorization for the administration to negotiate the treaty. * By the time TPP is ratified by Congress at the end of 2016, it will have been public for over a year, and we'll have change-bars for the "legal scrub" stuff Techdirt is so worried about. My real objection to US concern over TPP is that TPP has minimal impact on US domestic law. If you're a New Zealander, or, worse, Vietnamese, I totally understand how the TPP is problematic. The idea that a treaty that mostly serves to normalize global trade rules around the ones already in place in the US has been "rammed through in the USA" seems pretty arrogant to me.
  - Silhouette 11y ago
    This "negotiations must be secret to work" principle seems an odd argument to make. In the UK, for example, our national laws go through several stages of development in Parliament. Over the course of many months or years there will often be thousands of comments contributed by MPs, Lords, civil servants, independent subject matter experts, special interest groups, and the general public. There are no draconian restrictions on seeing or discussing the work in progress of the kind we're talking about here. No-one is wearing tin foil hats. No-one is spending their entire working lifetime fending off crazy theories from everyone with half a clue. And yet, as you say, stuff still gets done.
    - TheLogothete 11y ago
      You are comparing domestic and international legislation...
      - c0ur7n3y 11y ago
        What is international legislation?
      - Silhouette 11y ago
        No, I'm demonstrating that if an entire programme of complex proposals can routinely become law after open debate among thousands of participants with often conflicting views and preferences, the idea that a single trade agreement can't be hammered out without resorting to secrecy and subterfuge by a small group of mostly unidentified participants is absurd.
        TheLogothete 11y ago
        It is a very different playing field. In one case you have agenda for the UK, in the other you have for the UK and Romania. Local forces will escalate the tension and break up all talks.
        Silhouette 11y ago
        And yet, again, we have both bilateral and multilateral negotiations going on all the time in international relations, without the same level of controversy that the likes of TPP and TTIP have attracted. Discussions in the UN about issues as big as imposing sanctions or going to war have taken place with more transparency than we're seeing here. National politicians who have defied public opinion on such matters have sometimes paid a heavy price for it at the next elections. I mean, seriously, we're talking about a bilateral trade deal here, not the fate of humanity. Yes, each party has some internal political structure and local variations, but the point of both the EU and the US is to have regulated, harmonious local variations so the whole can still function effectively. Please tell me, if everything is above board, what is so secret about this kind of a deal that it justifies obstructing not only the public but their elected representatives from watching it develop? For that matter, why should those elected representatives not then block the entire thing on principle, if they are only to be asked to rubber stamp the results without substantial scrutiny or a meaningful opportunity to actually represent the interests of their electorates?
- persusta 11y ago
  > continuing to deal in private where even lawmakers are restricted from seeing it can be absolutely nothing other than trying to avoid controversy and public debate Indeed, they just don't want us little folks to disturb their dealings. They say it's a free trade deal of sorts, but actual free trade could be arranged overnight: just stop intervening in trade, and it will be free. I get the feeling that the tone on HN has changed a bit. Are intelligent people finally waking up to doubt their "representatives'" or governments' good intentions? It's difficult to see how they could make it any clearer that they're working against our interests. Going full police state on us would do it, but there's not much room in between.
witty_username 11y ago
If the deal is done in secret, people'll complain that its secret. If the deal is not done in secret, people'll complain about the draft terms before it is finalized.
- imglorp 11y ago
  > If the deal is not done in secret, people'll complain about the draft terms before it is finalized. That little bit there is called democracy. Without transparency, it's called fascism.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- eis 11y ago
  And the issue with that is...? "complain" just means negative feedback which should be taken into consideration since a draft is a version which is still being worked on. Isn't that how it should really be?
  - TheLogothete 11y ago
    Complain is a very mild word. Proposals will be shred to pieces by local politicians looking for quick score and media always on the look for a sensation. Nothing will ever get signed if proposals are made public.
    - eis 11y ago
      If you can shred something to pieces then maybe it shouldn't be signed? And if it was good then they wouldn't be able to shred it to pieces. Sounds like you'd be afraid of public discourse.
      - Loughla 11y ago
        That is unbelievably naive, or immature. One of the two, I'm not sure which. Public discourse isn't the same as what happens when the media spins a narrative about a piece of legislation. You and I both know they don't need truth to make a story. And small-time politicians looking to make a name for themselves will always impede the process, regardless of whether or not it's a good process. Having the public voice their dissent is good. Letting a piece of legislation get ripped to shreds because some small-name representative has a hard-on for one of the bill's co-creators is not.
mtgx 11y ago
1) They promised they would give at least a year for people to see the final draft before voting on it. Looks like they might vote on it this summer already, and the final draft is not even out yet. 2) The Parliament can vote it down or up, which means there's a 90% chance it will pass, unless there are large protests all over the EU, like it happened with ACTA. However, this time they need to be even bigger because ACTA was mostly about copyright, so the EU Parliament didn't care that much about it. This is about trade and they care much more.
jandrese 11y ago
This is kind of like tying a guy to a stake above a fire pit and telling them "Don't worry, I might not light the tinder at your feet with this flaming torch I'm holding. Certainly don't try to do anything about it now because this is the way these things work. I'm sure you'll be just fine in the end."
belorn 11y ago
Most law are written after years of public debates in parliaments (for those countries which has one), by a larger number of public inquiries and studies, and by appointed politicians talking about it in public speeches, conferences, personal website, news papers, social media and so on. The process is so connected to bureaucracy that we recognize it as the definition for it, with the majority of time spent in public discussions or waiting for the next report to finish. We have had close to nothing of those things regarding this treaty and the changes it propose, so the process for TTIP is completely different from how most laws are made. If we compared its process to the recent work done in EU to draft network neutrality laws, we see almost no comparable aspects at all.
- germanier 11y ago
  I can only talk about Germany, as this is the country I know best. I suspect it's not too different in most others. Most laws are not passed after a long public debate in parliament, certainly not years (that would make for really slow legislation). In fact, almost all laws see almost no debate at all. As an example, just today the federal parliament passed a law without plenary debate at all and with no votes against to streamline electronic communication with the patent and trademark office. The law was introduced in November and voted through all required phases as just a single line-item every time. That is not an exceptional example. Sure, these are mostly low-profile, low-impact laws so not really comparable to TTIP. But extremely fast lawmaking is also not unheard of. For example, the "Finanzmarktstabilisierungsgesetz" during the financial crisis was first introduced to parliament and the public on 14th October 2008 and already went in full force by 18th October 2008. And that was certainly not your regular change of traffic rules but introduced hundreds of billions euros of liability. Of course that drew a lot of criticism. I'm not saying everything went well with TTIP (certainly it didn't). But if you talk to anyone in the EU commission they will tell you that they have been really caught off guard with the public interest which hadn't been anticipated at all. It was not that they purposefully hid the negotiations from the public to reach their goals but rather did what felt natural to them. The EU has negotiated dozens of similar treaties (though smaller and lower-impact) with nobody voicing interest in the process. When was the last time you heard about trade agreements with Singapore, Japan, Ecuador, Kazakhstan, the East African Community, Thailand, Morocco, India, etc.? All those are currently being drafted or have just been finalized without any public debate at all. Many of those contain clauses similar to the ones criticized with TTIP. Of course we should ask critically why they saw it that way and hope that it will change in the future to more open negotiations. But saying TTIP was created in an exceptional never-seen-before process is really stretching reality. Drafting the net-neutrality laws is the exception rather than the norm here learned after years of public debate on certain topics.

themartorana 11y ago

That doesn't make me feel any better. This treaty and the debate around it have become very public, and continuing to deal in private where even lawmakers are restricted from seeing it can be absolutely nothing other than trying to avoid controversy and public debate. By the time this is in its final form, many countries (like the US) would have basically already voted for approval, meaning a public debate will be too late and all but meaningless.

TheLogothete 11y ago
Yeah. Make them public. Every populist party in every member state would have a wonderful time catering to tin foil hats and making everyone with half a clue miserable. This is not how negotiations work. You don't make preliminary talks public. Many of the things in those talks are outrageous and no one believes they will be in the final draft. It's how you negotiate. You ask for X, then the opposing side tells you no, BUT if you manage to do Y, then we can do a scaled back version of X. You tell them no, BUT if they do X and Z, you will make Y happen. All sides make concessions and sh... stuff gets done. Making the above process public will tie the negotiators hands.
- sdoering 11y ago
  Why not. If I can argue as a leading party, that my populous would never consent to this or that feature of the treaty, I gain enormous leverage. And seen another way. If any majority of people inside a democracy does not want to have a feature it is the politicians job to listen to the people and do their bidding. Politicians are there to server the people not to rule them.
  - TheLogothete 11y ago
    You have time for that. After the draft is published. People are saying that this is NEGOTIATED in private. Which is how negotiations work. What will be proposed as a draft depends on many variables. Accepting the draft and making it into laws takes many steps, the final one being approval from every member's parliament.
    - bediger4000 11y ago
      We don't have time for that in the USA, for the TPP, which seems analogous to the TTIP. Our "representatives" will get one vote, up or down, on the entire TPP, no debate. During TPP "negotiations", corporations got access to the drafts. It wasn't negotiated strictly in private. Corporations are the only stakeholders, and US citizens have had zero say.
    - sdoering 11y ago
      Well I do not see, why corporations then get an early say in the "negotiations" when the people are not able to do so via their elected representatives. Because, as you can clearly see, my representative might have the right to read some of it, but he has no right to alter the "negotiations". The people negotiating on my behalf are so far removed from my actual vote, that I could not possible call this democratic. So no, when the final draft is released, we will have the european parliament get some short amount of time (easily too short to really grasp implications), no real debate, but a fast vote. Then this will have to be implemented into national laws (without another parliamentarian debate on a national basis). Let's see, what you have to say then in regards to this process.
      - TheLogothete 11y ago
        I say there is enough time, you say there isn't. What is left to say?
        sdoering 11y ago
        Wow. What an elaborate argument. How grown up. Someone could label your statement as a kille phrase. I now see how you do "discourse" and can understand why you do not fear TTIP "discourse". As yours and the so called "discourse" are equally non existent and on the same level. Please. I beg you to refrain from an answer, as I write this just for the afterworld. I do not try to feed you, the troll.
- RodericDay 11y ago
  Human inventiveness is infinite, can take us to the moon and land supercomputers in our hands... but apparently making smart business and transparent democracy compatible is just too damn difficult.
  - TheLogothete 11y ago
    Human stupidity is infinite, not our inventiveness. Einstein's words, not mine.
    - striking 11y ago
      So you accept oligarchial rule because you don't trust your fellow man? What a sad world you live in.
      - TheLogothete 11y ago
        How did you come with this dichotomy?
    - dalke 11y ago
      He probably didn't say that. As http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/04/universe-einstein/ http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/04/universe-einstein/ points out, the original saying was attributed to a "great astronomer", then followed by "To-day we know that this statement is not quite correct. Einstein has proved that the universe is limited." These later got merged. In any case, you are making a fallacious argument from authority. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority#Appeal_to_non-authorities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority#Appeal... : > A common example of the fallacy is appealing to an authority in one subject to pontificate on another - for example citing Albert Einstein as an authority on religion when his expertise was in physics.
      - TheLogothete 11y ago
        In fact, I don't care that Einstein told it. Or didn't. I quoted it because it sums my thesis pretty well. People are very, very stupid. You cannot count on them not being swayed by some pretty words and blowing the whole treaty out of the water with some misguided protests. Perhaps if you frequent HN, you don't know how stupid people are, because you only talk to the the smartest 10%.
- fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
  >This is not how negotiations work. You mean it's not how oligarchs want it to work. Proponents of unpopular policy proposals want to govern people, but they don't want to have to explain themselves to the people they propose to govern. >You don't make preliminary talks public. Just because it doesn't always happen, does not mean that it never happens, shouldn't happen, or can't happen. >Making the above process public will tie the negotiators hands. Which is the point of democratic processes. It is exactly what people want. I'm not sure what they're worried about anyway, in the US the proletariat has been convinced to go along with all manner of political and economic policy that goes against their best interests; they beg for more of it.
  - bediger4000 11y ago
    It worked almost like that in the USA with the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Text of the TPP totally kept secret, even from the US Senate and House. Before our "representatives" got a chance to read the treaty, someone forced a vote on trade authority. Now, there's a short period to read a long treaty, which is being changed by the "legal scrub" process, and there's one opportunity to vote on it, no debate on the provisions, very little debate overall. In short, TPP is getting rammed through in the USA. All objections are getting overridden, hard.
    - tptacek 11y ago
      Well, that's the least charitable way to frame it. A more accurate way to frame it: * The United States Congress does not really get line-item veto on giant international trade agreements that affect dozens of countries, all of whom also must ratify the treaty. * Trade promotion authority is simply the authorization for the administration to negotiate the treaty. * By the time TPP is ratified by Congress at the end of 2016, it will have been public for over a year, and we'll have change-bars for the "legal scrub" stuff Techdirt is so worried about. My real objection to US concern over TPP is that TPP has minimal impact on US domestic law. If you're a New Zealander, or, worse, Vietnamese, I totally understand how the TPP is problematic. The idea that a treaty that mostly serves to normalize global trade rules around the ones already in place in the US has been "rammed through in the USA" seems pretty arrogant to me.
- Silhouette 11y ago
  This "negotiations must be secret to work" principle seems an odd argument to make. In the UK, for example, our national laws go through several stages of development in Parliament. Over the course of many months or years there will often be thousands of comments contributed by MPs, Lords, civil servants, independent subject matter experts, special interest groups, and the general public. There are no draconian restrictions on seeing or discussing the work in progress of the kind we're talking about here. No-one is wearing tin foil hats. No-one is spending their entire working lifetime fending off crazy theories from everyone with half a clue. And yet, as you say, stuff still gets done.
  - TheLogothete 11y ago
    You are comparing domestic and international legislation...
    - c0ur7n3y 11y ago
      What is international legislation?
    - Silhouette 11y ago
      No, I'm demonstrating that if an entire programme of complex proposals can routinely become law after open debate among thousands of participants with often conflicting views and preferences, the idea that a single trade agreement can't be hammered out without resorting to secrecy and subterfuge by a small group of mostly unidentified participants is absurd.
      - TheLogothete 11y ago
        It is a very different playing field. In one case you have agenda for the UK, in the other you have for the UK and Romania. Local forces will escalate the tension and break up all talks.
        Silhouette 11y ago
        And yet, again, we have both bilateral and multilateral negotiations going on all the time in international relations, without the same level of controversy that the likes of TPP and TTIP have attracted. Discussions in the UN about issues as big as imposing sanctions or going to war have taken place with more transparency than we're seeing here. National politicians who have defied public opinion on such matters have sometimes paid a heavy price for it at the next elections. I mean, seriously, we're talking about a bilateral trade deal here, not the fate of humanity. Yes, each party has some internal political structure and local variations, but the point of both the EU and the US is to have regulated, harmonious local variations so the whole can still function effectively. Please tell me, if everything is above board, what is so secret about this kind of a deal that it justifies obstructing not only the public but their elected representatives from watching it develop? For that matter, why should those elected representatives not then block the entire thing on principle, if they are only to be asked to rubber stamp the results without substantial scrutiny or a meaningful opportunity to actually represent the interests of their electorates?
persusta 11y ago
> continuing to deal in private where even lawmakers are restricted from seeing it can be absolutely nothing other than trying to avoid controversy and public debate Indeed, they just don't want us little folks to disturb their dealings. They say it's a free trade deal of sorts, but actual free trade could be arranged overnight: just stop intervening in trade, and it will be free. I get the feeling that the tone on HN has changed a bit. Are intelligent people finally waking up to doubt their "representatives'" or governments' good intentions? It's difficult to see how they could make it any clearer that they're working against our interests. Going full police state on us would do it, but there's not much room in between.

witty_username 11y ago

If the deal is done in secret, people'll complain that its secret. If the deal is not done in secret, people'll complain about the draft terms before it is finalized.

imglorp 11y ago
> If the deal is not done in secret, people'll complain about the draft terms before it is finalized. That little bit there is called democracy. Without transparency, it's called fascism.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
eis 11y ago
And the issue with that is...? "complain" just means negative feedback which should be taken into consideration since a draft is a version which is still being worked on. Isn't that how it should really be?
- TheLogothete 11y ago
  Complain is a very mild word. Proposals will be shred to pieces by local politicians looking for quick score and media always on the look for a sensation. Nothing will ever get signed if proposals are made public.
  - eis 11y ago
    If you can shred something to pieces then maybe it shouldn't be signed? And if it was good then they wouldn't be able to shred it to pieces. Sounds like you'd be afraid of public discourse.
    - Loughla 11y ago
      That is unbelievably naive, or immature. One of the two, I'm not sure which. Public discourse isn't the same as what happens when the media spins a narrative about a piece of legislation. You and I both know they don't need truth to make a story. And small-time politicians looking to make a name for themselves will always impede the process, regardless of whether or not it's a good process. Having the public voice their dissent is good. Letting a piece of legislation get ripped to shreds because some small-name representative has a hard-on for one of the bill's co-creators is not.

mtgx 11y ago

1) They promised they would give at least a year for people to see the final draft before voting on it. Looks like they might vote on it this summer already, and the final draft is not even out yet. 2) The Parliament can vote it down or up, which means there's a 90% chance it will pass, unless there are large protests all over the EU, like it happened with ACTA. However, this time they need to be even bigger because ACTA was mostly about copyright, so the EU Parliament didn't care that much about it. This is about trade and they care much more.

jandrese 11y ago

This is kind of like tying a guy to a stake above a fire pit and telling them "Don't worry, I might not light the tinder at your feet with this flaming torch I'm holding. Certainly don't try to do anything about it now because this is the way these things work. I'm sure you'll be just fine in the end."

belorn 11y ago

Most law are written after years of public debates in parliaments (for those countries which has one), by a larger number of public inquiries and studies, and by appointed politicians talking about it in public speeches, conferences, personal website, news papers, social media and so on. The process is so connected to bureaucracy that we recognize it as the definition for it, with the majority of time spent in public discussions or waiting for the next report to finish. We have had close to nothing of those things regarding this treaty and the changes it propose, so the process for TTIP is completely different from how most laws are made. If we compared its process to the recent work done in EU to draft network neutrality laws, we see almost no comparable aspects at all.

germanier 11y ago
I can only talk about Germany, as this is the country I know best. I suspect it's not too different in most others. Most laws are not passed after a long public debate in parliament, certainly not years (that would make for really slow legislation). In fact, almost all laws see almost no debate at all. As an example, just today the federal parliament passed a law without plenary debate at all and with no votes against to streamline electronic communication with the patent and trademark office. The law was introduced in November and voted through all required phases as just a single line-item every time. That is not an exceptional example. Sure, these are mostly low-profile, low-impact laws so not really comparable to TTIP. But extremely fast lawmaking is also not unheard of. For example, the "Finanzmarktstabilisierungsgesetz" during the financial crisis was first introduced to parliament and the public on 14th October 2008 and already went in full force by 18th October 2008. And that was certainly not your regular change of traffic rules but introduced hundreds of billions euros of liability. Of course that drew a lot of criticism. I'm not saying everything went well with TTIP (certainly it didn't). But if you talk to anyone in the EU commission they will tell you that they have been really caught off guard with the public interest which hadn't been anticipated at all. It was not that they purposefully hid the negotiations from the public to reach their goals but rather did what felt natural to them. The EU has negotiated dozens of similar treaties (though smaller and lower-impact) with nobody voicing interest in the process. When was the last time you heard about trade agreements with Singapore, Japan, Ecuador, Kazakhstan, the East African Community, Thailand, Morocco, India, etc.? All those are currently being drafted or have just been finalized without any public debate at all. Many of those contain clauses similar to the ones criticized with TTIP. Of course we should ask critically why they saw it that way and hope that it will change in the future to more open negotiations. But saying TTIP was created in an exceptional never-seen-before process is really stretching reality. Drafting the net-neutrality laws is the exception rather than the norm here learned after years of public debate on certain topics.