7 ms·

EU dropped pesticide laws due to US pressure over TTIP, documents reveal

162 points by ionised 11y ago

Zigurd 11y ago
When people say "trade agreements NEED to be negotiated in secret" this is why. It's hard to pack them with horrors like this, otherwise. You'll be told "blah blah regulatory protectionism blah." When was the last time a regulatory protectionism story was in the news, compared with weakening environmental protections or ratcheting up bad IP laws? It's not about nationalists clinging to sovereignty. It's not about luddite workers. It's about stuffing treaties with crap like this.
- lumberjack 11y ago
  What's exactly wrong with nationalists clinging to sovereignty? What's wrong with economic protectionism? I see sensible reasons for both.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    There is nothing wrong with either if they are transacted out in the open so they can be weighted accordingly. When done in secret you can end up with something that you would not have chosen without protest or input but are nevertheless bound by.
  - astazangasta 11y ago
    The comparative advantage arguments are not even that great, in my opinion. https://fixingtheeconomists.wordpress.com/2014/05/01/arguments-against-free-trade-and-comparative-advantage/ https://fixingtheeconomists.wordpress.com/2014/05/01/argumen... >Ricardo took the example of trade between England and Portugal. He argued that England, by allowing imports of wine from Portugal, would expand the production and export of cloth to pay for it. Ricardo, of course, was thinking of the English side of the exchange but the analysis is perfectly symmetrical; it implies that Portugal will gain from specialising on wine and importing cloth. In reality, the imposition of free trade on Portugal killed off a promising textile industry and left her with a slow-growing export market for wine, while for England, exports of cotton cloth led to accumulation, mechanisation and the whole spiraling growth of the industrial revolution.
madez 11y ago
This is not democratic. In a democracy, the people are the sovereign. The people cannot be the sovereign if important decisions are kept in secret. This is a serious problem.
- PythonicAlpha 11y ago
  The problem today is, that our democratic systems are eroding world-wide. Since the EU has more and more influence in Germany, German politicians are regularly using the EU to circumvent democratic decisions in our country. When a law is not popular in Germany, they just pass it to the EU, where it is much easier to bring them into effect. Then they pressure our own parliament: "We have to comply to EU standards" and they just pass it on. There even was at least one case, where such a law was passed without thinking about it and our constitutional court had to cancel it as not constitutional. These cases, where democratic decisions are circumvented are not single ones any more -- they are the rule, not the exception.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
    Yep. This is how the Data Retention Directive came about, for example. National politicians couldn't get it passed at home, so they did it at the EU level.
  - pmezard 11y ago
    It works both ways. Laws or litigations brought on European level may be good or bad depending on their content. It could be useful to work around national systems sometimes.
- seiji 11y ago
  > In a democracy, the people are the sovereign. The US isn't a democracy, it's a representative republic. Big difference. Your only power is voting for elected officials (modulo jury nullification, rioting, and overthrowing the government itself). If your elected representatives fail to represent the viewpoints of the actual public, the system has failed. Right now, the system has been gerrymandered to an extent that it qualifies as failed (plus the introduction of mass media populist manipulation plus the reduction in popular education levels allowing such easy manipulation).
PythonicAlpha 11y ago
People say, that TTIP will reduce standards in the EU (and potentially also in the US) regarding environmental and people protection. When I see that: TTIP starts to reduce standards even before it is signed.
white-flame 11y ago
The US is theoretically based on a checks and balances system, in the hopes of preventing unchecked tyranny. On the global scale, more countries need to say "no" to keep the US government in check. It's what the founding fathers would have wanted. The complaints are about how restriction will impact "global trade" of particular pesticides. The EU's entire point is that these items should not be traded. That statement holds regardless of the economic impact.
- roflchoppa 11y ago
  Yeah thats how its supposed to be designed, but you know what if money was just transferred to everyone that worked in the system? Does that allow it to be balanced, or bought through the highest bidder. Do countries that say 'No' get rolled over through economic warfare? shit man this is depressing.
- jnet 11y ago
  "On the global scale, more countries need to say "no" to keep the US government in check. It's what the founding fathers would have wanted" I am very skeptical that any of the founding fathers would have wanted European countries restricting US trade. With that said, I agree that the Europeans should make a stand and not accept what they consider dangerous pesticides to be imported into the EU
  - themeek 11y ago
    They were pretty clear that they didn't want European countries saying saying either 'yes' or saying 'no'. Up until very early 1900 it was the US's lifeblood to not involve itself politically with Europe (or the rest of the world) at all. It's probably the case that the founding fathers would have different opinions were they born today. Today you can travel around the world several times than you could travel across the (extremely small) country then. Things are different.
    - dragontamer 11y ago
      > Up until very early 1900 it was the US's lifeblood to not involve itself politically with Europe (or the rest of the world) at all. Erm... Monroe Doctrine anyone? How about War of 1812? US Leaders visiting France for support in the Revolution? Seriously, what's with everyone not understanding basic history around here... I do recognize this is a tech forum, but its exceedingly easy to come up with counter-examples to so many historical statements...
Nursie 11y ago
>> The TTIP is a trade deal being agreed by the EU and US to remove barriers to commerce and promote free trade. Free trade is only good when we respect each other's standards and don't try to constantly undermine consumer and worker protections.
- sdalfakj 11y ago
  >> The TTIP is a trade deal being agreed by the EU and US to remove barriers to commerce and promote free trade. > Free trade is only good when we respect each other's standards and don't try to constantly undermine consumer and worker protections. "Neoliberalism is the defining political economic paradigm of our time - it refers to the policies and processes whereby a relative handful of private interests are permitted to control as much as possible of social life in order to maximize their personal profit. Associated initially with Reagan and Thatcher, neoliberalism has for the past two decades been the dominant global political economic trend adopted by political parties of the center, much of the traditional left, and the right. These parties and the policies they enact represent the immediate interests of extremely wealthy investors and less than one thousand large corporations." ~ Noam Chomsky, 1999, http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/19990401.htm http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/19990401.htm
  - ionised 11y ago
    Why was this downvoted?
  - Htsthbjig 11y ago
    I live in Europe, and I give way over 50% of my income to the State. How is that liberalism? It is not. This is a socialist State. And it is broke by the way. The European or Federal Reserve printing money is not liberalism, it is Central planning. That people in power try to maximize their personal profit is not liberalism, it is the rule of power on any ideology, institution or religion in the History of Humanity. Look at any social animal out there and you will see them fighting for becoming alpha males or females. The difference with humans is that they rationalize it.
timwaagh 11y ago
i voted for eickhout in last elections because he seemed like a wise person. i did not like his party's skeptisism regarding ttip. but seems like he had good reason for this and is in fact doing a good job. some things ain't worth it.
ensignavenger 11y ago
I would like to hear some discussion on the different proposals discussed in the article on the merits of the criteria for identifying endocrine disruptors. I know there are some knowledgeable folks on HN, so setting aside the main point of US interference in EU regulations, (a disturbing matter in its own right) what about the scientific analysis of the arguments?
willholloway 11y ago
When the US invaded Iraq under the pretext of WMD there were some early reports of WMDs being found. They turned out to be agricultural pesticides. Many pesticides are nerve agents, as are chemical weapons like Sarin. Growing a field of crops without growing competing weeds or having insect infestation is a difficult problem. A lot of manual labor is one solution, and chemicals are another. I have hope that robotics can solve the problem of competing weeds. I envision solar powered robots scouring the fields, using computer vision to identify weeds, and cutting/uprooting them. This would let us avoid manual labor while maintaining the great advantage of chemical herbicides. I think that robots could also be designed to kill insects, but I think that is a much harder problem.
ancap 11y ago
In case anyone is confused TTIP (along with NAFTA) is not a "free trade" agreement. A free trade agreement could be written on a post-it note and would be worded something like: "We agree to not get in the way of our citizens engaging in commerce with one another."
- kevinskii 11y ago
  Countries differ in how they regulate commerce. Reconciling those differences can be very complicated. You may disagree with TTIP or NAFTA, but it doesn't make sense to say that they're not free trade agreements because of their length.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  That's not so much a free trade agreement but a statement of intent around which a free trade agreement can be made. OTOH, any "free trade agreement" that's substantially more text than the US Constitution (which itself is a free trade agreement with lots of other things tacked on) should be looked at suspiciously -- because, whereas the US Constitution is free trade with common rules delegated to accountable common bodies, most bigger free trade agreements do have an element of free trade, but instead of having common rules set by a body accountable to the public of the whole trade area, they set all the common rules in stone at the start to favor particular parties, and either leave adjustments to a body whose members are un- (or only distantly, through multiple layers of indirection) accountable to the public, or to the process of revising the whole agreement typically requiring assent of all parties. So its "free" trade -- plus baked in advantage for certain powerful actors.
acd 11y ago
Sopa, pipa, acta, tpp is this ambigious acronyns there to confuse the public? How about a new codes acronym f.t. which does not relate to a financial paper.

162 points by ionised 11y ago

When people say "trade agreements NEED to be negotiated in secret" this is why. It's hard to pack them with horrors like this, otherwise. You'll be told "blah blah regulatory protectionism blah." When was the last time a regulatory protectionism story was in the news, compared with weakening environmental protections or ratcheting up bad IP laws? It's not about nationalists clinging to sovereignty. It's not about luddite workers. It's about stuffing treaties with crap like this.

lumberjack 11y ago
What's exactly wrong with nationalists clinging to sovereignty? What's wrong with economic protectionism? I see sensible reasons for both.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  There is nothing wrong with either if they are transacted out in the open so they can be weighted accordingly. When done in secret you can end up with something that you would not have chosen without protest or input but are nevertheless bound by.
- astazangasta 11y ago
  The comparative advantage arguments are not even that great, in my opinion. https://fixingtheeconomists.wordpress.com/2014/05/01/arguments-against-free-trade-and-comparative-advantage/ https://fixingtheeconomists.wordpress.com/2014/05/01/argumen... >Ricardo took the example of trade between England and Portugal. He argued that England, by allowing imports of wine from Portugal, would expand the production and export of cloth to pay for it. Ricardo, of course, was thinking of the English side of the exchange but the analysis is perfectly symmetrical; it implies that Portugal will gain from specialising on wine and importing cloth. In reality, the imposition of free trade on Portugal killed off a promising textile industry and left her with a slow-growing export market for wine, while for England, exports of cotton cloth led to accumulation, mechanisation and the whole spiraling growth of the industrial revolution.

madez 11y ago

This is not democratic. In a democracy, the people are the sovereign. The people cannot be the sovereign if important decisions are kept in secret. This is a serious problem.

PythonicAlpha 11y ago
The problem today is, that our democratic systems are eroding world-wide. Since the EU has more and more influence in Germany, German politicians are regularly using the EU to circumvent democratic decisions in our country. When a law is not popular in Germany, they just pass it to the EU, where it is much easier to bring them into effect. Then they pressure our own parliament: "We have to comply to EU standards" and they just pass it on. There even was at least one case, where such a law was passed without thinking about it and our constitutional court had to cancel it as not constitutional. These cases, where democratic decisions are circumvented are not single ones any more -- they are the rule, not the exception.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  Yep. This is how the Data Retention Directive came about, for example. National politicians couldn't get it passed at home, so they did it at the EU level.
- pmezard 11y ago
  It works both ways. Laws or litigations brought on European level may be good or bad depending on their content. It could be useful to work around national systems sometimes.
seiji 11y ago
> In a democracy, the people are the sovereign. The US isn't a democracy, it's a representative republic. Big difference. Your only power is voting for elected officials (modulo jury nullification, rioting, and overthrowing the government itself). If your elected representatives fail to represent the viewpoints of the actual public, the system has failed. Right now, the system has been gerrymandered to an extent that it qualifies as failed (plus the introduction of mass media populist manipulation plus the reduction in popular education levels allowing such easy manipulation).

PythonicAlpha 11y ago

People say, that TTIP will reduce standards in the EU (and potentially also in the US) regarding environmental and people protection. When I see that: TTIP starts to reduce standards even before it is signed.

white-flame 11y ago

The US is theoretically based on a checks and balances system, in the hopes of preventing unchecked tyranny. On the global scale, more countries need to say "no" to keep the US government in check. It's what the founding fathers would have wanted. The complaints are about how restriction will impact "global trade" of particular pesticides. The EU's entire point is that these items should not be traded. That statement holds regardless of the economic impact.

roflchoppa 11y ago
Yeah thats how its supposed to be designed, but you know what if money was just transferred to everyone that worked in the system? Does that allow it to be balanced, or bought through the highest bidder. Do countries that say 'No' get rolled over through economic warfare? shit man this is depressing.
jnet 11y ago
"On the global scale, more countries need to say "no" to keep the US government in check. It's what the founding fathers would have wanted" I am very skeptical that any of the founding fathers would have wanted European countries restricting US trade. With that said, I agree that the Europeans should make a stand and not accept what they consider dangerous pesticides to be imported into the EU
- themeek 11y ago
  They were pretty clear that they didn't want European countries saying saying either 'yes' or saying 'no'. Up until very early 1900 it was the US's lifeblood to not involve itself politically with Europe (or the rest of the world) at all. It's probably the case that the founding fathers would have different opinions were they born today. Today you can travel around the world several times than you could travel across the (extremely small) country then. Things are different.
  - dragontamer 11y ago
    > Up until very early 1900 it was the US's lifeblood to not involve itself politically with Europe (or the rest of the world) at all. Erm... Monroe Doctrine anyone? How about War of 1812? US Leaders visiting France for support in the Revolution? Seriously, what's with everyone not understanding basic history around here... I do recognize this is a tech forum, but its exceedingly easy to come up with counter-examples to so many historical statements...

Nursie 11y ago

>> The TTIP is a trade deal being agreed by the EU and US to remove barriers to commerce and promote free trade. Free trade is only good when we respect each other's standards and don't try to constantly undermine consumer and worker protections.

sdalfakj 11y ago
>> The TTIP is a trade deal being agreed by the EU and US to remove barriers to commerce and promote free trade. > Free trade is only good when we respect each other's standards and don't try to constantly undermine consumer and worker protections. "Neoliberalism is the defining political economic paradigm of our time - it refers to the policies and processes whereby a relative handful of private interests are permitted to control as much as possible of social life in order to maximize their personal profit. Associated initially with Reagan and Thatcher, neoliberalism has for the past two decades been the dominant global political economic trend adopted by political parties of the center, much of the traditional left, and the right. These parties and the policies they enact represent the immediate interests of extremely wealthy investors and less than one thousand large corporations." ~ Noam Chomsky, 1999, http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/19990401.htm http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/19990401.htm
- ionised 11y ago
  Why was this downvoted?
- Htsthbjig 11y ago
  I live in Europe, and I give way over 50% of my income to the State. How is that liberalism? It is not. This is a socialist State. And it is broke by the way. The European or Federal Reserve printing money is not liberalism, it is Central planning. That people in power try to maximize their personal profit is not liberalism, it is the rule of power on any ideology, institution or religion in the History of Humanity. Look at any social animal out there and you will see them fighting for becoming alpha males or females. The difference with humans is that they rationalize it.

timwaagh 11y ago

i voted for eickhout in last elections because he seemed like a wise person. i did not like his party's skeptisism regarding ttip. but seems like he had good reason for this and is in fact doing a good job. some things ain't worth it.

ensignavenger 11y ago

I would like to hear some discussion on the different proposals discussed in the article on the merits of the criteria for identifying endocrine disruptors. I know there are some knowledgeable folks on HN, so setting aside the main point of US interference in EU regulations, (a disturbing matter in its own right) what about the scientific analysis of the arguments?

willholloway 11y ago

When the US invaded Iraq under the pretext of WMD there were some early reports of WMDs being found. They turned out to be agricultural pesticides. Many pesticides are nerve agents, as are chemical weapons like Sarin. Growing a field of crops without growing competing weeds or having insect infestation is a difficult problem. A lot of manual labor is one solution, and chemicals are another. I have hope that robotics can solve the problem of competing weeds. I envision solar powered robots scouring the fields, using computer vision to identify weeds, and cutting/uprooting them. This would let us avoid manual labor while maintaining the great advantage of chemical herbicides. I think that robots could also be designed to kill insects, but I think that is a much harder problem.

ancap 11y ago

In case anyone is confused TTIP (along with NAFTA) is not a "free trade" agreement. A free trade agreement could be written on a post-it note and would be worded something like: "We agree to not get in the way of our citizens engaging in commerce with one another."

kevinskii 11y ago
Countries differ in how they regulate commerce. Reconciling those differences can be very complicated. You may disagree with TTIP or NAFTA, but it doesn't make sense to say that they're not free trade agreements because of their length.
dragonwriter 11y ago
That's not so much a free trade agreement but a statement of intent around which a free trade agreement can be made. OTOH, any "free trade agreement" that's substantially more text than the US Constitution (which itself is a free trade agreement with lots of other things tacked on) should be looked at suspiciously -- because, whereas the US Constitution is free trade with common rules delegated to accountable common bodies, most bigger free trade agreements do have an element of free trade, but instead of having common rules set by a body accountable to the public of the whole trade area, they set all the common rules in stone at the start to favor particular parties, and either leave adjustments to a body whose members are un- (or only distantly, through multiple layers of indirection) accountable to the public, or to the process of revising the whole agreement typically requiring assent of all parties. So its "free" trade -- plus baked in advantage for certain powerful actors.

acd 11y ago

Sopa, pipa, acta, tpp is this ambigious acronyns there to confuse the public? How about a new codes acronym f.t. which does not relate to a financial paper.