4 ms·

The conclusion to this is very strange. There's vast amounts of people on both sides of this deal that come into the fray in black and white. What I mean is the

by deif 11y ago

The conclusion to this is very strange. There's vast amounts of people on both sides of this deal that come into the fray in black and white. What I mean is they're either totally for or totally against. I've watched one of these presentations to the EU Parliament and the MEPs completely shredded the negotiators on ISDS. And yet there are still people concerned that the European Parliament is somehow going to lower standards and screw the public over. The final few paragraphs state that if one EU member votes against TTIP then they will be blamed for not facilitating growth. Yeah, by lobbying companies, but not by the people. The EP have generally been the 'good' guys in history, and I highly doubt that they're going to U-turn and go against everything they created in the past few decades by allowing multinational companies to lobby them into lowering standards. It's all very sensational and the media takes a very jazz hands approach to presenting the happenings to the public, when in actuality if one did a little research, you would find that the documents that exist right now present the opposite case of what the public believes. If TTIP is horrible, I still have faith that our MEPs will reject it. But we're not anywhere near a final document to vote on, so I don't think we should be running around waving our hands in the air just yet.

wersfg 11y ago
Would you mind sharing the sources mentioned in the first paragraph?
- deif 11y ago
  The EU Parliament videos? I don't know how BBC iPlayer works for other countries, but I think the one where they were heavy on ISDS was this on: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05wq51g http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05wq51g There's also another broadcast on 10th June that the BBC will produce: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05ykxrt http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05ykxrt
  - wersfg 11y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVmVnyZVkFw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVmVnyZVkFw Is this anything close to it?
    - deif 11y ago
      Yeah but the one specific on ISDS was held early May/late April.
Al-Khwarizmi 11y ago
At the moment, the European Parliament seems to be planning to accept ISDS: http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/05/dirty-last-minute-deal-sees-isds-accepted-by-key-european-parliament-committee/ http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/05/dirty-last-minu... And yes, I do think we should be running around waving our hands, because when the treaty gets approved, it will be too late. "Faith" is the very last think I have in our political parties when they act with their backs turned to the people.
toyg 11y ago
> The EP have generally been the 'good' guys in history, and I highly doubt that they're going to U-turn and go against everything they created in the past few decades This is a very rose-tinted view of MEPs. Like most of the European machinery, their work is not scrutinised with the same level of detail that applies to national parliaments; you hear about them when something particularly controversial comes up for voting, and at that point, most vote "with the public" just to go back to the quiet life. In some cases, they vote to stick it to the (undemocratically appointed and way too powerful) Commission, with whom there are long standing constitutional conflicts that are far from being settled. The Commission typically represents overall winners at the previous round of national elections (it's appointed by national ministers), whereas the EP is elected with mostly-proportional mechanisms, resulting in smaller (and louder) parties prevailing; that, of course, increases conflicts. In addition, there is the issue of large transnational groups (conservatives and socialists) constantly struggling between national priorities and traditional party discipline. Obviously that's not always the case -- a lot of MEPs do work hard for the public and just vote with their conscience -- but I'm just saying they are not innately "good", their voting record is the sum of many factors and as far as I know there is no such thing as the will of MEPs "as a whole". > If TTIP is horrible, I still have faith that our MEPs will reject it. That would be interesting, and it would create a big constitutional mess. The Commission could technically soldier on and just push it down to national parliaments; would it be OK for them to ratify such a significant treaty after the (theoretically superior) EP rejected it? I'm not a scholar, there might be precedents in this area, but the EU is not a "common law" institution anyway...

by deif 11y ago

wersfg 11y ago

Would you mind sharing the sources mentioned in the first paragraph?

deif 11y ago
The EU Parliament videos? I don't know how BBC iPlayer works for other countries, but I think the one where they were heavy on ISDS was this on: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05wq51g http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05wq51g There's also another broadcast on 10th June that the BBC will produce: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05ykxrt http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05ykxrt
- wersfg 11y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVmVnyZVkFw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVmVnyZVkFw Is this anything close to it?
  - deif 11y ago
    Yeah but the one specific on ISDS was held early May/late April.

Al-Khwarizmi 11y ago

At the moment, the European Parliament seems to be planning to accept ISDS: http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/05/dirty-last-minute-deal-sees-isds-accepted-by-key-european-parliament-committee/ http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/05/dirty-last-minu... And yes, I do think we should be running around waving our hands, because when the treaty gets approved, it will be too late. "Faith" is the very last think I have in our political parties when they act with their backs turned to the people.

toyg 11y ago

> The EP have generally been the 'good' guys in history, and I highly doubt that they're going to U-turn and go against everything they created in the past few decades This is a very rose-tinted view of MEPs. Like most of the European machinery, their work is not scrutinised with the same level of detail that applies to national parliaments; you hear about them when something particularly controversial comes up for voting, and at that point, most vote "with the public" just to go back to the quiet life. In some cases, they vote to stick it to the (undemocratically appointed and way too powerful) Commission, with whom there are long standing constitutional conflicts that are far from being settled. The Commission typically represents overall winners at the previous round of national elections (it's appointed by national ministers), whereas the EP is elected with mostly-proportional mechanisms, resulting in smaller (and louder) parties prevailing; that, of course, increases conflicts. In addition, there is the issue of large transnational groups (conservatives and socialists) constantly struggling between national priorities and traditional party discipline. Obviously that's not always the case -- a lot of MEPs do work hard for the public and just vote with their conscience -- but I'm just saying they are not innately "good", their voting record is the sum of many factors and as far as I know there is no such thing as the will of MEPs "as a whole". > If TTIP is horrible, I still have faith that our MEPs will reject it. That would be interesting, and it would create a big constitutional mess. The Commission could technically soldier on and just push it down to national parliaments; would it be OK for them to ratify such a significant treaty after the (theoretically superior) EP rejected it? I'm not a scholar, there might be precedents in this area, but the EU is not a "common law" institution anyway...