Germany’s Vice Chancellor and Economic Minister said that the controversial Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) has “de facto failed,” admitting that negotiations between the U.S. and E.U. have completely stalled.
“Negotiations with the U.S. have de facto failed, because of course as Europeans we couldn’t allow ourselves to submit to American demands,” Sigmar Gabriel told the German news station ZDF in an interview that will air at 7pm German time Sunday, according to Der Spiegel.
“Everything has stalled,” Gabriel said.
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“TTIP would have resulted in a massive corporate power grab.” —Kevin Smith, Global Justice Now
“Nobody is really admitting it,” Gabriel added, according to the Independent.
The Independent reports on the context to Gabriel’s remarks:
The UK-based economic justice group Global Justice Now celebrated Gabriel’s comments. Kevin Smith, a spokesperson for the group, said:
In fact, despite noting the failure of the TTIP negotiations, Gabriel still told ZDF that he believes the Canada-E.U. Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) is a better agreement than the TTIP—but also observed that it is being perceived by the public as interchangeable with TTIP, according to Deutschlandrundfunk.
Yet CETA is having its own procedural problems, and its future may be in doubt: as CBC reported earlier this month, multiple European countries are still attempting to alter and amend the agreement, and disagree on how to implement the deal—a mere two months before it is supposed to be ratified.
Leaked meeting notes quote Jean-Luc Demarty, E.U. director-general for trade, saying that CETA is a “litmus test” for E.U. trade policy, CBC reports. Demarty reportedly added that an inability to ratify the deal “would be a big credibility problem for the E.U.: it would be ‘close to death.'”
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