About 250 groups on May 19 sent a letter to EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht calling for more transparency in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations.
“We are calling on you to open the negotiation process to the public, by releasing the negotiating mandate, documents submitted by the EU, and negotiating texts,” the letter states.
Friends of the Earth and other signatories stressed that the main focus of TTIP will have wide effects as it seeks to achieve regulatory convergence.
“The setting up of a stakeholder advisory group for the negotiations by the EU – although an improvement compared to previous negotiations – is far from sufficient to make the process fully transparent,” according to the letter, saying that members “will have limited access to the negotiating texts under strict confidentiality rules, and these will remain out of reach for the rest of interested civil society groups and citizens.”
The letter points to several examples of more open international negotiations.
Another Leak
A recently leaked text, from Sept. 20, 2013, by the Directorate-General for Trade in the European Commission, was immediately criticized by environmental groups. The Sierra Club and the German group PowerShift issued an analysis.
Filed under: IFTI Watch