TTIP won’t help SMEs, Sant says: ‘It’s fuelled by multinationals’

Labour MEP Alfred Sant has called out the controversial TTIP (Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) agreement as being fuelled by “multinationals of the neoliberal order” that will further promote “oligo-polarisation” on a US-EU scale.

“The powers behind it are the multinationals… and where can it go? We’re moving towards a global economy with a few oligarchs at its helm. I don’t see how it’s going to help SMEs,” Sant told a seminar at the Chamber of Commerce in Valletta.

The TTIP is a proposed trade agreement that is still undergoing a series of negotiations between the EU and the United States, to create a free trade zone across the north Atlantic. The European Commission claims it will boost the size of the EU economy by €120 billion.

Supporters say it will create millions of jobs based on exports and allow for cheaper imports to the EU, because under TTIP there will be tariffs cut down to zero, or by as much as 50%.

But the main beneficiaries are big businesses who trade outside the EU and who need less regulatory barriers to trade – including environmental rules, banking rules, and food safety regulations, which is why opponents are protesting it.

As Labour MEP Miriam Dalli said, calls for transparency remain justifiable.

“Some chapters are confidential [but] the EU has made quite an effort to be transparent. Lack of transparency would mean less informed decisions and people want to know TTIPs details. I think the EU can be more transparent.”

The secret talks have led to online petitions signed by over 2 million people in Europe calling for the repeal of TTIP and its controversial ‘investor-state dispute system’.

“The criticism of the ISDS is that it is a private arbitration system – socialists and democrats want this to be a public arbitration system,” Dalli said.

On her part, Nationalist MEP Roberta Metsola said a recent revision of the ISDS proposal was being supported by the EPP group. “My position is that as long as ISDS remains as is and there is proper coverage for SMEs, then I will continue to be in favour.”

She also said the Commission’s response to the parliamentary resolution not to have a repeat of ACTA, the anti-counterfeit trade agreement, had been a positive one in the case of TTIP.

Metsola said MEPs had to make sure that stories in the press about TTIP should not be used to spread misconceptions about national health systems being privatized. “We should discuss how one guy in the United States managed to buy up AIDS medication and spike up its prices,” she said in reference to hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli’s purchased of cheap AIDS drugs.