Lawsuit Filed Against European Commission In EU's Highest Court For Refusing To Allow Official TAFTA/TTIP Petition
from the almost-worthless dept
A couple of months ago, we reported on an extraordinary refusal by the European Commission to allow an official EU-wide petition, called a European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI), to proceed. It was to have been on the topic of TAFTA/TTIP, and the Commission claimed it couldn’t go ahead for the following reasons:
The negotiating mandate for TTIP is an internal preparatory act, and not a legal act affecting EU citizens. The act affects institutions only; not EU law directly. An ECI can only be directed at a concluded act, and not already at its preparatory stage.
An ECI proposing not to enforce a legal act is not possible. An ECI may be formulated only positively, i.e. work towards the enactment of a legal act.
That summary comes from a background document from 300 European civil society groups that have just filed a lawsuit against the European Commission in the EU’s highest court, seeking to overturn this refusal. The document goes on to explain why the European Commission’s reasoning is flawed (pdf):
Through its legal interpretation, the Commission is attempting to completely exclude its citizens from the development of international contracts: they should have no influence on their preparation. However, if international contracts are already in force, it is then almost impossible to challenge them — it is practically impossible to terminate them.
The Commission wants to push through that an ECI can be used by citizens only to applaud decisions and schemes of EU bodies. Criticism or rejection should not be permitted, at least through official channels.
And what is more: From the justification of the rejection, it follows that an ECI on international contracts should not be possible, even if it were formulated positively ( “…the preparatory Council decisions authorising the opening of international negotiations or repealing such authorisation do not fall within the scope of the Regulation”). The citizens want to initiate a Europe-wide agreement on the determination of occupational safety standards? Impossible — says the Commission.
If citizens are to be active through an ECI only if the EU institutions have already made all the important advance decisions, then the instrument of the European Citizens’ Initiative is almost worthless.
Challenging the refusal therefore has another, more general, aim:
“We are not only appealing for the sake of the Stop TTIP ECI, but also for future European Citizens? Initiatives. When it comes to the negotiation of international treaties, the European Commission wants to exclude citizens. While they are being negotiated, people are told not to interfere and when final contracts are put on the table, it?s too late. The Commission?s legal position effectively prevents any future ECIs on international agreements.”
This really goes to the heart of the problem not just with TAFTA/TTIP, but also with TPP and the new TISA. The public is told that it cannot comment while the negotiations are being conducted, but that it should wait to see the final document. At that point, it is then told that there is no point in commenting, since nothing can be changed, and so the agreement must simply be accepted.
Fortunately, the groups behind the original ECI petition that was turned down have gone ahead and organized a petition quite separate from the ECI system. At the time of writing, it has attracted nearly 900,000 signatories from within the EU (the petition is limited to EU citizens, as the ECI would have been.) That makes it anti-democratic in the extreme for the European Commission to stymie an ECI on TAFTA/TTIP. The hope is that the legal action at the European Union’s Court of Justice will compel the Commission to accept that fact and act on it.
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Filed Under: eu, european commission, petitions, public, tafta, transparency, ttip
Comments on “Lawsuit Filed Against European Commission In EU's Highest Court For Refusing To Allow Official TAFTA/TTIP Petition”
The negotiating mandate for TTIP is an internal preparatory act, and not a legal act affecting EU citizens.
Oh, so you mean nothing in the TTIP would affect EU citizens? Hey, that’s great to hear!
… oh, that’s not what you’re saying? Then the negotiations over TTIP, and the end result from those negotiations, will most certainly be ‘affecting EU citizens’.
The act affects institutions only; not EU law directly.
‘We will be changing law X’ and ‘We will be changing law X to comply with treaty obligations’ are functionally identical, to claim otherwise is pathetically transparent semantics.
An ECI can only be directed at a concluded act, and not already at its preparatory stage.
Or in other words: ‘You may not use an ECI to object to something when your protesting may actually be effective, only when it will not be.’
An ECI proposing not to enforce a legal act is not possible. An ECI may be formulated only positively, i.e. work towards the enactment of a legal act.
Or in plain english, and ECI can only be used to support something, never to oppose it.
The result from this lawsuit will be quite telling. Either it wins, in which case the European Commission will have been shown to have ‘misread’ the applicable law in an attempt to stifle any protest or criticism of their precious ‘trade’ agreement, or it will lose, in which case the entire ECI process/law will be shown to be nothing more than a sham, something set up so EU citizens can show support of government actions, but never, never opposition to them.
Re: Re:
‘institutions are people, my friend…’
“The public is told that it cannot comment while the negotiations are being conducted, but that it should wait to see the final document. At that point, it is then told that there is no point in commenting, since nothing can be changed, and so the agreement must simply be accepted.”
Nicely stated! It’s ludicrous to tell citizens they have no say in helping to draft international laws. Laws which will effect everyone, including generations to come.
Re: Allow me to present the cycle of 'Sit down and shut up peasant, your betters are talking', otherwise known as Politics
Well you see the public isn’t allowed to have any say because they’re not allowed access to the negotiations.
And they’re not allowed access to the negotiations because if they were they’d make ill-informed decisions based upon incomplete information.
And they’d make ill-informed decisions based upon incomplete information because they don’t know all the facts.
And they don’t know all the facts because they’re not allowed access to the negotiations.
And they’re not allowed to have any access to the negotiations because…
Re: Re:
That citation is a very good summary.
The problem is that it has traditionally been accepted that these agreements are unchallengeable. You are taking it several steps ahead, though. This case is only about access to the underlying texts for the negotiation and not about giving citizens an ability to help or even follow the draft of international laws. The specific case is thus even more obscure.
Re: Re: Re:
If the laws are secret, how can someone avoid violating them? If it’s impossible to choose to act lawfully, how can any punishment for not acting lawfully be morally justified?
If the government lacks moral justification, why shouldn’t the governed reenact the French Revolution, EU-wide?
Can someone from Europe please send Google a request to forget the European Commission?
Re: Re:
At this point, I imagine they would be all too happy to have people forget them. Hard to protest against a group you’re not aware of after all.
Re: Re:
Then German media companies can sue Google for failing to pay for the right to forget the EC via a Right To Be Forgotten request.
This is a feature, not a bug! And all europeans should be proud of their commissionaires to hide it that well. Looking at it in another way is just to depressiv. The investment protection alone…
“what do you mean I cant create an Ebola flavored ice cream? But I invested money… I want my money back with interest! I’ll sue you random EU country!”
Re: growth or grow up
http://www.examiner.com/article/china-will-use-gold-and-gold-pricing-to-force-global-currency-reset
P erhaps, the coming IMF meeting may contemplate such diversion, instead of what capital deposit is. If Ms. Largarde misunderstood the policy in Basel III for basil in her Beef Stroganoff in her French Home Culinary Network; then, we are going to hell now.
It is all business as Usual; that non-elected officials bore no responsibilities on the democracy. TAFTA/TTIP and CETA allow the use prosperity index to raise their equity as double your residence value in few years. If you can’t afford to pay popped tax or utility; considerably, you may earn your first bucket of gold and move on. Perhaps, you would let those, know-how to sell your national reserves at a price that elected can retire earlier and wealthier; because election cost much and it demands a better return if they qualifies tax exemption for the Corporation sovereigns.
Besides, it cut dependency from government; it accumulated and accelerated government debts; so, you can be more independent without social services like medical and education and so on. Aren’t you lucky if you are selected to leave your home with its prosperity index? Growth or grow up…..
Londoner cries, ex-Londoner laugh…….LOL,
OK European Commission, make up your goddamned mind. Is TTIP a legal act or is it not a legal act (illegal)? If it is not a legal act, then why are you even considering it in the first place?
Genuine interrogaiton about the whole process
On the TTIP part of the EC website, one can read :
“At the end of the negotiations, it is these two institutions – the Council containing representatives of Member States’ governments and the directly elected European Parliament – that will approve or reject the agreement.”
Isn’t it then that what we know of the TTIP stops being “an internal preparatory act” where an ECI could be conducted before votes on it take place?
I must confess that I find the good-intentionned uproar against the TTIP a bit too focus on hear-say and conjecture about what it could be. We can’t be specific in our critics of what it is until it is more than a leaked draft written only a month after the negociation begun.
If it is, thank you for providing me with links and sorry for any perceive aggression or naivety.
Sincerely,
Nils