US, European Advocacy Groups Reject Chemical Regulations in TTIP Negotiations
Dozens of U.S. and European health and environmental advocacy organizations railed against Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) provisions on chemicals regulation, while rejecting any agreement that includes such language, in a July 10 letter to U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman and European Commissioner on Trade Karel De Gucht. Claiming the pact would allow the U.S. to undermine current regulations in favor of chemical industry interests, the organizations vowed to oppose agreement chapters on regulatory cooperation, investment, technical barriers to trade, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, and all sectoral annexes that relate to chemical regulation.
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The chemical industry has proposed TTIP recommendations that neglect the societal costs of toxins in U.S. and European homes, food and workplaces, said the letter. “We are highly concerned to see recent position papers by the European Commission on regulatory cooperation that, by embracing proposals from the chemical industry for TTIP, would threaten to chill or even freeze forward-looking chemical regulations,” said the letter. “Equally alarming is that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is promoting an approach to regulatory cooperation that would export to the EU the current U.S. rulemaking process, which has proved to thwart the timely promulgation of important regulations and impose requirements such as cost benefit analyses that result in regulations being weakened.” The organizations also reject investor-state dispute settlement provisions in a final TTIP agreement, saying such a mechanism would also provide industry opportunity to further undermine chemical regulations.