EU Commissioner De Gucht says no to transparent TTIP negotiations

Exchange of views with Commissioner De Gucht on transperency in the upcoming TTIP negotiations

The new TTIP agreement between the EU and the US will be negotiated in the same secrecy as the ACTA agreement was, EU trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht told the European Parliament on Wednesday evening.

I reminded him about how the Commission had failed with the ACTA agreement, largely because of the secrecy and lack of transparency in the negotiations. But when De Gucht answered (in a 3 minute reply to my 1 minute question), he made it clear that he was not willing to conduct the negotiations in a more transparent way with TTIP.

Here is the parliament’s transcript of what we said in plenary yesterday:

Christian Engström, Member of the European Parliament:
– Mr President, I would like to remind the Commission about the ACTA agreement that this Parliament rejected less than one year ago. There were a number of reasons why the Parliament said no to the ACTA agreement that the Commission had negotiated, but at the very heart of it was the lack of transparency. It makes me very disappointed that the Commission is setting itself up for exactly the same kind of failure once again.

The positive thing about the whole ACTA affair was that there are now hundreds of thousands of European citizens who have, at least once, been demonstrating on the streets of various European cities against the trade agreement. There are lots of citizens now who take an interest in these agreements.

This is a very positive thing, but by insisting on the same kind of secrecy – only handing out secret documents to the members of the INTA Committee – the Commission is setting itself up for the same kind of failure. I would urge you to re-think this and become transparent.

Karel De Gucht, Member of the Commission:
…
Secondly, continuing on the subject of openness, I have no problem saying what we are doing and what we want to achieve and, when not speaking in public, how I want to achieve this. But you are all politicians. So you should know – and I think you do know – that you cannot negotiate openly. You do not do that in your parties either; you do not do that in your constituencies. You need to focus – and yes, of course we have to report on what we are doing, explaining why we are doing things and why we are making some concessions; we will have to make concessions in the course of these negotiations. But you need a certain degree of confidentiality in negotiations. You also need it because your counterpart is asking for it; if not, you cannot negotiate.

It is interesting that it seems that there is a copy of one of the drafts of the negotiating mandate. So what? It is a draft. The Presidency has, of course, to make sure that they come to an agreement within the Council, so they put forward possible ways to get out of any difficulties that we have to deal with. Immediately, very vocal Members of this Parliament say that this is a scandal and that we are traitors and cannot be trusted. Of course you can trust me, because in the end you can say ‘No’. You have done so in the past. You said ‘No’ to ACTA: I am still not convinced that it was the right choice, but you decided to do so and that was how it was. You have the final word.

But a parliament is not created to negotiate. It is not its job. I think I have been in a parliament for a longer time than most of you –25 years. Maybe there are some who have been in a parliament as long – Mr Brok has already left, but he has certainly been in a parliament for more than 25 years – but not very many. I have never sought to negotiate an agreement from within a parliament because it simply does not work.

What you have to do – and you do it in an eloquent way – is indicate the important points that you want to mention, that you want me to look at and which you will question me about. You will scrutinise me and in the end will vote against me if I do not do that. But a parliament cannot negotiate, because a parliament only exists as a body when it votes. Outside of voting you take up individual positions. You cannot negotiate with 20, 30 or 50 different positions. That is not possible. You need to negotiate on the basis of a mandate, and then, of course, you have to demonstrate that you have been following your mandate.

Video of my exchange of views with Commissioner De Gucht (4:23)