"As officials from both sides acknowledge, the main goal of TTIP is to remove regulatory 'barriers' which restrict the potential profits to be made by transnational corporations on both sides of the Atlantic," John Hilary said Thursday.
However, these exact "barriers," Hilary argues, are in reality "most prized social standards and environmental regulations, such as labor rights, food safety rules, including restrictions on genetically modified food, regulations on the use of toxic chemicals, digital privacy laws and even new banking safeguards introduced to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis."
Hilary calls the TTIP "a comprehensive free trade and investment treaty currently being negotiated in secret," which would allow multinationals raise their profits by taking over new markets as they have been doing during the past 30 years.
"The deal will also make it impossible for any future government to repeal the Health and Social Care Act and bring the National Health Service back into public hands," Hilary said.
Scheherazade Rehman, director of the European Union Research Center at George Washington University, agrees that public concerns over the TTIP is not only about the protection of the national healthcare system and employment rights, but also about "the ability of investors to sue governments."
"The last item is one of the key issues of contention as the proposed Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) is a form of tribunal that can be used to sue governments if their policies cause a loss of profits," Rehman told Sputnik.
"Foreign investors have sought approximately 30 billion euros [$37 billion] in compensation from 20 [European] states – the fear is that this will rise dramatically," Rehman continued.
"TTIP creates a single market of 1 billion consumers spanning half the globe, harmonizing regulations and removing tariffs from Alaska to the Baltics. TTIP is about creation of new jobs and about investors safeguards," Rehman said.
For European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, the TTIP is an essential part of his five-year agenda and thus the EU-wide petition to stop the negotiations on the matter comes as "an embarrassment" for him, while for the White House it is an essential part of the Obama administration's job-creation agenda, Rehman said.
However, Hilary argues that the TTIP will "cost at least 1 million jobs" for Europeans.
Michel Dubromel from France Nature Environnement also shared his concerns with Sputnik about the consequences of the TTIP for European social standards.
"The general decrease of laws and regulations [under TTIP] will impact public health and quality of life, we are deeply concerned with environmental laws and regulations," Dubromel said.
More than a million people European Union citizens have signed a petition urging the bloc to stop negotiations with the United States on the TTIP. The European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) campaign, comprising over 300 nongovernment organizations and activists from 24 countries, was named Stop TTIP.
