As a bilateral trade agreement, TTIP, expected to be signed already before the end of this year, is about reducing the regulatory barriers to trade for big business, things like food safety law, environmental legislation, banking regulations and the sovereign powers of individual nations.
Hundreds of rallies warning against the downsides inherent in the agreement being negotiated have been held across Europe.
“Relations with America, so strategically important to Europe, remain fundamentally asymmetrical. The TTIP will make Europe even more dependent on the United States erasing jobs instead of creating new ones,” La Libre Belgique newspaper quoted Pierre Defraigne as saying.
