Greenpeace activists block secret Brussels TTIP talks

Greenpeace activists have blocked EU and US negotiators from holding secret talks in Brussels for a trade deal that gives multinational corporations 'unprecedented power', the environmental organisation claims.

Calling for an immediate end to negotiations, protesters warned that the controversial Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreement (TTIP) is a threat for democracy, environmental protection, health standards, and working conditions.

Thirty activists from seven countries chained themselves to the entrances of a conference centre where the meeting was due to take place. Some activists climbed the front of the building to deploy a banner that read: 'TTIP: dead end trade deal'.

In the two-and-a-half years since talks began, TTIP negotiators have revealed little about the discussions over the divisive plans that critics argue will allow foreign investors to challenge laws that protect the public, employees, and nature, including on food, chemical pollution and energy.

Greenpeace campaigner Susan Jehoram Cohen said TTIP was not about trade but the transfer of power from the public to big business.

'What the commission calls barriers to trade are in fact the safeguards that keep toxic pesticides out of our food or dangerous pollutants out of the air we breathe,' she remarked.

'The negotiators who were supposed to meet in secret today want to weaken these safeguards to maximise corporate profits, whatever the costs for society and the environment. It's our responsibility to expose them and give a voice to the millions who oppose this trade deal.'

Negotiators from the European Commission and the US trade department were due to begin a five-day-long round of talks.

The scheme favoured by the commission - known as Investment Court System (ICS) - would provide a quasi-court jurisdiction over democratic states to defend the interests of investors.

The activists argue that ICS would allow multinational corporations to bypass national courts, allow preferential treatment for foreign companies, flout democratic principles, and have a 'chilling effect' on public authorities by discouraging them from adopting or enforcing standards in the public interest, for fear of being challenged.

Greenpeace's EU legal counsel, Andrea Carta, explained: 'The commission's plan for a special court to protect corporate profits is a threat for democracy and the rule of law. It discriminates against local businesses and threatens the right of governments to adopt laws that are in the public interest.

'Multinational corporations are not above the law. The same rules should apply to them as to everyone else.'