People's News 117

http://www.people.ie/news/PN-117.pdf

Contents PN 117

P1. Austrian Chancellor issues threat! Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann has warned that Austria could file a lawsuit before the European Court of Justice (ECJ) over EU’s intention to sign the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)

P1. Brussels seeks to extend "economic governance" reach. During the last years of economic crisis, Brussels has moved to expand its power at the expense of the sovereignty of the member states.

P2. No decision on ISDS until the end of TTIP talks. The EU won’t decide whether to include the investor- state-dispute-settlement (ISDS) clause in TTIP until the “final phase of the negotiations” with the US.

 

P3. “All market and no social” – ETUC! Commenting on the European Commission’s statement on its work programme, Bernadette Ségol, General Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) said: “There is not a single proposal to improve worker, consumer or environmental protection.”

 

P3. Asia pushes ahead while Brussels dawdles. The European Commission has been desperately trying to put flesh on the bones of EU President Juncker’s flagship €315 billion investment plan to kick start EU economies.

 

P4. Results of Commissions TTIP on- line consultation published. Over 97 percent of submissions in an on-line consultation on TTIP conducted by the EU Commission, were opposed to the inclusion ISDS.

P5. ECJ - Draft agreement on the accession of the EU to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is not compatible with EU law.

P6. Falling euro - a cause for concern? European manufacturers are happy with the falling value of the single currency, which allows them to export their goods more easily. But the mood is tempered by the threat of deflation

P7. Farmers protest against TTIP. In the run- up to Christmas, farmers and trade unionists were protesting in Brussels against TTIP.

P7. OMT OK! – ECJ Advocate General! The ECJ’s top legal advisor, the Advocate General of the ECJ (EU Court of Justice) has found that the ECB’s Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) programme is compatible in principle with EU law if certain conditions are met.

P8. Now online - EU negotiating texts in TTIP. A final agreement would have 24 chapters, grouped together in 3 parts.

P8. Canadian tar sands oil won’t be labelled ‘dirty’ – the hidden hand of CETA! Just before Christmas, the EU Parliament passed by just 12 votes controversial fuel quality rules that do not penalise imports of polluting tar sands oil from Canada.

P9. Another step to a banking union! The Single European Mechanism (SRM) will be launched over the next three months, with the aim of rescuing or winding up stricken banks with minimal recourse to taxpayers’ money.

P10. Lithuania joins eurozone. Lithuania has become the 19th member of the eurozone.

P11. Opposition to the euro increases in Southern Europe - anti-euro parties hold around half of the vote in Italy.

P11. The situation in Greece. With Greek elections on 25 January which see the possibility of Syriza party form the next Greek government, the debt debate rather than Greek exit from the eurozone has returned to the centre of European politics.

P13. The results of the Commission’s on-line consultation on ISDS – Infographics

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The real Phil Hogan

Criticism of the Government’s nomination of Phil Hogan as Ireland’s member of the EU Commission has tended to focus on his lobbying in 2012 to prevent a Traveller family being given access to social housing. On those grounds Nessa Childers, an independent member of the EU Parliament, reasonably described the nomination as a “step backwards for equality.”

The other main strand of criticism concerns his agreement on bloated consultancy payments for the establishment of Irish Water, an issue that Sinn Féin in particular is emphasising. Again, the criticism is legitimate and important, as is the fact that he spent the summer appointing former Fine Gael and Labour Party councillors to state boards, and that he quashed inquiries into planning irregularities, including in his own fiefdom of Co. Carlow, when he took office as minister for the environment.

An article in Irish Left Review by Andy Storey points out that the problem with Hogan goes well beyond anti-Traveller racism, the wasting of public money, the dishing out of sinecures to political cronies, and taking a relaxed approach to dodgy planning. Most politicians engage in all the above. Hogan’s real importance lies in his being a prime example of the noxious nexus between political and corporate power in Ireland.

The Moriarty Tribunal in 2011 concluded that the former minister Michael Lowry had “an insidious and pervasive influence” over the awarding of a mobile phone licence to Denis O’Brien’s Esat Digifone consortium; in fact the tribunal described Lowry’s conduct as “profoundly corrupt to a degree that was nothing short of breath-taking.” In July 2010 Lowry was an honoured guest at Phil Hogan’s fiftieth birthday party, and only days after the publication of the Moriarty report Hogan had an official meeting with Lowry—allegedly to discuss unrelated matters.

But then, this should not be so surprising. Hogan has form here. As Jody Corcoran has reported, “Hogan was personally engaged in the extraction of at least two significant sums of money from O’Brien, or his companies or associates, for Fine Gael at or around the time of the granting of the licence.” Coincidentally, Siteserv—a company owned by O’Brien that had substantial debts owed to Anglo-Irish Bank, now owned by the state (i.e. you and me) and now written off—has won some of the contracts for installing water meters—water charges, of course, being another of Hogan’s legacies.

O’Brien, who Hogan “ran into” at the Mount Juliet Golf and Country Club in March, is not the only controversial businessman Hogan has been associated with. In the 2000s Michael Fingleton, then managing director of Irish Nationwide Building Society, personally approved a loan of €450,000 to Hogan to allow him buy a house in Dublin 4, with Hogan having to repay only the interest on the loan for a decade. Fingleton then lent him €430,000 to buy a Portuguese holiday home, on the same generous repayment terms. A report in the Irish Independent on the matter charmingly described the second loan as having been processed with “what appears to have been ... minimal paperwork.” How probable was it that we would ever have had a serious banking inquiry when a senior Government minister had personally profited from the shady practices that created the property and banking crisis in the first place?

In February 2009 Hogan declined to follow his party leader’s example and take a 5 per cent cut in his salary of €110,000, stating that “my personal circumstances don’t allow that at the moment.” (God knows how dire his personal circumstances would have been if he had been obliged to meet normal repayments on his property loans.)

In April 2012 a Kilkenny woman texted Hogan to complain of the hardship the household charge was causing her, to which Hogan responded: “Would you ever relax and feed the children.”

The man is demonstrably a hypocrite and a boor (appropriate enough qualifications for an EU Commissioner these days). Even more importantly, he is the embodiment of the crony-capitalist links between business and politics in Ireland, links that are forged and greased through political donations, personal favours and friendships, opaque meetings, and secret business dealings.

In that sense Hogan is the perfect representative of the Irish elite and an eminently apt person to fulfil that representative role in Brussels. 

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Euro-zone peripheral countries lick their wounds

The peripheral countries of the euro zone will have to pay more than €130 billion this year just to meet the interest payments on mounting debts, a burden almost three times as high as the rest of the euro area.

The figures—calculated by the Financial Times from data published by the International Monetary Fund—underline the deep wounds left by the euro-zone crisis, in spite of the high demand for peripheral euro-zone debt in recent months.

Although falling bond yields have eased borrowing costs markedly during the past two years, weak economic recoveries and still- extensive budget deficits mean that the interest bill is still climbing. But, even if their debt ratios stabilise, and even start to tick down, they will remain extremely high for a long time, which means they’re very vulnerable to any further shocks.

The figures show that the debt-servicing burden of the euro-zone periphery accounts for almost a tenth of the revenue received by governments. In the other thirteen euro-zone countries the same burden averages only 31⁄2 per cent, with the difference in the debt- servicing burden between the indebted periphery and the rest of the zone forecast to rise over the next five years.

 In the 2013 budget the Government estimated that expenditure on interest reached €6.3 billion in 2012 and is expected to rise to just over €10 billion by 2015. These numbers are put into perspective when we consider that the total tax take in 2012 was €36.6 billion, with income tax accounting for €15.2 billion.

In other words, interest on the national debt in 2015 is expected to be equivalent to two-thirds of the total income tax take in 2012. This is an unacceptable and unsustainable burden, to which there can only be one answer.

Incidentally, the Irish health budget for 2013 is €13.6 billion.

 

Abandoning the euro

The recent call by Ming Flanagan TD, who is an independent candidate in the forthcoming EU Parliament elections, prompted us to look for a succinct commentary on the mechanics of abandoning the euro.

Two years ago, a team headed by Roger Bootle won the prestigious Wolfson Prize for Economics with a paper that outlines the smoothest process by which a member-state could give up the euro. We publish a summary below.

■ The most realistic scenario for the break-up of the euro is that one or more of the weaker peripheral countries will leave the euro zone, introduce a new currency, which then falls sharply, and default on a large part of their government debt. Other forms of break-up are possible, but the analysis of these will involve the same issues, although, in the case of strong countries leaving, often with the signs reversed. Accordingly, our analysis centres on the departure of a single weak member, and we then note any instance where the issues and conclusions need to be modified for other forms of break-up.

■ It will not be possible to be open about preparations to leave for more than a very short period without precipitating a damaging outflow of money, which could cause a banking collapse. Accordingly, preparations must be made in secret by a small group of officials and then acted on more or less straight away.

 recommend that the country should immediately announce a regime of inflation- targeting, monitored by a body of independent experts, adopt a set of tough fiscal rules and outlaw the indexing of wages but announce the issue of index-linked government bonds. The government should also continue with structural reforms designed to increase the flexibility of product and labour markets.

■ To facilitate the convenient use of euro notes and coins, to help to maintain price transparency, and to boost confidence in the new system, we recommend that the new currency be introduced at parity with the euro. Accordingly, where a price used to be 1.35 euros it would now be (for example) 1.35 drachmas. The drachma would be free to fall on the foreign-exchange markets, and indeed it is vital that it should do so.

■ We reckon that when any or all of the weaker members of the euro zone left, their currencies would depreciate by something like 30 to 50 per cent. This would add another 10 per cent to consumer prices, or even more, which, spread over two years, would cause the annual rate of inflation to rise by roughly half this figure. But international experience suggests that such a spike can be short-lived, and inflation can then return to something like its previous level.

■ Given the short time from announcement to implementation, it will not be possible to have new notes and coins available immediately. This is unfortunate, but it is not as serious as is often imagined. The authorities should allow euro notes and coins to continue to be used for small transactions; but immediately after the decision to abandon the euro has been announced they should commission new notes and coins to be produced as soon as possible.

■ To facilitate the convenient use of euro notes and coins, to help to maintain price transparency, and to boost confidence in the new system, we recommend that the new currency be introduced at parity with the euro. Accordingly, where a price used to be 1.35 euros it would now be (for example) 1.35 drachmas. The drachma would be free to fall on the foreign-exchange markets, and indeed it is vital that it should do so.

■ We reckon that when any or all of the weaker members of the euro zone left, their currencies would depreciate by something like 30 to 50 per cent. This would add another 10 per cent to consumer prices, or even more, which, spread over two years, would cause the annual rate of inflation to rise by roughly half this figure. But international experience suggests that such a spike can be short-lived, and inflation can then return to something like its previous level. 

■ Just before the changeover, some form of capital controls will be essential, including at least the closure of the banks. But after the changeover, capital controls should be avoided and, if used, should be withdrawn as soon as possible.

■ The government should redenominate its debt in the new national currency, and make clear its intention to renegotiate the terms of this debt. This is likely to involve a substantial default—perhaps enough to reduce the ratio of debt to GDP to 60 per cent. But the government should also make clear its intention to resume servicing its remaining debt as soon as practically possible.

■ The central bank of the country should stand ready to inject liquidity into its own banking system, if necessary by quantitative easing. The monetary authorities should also announce their willingness to recapitalise the banks if necessary.

■ The authorities should provide as much clarity as possible on the legal issues, including the status of the country’s membership of the European Union and the effect on international contracts at present denominated in euros. Approval by the EU would also be needed for any capital controls, but this would have to be sought retrospectively. All this would require close co-operation with other EU member- states and institutions, including countries in the northern core.

■ Domestic economic policy may also have to adapt. Indeed policy-makers in the northern core should have more freedom once they are no longer constrained by the need to set an example for weaker countries that have left. As the value of the euro would rise, the northern core would at first suffer from a loss of domestic demand, though it would enjoy a lower rate of inflation. This combination would give it the incentive to undertake measures to boost domestic demand, especially through monetary policy and structural reforms.

■ A rebalancing of the economy away from reliance on net exports would be in the interests of the whole of the present membership of the euro zone, as well as countries outside it.

Of course, giving up the euro without breaking from the dominance of neo-liberalism would result in further significant hardship for ordinary people, as the price of imported goods, especially food, would increase. Austerity would not just go away either; so repudiating the debt would be necessary in order to force the highest possible write-down. This would allow social measures and strategic economic investment to be given priority, rather than paying the bondholders, and for the people of this country to be put first. 

European Movement officially promotes EU in schools

The “Blue Star” programme is part of the Government’s “Communicating Europe” initiative, whose aim is “to foster better understanding and knowledge among primary school children of the European Union and how the EU affects our lives.”

The invitation to tender for the post of national co-ordinator was published on the Public Procurement web site in October 2011. The European Movement (Ireland) was awarded the contract, and the scheme was subsequently renewed for a further two years. The total cost was €140,000, paid by the Department of the Taoiseach.

The scheme has grown significantly over the period of the contract, from 30 schools in twelve counties in the pilot year to 106 schools in twenty-four counties registered for this year’s programme.

Reports on the first two years are available on the web site of the Department of the Taoiseach.

 

Could TTIP contain an internet censorship plan?

An internet censorship plan is at present being finalised, with Barack Obama holding secret meetings with political figures and lobbyists in Asia to lock the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s internet censorship plan in place.

Leaked documents reveal that this secret plan would censor the use of the internet and strip away people’s rights.1 If completed, the plan would force internet service providers to act as “internet police,” monitoring our use of the internet, censoring content, and removing whole web sites.2 It would give media conglomerates centralised control over what we can watch and share on line, and give governments the ability to neutralise the internet for political rivals.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is being called a legal “blueprint” for the rest of the world.3 Once the TPP’s internet censorship plans are complete, they will be used to globalise censorship—which brings us back to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the European Union and the United States, which is also being negotiated in secret and whose known components bear a striking similarity to the TPP. It would be a good bet that a similar provision is included in the TTIP, providing another reason why we should be determined in our opposition to it.

1. Wikileaks: “Secret trans-Pacific partnership agreement.”

2. Electronic Frontier Foundation: “TPP creates legal incentives for ISPs to police the internet.”

3. Inter Press Service News Agency: “US ‘bullying’ TPP negotiators amid failure to agree.” 

"Ireland is not Greece"

Speaking in Luxembourg on 4 October 2011, Michael Noonan insisted that “Ireland is not Greece.” Now, in April 2014, the graph below by David McWilliams proves that Noonan was correct—to the detriment of us all.

The fact that the Greeks can raise money shows that the markets have absolutely no memory. Two years after the biggest sovereign default in history they are back at it—though it should be noted that their balance sheet is immeasurably better after the default than before.

Greece’s debt is still almost 180 per cent of GDP. But the bulk of the debt is owed to other

euro-zone governments, as a result of its two “bail-outs.” Not only do these loans pay a low interest rate of a little over 2 per cent, but Greece doesn’t need to begin repaying them until 2022, and then it has another twenty years to complete the job.

Greece shows just how quickly things can turn about. Note also that its ten-year bond yield, which hit 30 per cent after the debt default two years ago, is now 6.2 per cent.

Two of the country’s big four banks— Piraeus and Alpha—have raised €3 billion of equity between them in recent weeks, and Eurobank, another big lender, is planning to follow with a €3 billion issue later this month.

So it was just more bragging from Noonan when we should have been planning to emulate the Greeks, if not surpass them, by repudiating the debt. Instead we have water charges, another austerity budget ... and so on.

Doesn’t it make your blood boil? 

Red C poll: Irish public unaware of how EU makes decisions, unwilling to bail out Euro further

Link to poll report - http://cdn.thejournal.ie/media/2013/12/red-c-poll.pptx

Red C poll finds lack of public awareness of changes in EU decision making process and strong public resistance to pay more for survival of Euro currency

At the launch of a Red C opinion poll in Dublin today the Peoples Movement warned that Irish people were unwilling to make further sacrifices to ensure the future of the Euro currency and that they were unaware of forthcoming fundamental changes to the voting system in the EU Council of Ministers.

The Red C poll was commissioned by the EU Democrats; a Brussels based pan-EU political organization, for the People’s Movement in Ireland.  The President of the EU Democrats, former MEP Patricia McKenna , said that the findings of the poll show a lack of public awareness of forthcoming fundamental changes to decision making at EU level and also shows a strong resistance to any further suggested costs to taxpayers to help bail out the Euro currency. 

McKenna said it was notable that despite two referendum campaigns 69% of Irish people were still unaware of the most significant political change introduced by the Lisbon Treaty - which is that voting in the all powerful EU Council of Ministers will move to a population based system giving a huge increase in voting power to the big States at the expense of small States like Ireland. In 2014 Ireland will see its vote more than halved to less than 1% while Germany will see its vote doubled to 16%.

She said, these findings come as no surprise to members of the Peoples Movement because we have argued consistently that there was a deliberate policy by the Government and the political establishment to keep Irish people in the dark about this fundamental change to the EU law-making process. From November, under the new population-based system, the six largest EU States will increase their share of Council votes from 49% to over 70% while the combined voting share of the 22 smallest States will fall from 51% to less than 30%.

People’s Movement patron and artist Robert Ballagh said, the findings that 72% Irish people would be resistant to any cuts in pay, social welfare or pensions to ensure the survival of the Euro currency should provide a strong health warning to any further plans by Government for continued austerity measures.  It is significant to note that despite Irish people’s current attachment to the Euro a large majority will resist any further pain to ensure its survival.  Clearly Irish people’s generosity will only stretch so far.  The Irish taxpayer has already paid a high price for the Euro’s survival. It is now a well known fact that in order to protect the Euro project the EU and ECB put pressure on the Irish Government to provided the infamous 2008 blanket guarantee for all loans by Irish banks thus ensuring that these debts were transferred onto the backs of the Irish taxpayer.

People’s Movement member, Kevin McCorry pointed out that while Irish public opinion appears polarised in terms how concerned they believe the ECB is with Irish interests, the findings overall show a slight majority, 52% of people have little or no confidence in the ECB’s ability to take account of Irish interests. He said this is a significant finding, in that the main EU institution controlling the economies of all Eurozone countries including Ireland attracts little public confidence from Irish people.  Furthermore, it highlights yet again the serious democratic deficit at the heart of the EU structure because even if 100% of people distrusted the ECB it would be irrelevant as there is no mechanism to hold this vital decision-making institution to account.

For further information phone:

Patricia McKenna 087-2427049

Kevin McCorry 086-3150301

Robert Ballagh 016719075

Findings of Red C poll see at http://cdn.thejournal.ie/media/2013/12/red-c-poll.pptx

RED C interviewed a random sample of 1,003 adults aged 18+ by telephone between the 16^th-18^th December 2013. 

A random digit dial (RDD) method, using both mobile and landline numbers, was used to ensure a random selection process of households to be included – this also ensures that ex-directory and mobile only households are covered. 

Interviews were conducted across the country and the results weighted to the profile of all adults, by gender, age social class and region. The margin of error on this sample size is +/- 3.2%

People’s News 96

P 1 .“…. the welfare of the people as a whole?” “Ireland holds the undesirable position of being the only country currently undergoing a banking crisis that features among the top-ten of costliest banking crises along all three dimensions [..fiscal cost, increase in debt and output loss..].

P 2 . Brussels Summit takes another step towards forming a Euro Army – Lisbon in action! British and French warplanes and other military assets will be handed over to the European Union under sweeping plans to create what many believe will become a “Euro Army”.

P 3. Merkel supports EU treaty change Angela Merkel in a speech to the Bundestag ahead of the EU summit appeared to be calling for EU treaty change.

P 3 . EADS Chief calls for EU Drone budget  Tom Enders, chief executive of EADS, Europe’s biggest defence and aerospace company said that the EU needed to commit money and agree a timeline for developing and building a military drone.

P 4 . Troika consultancies: another fiddle? Alvarez and Marsal, BlackRock, Oliver Wyman, Pimco: ever heard of them? Bet not!

P 5 . Partnership for Profits. As European and Canadian trade officials continue negotiating an investment protection chapter in the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), civil society groups are demanding that this chapter be removed entirely as an affront to democracy.

http://www.people.ie/english5.html

We’ll continue to be “good Europeans”!

Recently Senator Marc MacSharry (Fianna Fáil) called for greater scrutiny of EU directives and regulations. He said that last year there were 53 acts of the Oireachtas and 590 statutory instruments, while there were 52 EU directives and 1,270 regulations proposed. “In reality, we only debated the 53 acts of the Oireachtas.”

Introducing a private member’s bill, the EU Scrutiny and Transparency in Government Bill (2013), MacSharry said the democratic deficit often suggested in respect of Europe was a reality.

But the Tánaiste, Éamon Gilmore, let the cat out of the bag, saying there was little point in lengthy debate about the substance of EU legislative measures at the time of their being transposed into Irish law, often by statutory instrument. Vigorously tugging his forelock, he explained that at that stage the policy issues were settled, and Ireland’s obligation was to apply the law agreed at the EU level.

Of course what both MacSharry and Gilmore omitted to mention is that a more potent method of scrutiny involves reviewing the legislation before agreement in Brussels, as is done, for example, in Denmark. We might then mandate our representatives. But then we wouldn’t do that, would we?

 

EU competitiveness pact: time for action!

Our politicians regularly tell us that we must work harder and longer, and for less pay, in order to be more “competitive.” We must reduce or give up our hard-earned social protections, pensions and unemployment benefits in order to be more competitive. We must be more “flexible,” which means we must sacrifice job security for ever more precarious and demanding work practices—in order to be more competitive.

Governments must observe “fiscal discipline,” rather than stimulating economies out of

recession, because such discipline makes us more competitive. Peripheral EU countries must surrender their sovereignty to the Troika in order to “regain competitiveness.” We must sign free-trade deals, such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the United States, because that will make us more competitive. We must not “over-regulate” the financial sector, or impose “excessive” environmental restrictions on businesses, because to do so would be to make us less competitive.

The competitiveness dogma will not solve the present euro-zone crisis, as it is downward pressure on wages (and therefore consumer demand) and on government spending that has locked European economies into spirals of decline.

More fundamentally, this discourse is really about boosting corporate profits at the expense of the welfare of the population and of the environment. We have the option of distributing work and income more fairly, so that everyone has access to a decent wage and fulfilling work, as well as high-quality public services; but to do so requires that we redistribute income away from financial capital and corporate profits more generally and towards the mass of the population, towards public services and towards environmental protection.

The true agenda behind this talk of “competitiveness” will be evident at the European Council meeting on 19 December, which will debate a proposed new competitiveness pact. To help draft this pact the chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel,

 

invited the president of France, François Hollande, and the president of the EU Commission, José Manuel Barroso, to a meeting in Berlin in March with fifteen members of the European Round Table of Industrialists, all of them chief executive officers of large corporations, two of whom were asked to chair a “working group on competitiveness.”

The report of that group called for, among other things, reduced taxes, a rolling back of (limited) bank regulation, further erosion of labour protection, the streamlined facilitation of mergers and acquisitions, and privatisation. As Corporate Europe Observatory, put it, “the demands of the ERT appear to amount to nothing less than putting the European Union entirely at the service of corporations.”

The TTIP, if adopted, would constitute another contractual arrangement between member- states and the Commission—a form of “troika for all”—that would see the further weakening of national labour laws, downward pressure on wages, and more ERT-style “business-friendly” regulation (or the lack of it).

This last element will increase the likelihood of another economic crisis erupting in the future. To avert such a crisis we need more, not less, regulation, especially of the financial sector.

The TTIP also features yet more intrusive mandatory rules on the economic policies of member-states, building on the Austerity Treaty and related measures that serve to reduce democratic control over vital areas of economic governance.

The pact must be rejected, for three main reasons. Firstly, it would deepen the European economic crisis by further depressing domestic demand and government spending at a time when stimulus measures are desperately needed for recovery. Secondly, it would take still more economic policy tools out of the hands of national governments and transfer them to unelected technocrats. And thirdly, in line with the aggressive “competitiveness” agenda long pursued, it would further degrade the quality of life of workers by forcing them to work longer hours for less pay in conditions of ever greater insecurity while simultaneously cutting the public services on which they depend. This is being done in the name of “competitiveness,” but in reality it is for boosting corporate profits at the expense of ordinary people’s rights to a decent life.

 

More at http://www.people.ie/news/PN-95.pdf

First published on Indymedia.ie http://www.indymedia.ie/article/104377

Brussels nervous on public reaction to EU-US trade talks

The EU Commission has discussed with member-states how best to communicate to the public the pending EU-US trade deal called the “Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.” The meeting was attended by national officials in charge of dealing with

media relations. A paper accompanying the meeting, called “Communicating on TTIP,” obtained by the Danish magazine Notat outlines the EU’s media strategy during the talks.

Formal talks on the agreement began in July, but the scope of the talks and what it could mean for consumers has been the subject of controversy. “The aim is to define, at this early stage in the negotiations, the terms of the debate,” the paper states, “by communicating positively about what the TTIP is about rather than being drawn reactively into defensive communication about what TTIP is not.”

However, the first notes of concern were sounded before the last round of talks held in Brussels earlier this month. A series of consumer groups and NGOs expressed fears that an agreement could water down EU standards on environmental protection and food safety, including genetically modified products. The charge was swiftly rejected by the EU’s chief negotiator, Ignacio Garcia Bercero.

Although the negotiations are held behind closed doors, the Commission says that 350 representatives of NGOs, business and consumer groups met the chief EU and US negotiators for an update on the talks earlier this month.