Another one bites the dust

[Suff]

Another what? Another scare story. The latest that if we leave the EU we'll lose TTIP and all the "benefits" it will bring with transatlantic trade.

Yeah right. A treaty so poisonous that they had to hide it from the public so that they could even get on with trying to do the deal.

Of course nobody is really saying how it would go down. But it goes like this.

The EU, Commission carries out the negotiations but the Parliament has oversight and veto thanks to the Lisbon Treaty. So far the negotiations have also been kept secret from the parliament. This leak is certain to be a result of the full text being presented to the parliament in secrecy not just the parliament committee with oversight.

It all looks so much better from the viewpoint of the EPLO...

When the Commission finally strikes a deal the Parliament goes into closed chambers. They vote on it. It passes then the Commission starts issuing directives to change the rules in the "member states". The Council OK's the directives and the Parliament nods and it happens.

Honestly the only country in the EU which could wear this relationship is the UK, the rest of them are so far behind in market liberalisation that they could never compete with the US on a level playing field.

Even then the trade benefits which are supposed to come from it are pitiful. €60bn to €120bn. That is a UK, or Germany or a France dealing with the US. Hardly the €14tn EU economy. That is such a low percentage as to be virtually not worth the effort.

So now the treaty is probably cast into the Atlantic to sink or swim, I wonder what they will think up next to keep us up at night????

What keeps me up at night is the people who firmly believe they can put this off on us and it will stand. It keeps me up because they are probably right. If it were not election year in France and Germany next year, this would be a done deal already.

Is that really the kind of institution we want to tie our colours to???