Proposition 54K1597

Proposition de résolution relative à l'Accord économique et commercial global (CETA) conclu entre l'Union européenne et le Canada.

General information ¶

Authors

Ecolo Benoît Hellings
Groen Wouter De Vriendt

Submission date

Jan. 20, 2016

Official page

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Subjects

Canada European Union resolution of parliament free-trade agreement

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Discussion ¶

March 3, 2016 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

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Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister, dear colleagues, first of all, I would like to thank the services for the excellence of their work throughout our activities, whether during the hearings we held in 2015 or during the discussions on the many resolutions submitted by each of the groups on this important issue of trade agreements in general and TTIP in particular.

Indeed, while my work as rapporteur concerns only the discussions we had on the proposals for resolutions, it is also important to remember that these discussions themselves were based on numerous hearings in March, April, May and December 2015. For further details on these hearings, I refer to the specific report of my colleagues Hellings and Tim Vandenput. But I would still like to point out that during these meetings we were able to hear a broad panel of experts and representatives from all perspectives and with whom we exchanged: the minister himself, academics, representatives of the ILO, Belgian diplomats, the CNCD, trade unionists, business leaders, consumer representatives, officials of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Europe and the European Commissioner in charge of the matter. Undoubtedly, this helped to best feed our reflections in the light of the second round, namely the submission and consideration of proposals for resolutions on the subject.

This discussion of the various draft resolutions required no less than three meetings of the Committee on Foreign Relations (January 19, February 3 and 16). Several texts, dealing on different topics but gathered within this theme of “trade agreements”, have been submitted by various MEPs. Not less than five texts covered TTIP, which is, of course, the main topic of our discussions today, but also TiSA and two on CETA. In addition, many amendments, some very extensive, have been submitted to several of these texts.

After the general presentations of each of the authors of the various texts, and after extensive, and sometimes lively debates, the committee decided to take as its basic text on TTIP, Resolution No. 904, backed after amendment by all the majority groups.

It is therefore the only text that has been approved by the committee and which is now submitted to the plenary vote. Furthermore, I can only see that none of the amendments submitted by the members of the opposition were approved in a committee. The other texts, whether they relate to TTIP, TiSA or CETA, were all rejected in committee. If they are included on the agenda of our plenary session today, it is at the request of their authors and on the basis of Article 88 of our Rules of Procedure.

I would like to speak on behalf of my group.

I please please.

Mr. President, I thank you.

This is an important moment in this Parliament. TTIP poses a serious threat to Europe’s political construction and its strategic autonomy, without even bringing in return a reasonable certainty of growth and job creation for our people. Confronting the expected loss of sovereignty and marginal growth expected from TTIP, one can say that Europe is preparing to exchange its ball dress for hailons. This is worth a warning for all the elected that we are, when we need to grant democratic sovereignty to bureaucratic apparatus more vulnerable to pressure from lobbies and global firms than to the assembly of elected that we form.

Even the majority’s resolution leaves no doubt about this. It is punctuated with recommendations to the government that clearly express its reluctance and concerns. The MR, in particular, mistakes its discomfort and fears a lot in TTIP for its voters, including SME bosses, farmers and liberal professions. He shows his concern in their place but he will still vote for TTIP, which, however, for the vast majority of our populations, constitutes more a threat of degradation of their income and employment than the opportunity normally associated with trade liberalization. TTIP, too obviously, is a treaty that American multinational companies impose on Europe. Only the shareholders of these global firms are happy, who can expect more surplus value and dividends.

This is what TTIP really is: loss of European sovereignty on one side and unequal distribution of the expected profits on the other. The majority understood it. The majority knows! However, on the one hand, it is stuck in the dynamics of negotiation and, on the other, it is stuck in a dogmatic and not pragmatic view of free trade. It does not realize that it sacrifices the common good for the benefit of a small minority and, more seriously, politics to the market forces and citizens to shareholders.

Instead, let us admit that by launching the TTIP negotiation on 14 June 2014 by consensus, the European Council has taken the wrong path and that it is necessary to stop to make the point and look for an alternative to TTIP. Let’s be clear: TTIP is not just a trade agreement, similar to the 400 existing bilateral agreements. Its spiritual father, Karel De Gucht, in fact called it a transatlantic internal market, which is quite different from a free trade zone.

A free trade area aims exclusively at the elimination of tariffs and quotas between partners as well as the opening of services, as well as public procurement, which is also aimed at TTIP. But an internal market goes much further: it aims to harmonise standards and standards, it also aims to set new rules on competition, intellectual property and investment.

This includes the establishment of an arbitral tribunal, open only to foreign companies for appeals against States, and, above all, a Council for Regulatory Cooperation, which, once the harmonisation of national laws has been achieved, will ensure that no unilateral legislative initiative breaks the unity of the market. That is what TTIP is.

Obviously, with the TTIP, we are no longer in trade policy but in co-legislation with the United States. by Mr. De Gucht was right, it is a transatlantic internal market, in which the EU de facto loses its legislative autonomy and in which it remains exposed to the practices of extraterritoriality used in the US in terms of economic sanctions, taxation of profits, anti-corruption legislation, respect for privacy, as the NSA surveys have established.

How can we forget it when we talk about TTIP, since these listenings from the allied authorities of the United States are the most visible expression of the very particular U.S. royal power, that of a hegemonic power?

I come to the three objections I raise against TTIP, which, in my opinion, poses a real danger to Europe.

First, it will result in a weak growth and a threat to our model. Expected growth will be marginal while the effect on net job creation or destruction is undetermined. The Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), the study office held by the Commission, predicts an annual growth of 0.5 percent of GDP after ten years if the negotiation is a 100% success, but a study from Tufts University, equally credible, speaks for Europe of destruction of several hundred thousand jobs, a bleeding in other words. In the absence of a secure numerical assessment, the two partners with comparable GDP and whose markets involve respectively 320 and 500 million consumers have already exhausted their affordable economies of scale. Adding both markets will ⁇ reduce the costs of product certification and testing by avoiding duplication, but will not create productivity gains.

The sectors in which liberalization through harmonisation will take place are dominated by large companies. In these advanced technology activities, the major American firms prevail. Consider the financial services and the digital sector. Our companies, scattered and smaller, will struggle to withstand a new shock of liberalization against a resolutely more advanced competitor. In this regard, the TTIP would sound the sound of a reindustrialization of Europe from the top, i.e. in advanced technologies, in particular digital, financial services, energy and defence industries. With this agreement, growth will not only be low, but concentrated due to the advantageous industrial specialization of a core of countries around Germany. This will contribute to aggravating the gap between the heart and the periphery of the euro area.

But the growing difference between states is precisely the poison that undermines the health of the eurozone and condemns it in the long run, if there is no remedy.

This growth would be unequal, benefiting oligopolistic firms, which are mostly American, more than our SMEs or our workers. These will be exposed to the competition of 24 U.S. states in which unions are absent. This latter aspect highlights one of the three political issues raised by TTIP.

First, the questioning of Europe’s political sovereignty on its internal market and on its integration process. Then, the loss of strategic autonomy of Europe and, finally, the exposure of the more solidary European model to the pressure of a more unequal and therefore more violent American model.

A more direct communication between the American and European labour markets through the arbitration of global firms is the main channel of this transmission of this war of models whose transatlantic partnership will be the cause and place.

But the European social model goes beyond the social model. It encompasses the specific collective values and preferences of Europe in the fields of health, the environment, the protection of consumers and savers, culture and whose common denominator is the precautionary principle which leads us to prefer ex ante regulation rather than class actions ex post, prevention by law rather than compensation by courts.

The Commission assures us that the level of protection will never be lowered and that harmonisation will therefore be upward. But who, if not the U.S. courts, will determine a posteriori which U.S. or European measures constitute the highest level of precaution? This simple example illustrates the danger of building an internal market on different judicial systems. A Pandora box is opened which can prove to be a source of tensions between Americans and Europeans and, paradoxically, decrease rather than increase the necessary cohesion within the Atlantic Alliance.

Those who, like me, think that the market is first and foremost an institutional fact governed by rules and institutions are naturally concerned about any cessation between the two.

The coherence of an economic system and its social model do not fit well with this dichotomy between the transatlantic internal market and autonomous political systems on both sides of the ocean. The mere idea of creating a private arbitration tribunal to short-circuit European and U.S. official courts constitutes a profound distortion in terms of equality for all before the law; but it is deemed necessary on the grounds that partners do not trust the objectivity of their respective courts. Do the promoters of the TTIP realize that they have already played the sorcery learners?

My second objection lies in the asymmetry between a united America and a divided Europe of 28. Let’s look at the actuality. The eurozone is flirting with deflation because we are divided on its governance, and in particular on the possibility of establishing a federal budget, a “transfer-union” funded by a federal tax, for example on coal or multinationals operating in Europe. These differences between Member States we see in the tragic refugee case, a real test for the integrity of the Schengen area and for the unity of the European Union itself.

But the European differences do not stop there. We have not completed the single market in key sectors dominated by U.S. multinationals: energy, telecommunications, digital, financial services, industry. We have ten currencies where the U.S. has the dollar, the world currency. Moreover, in Europe, unlike the United States, we do not have an equation budget to cope with external shocks such as trade liberalization.

But the greatest asymmetry lies in the trade negotiation itself. This is the first time that Europe has entered into a free trade agreement with a stronger power than itself, and how much stronger. In the area of trade, the United States has also taken the initiative of a double trade liberalization: on the Pacific side with the TPP, which is concluded and signed, and on the Atlantic side with the TTIP. The aim of these strategies is to make the United States the pillar of global trade between East and West. When Europe is now negotiating with America, it is in fact also clashing with the mass of the 12 TPP countries, including Japan.

I add to this that Europe is demanding for trade negotiations with the United States. It is she who, weak of Putin’s Russia’s pressure on Ukraine and concerned about Obama’s Asian pivot, has sought this trade partnership with Washington. America, in alliance with Europe, seeks the possibility of a technological and normative coalition to impose on the rest of the world Western standards and standards. This is the role of the EU in TTIP. The main beneficiaries are American multinationals.

My third objection is of a completely different nature. It passes over the heads of our citizens. For children, this is probably the most important thing. This is the world order, post-globalization. America, it is known, holds on to its strategic hegemony, threatened by China’s rise in power. Washington intends to curb this rise in power while slowing back China’s slowing growth, which is now dragging the global economy. This is a complex game, made of commitment and rivalry specific to the China-American relationship.

When opposed to the protagonists of TTIP that this Treaty threatens the foundations of the WTO, the commercial pillar of multilateral governance, they argue that the TTIP goes in the direction of multilateralism, as it will gradually open, country by country, to other WTO member states. Thus, every third country will be invited to join the Atlantic Coalition, but on the conditions of it. We will agree that this is a very unilateral path to returning to multilateralism. Is it in the interests of Europe? The fact that this point is not truly debated in European opinion is a sign of collective blindness to the reality of the coming decades.

The TTIP negotiations have been ongoing for almost three years. Last week we were in the 12th round. The impression that dominates is that of an extreme difficulty, which confirms that this agreement is not obvious, both on the European and American side. The hope, caressed for a moment by Karel De Gucht, of finishing it in 2014, has, of course, disappeared. Even the end of Obama’s term seems illusory.

Therefore, it is time to make the point and find a better solution for Europe than TTIP. This would add an unwanted economic dependence to the strategic independence needed within the Atlantic Alliance.

For the CDH, it must be considered that the conclusion of such a partnership between the United States and Europe does not constitute and should not constitute a priority in European policy. In fact, the return to growth and employment in Europe is prioritised by the establishment of a sustainable recovery plan at European level. To do this, Europe must focus on implementing a comprehensive investment strategy and not on concluding a TTIP whose expected benefits are far from obvious while presenting real risks.

But, more importantly, as Europeans, our efforts must today focus not on the conclusion of a disputed and questionable trade agreement with the United States, but on the deepening of European integration and the urgent need to formulate optimal responses to the various existential crises that now threaten the European construction as a whole.

Mr. Speaker, I listen well to Mrs. Matz and always listen to her with interest, no matter what she thinks of it sometimes, but I have a bit of the impression that it is “Vanessa in Wonderland.” We are building Europe. You have pledged with great enthusiasm for a stronger European Union. I think we almost all share the same feeling here, but from the moment we want to make a more European Europe, it also means more European parties. Now, at the last congress meeting of your political family, the European People’s Party (EPP), in Madrid, it was pledged to speed up the negotiations on TTIP. As I know, the President of the European Commission is of your party, as is the President of the European Council; your party constitutes the relative majority of the European Parliament, the majority of the European Commissioners and the Ministers of the European Council. You may be unheard within your own party, but if I hear what you say, you are proposing to stop the negotiations. Why don’t you listen to your fellow believers?

Mr. Flahaux, I am accustomed to this kind of interventions that never go to the bottom, even though they are now more courteous than the interventions formulated against us in committee.

From the beginning of my speech, I have been talking about the substance of the case, the consequences that such an agreement could have.

Mr. Flahaux, I will answer you. You would be very honored to the CDH to say that the President of the European Commission and almost all of the Commissioners are CDH. They are PPE. We are members of the EPP but we have two Belgian CDH European MEPs who will oppose TTIP. Teaching us that it’s weird that we don’t get heard is a bit ridiculous. You know, like us, the strength ratio in European political groups. We are two, but we are two to vote against. In Lisbon, Mr. Rolin voted against the willingness to continue negotiations at the transatlantic partnership level. There is no consistency problem with this. Whether in municipalities, in federal entities, within our assembly, at the level of the European Parliament, the CDH is consistent, with substantive arguments and above all not with slogans. In this case, I always defended myself with slogans saying that we were against the Americans, against liberalism, etc. We are not against these principles. We have had interesting discussions on these issues, especially with Mr. Miller, as well as on a number of doubts that were born. The fact of mentioning the precautions in your resolution, namely that the SME sector should be carefully addressed, means that you already know that this sector is likely to be fully impacted by the conclusion of this treaty.

If the Union of the Middle Class reacts extremely precisely by criticizing this agreement, it is that there is a reason.

I wish to remain courteous, as I did in commission, which was not always the case for you. However, I acknowledge that today you have been cordial, which is why I have responded to you with the same cordiality.

But back to the issue that concerns us. For the Europeans we are, the efforts must focus not on the conclusion of a controversial and controversial trade agreement with the United States, but on the deepening of European integration and the urgent need to formulate optimal responses to the various existential crises.

In the face of the serious crises that succeed (euro, public debt, terrorism, the role of the European Union on the international stage, migrants) and in the face of existential questioning (euro-sceptics, Brexit, nationalism, populism, self-determination), the question that arises above all is what European Union we want tomorrow and how we intend to ⁇ it.

For the CDH, there is no doubt that everything must be done to give, as soon as possible, a new momentum and relanced the European project in a concrete way. As the Prime Minister has said, Europe needs to be rejuvenated. We must now move from words to deeds.

We want a Europe as Belgium has always defended it, namely a federal political union defending European citizenship, a true solidarity between all Europeans, all Member States, and capable of meeting the challenges of our time.

Since it is necessary to acute the refusal of some to go further or even backwards in matters of European integration, Belgium must move forward with the states that really want it and actively work on the constitution of a hard core, open to those who want it within the European Union in order to quickly set up a political Union of a federal nature.

In short, the European Union must, first and foremost, find answers to its own challenges in order to be able to negotiate, then, on an equal footing with the United States.

A suspension of negotiations would allow for internal progress and better assessment of what is most beneficial for Europe in terms of its ⁇ , consumers and citizens.

This is what we strongly advocate.

Mr. Speaker, dear colleagues, we have seen a whole train of experts in the Committee on Foreign Relations and conducted a whole range of debates. After all these debates, a whole bunch of resolutions are now for voting. It is useful to conduct this debate. Colleagues, if we take the debate seriously, you must acknowledge that much is stated in the resolution put on the table by the majority. There are concerns and concerns that you also have.

Today, we would like to present a majority resolution calling on the government to take the necessary initiatives at European and national levels to conduct those TTIP negotiations and to complete them before the end of 2016. We think this is important, we think the treaty is important, but the beginning, the negotiations that should lead to that treaty, we think equally important.

What is on, is not mine. Collega Matz said it already, it is an enormously ambitious treaty, a free trade agreement between the two largest trade blocs in the world. It would be the largest bilateral trade agreement ever for Europe. We support, as I said, those negotiations, because free trade creates prosperity, because it reduces costs for companies, because investment is attracted and jobs are created.

The economy and the citizens are involved. We have to look at the European market. In a not so long past, it did not exist. Take a look at the benefits that this single European market offers today to the Member States.

It is important for Europe. For the European Union, it is also a geopolitically and economically important treaty, as it strengthens relations with the United States. It is a new partnership that means a long-term strategic alliance between the US and Europe. The European Commission expects growth to increase by 120 billion euros for the EU alone.

We can never predict the future with the euro. There are indeed several studies, but we assume that this means a huge advantage, that creating free trade creates jobs. In addition, many of those jobs today in Europe are also dependent on the relationship with the United States. A successful transatlantic trade and investment partnership is a huge potential. Belgium and not least Flanders have much to gain from a well negotiated TTIP agreement. It is a win-win situation for consumers and ⁇ . Flanders has an open economy and is dependent on foreign trade. We need an agreement that includes agreements, market access and regulations on non-tariff barriers. Bagger companies such as Jan De Nul and DEME can now not operate within the United States due to the barriers behind-the-border. TTIP also offers opportunities for the Flemish ports, the petrochemical and pharmaceutical sectors.

The same applies to many SMEs. The costs and threshold to start an export adventure are relatively higher for them than for large companies. They can also indirectly profit as suppliers to large companies that surf on that export wave to the United States. Flanders is a SME region and that a specific SME chapter is included in this TTIP agreement, we therefore welcome.

Consumers themselves, by the way, are also moving forward because the elimination of import tariffs on American products implies a price drop. TTIP increases purchasing power through economic growth and lower prices.

We want to give these negotiations a push in the back. There are also a lot of challenges. This agreement has very many assets, but that does not exclude that there are also concerns. However, let’s not make this debate send in bangmakerry or votingmakerry. I just heard that.

We are not going to vote on the TTIP agreement. For all clarity, that is not yet there. Today we vote on the resolutions. In this, we ask how we move forward in those negotiations and what we want to emphasize.

Mr Luykx, I have heard you. You mentioned two Belgian companies, Flemish in this case, that may be interested in negotiating and then signing a possible transatlantic treaty. You mentioned none and none. I congratulate you for this transparency. In fact, de facto, port companies are a number of companies that will potentially benefit from the opening or potential liberalization of U.S. ports, now military areas.

You just said that this is interesting for these companies. But is it interesting for employees of these companies? Will the fact that De Nul or DEME win contracts in the U.S. create jobs in Antwerp, Flanders and Belgium in general? No, this will generate revenue. This will create dividends for the shareholders of these two multinationals, whose expertise and value I recognize. But what the European Union, what the Flemish Region, what Belgium needs are jobs, not wealth creation.

The workers who will be engaged on the possible contracts of which De Nul and DEME will benefit in the United States will not be Belgians. Probably some engineers. Probably some commercials. Shareholders, yes! that is the TTIP method! By itself, the opening of markets does not create jobs located in Europe, Belgium and, in your case, Flanders.

In addition, we started in 2013, via a mandate granted by the government of Di Rupo at the time, in negotiations on TTIP without knowing a study carried out in Belgium by an authorized authority in this sense, either the Plan Bureau or the SPF Economy, a study that could determine the impact of a possible TTIP on our economy.

I understand your argument. He is sincere about these two companies, but it does not create the jobs that Belgium and the Flemish Region need and this is not validated by a serious study. We are still waiting for the SPF Economy study.

I have two things to say.

First, in our draft resolution, which you may have read carefully, we also advocate corrective action if jobs are at risk. This aspect has been addressed in the majority resolution proposal, which you can vote on later.

Second, there are indeed a lot of studies. A very recent study by the World Trade Institute says that Belgium, not just Flanders, will benefit most from the TTIP. We are moving towards a GDP growth of 1.1%, wages are rising, including from the workers, and consumers are taking advantage of falling consumer prices.

In my introduction, I already said that I don’t have a glass ball and so we can’t predict the effects of TTIP up to the euro. However, we have included a correction in the draft resolution to take into account your question.

Mr. Speaker, as always, we argue with the pretext that some studies say that this will be beneficial in terms of growth, jobs, wages, while other economists, both left and right, say the opposite. I point out that in Belgium, a whole series of economists, who are ⁇ not affiliated with the PS, say that this risks to be catastrophic for a country like ours. In particular, I think of Mr. Callataÿ who recently said that this would bring us nothing good.

But, above all, we still have reference points with other treaties that were made in the same vein as this one. I think for example of the ALENA Treaty which, too, prior to its conclusion, was allegedly bringing growth, jobs and well-being for workers. This Treaty was concluded between Canada, the United States and Mexico, and the concrete impact can now be assessed, far from the previous promises. I point out that the trade balance of the United States with Mexico has completely deteriorated, that hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost in the United States, while, of course, they have recreated other jobs but at a salary much less than that valued in the previous jobs. In Mexico, yes, there was an increase in employment but, at wage level, consumer goods increased so much in terms of cost that, comparatively, wages decreased. So here’s a preliminary study that said it was going to be “good,” as you said. But in reality, at least in terms of salaries and the number of jobs, this was a catastrophe.

Mrs. Onkelinx, your assessment is different from ours, but also different from that of your colleague Magnette. After Mrs. Malmström’s visit to the Wallish Parliament, he was, after all, remarkably positive.

Allow me to refer to his words. He expressed satisfaction, including over the removal of the original ISDS arbitration system, and called on everyone to let go of all populist and anti-American doubts in order to preserve the close ties between the Wallish and the American economy.

Like Mr. Magnette, we also have some concerns. We also express this. Mr. Magnette expressed these concerns because he said he wanted to deceive no one.

I repeat that this is ultimately an estimate – there are both studies for and against – that the free trade agreement will create jobs. I am sacredly convinced of this. Not only I am convinced of this, because a lot of experts are in favor. Indeed, there are sectors that we need to follow closely. This is also stated in the majority resolution. Corrections may be needed, but globally, the treaty will create more jobs.

You mentioned Mr. The magnet. I just want to enlighten you about this and take advantage of it to say something official and important.

First of all, mr Magnette is a gentle and courteous man. He said he was pleased with the dialogue. For the rest, since you speak of Wallonia through him, I inform you that the Walloon Parliament is performing an extraordinary and very intense work on the matter.

My dear colleague, in the current state of the situation – since we are obviously talking about CETA, which will be submitted to the assessment of governments at the earliest – I can tell you that nothing supports such a treaty in Wallonia or Brussels. This is an extremely important point. Indeed, in your proposal for a resolution, you are talking about negotiations necessary with the Regions. In this case, you will face a serious problem.

Colleague Luykx, I have listened carefully to you. Obviously, you get your figures from the study of the World Trade Institute.

I said that too, with the name.

Colleague, you know who paid the study of the World Trade Institute: the American Chamber of Commerce.

Mr. Van der Maelen, I just cited a study, as you also cite. We can beat each other’s ears with studies.

The American Chamber of Commerce is the lobbying machine of the very large American multinational corporations. You know, or you don’t know, that the World Trade Institute used the CGE model for the study. I have – this does not come from the study service of sp.a, nor from the PS – the opinion of the European Court of Auditors, which examined the CGE model. According to the European Court of Auditors, it is not a suitable model to do simulations and ⁇ not to make predictions in the medium and long term. Then, the European Court of Auditors says that it is not a good model because it is not at all suitable for social impact assessments. So that is the study with which you come here to us now.

You don’t have to believe me and you don’t have to believe the European Court of Auditors. I also have another article from The Time of 28 January. You can check the source. At the beginning of the article is stated what you just mentioned here, namely the prostitute reports from the study of the World Trade Institute. The same article also cites a study by Professor Van Hove of the KUL, who has been with us in the committee. The article, by the way, is from the hand of Bart Haeck, whom I have not often caught on leftist views. I read before what he writes: “A second study, by KU Leuven professor Jan Van Hove, nuances the macro-economic benefits. According to Van Hove, too much depends on the principles from which researchers leave in their simulations."

Colleague, the study of the World Trade Institute belongs to the kind of studies that we unfortunately already see too much. Who pays, determines the content. Be careful to screen with those results.

You would do me too much honor or contempt by saying that it is my study. I quote here from one.

It is pure coincidence that you cite this study.

It is a good study.

There are actually a lot of studies. You are defending the majority resolution. I would like to ask this question, and at the same time I would like to ask the author. Miller, that in the resolution, the only study of which it is discussed (in point 2.b.) is a study a posteriori. What will this serve? Evil will be done. Apart from weeping over our fate at this time, what else can we do?

I have another comment. You boast that all of this is likely to create a lot of jobs, to be favorable to our ⁇ . But then why encourage in the resolution (in point 1.l) the conduct of a study that tends to create a compensation mechanism for SMEs within the European Union? Why already provide compensation when you sell us this TTIP as favourable for our SMEs?

I would definitely like to discuss the concerns further.

The second part is actually good for you; it contains several things that we share.

In this resolution, we advocate just a number of instruments and for follow-up. We also propose to conduct an evaluation. That is correct. We are not working on the final TTIP agreement, we are not determining what should be included in it. However, we are asking for a number of ways to reach the final negotiations. That is what we discuss today. If you cite from our resolution, then you must also quote in full.

Let me discuss the shared concerns in more detail. One of them is the demand for transparency, because it must be fulfilled as much as possible. We feel that the European Commission is also involved in this. On the contrary, it is quite obvious that not everything can be released if one does not yet have it, or if there is no finalised document or treaty.

Strange in this regard is the judgment of Mrs. Marie-Dominique Simonet of the CDH, who welcomed the recent developments, namely the great transparency in the treaty. Apparently there is another sound.

Colleagues, in our resolution we state that European standards should not be weakened. The differences between European and American standards and standards can be addressed in various ways. We should make the utmost effort for mutual recognition in the case of equivalence. In sectors or industries where there are qualitative differences in standards and standards, we are actually not so afraid of the so-called race to the bottom. On the contrary, we think a race to the top is possible.

The European Commission has always upheld the so-called precautionary principle. I also refer to the clear clause on this in the mandate given to the European Commission. Only when it is proven that something is not harmful is it permitted. As the EU adheres to this principle, the US is encouraged to raise its standards to our own.

In our resolution under point 1.j, we also made clear that our high European and national standards in consumer protection, social rights, the environment and food security should remain consistent and not be negotiable.

These are the steps we are asking this government to take.

Certainly in the latter, we are surprised by the criticism we are reading because some matters are not being negotiated at all. I give a few examples. Even with TTIP, hormone meat will not be allowed on our market. With TTIP, the current regulation on genetically modified organisms remains steady. With TTIP, chlorine caps will also remain banned. Also with TTIP, European governments will have the right to shield out health care or education from foreign or private players.

As far as ISDS is concerned, much has also been said about that mechanism. We need a new system, but it needs to be renewed. We can find ourselves in the proposal at table, in particular the investment court system, which establishes a public system of investment rights with a court of first instance and an appeal court.

We have always upheld our position on audiovisual services, cultural and linguistic diversity.

In the Commission’s mandate, those cultural products were excluded. We refer to this again in our resolution under point 1.d.

Conclusion: We believe that the negotiations that should lead to the TTIP are important. They must be treated with nuance. We refer to all the concerns that we have included in our resolution. However, we are convinced that the TTIP will ultimately boost the incomes of the European Member States, boost exports from both the United States and the European Union, and boost consumer benefits.

Mr. Speaker, we have an interesting, exciting and important debate here because we are talking about a treaty – I should say several – which is at risk of bringing a fatal blow to our way of life, to the defense of our social and environmental vision, and to our cultural DNA.

This is not a debate about a short-term project that could be quickly evaluated and amended after a certain time of application. If the TTIP passes, let’s not be naive, we won’t have the opportunity to step back very soon.

The fable “The Pot and the Iron” by Jean de La Fontaine. This fable makes me strangely think of TTIP and the attitude of that majority, the situation of Europe to the United States. The risk is, of course, that the European Union, and more ⁇ our country and its socio-economic fabric, will be the debris of a pseudo agreement. The worst thing, my colleagues, is that the majority clearly believes this TTIP as hard as iron. There is only one message in his mouth: everything is well, let’s close our eyes, let’s wait for it to pass. When TTIP or CETA come into force, I repeat that it will be too late to cry, and that we will all collectively pay for the broken pots.

Despite the many reservations expressed by representatives of civil society, despite the thousands of signatures gathered across Europe, the monstrous protests, the warnings of parliamentary opposition, the discussions somewhat everywhere in municipalities – there are more and more outside of TTIP – despite the resolutions adopted by parliaments, ⁇ regional ones, calling for a suspension of negotiations, nothing does.

Despite the disturbing hearings we have had, in particular from EU Commissioner Malmström, all of this is always wiped out of the back of the hand and we get into force with a text that is, I will return to it, bad, dangerous for our future.

And at the same time, we are always talking about enchanting the European ideal. As I said, there are, among those who contest, a lot of Europeans but especially a lot of young people who are mobilizing, who are in favor of the European ideal, but who are fighting for a model of social, environmental, cultural life that is extremely important to all. They demonstrate, they go to the municipalities, they come to parliament and every time, their intervention is whipped with a back of the hand. This is serious for our democracy.

It is also a mandatory text. Mr. Speaker, you have imposed a comprehensive debate around the majority resolution, while there are many other resolution proposals. I would like to point out that we had a certain priority.

That being said, I would like to tell you that my group has always been clear in the discussions surrounding trade agreements, in the broad sense, with a constructive stance. I mean as proof our proposal for a resolution filed at the beginning of the legislature and our many recommendations to the government, during this legislature but also during the previous legislature, on such trade or free trade agreements. We have placed very clear labels on transparency, the need for social and environmental standards, and we rejected so-called UEBL agreements when they did not meet those requirements.

I will therefore allow myself, Mr. Speaker, to make for my group a comprehensive speech on our text on TTIP and CETA as well as on the text on TiSA. Both texts have been rejected by the majority, but we propose them to you in a general amendment that we are submitting today to give a bit of meaning to your resolution. Because we believe that Parliament is an ideal forum for debate and dialogue and to convey questions and concerns from civil society and citizens about the dangerous consequences of the application of these Treaties.

Let me start by reminding you of two basic principles that you seem to have forgotten. First, opening negotiations is not dangerous in itself – you said it, and it’s true – but as long as transparency is ensured. We have always demanded it. It was at the heart of the negotiating mandate signed by Belgium. Another strong demand inscribed in the Belgian mandate is the imperative defense of our social and environmental model.

I come to the second principle. Whatever some say, it is always possible to say “no” depending on the turn of the negotiations. This is not what your texts seem to suggest. I do not hide from you that the statements of Minister Reynders and European Commissioner Malmström in the Commission are far from reassuring us. The “Don’t worry”, “It’s blurry, but it’s normal”, “In these negotiations, everything will go well” or then “Circle, there’s nothing to see”, which the federal government and the majority for months gratify us, are not suitable for us. On the contrary, I have the impression that the more we listen to them, the more we need to worry.

Let us not forget that these free trade agreements concern us all. For several years, international treaties have been succeeding around the liberalization of global trade. For the PS group, these agreements that commit the European Union, therefore also Belgium, can in no way lead to a leveling down our social, health or environmental standards. They cannot in any way threaten our jobs, health care, public and cultural services, our agriculture or our ⁇ – and I emphasize what has been said here regarding the danger to our SMEs. They cannot sacrifice them on the altar of hypothetical growth or principle free trade, especially without any serious impact assessment. I repeat once again that when the agreements are concluded, it will be too late for a very long time.

Asking questions about TTIP, CETA or TiSA is not an euroscepticism or primary anti-Americanism. On the contrary, it is about preventing such a free trade agreement from destroying our social, health, environmental and economic standards, those values which constitute the foundations of the Europe we defend and which are at the basis of the trade relations we maintain around the world within the WTO framework.

As you know, my group is conceptually pro-European, because we obviously need Europe, but a democratic and solidary Europe, not a Europe that destroys, that does not assume the social consequences of its up to political buttism or, worse, a Europe that is deaf when several million citizens from all Member States massively reject mechanisms like ISDS or when municipalities declare themselves out of TTIP or parliaments call for the suspension of negotiations. From the top of his ivory tower, the Commission did not hear or listen to them.

I want it as proof – my colleague Stéphane Crusnière will intervene more precisely on the subject – that there is a major dispute regarding ISDS, the way we will manage trade conflicts. As you know, not only do we oppose it, civil society opposes it, but you have noticed that the judiciary at the European level has mobilized itself by saying “it’s not okay.” The German courts also mobilized themselves by saying that this was not okay!

The European Commission stretches its arms by saying "I have understood you" and puts on the table a system that does not respond in any way to criticism and which, again, has been criticized by German courts for example as contrary to European treaties in particular.

Ms. Onkelinx, I am pleased to hear you talk about the ISDS clause, which in fact poses enormous problems to a number of associations, to the Association of German Judges, you cited. Law in Germany is fundamental. You also mentioned the mechanism that allowed the European Commission to negotiate on behalf of the 28 member states of the European Union.

I remember, and Mr. Miller also recalls the episode of the granting of the mandate by Belgium and the other 27 member states to the European Commission. This was the question of the cultural exception. It was June 13, 2013. The Senate, which was still in power at the time, had gathered to discuss a resolution on the cultural exception. We did not know at the time what the mandate was. But a series of cultural actors had mobilized us to put pressure on the Di Rupo government in which you were, so that the cultural exception is within the mandate. And so was the case. The resolution was voted, the kern met, you were a member of the kern at the time, and you agreed that finally Belgium defends, like France, the cultural exception, which pushed the rest of the European states to go in this direction.

But within the mandate that was granted the next day to the European Commission, on June 14, was already the ISDS clause, Ms. Onkelinx. And in the mandate you gave at the time to the European Commission, it was said on page 9, I quote: “Investment protection and dispute settlement between investors and the state, what is called the ISDS clause, which became by after the ICS clause, will be included in the future in the Treaty.”

So I am very happy to see you evolve today and strongly defend a position against negotiations. But I think we must be much more cautious in the future at the time of granting the mandate because if today, the United States and Europe are negotiating on the arbitration clause, which has become the arbitration court, it is because we have let go. The Di Rupo government let go, the core of the time let go and introduced an arbitration clause into the mandate.

I think that the final text should be evaluated against the interests of the European Union and our country and that ISDS clause should be removed.

When you are happy, I am happy too. Can you accept, in particular in terms of cultural exceptions, that it was through the mobilization on the basis of a personal intervention of Elio Di Rupo – remember what was called the Mons spirit – that we alerted against the dangers of the Bolkestein directive? Can you accept that whenever Elio Di Rupo was questioned, he was very clear on the subject. The cultural exception is really our struggle in this matter. He said this for culture but also for social and environmental standards and for the necessary transparency of negotiations. I want to emphasize this here because it is extremely important.

I don’t always agree with Mr. Hellings, but your answer did not correspond to anything he pointed out. He asks you about the fact that when you were in the previous government, you accepted everything and you change your mind now!

Mr. Miller, I will refer you to the debate that took place in the Senate on this matter. The Prime Minister at the time was very clear. I also refer you to the discussion in the regions. We are not in opposition just to say we disagree; we have responsibilities in the Regions! Mr. Hellings, I answer you: in the Regions, it is mainly for that reason that in the current state, we do not see how CETA or TTIP could be accepted. I am very clear in this regard.

I am happy that we can agree, in particular on the fact that in what is envisaged as two-speed justice – ordinary justice and that of big investors – what is proposed is totally unbearable. Stéphane Crusnière will talk about it soon.

I truly think that no one in this majority is aware of the dangers to which we are exposed by negotiating this agreement, which concerns less the reduction of tariff barriers, the level of which is already very low, than the harmonisation of non-tariff standards and regulations. However, these standards refer to very sensitive topics that have been discussed in the committee, such as the exploitation of shale gas, GMOs, chicken to the straw, beef to hormones, our social achievements, our culture or even our public services or mutual. On all these questions that affect the daily life of our fellow citizens, we have no answer.

How can a Belgian independent film compete with a Hollywood superproduction? How will our farmers be able to compete with U.S. cloned or genetically modified products? How will our health care, our social standards, be able to resist the attacks of the private sector and the deregulation of the American?

You know – and I look at some majority partners who are however sensitive to the analyses of our mutualist institutions – all Belgian mutualities have introduced a joint and official request for health care services, social services and social security systems to be excluded from the negotiation mandate, regardless of how these services are organized or funded. We fully support this request. Health and social services cannot be regarded as commodities and the right of States to define their health policy cannot in any way be restricted.

Today, very concretely, these social and health care services are threatened by TTIP. These agreements are presented by some as an antidote to the crisis, starting from the principle that free trade and deregulation are the key to growth and by systematically minimizing the potential risks of such an agreement. At this stage of negotiations, my group has a lot of concerns. We have "materialized" them in the form of serious and constructive resolutions.

I also think of the resolution of our colleagues, for example sp.a, on health care, which we signed with happiness, with strength. This is also on the agenda of the plenary session.

I say it, and I repeat it, it is official, the PS will oppose the ratification of any agreement that threatens our European achievements in the fields of social security, health, public services, consumer protection, environment and labour rights. That is why we call for the temporary suspension of the TTIP negotiations in order to carry out a rigorous assessment of the progress of the negotiations with the utmost transparency.

We also request that Belgium oppose the ratification of the EU-Canada Agreement (CETA) in its current form. This is what is black on white in our resolution.

The only condition that could allow the resumption of negotiations is a redefinition of Belgium’s negotiating mandate so that it respects the following eight badges. The first is compliance with European social and environmental provisions. There must not be the slightest suspicion of dumping to harm European jobs. We must maintain the level of our European standards and our laws to protect those and those who live on European territory. The second is to ensure our food security. We are the continent with the highest health and agro-food standards in the world. This quality should not decrease. Third, the exclusion of public services and of general interest from any merchandising. Fourth, culture and audiovisual should not be part of negotiations, because culture, we say all the time, is not a commodity. Fifth, we can’t put a dispute settlement clause – we talked about ISDS – between investors and the state. This would infringe upon the right of states to regulate. All companies must comply with the laws of our states. Similarly, the revised version is not acceptable. Sixth, absolute compliance with data protection. No espionage, no scrambling into the emails of European citizens or confidential documents of our companies. Seventh, rejecting negative commitment lists for service negotiations. Eighth, the requirement for full transparency of negotiations.

The same concerns weigh on the TiSA. Although less media-based, this acronym covers opaque negotiations that could block, tomorrow, any regulatory will in the head of fifty of the world’s largest economies that have taken part in this service mega-negotiation.

Our text on the TiSA requires in particular to ensure as an absolute priority the protection of public services and of general interest at the Belgian and European level. It also calls for ensuring that public services and public interest services are excluded from all merchandising and to advocate, at European level, for the preservation of the high quality and diversity of our public services, and for the capacity of our States to legislate in this area and, if necessary, to reverse certain liberalizations. This is the simple, pragmatic position of my group.

We are currently discussing a majority resolution which is also the subject of amendments.

If my group has not submitted any amendments to this text, it is because it is so hollow that it was an impossible mission for us. Our amendments, dear colleagues, are our texts that you are always free to send back to the committee today.

The position of the majority is the opposite of our texts and those adopted by the Brussels and Walloon Parliaments. It contains a few pearls on which we have, of course, received no response from the majority.

Considerant O speaks of TTIP as a great way to reindustrialize Europe. We really wonder if anyone believes it and who wrote this in this resolution.

Consideration P identifies TTIP as a means of promoting our legal rules. In this case, why impose an ISDS, even remastered, if our legal rules are so good?

Consideration Q raises the following question: How do you think TTIP can unlock negotiations at WTO level?

Consideration R presents TTIP as a vector of growth. If the majority is as sure of its fact, why does the federal delay in making an impact study? Why, above all, has he mandated a private company whose methodology has already been criticized, notably by the European Court of Auditors, and not, for example, the SPF Economy?

Finally, as regards consideration S, which is to be put into perspective with everything written in point 1, the majority is based on the almost ideological postulate that TTIP will create opportunities for our small and medium-sized enterprises. On the other hand, as Ms. Matz said, in their resolution, they encourage the conduct of a study that tends to create, within the European Union, a compensation mechanism for SMEs. If this is so good for SMEs, why should a compensation mechanism be studied? We know that our SMEs are at risk with this type of agreement.

I also point out that request 1 speaks of consultation with the Regions. But, obviously, we are not really listening to the Regions who, themselves, do not want an agreement in the state. So, if you want to have a consistent Belgian position, you may need to rethink your trading methods.

You say, always in point 1, that there is no need for a leveling from the bottom but you say it in catimini, at the end of a paragraph, between parentheses, as if it had taken the majority of weeks of negotiation before deciding to put it but hiding it in a parenthesis at the end of a paragraph. However, this should be at the heart of the resolution we are proposing.

We are also told, in point 1, that the objectives of COP21 must be met. How to ? Increase in long-distance trade. Do the authors see shale gas as a future track? As in the exchanges of views on the EU-Peru-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, we find all the hypocrisy of a majority, since point 1.k. It requires an a posteriori evaluation. What to do, as Mr. The Crusher? Per ⁇ to be able to cry together over our fate, saying, “If we had known, we would not have done it.” The request d. He talks about such an assessment but when will it take place then, since the majority has the lever to do it? What is she waiting? What are the objective data mentioned by the majority?

As for the 1.m demand, we already struggle to organize the mobility of European workers in Europe without social regulation. We are talking about social dumping. Why then think that the TTIP will facilitate the search for a new job?

We are speaking in the request 1.q. The Reading Rooms. What is adequate transparency? Some will come to explain what they experienced by going to consult the document in Foreign Affairs. You can consult it here. They can be accompanied by technicians. There is nothing of all this! It is necessary to reserve, several days in advance, a time gap and especially without the presence of technicians. You just have to deal with this extremely technical English text! It is not serious! This is not real transparency.

Finally, if the majority amended the previous request 2.c. not being aware of concerns regarding the possible inclusion of ISDS provisions, it still does not trust the European courts, since it advocates the request 1.r. The new system of settlement of conflicts between investors and states, which we strongly reject. I consider that the request 2.c. It is totally scandalous.

More generally, it cannot be understood that your resolution proposal is completely silent on CETA despite the urgency. It would be interesting if our majority colleagues come to explain why they don’t talk about CETA, which is, however, at the heart of the news.

I conclude, my colleagues. Through such agreements, it’s about allowing in Europe practices that Europeans themselves prohibit; or that the Union – and therefore Belgium – embarks on a losing adventure by abandoning our states’ ability to legislate, to protect their citizens, to provide them with sometimes vital services; it’s also about saying that the European judicial system would not be enough in case of a dispute. Our high standards are not negotiated with Canada, the United States, or any other state in this world.

Today you have the opportunity, through this discussion, to reenchant the ideal of Europe for the benefit of the European citizens. I therefore ask you to review the work that has been done, to send this text back to the committee for a substantial debate, to work with the Regions so that there is a coherent Belgian mandate and finally to protect as best as possible our model of social, environmental, economic and cultural life. I have said!

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister, dear colleagues, I believe that it is necessary to reassess the way my colleagues of the majority, whom I thank for the passage, and myself have worked on the preparation and drafting of this proposal for a resolution which is subject to your attention, debate and vote.

Through the various interventions, I perceived a mistake of appreciation. It is as if, for this issue of TTIP, we had put all our forces, all our goals, all our desires, all our impulses, all our ideological pretensions, in the achievement of an agreement. Just recently, Ms. Matz said that this treaty would not work, because it would not succeed in reenchanting Europe. I can understand the approach. The attention of citizens has been drawn to these negotiations, and it is happy.

I will not say, Mrs. Onkelinx, that you suffer from primary anti-Americanism. In contrast, and I have a little pity on you, you suffer from anti-governmentalism. What makes you deeply hurt, and it is becoming physical, is that, suddenly, you are no longer in business to be able to say "this is how you must act." I liked the intervention of Mr. Hellings just a few minutes ago. You have not answered! You take the lesson. Now all that we are talking about today, all the difficulties that we are facing and to which we are trying to provide answers, you voted! But yes ! It was you who gave the green light, you were in the same majority as us. A little dress, Madame Onkelinx!

It is when you are uncomfortable, like Mr. Miller, let’s start saying anything!

You’re doing a little like mr. Flahaux just recently, when you are uncomfortable, you don’t talk about the substance of the dossier.

You tell us that we do not agree because we are against the government. It’s all about the puppets!

This is an extremely important case in the background, which will condition our ways of living at the European level, and you tell us that it is because we don’t like the government that we challenge! It is not serious!

Always on the background of the case, there have been extremely interesting background debates in the Regions, where we participate in power. And where we are in power, we take our responsibilities and we say that in the current state of the case, it is not! These are not just words in the air on the banks of the opposition! When we have the ability to block something, we block!

I recognize your ability to use formulas and make them speak. “We have, in the Walloon Region, done an extraordinary job and there we really have the proof that TTIP is a bad thing!” I have the right to answer Mr. Devin. Mrs. Onkelinx asked me, I answer. It is a little too simple to come all of a sudden to present the Walloon Region as the temple of scientificity. I am a regionalist. I have been a parliamentary for 15 years in the Walloon Region, I have a huge respect for the Walloon Region, but you will never make me believe, Mrs. Onkelinx, that the political color of the Prime Minister-President has no influence on the results of the scientific studies of the Walloon Region.

It’s about talking about the bottom here. There needs to be a bit of serenity in this discussion. Let’s put Mr. Miller and Ms. Onkelinx agree. They were in the same majority in 2013, when Belgium’s mandate was granted to the European Commission to negotiate the transatlantic treaty with an ISDS clause, an arbitration clause, which was on page 9 of that mandate. And it is the responsibility of Ms. Onkelinx, who was Deputy Prime Minister at the time of the mandate, to acknowledge that she was wrong. And I acknowledge that it is great to have acknowledged it at the time in the tribune and that, yes, the arbitral clause was in the mandate, page 9, which it approved on June 13, so that Mr. Reynders may give Belgium’s opinion in the Council on 14 June.

I know that Ecolo would prefer not to talk. We have no problem in dialogue. On the other hand, we are putting balises. I have answered you recently, Mr. Hellings. I would like to return to what Mr. said. Miller because I think it’s very serious. When he says that the Walloon Region funds studies, he asks for example for studies at universities, therefore the study is oriented. Do you question the probability of the researchers? This is what you do! I think this is very serious for a person like you. It is indecent. I would rather like to support our academics, our research institutions who do their work with probity. Your words are indecent.

That Ms. Onkelinx finds that my words are excessive, it does not affect me! I can tell you that effectively, you can look at all the studies that have been conducted by the Walloon Region for years... You want an example, Mrs. Onkelinx? Because I don’t want to give the feeling that I hold words that I can’t justify! Do you want to study on European funds in Hainaut? Here, that is all! We can talk about these studies for some time; there is never one that has shown what really should be done in Hainaut! But everyone said that the decisions made by the Socialist Party in Wallonia were very good!

We will try to move forward... The topic we are discussing is an important topic. Several facets show the complexity of this case. by Mr. Luykx said something recently, which rarely came back during other interventions: there is first and foremost the interest of consumers. This is a point that, in our view, still has its importance. There is also the protection of European standards, the revival of economic activity, the growth rate of European GDP, Belgian GDP, etc. There is the access of European SMEs to the US market, the high demands on democratic control, the precautionary principle, the quality of products, and also the strengthening of the European-American axis in the globalized economy, whether you like it or not.

How can TTIP be an advantage for consumer protection? I would like to understand it!

I talked about interest. This is about the interest of having different, multiple and cheaper products.

With equal quality?

Absolutely of course!

I know that various current citizens have taken the TTIP negotiations as their target. The first complaint, and this has been repeated in this tribune, is the lack of transparency. There is also the antidemocratic nature of the negotiations. According to the colported image, parliamentarians would be kept away from negotiations. They would have their word to say only when adopting a free trade treaty, treaty in which there is no longer a way to change a virgule, etc. I reject this assertion. I think, on the contrary, there will be a before and a after TTIP.

That is clear!

It’s clear and I used the formula intentionally to stretch your pencil!

There will be one before and one after. We have actually entered a new world that requires new types of negotiation.

One man has really well highlighted this aspect of the negotiations and he is a socialist. Pascal Lamy was the head of the WTO. He said that what is being negotiated for now is more than what was presented, first of all, by the European Commission.

As far as I am concerned, I join with the criticism of the negotiations as they were launched and conducted by the previous European Commission, which committed a mistake in terms of pedagogy that I will never understand. Why not have started things more transparently by trying to explain clearly the mandate, the content of the negotiations, etc.

For reasons X, the Commission gave the feeling that there was a sort of horrible secret, antidemocratic, etc. So I understand the citizens who have been concerned and who have asked questions. But, contrary to what has been said, the concerns of citizens and the questions asked have not remained a dead letter. Changes that are not at all negligible have been made, including in terms of transparency and communication of information.

I therefore disagree with the idea that parliamentarians would be just pantins who have a little fun on Thursday evening at the tribune to try to make believing the importance of the political debate again.

Mr. Miller, you seem to say that this lack of transparency is a road mistake. I think this is not at all the case! On the contrary, it is evidence that a citizen’s mobilization has been needed to attack a project that goes against the interests of a large part of the population, which benefits only a few. In terms of transparency, this citizen mobilization would have been needed to take out a weak concession, the reading room. We are not at all in transparency when we see the conditions imposed to access a text of 361 pages, in a closed space, as the only parliamentary, without being accompanied by a specialist, without a dictionary for example. Remember, we were lucky to be together. It was you who had demanded to have an English-French dictionary, which we did not obtain.

Legal and Commercial English. Do not reduce my knowledge of English.

It is a commercial English-French dictionary. Even that, we didn’t have it! And most importantly, what have we signed? I have the copy before my eyes, but you too, Mr. Miller, must have signed the commitment not to disclose what we read in this reading room. You have signed it too, Mr. Miller!

You too !

Do you call that transparency? What hides this text so that we must sign a treaty committing us not to disclose its content? Can we conduct a democratic debate if we cannot reveal what we have read, Mr. Miller?

This is an excellent question!

I didn’t say it was just a road accident. I think this is the fault of the previous commission. She should have known that the TTIP would lead to a debate that concerns, to repeat Pascal Lamy’s terms, “the entry into a new world of negotiations.” Indeed, it should have anticipated from the beginning more information to the population, attempted to organize and succeed more cohesion and citizen adherence to what is going on.

I think that today, Ms. Malmström is facing the need to “wash her shirt” in order to go carrying the right word everywhere.

The European Commission has done more than you say. It has put the negotiation mandate on a website available to all citizens. This was also possible thanks to the will shown by our Minister of Foreign Affairs, Didier Reynders, who took into account requests made by civil movements, etc.

The mandate is available. It can be consulted. The state of the negotiations regarding European applications is also available and can be consulted.

As it comes to trade-type negotiations, the United States says they are not playing in that room. Morality: The European Commission has undertaken to inform, through reading rooms, elected parliamentarians who represent the European peoples. It doesn’t bother me to have given my identity card, to have signed and to be committed to reading the documents in a certain context. Why Why ? Because I was going to check one thing: I wanted to be sure that in all the elements where we found an imperative from the European Union, we found well the concerns that are our in environmental, social, sanitary, phytosanitary, cultural, etc. I have seen it! Mr. Van Hees, you were present, you can’t say that’s not true.

I am not saying that everything will be achieved. We are talking here about continuing negotiations and the issue is not to say that the agreement is perfect and that it is followed. It is a question of what the European Union, as part of a major negotiation with the United States, can and must ask to protect the standards that are ours, the interests of citizens, small and large enterprises. I think I found all this.

Mr Miller, you are talking about defending citizens, ⁇ , big, small. You put them in the same bag. But this treaty does not treat large and small enterprises in the same way. I will not say that this treaty defends only the interests of the “richers” (you would see it as a personal attack!), but in any case of the multinationals. When I read the UCM statement, I think you’re going to have a problem.

I thought I would talk about SMEs later, but I can talk about it now.

I want to understand that you do not have a lot of concerns about workers, mutual companies, public services, the environment or health but SMEs are part of your electorate!

What does the UCM say? All employers organisations are in favour. All of them? No, the UCM and the Walloon Federation of Agriculture oppose the project. Our Board of Directors has debated this, and it is unanimously that it believes that Walloon and Brussels SMEs have nothing to gain from this treaty. On the contrary, in its present form, it presents dangers.” In a way, your resolution confirms what the UCM says, since you have asked the European Union to establish a compensation mechanism for SMEs. If they need compensation, it is because they are losing with TTIP.

very well . I thought I would talk about SMEs later, but just take the bull by the horns right away.

With all the respect I have for the UCM and for those who take care of the development of our SMEs and all the work of business executives, and although I understand the concerns raised by such a negotiation, I feel that it is a little quick to put aside the politicians and parliamentarians we are; it is a little quick to put aside the importance of the European Parliament. This is like saying, “It’s over. We can see that the TTIP, with what will be achieved, will be detrimental to SMEs.”

Again, I respect their concerns. But, between the time this was said and today, Mr. Van Hees, parliamentary work has been done, meetings with the European Commission have taken place. What do we see gradually being drawn? In the requests made today by the Commission and which we have been able to consult together in this famous reading room, there is an entire chapter on SMEs. I’m not saying – and I’ll never say it to the tribune – that this will be in the agreement. This will have to be evaluated in line with what is put on the table by the European Commission. That is why we are very attentive to what could be achieved in favour of SMEs and are extremely demanding an opening of the US markets. We want to do everything we can to help SMEs conquer these markets.

As for this study aimed at whether a compensation plan is needed, and Sarah Claerhout had also brought this dossier to our work meetings, we did it. Why Why ? I go back to what I said just before – and I apologize to Ms. Onkelinx if I got a little annoyed about her. This is a political text, a work text, this is what we want, what we put as badges to the Belgian government.

And we say that we will see measures favourable to the development of SMEs, to the training of people working in SMEs, to the implementation of policies that allow our SMEs to conquer steps, including public procurement on American soil.

Mr. Van Hees, we are not saying that this TTIP is wonderful, that it will be the eighth wonder of the world for our SMEs. We do not say this because we are concerned and understand the concerns of SMEs, but we support the continuation of negotiations because we want to reach the best deal possible to help our companies, whether large or small. We want this agreement to allow an increase in GDP growth at the Belgian and European levels. We hope that this is how it will play out. And we are aware that it will not be obvious that this will happen.

We therefore regret the position of the Socialist Party that wants to sweep this off.

The Invisible Hand.

No, it is not the invisible hand because we propose to take measures of regulation, framework, etc. This has nothing to do with the invisible hand.

The negotiations must continue, not to lead to this eighth wonder of the world that would be the TTIP – as this is not the case – but to an element, a piece of a building that we carry to the Belgian level through the policy of the federal government and to the European level. It is true that a re-industrialization of the European Union is expected. And it is not through a resolution proposal that we must say what needs to be done to re-industrialize Europe. But when the ministers are at the table of the European Council of Ministers on economic matters or in the various areas that concern the political, social and economic activity in our country, they must have in mind what we ask.

I don’t like the formula of “re-enchantment of Europe” that makes me think too much of Alice in Wonderland. Formulas are used and I have the right to find that it is a bit weak. I have not said anything else; I share the ambition.

We have had a long discussion, and I also thank the chairman of our committee for all the hearings he has organized, because it has been many weeks since parliamentarians, even those who have nothing to say, are working on the subject.

Mr Miller ...

Let me finish what I started saying, otherwise I will lose myself. Well, I am lost, I am lost.

I will make you dream, Mr. Miller. I don’t know who you were targeting when you talked about Alice in Wonderland when you talked about “re-enchanting the European project”. I wondered if you were not targeting Mrs. Matz. I don’t know if she looks like Alice in Wonderland, but in the middle who else said that the European project should be reenchanted? Who is Alice in Wonderland? Prime Minister Charles Michel. This allows you to dream to continue your intervention.

My idea came back. Ladies and gentlemen, let this be between us. Do not tell him.

This is an excellent formula. (Laughs) I had not thought about it. Thank you very much, but you understand exactly what I mean. A formula requires content. This is the content that we are working on, and that is what the Michel government is working on, both at the European and federal level. by Brouhaha

I ask you who have the power in Wallonia, as you have said and repeated to me, and who have it in Brussels, to convince your friends that it is important that Wallonia and Brussels also work to unite their forces so that together, at the federal or European level, or at that of a TTIP agreement with the Americans, these elements give a real content to the European reenchantment.

I am a liberal. In my opinion, the re-enchantment is good. But, there is no money to finance this reenchantment! When you have to tell European citizens that there is unemployment and that the resources are lacking, etc., you can always run to reenchant them. Try a little to explain Alice in Wonderland! Financial resources are needed. N-VA, CD&V, Open Vld and MR support a negotiation as we hope that it will effectively result in a supplementary growth for Europe and for Belgium.

Dear colleagues, I have already said a lot of things that I thought I would present more calmly and I would like to be sure that I have forgotten nothing. I had an arrow against the PTB but Mr. Since Van Hees has helped me, I will not throw it to him. I also had some elements against the Socialist Party but it has already been done.

I continue my speech. With regard to the continuation of the negotiations on culture, Mr. Hellings is right to say that it was at the time when European filmmakers began to attract the attention of politicians that we realized that there was a gap. It was then that things really moved. Madame Onkelinx, you are right; Mr. Di Rupo has always identified himself in the struggle for cultural exception. However, I can tell you that he was not alone. I know it well, having been with him for many years. I know what we can do together. How what!

I would also like to insist on another point. First of all, there is the interest we have in the agricultural dossier. Farmers are in a very difficult situation. Once again, our government is attentive to this, because of the policy developed by Willy Borsus. We really have the willingness to bring the necessary answers and protection to farmers through the negotiations that we hope will result. Therefore, we pay attention to the situation of farmers.

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In a resolution, it is permitted to give a white-seing to negotiate while pointing a marked attention, inscribed black on white, in favor of farmers. And what we say is that the policy carried out at the level of the federal government, especially not Willy Borsus, is also part of a set of responses. We have the weakness of believing that we need to work both at the federal level, at the European level, at the level of trade agreements and, I repeat, at the level of the Regions.

Mr. Miller, I hear your argument in favour of agriculture. I ask myself only one question: why, then, have we not accepted our amendment on the agricultural exemption, submitted to the committee and re-submitted here to the plenary session, and on which we will have to speak again soon? This will give you another chance to catch up. It would be to move from words to deeds, Mr. Miller.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Miller, in relation to agriculture, there is an important and interesting context element that is never mentioned, that if we venture ourselves in a transatlantic market, our farms, which are notoriously much more modest in size than the US farms, will have a competition problem. That is, the kilogram of corn, soybeans, beef, pork made in the United States will be significantly lower than that practiced in our country. Indeed, the American farms are there deliberately and for a long time industrial, while the Europeans have rather bet on family and local agriculture.

If, by adventure, we engage in a transatlantic market, European farmers, and therefore Walloon and Flemish farmers, will not only face competition on health and environmental standards, they will find themselves facing competitors much larger than themselves and that they would not be able to fight.

I was prompted to discuss this, as part of citizens’ debates, with Belgian white-blue producers in Condroz. One operator told me, “but, you know, I would like to be able to sell my Belgian white-blue in the commercial areas of my area rather than find in my store – one where I’m going to shop, Argentine or American beef.” That’s the question, that’s the danger.

I would like to remind you that what is important is the specifications, and that we can have quality agriculture and import and export quality products. You say that our agriculture is different from that of the United States: surely. But our agriculture, in the Walloon Region, is also very different from that of Poland or other EU member states. I wanted to emphasize it. Regarding the agricultural exception, I think the amendment should be revised completely. We may then be able to talk about it again.

I would like to thank Mrs. Cassart for removing the words from my mouth. I can add, in response to these two questions, that we are aware of the enormous difficulties and legitimate fears of the agricultural sector. We are working on this, especially with representatives of our government. If we’re not talking about exceptions, it’s for the reasons I’ve tried to explain so far.

Our ambition is that this government, thanks to its weight at the European level, can contribute to the best possible TTIP agreement, which also concerns, Ms Cassart just said, agricultural products. It also includes exports. We don’t want to throw the baby with the bath water.

I am entitled to declare at this forum – I read the text prepared for me – that if objective evidence shows that an agricultural sector is significantly affected economically as a result of the lifting of tariff barriers, we would ask for the establishment of mechanisms to exclude or protect that sector. We do not want to do this a priori.

These data are already objective.

I am looking forward to the study being conducted by the services of Minister Peeters.

I have asked you about the agricultural sector.

I would like to say another word about GMOs, which are excluded. All that has been said about processed Belgian white-blue breed cows is no!

A simple explanation, Mr Miller. Can you explain how this is not possible? I often hear this saying: GMOs, this is not possible. Chlorine chicken is not possible. Beef with hormones is not possible. But why is this not possible? As far as I know, everything can still be negotiated. It is not even possible to disseminate what is in the text.

The issue of GMOs is excluded from the TTIP negotiations. That is the only answer I can give you. It’s a bit dry, but in a way I’m delighted.

Let’s talk about agriculture, because we are in the midst of the matter. We must stop leading a reducing debate on TTIP by talking only about chlorinated chickens. We do not want chlorinated chickens. This is part of the negotiations. This is not even negotiable. This is not even possible. The counter-publicity of the TTIP was made by speaking only of chlorinated chickens and hormone beef. That is enough! I am talking about charges.

Let me give you another example: milk. We cannot export milk to America because, there, the specifications are more specific than at home. In America, milk has to be pasteurized three times. In Europe, it is once. It is interesting, in the TTIP or in any agreement, to weigh the pros and cons, to give its margins, its specifications of charges, but above all not to have a reducing debate like the one you are leading.

I am pleased that I am at the tribune to mention it: with Mr. Van Hees, we searched, Mr. Friart, what, in the document, concerned the production of beer. We found nothing. We will come back with questions. The whole section concerns wines and spirits. I leave you the game of words, Mr. Van Hees!

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I thought you would specify that everything related to the production of wines from the American point of view is taken under the acronym COLA.

As for beer, Mr. Friart may worry, as a whole chapter is devoted to the protection of wine, but in the case of beer, nothing is indicated. This means that there is no special protection compared to beer. Also, Mr Friart, in your place, I would worry and vote against the majority resolution on TTIP.

Well tried, Mr Van Hees! Don’t vote against, Mr Freeman. It is not because we have not seen it that it does not appear there!

Let us now imagine the opposite situation! Followed by Mr. The Magnet! We say no, we say no, it is over. Global trade negotiations end at Grognon in Namur. This is the final point. They have already removed the King Albert statue in order to make room for all of this! Suppose the PS has won. In the Walloon Region, it is not! Everything ends at the Grognon! In Brussels, this is over too. They are no longer concerned with negotiations, exports, etc. We are no longer interested in the possible developments on the global level of everything concerning the trade in Brussels, etc. We are a great pedestrian. Here is ! It is finished!

It is important! Why Why ? If you are followed, if we do not reach an agreement, if in the agreement we entered, we do not find what we want, what will happen? Who will set the standards, these famous European standards, to which you are so attached? This will not be Europe. These will be negotiations between the United States and China, of which we will be excluded.

It is not me who invented it. Pascal Lamy, the Socialist leader of the WTO. If there is someone who knows this very well, it is him. He stated, “The game of precaution is in the hands of the highest level of precaution that is in the United States and that is in Europe.”

I pointed out that the level of precaution for our fellow citizens, for our ⁇ , for consumers, is the highest at the U.S. and European levels. But there is indeed a risk. If we don’t do it with the Americans, if we don’t reach an agreement through TTIP, there is a risk that they impose their standards on the Chinese. With a Chinese-American standard, I can tell you that we will be in trouble!

I would like Mr. Miller explains to me what the pedestrian comes to do in the TTIP, so that I can talk about it with the Brussels chief M. by Courtois. As Wallons, we must build bridges all together, and if you talk about Grognon, I ⁇ ’t want to stay without discussing it with our Brussels friends.

True to your name, you anticipated what I was going to say. It was just an image. Like you, I come to Brussels in the morning and go back in the evening. Contrary to what people think, parliamentarians work and I know the Brussels traffic problems. The pedestrian, the tunnels, all this came to my mind!

Texts have been voted. Mrs. Onkelinx is right. Don’t laugh, Madame Onkelinx! You voted a text in Namur and in Brussels saying: “It’s over! They are suspended.”

If there is an acceptable agreement at the TTIP level between Europeans and Americans, but if you have a visceral opposition to such an agreement, in the years to come, our children and grandchildren will depend on standards that will no longer be set at the European level! That is the reality!

Ms. Onkelinx used a sort of black crystal ball; she said it would be terrible, that there would be no more outlets for SMEs and that we would eat chlorinated chicken. In the absence of such an agreement, the standards will now be set between Americans and Chinese and Europe will be in its corner. What will you tell me then?

There, you will tell me that we have tried to reenchant Europe. It will be lost! Our criteria will no longer be operational globally. It’s not me who says it, but Pascal Lamy.

Mr. Miller, a contrario, if everything had to be decided between the Americans and the Chinese, what would you do?

I did not understand the question. The struggle of my political formation is precisely to do everything to prevent this from happening. We are trying to maintain high standards and discussions between Americans and Europeans so that this agreement can result in beneficial effects in terms of job creation and business, economic growth, etc.

Mr. Miller, I will not argue that all the arguments you make are to be rejected. Nevertheless, two questions question me.

First, assuming that no agreement will be reached with the United States, how can we believe that it will necessarily be the agreements between the United States and China that would impose on the rest of the world, in particular on the entire European market? It is the largest consumer market in the world, even before the United States. Why would there be a kind of automation that would want tomorrow to impose the agreements that Americans would conclude with the Chinese? Quod is no. I recall that it is because negotiations within the WTO have failed that we find ourselves with attempts to negotiate bilateral. Moreover, China is still far from being able to impose its point of view on the WTO. I try to understand this kind of automation that you seem to deduce as being the end of Europe’s autonomy on the grounds that, by hypothesis, the Chinese and Americans would agree.

My second concern is more important. Can you explain to me why the United States seeks to multiply bilateral agreements, if not because they aim to impose their standards or, in any case, most of them on their partners? This is where the real question lies. I will tell you why. I am not opposed to negotiations with the United States. I am not one of those who find this ugly. Far from there!

But the real problem is that Europe has engaged in a negotiation with the United States without knowing what standards it wants for itself. We are working in reverse. It is because Europe, today, has not sufficiently harmonised its standards that it is in a position of weakness in its negotiation with the United States.

A personality as prominent as Pierre Defraigne, who is nevertheless not of the extreme left – one can cite other personalities, like Pascal Lamy but I know well that there are on each side people who think the opposite of their ideological camp –, says very correctly (it is necessary to read his chronicles, in particular, in La Libre Belgique), that Europe has engaged in these negotiations like a chicken without a head, not knowing where it wants to go for itself. Therefore, if one does not settle in advance what Europe wants for itself, any negotiation is biased. And to that question, you do not answer.

I will answer you, Mr Mainz. First, I thank you for reminding me of an argument that I have not insisted enough on, but you are asking me to do so. The vision that was that of the opponents of the TTIP, that this will be the end of the world, have forgotten one small thing, which you just reminded, is the strength of the European Union. This force mistakes those who said that Europeans negotiated like “small arms” with the Americans who would impose what they wanted. It is false, totally false.

As you said, the European Union, with the number of consumers that make up it, represents one of the richest markets in the world, with a GDP higher than that of the United States. Those who say that Europeans are “little children” are wrong. I’m not saying that this argument has been advanced today, but that’s what we hear in the public.

The second argument: a chicken without a head. It is extraordinary! This is the second type of argument used. European negotiators do not know what they are talking about. They do not know what they have to defend. European negotiators do not have sufficient knowledge, for example, of existing standards in agricultural matters.

I am not saying that this is what Mr. Maingain said it. That is what I answer to him. I say we have standards. We would not have the discussion that we have had for weeks and weeks, if there were no European standards, European criteria, European standards in health, phytosanitary, etc.

In my opinion, the argument that European negotiators come with blind eyes, that they do not know what they are doing, that they do not know what they must defend, that at the limit, they are negotiating against their camp, they are negotiating against the Europeans, does not hold the road.

I will not be unpleasant, Mr. Maingain, because I have respect for you. I invite you to go to the reading room and check out the documents. You will see that the European standards are included there. You say we don’t know them. But it is you who do not know them.

Mr. Miller, you are usually more respectful of everyone’s interventions. No matter what, I listen to your arguments.

You cannot deny that the European negotiators who have been mandated have substantially evolved in terms of their requirements due to pressure from the public opinion, including states.

I said this at the beginning of my speech.

It is undeniable that at the beginning of the process, the level of requirement was not the same as we can see today.

It is actually a chicken without a head. It’s wise observers who let him think. It is not me. I will not allow myself to be so pretentious. I refer to Pierre Defraigne. Nevertheless, you can’t say that this is a man who passes for an amateur in terms of knowledge of European issues. He is also not a man hostile to negotiations with the United States. He considered that Europe had not reached its maturity of harmony and internal integration in order to initiate a negotiation process with the United States. This is a methodological error. There were not enough acquisitions in the European Union in terms of harmonisation of a number of policies, hence the current weakness of Europe on the economic level and the crisis that weighs heavier in the European space than in any other area of highly developed countries such as the United States.

This is what is being accused. First, we had to do the work of European unity before negotiating the big transatlantic market. This is a question of method, and it is to that question that you do not answer.

Mr. Maingain, I think I have answered that. If you don’t like my answer, that’s something else.

Since the beginning of my presentation, what I have presented as the position of the majority is the fact that we consider that the negotiation of TTIP is part of a set of policies to be carried out, whether at the regional, federal, European or global level. TTIP is not the eighth wonder of the world. It must be a part of a dynamic. Mr. Maingain, I agree with you to say that this dynamic, we must find it in the European Union itself, at the level of the Commission. There are also actions being carried out to try to have more unity at European level.

Only, if we wait, like the carabiniers of Offenbach, that there is suddenly a unit that emerges at the European level to begin to think about our exports and negotiations with a trade power such as the United States, they will go to negotiate with the Chinese. In this case, the European Parliament will be of no use, as will the national parliaments. We will be there to wait until we are told that Europe is getting better. Europe will be better if it is able to reach an excellent agreement within the framework of TTIP. This is our position. This is our point of view. I can understand, Mr. Maingain, that you do not share it, but we really have the feeling that, if we wait for what you say, we will never ⁇ anything.

As for mr. Defraigne, it is true that his intervention was extremely interesting, but he was developing another analysis, that of the need to be included in a multilateral framework. I think he likes the WTO very much. That was his point of view.

In the texts currently under negotiation, it is stated that if an agreement is reached on the definition of standards between Americans and Europeans, we will be much stronger to be able to restart a pace of discussion at the WTO level.

This is what led me – I tell you, Mr. Maingain – to say to me: he is essentially right, and this is how European negotiators can respond to it.

Your notion of multilateralism is to define standards between us and to impose them on third parties. I apologize, but this is not multilateralism. Europe and the United States will settle, will impose standards on third parties. This is not multilateralism.

I will answer you too, Madame Matz. In any case, I can tell you that a multilateralism where others would impose standards on us, I would not like at all. If there is a multilateral discussion at the WTO level, I like as much that the Europeans are strong enough, in agreement with the Americans, so that we have common standards.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Deputy Prime Minister, dear colleagues, the Reform Movement desires the continuation of these negotiations, their success and a positive effect on our economy and our jobs – one of the objectives, if not the main goal of the Michel Government. We have confidence in the work and vigilance of our Minister of Foreign Affairs and the SPF Economy department who will publish an impact study on the Belgian economy at the start of September.

We do not want to play with the fear of the people. We want to take our responsibilities. We feel that what needs to be done is to explain the issues well, to call for citizens to reflect. We need to be very careful about how the negotiations can be constructed. I trust, we trust in democracy, in debate, in explanation, in transparency. I reject the aggressive judgments, the slogans. I thank you, dear colleagues, for your attention and for all the work that has been provided in commission.

Many things have been said in the last few hours. In recent years, the debate on TTIP has been very vivid, both inside and outside the Parliament. We also exchanged many arguments, counterarguments and concerns. There have been hearings, where we have received a lot of relevant information. We exchanged ideas and concerns.

It is thanks to this debate that many concerns, pain points and delicate points have emerged. I think this is a positive evolution, because it is the work of many civil society organisations, it is the work of journalists, it is also the work of parliamentarians to intervene and play that role fully and to point out the difficulties. There is no agreement yet. Negotiations are still fully underway.

A trade agreement of this scale is unseen, both in terms of its potential economic scale and its substantive scope. This, of course, raises a lot of questions and uncertainties.

In this resolution and its amendments, we have sought to adopt a position in which we pay attention to the opportunities, but also to the challenges and concerns that emerge in this debate.

Although we may have different views on the opportunities and challenges of transatlantic trade relations from different backgrounds and stakeholders, I think we still agree that the European social model and regulatory framework should be safeguarded. There are also many of the concerns and concerns. This has always been crucial for our group, but at the same time we also see the potential of TTIP to promote the economy, our prosperity and our well-being.

I come to the opportunities. Belgium is an open economy in which trade, growth and employment are the basis of our prosperity.

International relations and international trade are crucial for our country. Trade between the US and the EU accounts for 30% of global trade. More than 750,000 Belgian jobs depend on exports. This number also continues to increase.

Mr. Van der Maelen, we have already talked about various studies. You have, among other things, cited the latest study of the World Trade Institute. We really need to see who is behind these studies. The study is sponsored by AmCham. However, it is also a study conducted by a consortium of European universities.

If one looks at the many studies, one finds that many studies usually warn of positive impacts and opportunities. A minority of the studies, including the study of Tuft University, see more likely negative consequences. However, this study has also been thoroughly studied and is questioned by other organizations.

A dynamic export and the continued encouragement of foreign investment in our country, such as through TTIP, are positive for our country. SMEs should also be encouraged to work more export-oriented. The countryside helps them in this.

One challenge of TTIP is that the sectoral effects are difficult to measure. It is therefore of utmost importance that we address the sectors. For this reason, the resolution also talks about a safeguard clause and about guiding workers to another job in the event of negative consequences. However, this must be considered further.

In addition to improving market access, TTIP also aims to remove non-tariff trade barriers and work towards better cooperation in the determination of regulatory systems. This is necessary not only because there are already a lot of lower tariffs, but especially because the production of goods and services no longer takes place in one place.

The world has changed and evolved greatly in this regard. Global production chains connect us. In the past, domestic production was protected through import tariffs and subsidies, but today we must also protect consumers through standards and standards.

If we want our socio-economic model to remain firm, it should be clear that a strong market together with the US can play a role in this. The crucial question in this debate for our group is not whether we want an agreement, but above all what form the agreement should take. How does TTIP look like? The debate should ⁇ not be confined to merely free trade and economic objectives. It also covers the protection of workers, consumers and the environment, shared values and global standards. Therefore, there are some uncertainties.

We have some red lines there, but they are also included in the mandate of Europe. For example, it should not be imposed on the protection of our social rights and the environment and on the protection of consumers. It is also essential that the TTIP does not affect the powers and responsibilities of the European Member States in the areas of the social aspect, education or health services. Our ability to regulate must remain guaranteed. This is also included in the mandate.

TTIP also raises many questions about democracy and transparency, just because it is also about our European standards and values. In the course of this process, which has been ongoing for a very long time, people have shown very justified concerns about this. We must be sensitive to that. We are therefore pleased that the Commission has evolved in this area and that documents are being released more and more. It may not be enough yet, but it has already been said that this is how we are conducting the most transparent negotiations in that area. So let us make sure that we can continue in that direction.

The strategic importance of the agreement is also very large. This cooperation gives Europe the opportunity to secure its position in the globalized world and thus it can also have a greater influence on the broader political agenda. In other words, we see TTIP in this context, with all the concerns and concerns that must definitely be addressed and also included in the resolution, as a lever. We see it as an opportunity for our companies to gain better access to the U.S. market and, for example, to public procurement. We see it as a lever to also promote our standards worldwide.

There is also a chapter on sustainable development in the TTIP. We must insist that it is well developed. This not only gives us the opportunity to participate in setting the standards of the future, but also to promote higher standards worldwide. We are therefore very interested in TTIP as the foundation for future international standards.

However, TTIP is about more. It is also about the political impact that we will have today and tomorrow at the global level. It can improve our impact power and our voice in the world of tomorrow.

We advocate for a good agreement. This is crucial for us in the whole discussion. Again, we are not here today to vote on the trade agreement. We vote on a resolution, in which we just advocate for a good deal. That good agreement must take into account all the concerns raised today both by the opposition and by the majority.

In the resolution, we ask the government to keep a close eye on all this and to remain very well informed of every step in the negotiation round, and to take into account in every step all the concerns that have been cited, but also the opportunities that many of us see in the agreement.

We are therefore convinced that the TTIP can strengthen our economy in the 21st century. Now, above all, we need to work well and negotiate to reach a good agreement. That is what the resolution ultimately calls for.

Mr. Speaker, colleagues, I will not be talking about who was sitting in which government and who decided what; that contributes little to the debate. Liberals prefer to look forward, and I want to do so here.

Customs duties, bureaucracy and low investment make it more difficult than necessary to sell goods and services on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. The removal of those trade barriers, both in tariff and non-tariff form, will need to boost our economy, create jobs and lower consumer prices. More trade will strengthen our economy, create jobs, provide lower prices and more choice, increase purchasing power and strengthen the competitiveness of our companies. This is what TTIP is about.

What is the future of the European-American trade relations? Trade between Europe and the United States accounts for 16% of the total world trade, together they account for almost half of the global GDP. Much of the future growth in the world will fall beyond the European and American borders. U.S. investments in Europe are worth €1,652 billion, our investments in the U.S. are worth €1,687 billion, which keeps each other in balance. EU exports to the United States amount to EUR 311 billion in goods and EUR 159 billion in services. In Europe, approximately 30 million people are currently employed in the export sector, approximately 14% of the total number of jobs in the EU. By opening the markets to trade and investment around the world, the EU can create even more jobs than it does today.

Creating jobs by opening up new markets means investing free of charge in the future of our children and grandchildren.

Why are we as liberals in favor of TTIP? We are in favour of this, primarily because free trade is a source of prosperity, both economically and socially. Trade has an enormous potential to positively impact investments and living standards.

Second, TTIP means opportunities for SMEs and opportunities to export. SMEs are the backbone of the European economy. They make up 99 % of the European companies, with which I immediately demonstrated that the European economy is not dominated at all by a few large companies. In addition, SMEs provide two-thirds of the jobs in the European private sector. It is therefore necessary to assist SMEs not only by improving access to markets, but also by simplifying administrative procedures. Today, a SME must endure a real administrative burden in order to export to the United States. Many of these difficulties are addressed in TTIP. Today, the costs for SMEs, including licensing and legal problems, often do not outweigh the benefits, the profits they generate from trade with the United States. Other benefits include the elimination of customs requirements and tariffs, the simplification of administrative procedures and customs procedures, the liberalization of trade and services and the improved investment conditions.

A third reason for the liberals to support TTIP is that it attracts investment in the European economy.

TTIP can bring interesting investments in Europe, which will also generate jobs. In addition, TTIP will also ensure that European and Belgian talent can remain here, which our group was able to establish with their own eyes during its visit to Silicon Valley in San Francisco in November.

The entrepreneurial climate in Silicon Valley is very positive. There is no shame in failing three times when starting a business. Here today it is quite the opposite: once one overlooks this, one is sent on the street with peek and feathers. That needs to change a little here. Well, we have met young Flemish entrepreneurs there who have crossed the gap in search of venture capital. Some stay there because there is money, and start a business there and create jobs there. However, we have also met entrepreneurs from a spin-off of the University of Ghent who have always been looking for money and have invested not only there, but also here. That, dear colleagues, must be the goal. We must bring such investments here, so that Belgian talent also here has opportunities to grow and here can provide jobs for our children and grandchildren. That example from life as it is in Silicon Valley proves that investments here are definitely needed.

Fourth, we are in favor of TTIP because it strengthens transatlantic relations and Western standards. The EU and the US have a great opportunity with TTIP to consolidate their position on the world economic scene. In fact, we will just be able to preserve and impose our high standards as a model for world trade. It is a choice, colleagues: either we take the lead, or we continue to watch along the sideline how the rules of the game will be defined elsewhere.

Those who reject TTIP do not choose status quo but decline. In particular, let us not forget that the economic transatlantic bloc will gain a stronger position on the geopolitical chessboard.

Colleagues, I would like to dismantle some myths about TTIP. First of all, there is the myth that TTIP will lead to the reduction of protection levels. As other colleagues have said, the Commission is negotiating harmonisation of European and US regulations to facilitate access to markets.

Opponents fear that this will lead to a weakening of EU legislation. The most discussed example is the fear of food safety, of which the chlorine cap has become the most well-known symbol. Article 8 of the mandate given to the European Commission from the Member States, including Belgium, clearly states that the EU and the Member States will not accept any level reduction of the European protection standards.

Therefore, there is no need to worry about existing European standards for consumer, environmental or health protection. The European Commission, the European Parliament, our national governments and the House of Representatives will ensure that this is not affected and that the current levels of protection continue to apply.

No concessions will be made regarding the protection standards. A high level of protection will be ⁇ ined. The aim is always to implement upward harmonisation or harmonisation at the same level. It is never a leveling, not on the American side, nor on the European side.

A second myth, dear colleagues, is that TTIP will be a threat to public services and democracy. In the same line, one fears that public services will become the victim of forced privatization or that governments will no longer dare to nationalize in the public interest.

All EU trade agreements allow governments the freedom to supplement their public services as they wish. It will be so here too.

Each Party therefore reserves the right to maintain issues of safety, public health, social security or environmental regulation at the level it considers necessary. Governments can still define what they consider to be public services. They may also choose to have certain services performed exclusively by the public sector. Furthermore, the Commission has already stated that it would be explicitly included in the free trade agreement. TTIP will never prevent countries from acting in the interests of their people, let that be clear.

A third myth is the lack of transparency. Critics hate the fact that the negotiations are conducted in the back rooms. Well, we can confirm that the European Commission has demonstrated an unprecedented level of transparency. All negotiation texts were published on the Internet and a public poll was organized.

Mr Vandenput, you are right, there was an effort of transparency on the part of the Commission. This was seen when the commissioner in charge of Trade changed. Under the M. De Gucht, it was the cross and the banner to get a minimum of elements. And since the arrival of Ms. Malmström, whom we have also met here, the Commission has made some effort. I regret that this is due to the arrival of Mrs. Malmström and not under Mr. Malmström. by Gucht. If, today, you know this unprecedented mobilization of European civil society with respect to TTIP, it is, among other things, because this error of non-transparency was committed by the Vld De Gucht.

Mr De Gucht started the negotiations when he was Commissioner, but we are now in a further phase. I am sure that our party partner Karel De Gucht would have gone to that stage as well. We all, maybe you too, hoped Mr. De Gucht would still be a commissioner, but that’s not the case. I am sure he would have done that too.

The website of the DG Trade is packed with infographics and sheets that provide an overview of each chapter of the TTIP in plain human language. All representatives from all European parliaments, including the Flemish and federal, have access to the consolidated negotiation texts. That has never been seen. Yesterday I met a few of my colleagues in the reading rooms. I recommend everyone who hasn’t been there to go there, because it’s a whole revelation to be able to read the texts.

I am closing up with a political step. Our resolution is a balanced resolution without taboos. It is ⁇ not a ratification of the TTIP agreement, which has yet to be concluded with the United States and for which we have given a mandate to the European Commission. The social debate over TTIP is important, but it is also high time that it is again about the facts and real concerns, and not about some fairy tales that we can sometimes read.

One in six Belgians have a job due to European exports. The final balance of the increased trade flows will result in greater growth, more jobs and greater prosperity for all citizens. Again, 90 percent of global economic growth in the next 15 years will be created outside the EU.

Many in the world want a stronger Europe. I am also in favour of that. My party has always been a pioneer in this. Today we urge some EU Member States not to lie back, sit down and look at Europe, which is dismantling itself a bit in this area. We must motivate those Member States to strive for a stronger Europe. I find, however, that some parties to the trade agreement are in fact taking the same stance as certain conservative or nationalist countries we point to today, Poland and Hungary.

This is a spread that is not sustainable. As liberals, we believe that more Europe will make us better and that we must open up to other continents to safeguard and stimulate trade. I just point out that backbending is not applicable, not even at the global level. To safeguard our own sovereignty by not negotiating such free trade agreements is the same as the attitude of countries like Poland and Hungary at European level. And we should not do that.

Hence our call to be open to progress and free trade, for free trade will guarantee our prosperity and that of future generations.

Mr. Speaker, colleagues, I begin with a word of thanks to the Secretariat of the Committee on Foreign Relations and to both rapporteurs, in particular Mr. Hellings and Mr. Vandenput, who have made a beautiful document of almost two hundred pages. It provides a good overview of the knowledge present in Belgium with regard to the TTIP, both in the academic world and in the civil society and the business community. All knowledge is collected in the document. Therefore, we should not be ashamed of this report, compared to the way this matter was dealt with in other European parliaments.

Colleagues, I had prepared a long presentation, but I will shorten the first ten pages to one sentence. Our group will not approve the resolution later because the TTIP project, first, gives too much space to the market, second, gives much more power to the multinationals and, third, undermines democracy and democratic decision-making. Contrary to what other members have stated here, it is, fourth, not in the interest of European citizens, even as consumers.

I will try to clarify these four points as follows.

First, the first question I ask myself, and I assume that other members also ask themselves, is the following. Will the TTIP deal be in the interests of our companies?

Per ⁇ everyone is asking this question. This part of my discussion I will subdivide into the following points.

First of all, it surprises me personally very much, and it also makes me somewhat suspicious, that we still do not have an impact study for Belgium. Maybe my suspicion is wrong, but if one were convinced that the TTIP is good and problemless for our own companies, then we would have had such a study for a long time.

Second, there are other studies. There are studies, as later cited by colleague Luykx, which are very optimistic and predict very good results. There is the study of the European Commission, which predicts a growth of 0.5 % of the European GDP after ten years. That is little, colleagues; that means for every Belgian at that time, so ten years later, one coffee a week more. There is also a study from Tuft University, which has already been mentioned. Let us be intellectually honest: it is very difficult to predict such a thing. This will only be seen when the treaty comes into force. However, there is something that makes me notice, colleagues, when I look at each of these studies. Our country, Belgium, is always in the group of countries that experience the least good results and the least positive effects of the TTIP agreement. In the positive and in the negative, we are always at the bottom. How is this to explain?

I have talked about it with some economists, people who have more understanding of economics than I do. They think that the explanation for this can be found in the structure of our economy. We all know that our economy is characterized by the fact that more than 90 % of our ⁇ are SMEs. Those economists say that TTIP is very good for very large companies.

By the way, we all know where the idea of coming to TTIP comes from BUSINESSEUROPE and AmCham, the interest-defense organizations of the super-big companies in Europe and America, which have much easier access to top politicians. They have convinced the European and American leaders that it is good for those big companies to do this type of operations, which will happen in TTIP.

But what is the fate of small ⁇ ? I ask you to think calmly. We know that 80 to 90% of everything our Belgian SMEs export is exported within a radius of 300 kilometers around Brussels. This is so despite the fact that they are allowed to operate in the European Single Market, where all barriers to trade have been removed, more than ever through the TTIP agreement will happen: there is the same currency, there are many more similar norms within Europe. Nevertheless, our SMEs, i.e. more than 90 % of our business tissue, fail to transport more than 300 kilometers.

And so those economists ask me: “If such a TTIP agreement comes, which will undoubtedly remove a number of obstacles, do you really believe that those Flemish, Belgian, Wallon, Brussels SMEs will get to the U.S. market?”

But there is something that is often forgotten in the debate. If barriers are removed for our companies to the United States, barriers will also be removed for companies from the United States to Europe and Belgium. That means that on our market – I will now limit myself to the Belgian market – our SMEs will face competition from U.S. companies and U.S. SMEs. In short, I mention, although with a strong simplification because it varies from sector to sector, that in the United States a SME is defined as a company with 250 to 500 employees. These companies are already medium-sized companies. SMEs are defined as companies with fewer than 50 employees. Therefore, in our European and Belgian markets we will see a much stronger presence of the major American companies that are already here, but we will also get more SMEs here according to the American definition.

These economists say to me that it is therefore not surprising that this could cost jobs in Belgium. It is, indeed, only one study, to which the leader of the PS, Laurette Onkelinx, has already referred, in particular the study of Tuft University in the United States, funded with American money, not European money. In the worst case scenario, the study concludes that 66,000 jobs could be lost in Belgium. I think that should be enough to worry somewhat our policymakers and to order a study ourselves. However, we do not see and get that study and that makes me a bit suspicious.

I take together. It is difficult to predict what the consequences will be. There are plenty of reasons to worry and order a study, but we don’t get it. In the best case, a small profit is possible. The question is whether it is important enough or not dangerous to want to take the risk of entering such a process of TTIP.

The second point I want to come to, and the name just fell, is Karel De Gucht. He is one of the leaders, one of the initiators. He said at the beginning of this project that it would become a transatlantic single market.

This is not an ordinary trade agreement. Ordinary trade agreements usually deal with tariffs. I’m not going to say that everything is gone, but a lot is far between Europe and the United States. Now they want to go much deeper. We want to create an internal market.

We have already talked about the standards. What I am concerned about is that those standards no longer exist in a democratically controlled system. We have built up the European Single Market and there is a Commission made up of Commissioners elected by political decision-makers in each country.

There is a European Parliament that monitors progress made on the single market. There are the Councils of Ministers and of Heads of State, in which politicians sit. They all follow this process of forming a European single market. This is controlled by checks and balances.

However, with this trade agreement, colleagues, a democratically uncontrolled project will begin.

Those who have read it, for example, know that a regulatory board is coming, a kind of regulatory board of directors. That means that any measure that is of any importance for the functioning of that transatlantic single market must be approved by that regulatory board. This includes the United States, but also representatives of the big business community. That means that those rules are already established in an organ that is not democratically elected and is not subject to democratic control.

It goes further. That’s the debate about ISDS or the international court system, what it has become now. It is not enough to give unelected economic interest groups control over the establishment of regulations and standards, but it will also give them the opportunity, if they believe that certain standards are contrary to their interests, to prosecute the states for issuing regulations that are contrary to their interests. Ladies and gentlemen, this is not a sad fear. Hundreds of examples are known.

For example, Vodafone attacked India because the Indian tax administration believes that Vodafone is not applying the rules on transfer pricing correctly. Veolia from France filed a lawsuit in Egypt over the Egyptian government raising the Egyptian minimum wage by 3%.

Colleagues, this is a process that is being launched and in which too much power is given to economic interest groups. Those groups are even given the power to challenge regulations made by states if, for example, they could lead – that’s their argument – to a decrease in their profits. These are really very dangerous developments.

What I am most concerned about, colleagues, is that we will have a collision between two social models. The European model contains certain collective mechanisms and is more focused on avoiding excessive inequality and striving for equality as much as possible. On the contrary, the other model, the American model, falls more on the individual and has little or no problems with large, growing inequalities. I fear that shock will cause problems.

I am not alone with this fear, colleagues. I have a few quotes that should especially concern the colleagues of CD&V. For example, I read in the documents of that movement that they are very concerned about the consequences and differences in the field of labour legislation. I don’t know if you know this, colleagues, but in the United States, among the 51 states, there are states where the average wage in various sectors is half the wage in Germany and Belgium.

I will not read all of those quotes, but I will give one example: “The impact of TTIP on economic growth and employment does not weigh for ACV against all the potential dangers of TTIP.”

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I have said that I am afraid of the consequences of the collision between the two models.

We have a model that contains elements of collective interests. We seek equality. The best example of this is our health system. By the way, our system is much cheaper than the American. I’m not sure, but I think that the cost of the health system in Europe is on average 6 % or 7 % and in the United States 12 % or 13 %. Our collective system is only half as expensive as that of the United States, but it is widely accessible, it is democratic and affordable for everyone. Their system is not that.

What are the dangers to the health system? Should I explain this first, can you respond to it?

I see here that there is a danger to the commercialization of education, health and culture. You have to explain it to me.

I was talking about health.

Explain to me the danger of commercialization!

I have another comment on the previous point.

Mr. Van der Maelen, your reasoning is interesting. You say that some U.S. states have only half the income of some European countries, and that we cannot be part of a free trade zone with such countries because the divide would be too big. If you penetrate that reasoning, and look at Romania, where the wage is unfortunately 2 or 3 euros per hour, then that is an argument to throw Romania out of the European Union free trade zone because the divide is too big. Where is the consistency of your reasoning?

We have incorporated countries like Romania into the European Union. That was a conscious political choice. After the fall of the Wall, we could not surrender those countries to their economic destiny. We have incorporated them into the European Union, and we have helped those countries through structural funds to boost their economies, hoping that in the near future we can bring them roughly to our level. There are enough win-win elements for both Romania and the other European Union countries.

In the case of TTIP, we are purely concerned with market/power relations.

I can give another example, relating to the different standards

Mr. Van der Maelen, there are other examples. We have a kind of free trade zone with Turkey, allowing the goods to be traded at a zero-tariff. The differences between Turkey and the European Union are much greater than between the EU and the various states of the United States. Services cannot be freely traded, but goods, with the exception of agricultural products, are freely traded. Per ⁇ the ratio, especially with regard to Belgium and Turkey, is 1 in 10. There is a free trade zone between the two countries.

Your argument about the difference that would be too big compared to certain U.S. states is not correct. I have given the example of Romania and also with Poland it will not be much different. There is also Turkey.

I have answered that, right?

You answered it and correctly pointed out that it is a political union. Turkey is also in a different situation. What is the difference with America?

I can give another example, the United Kingdom. Your political discourse is based on this. We are in a free trade zone with many countries with huge differences. I acknowledge the problem. I find it somewhere a problem that people compete with us from a very weak social order without any customs duty. In fact, it is atypical.

I find the example of the United States striking, because they are between the two. They are much closer to us! You use that as an argument to keep them out of a free trade zone. It might be that your anti-American sentiment got mixed up in this discussion.

The difference is that the countries that sit with us in the European Union must comply with all European rules and standards. I will explain the difference between Turkey and the United States. Turkey must accept our standards or they cannot sell their products here.

Now the two blocks come together. Mr Defraigne has already been mentioned. You should read the report and see what Mr. Defraigne said in our committee. I will not repeat it here.

What will happen now, colleague? What are they trying to make us wise? It is attempted to make us aware that in the event of a difference in standards in the field of occupational safety, remuneration, trade union freedom and so on, the two blocs will always go to the highest standard. The experience of other trade agreements from the past teaches us that this is not possible; this is seen in the first texts. A colleague has already said here that we will go toward mutual acceptance of the standards.

I think of the example of the chlorine chicken. In Europe, it is the case that measures must be taken from the rich to the fork to ensure that the chicken is safe. In the United States, people close their eyes, but at the very last moment they immerse the chicken in a chlorine bath. It may be that this is just as healthy, I don’t want to talk about it, but it is clear that the chlorine chicken will be cheaper than the European chicken grown here. If those chickens are allowed on the trans-Atlantic single market, the consequence will be that European chicken farmers will say that competition is unfair because their production costs are much higher. They will ask to lower the standards for them too.

I will take this example now, but that will happen for all standards. Instead of upward harmonisation, under pressure from the industry, one will find that there is a downward harmonisation.

It is a pity that I did not attend the debate in the committee.

Mr. Van der Maelen, you could make the same reasoning in the 1980s, when they talked about the liberation of the single market. The main defenders of that single market were Karel Van Miert and Jacques Delors. You’ve come back to the time when all those discussions were also held. It was then discussed that social security would be reduced by the liberalization of the single market.

The free market leads to prosperity in the long run. That is the essence of economics by Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill.

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I know that you do not agree, Mr. Hedebouw.

This leads to an international division of labor.

The great economist and first economist, Jan Tinbergen, said that the international division of labor is a good thing. Eventually, it will be produced where the cost is lowest, where the other countries can benefit from the fact that they produce. They have to buy production goods. They also have a marketplace and so on.

You are here going against the essence of how international trade has led to the most prosperous situation in world history that we now know.

What you want is that that situation be reversed and that some sort of normalization be established in international trade. This has also happened at the European level. I was Minister of Agriculture in the 1990s. Then there was a whole discussion about the tomatoes from Spain and about the pork sector from the Eastern European countries, which came to compete with us. This occurs in all forms of international development of trade and of other division of labour.

Mr. Van der Maelen, here you want to turn the clock completely back and develop a sort of retrograde reasoning against what has become the basis of our wealth.

Mr. Van Rompuy, I will try to answer you very briefly. Then I will listen to the comments of the other members.

I try to make it clear to you, but you are not listening exactly.

What is the big difference? I have subsequently noted that the European Single Market is a process led by politicians and democratically controlled, allowing you, in your then capacity as Flemish Minister of Agriculture here with us, to stand up for the tomato farmers. This is the European system, to create the single market.

Now we find ourselves in a system where, as soon as a government moves a foot, it must fight an ISDS or an ICS. Now we find ourselves in a situation where every new regulation that Europe wants to impose must be submitted to the regulatory board, in which major American companies sit. That is the antidemocratic aspect. I have already stated that I will not approve the proposal, because it is an adaptation of democratic decision-making, on which we all, in Europe, in Belgium, in the Parliament, must first agree.

This is the difference: one internal market process is democratically controlled, while the other is not controlled.

Mr Van Rompuy, I agree with you. But I add, Mr. Van der Maelen, that you are again doing a demonstration with chlorinated chicken. I don’t know how to tell you: it’s not about chlorinated chickens. I understand that you do not have the same opinion.

I’ve listened to what you said, but at some point you go back to your fantasies. As the mr. Van Rompuy and you said it yourself, what we’re talking about today, ... It’s true that there was a bit of noise when I used the formula. I admit I provoked him a little. What I meant, based on Pascal Lamy’s remarks, is that we are no longer in the same negotiating world at all. These are other international agreements. The ongoing negotiations for TTIP mainly focus on standards. I told the tribune that there was no question of having a reduction in standards at the European level.

But that will happen! It is inevitable!

It is you who says it.

It is no longer the policy but the regulatory board that will decide whether or not you can maintain a standard. I tell you, but you know it better than I do: every sector, every product for which there is a difference in production costs will be under pressure because there is a difference in standards. In Belgium, for example, the pressure will come from the fact that the conditions are not equal and we will insist on changing the regulation downward so that we get the same position in competing with an American competitor. That is what will happen. I do not invent it.

Mr. Van der Maelen, I just had it in my discussion about the chlorine cup. I have said that in Article 8 of the mandate, which was also given by the previous Belgian government, it is clear that the EU and the Member States will not accept any reduction of the European protection standards. That is in it.

If you say this is not true, I don’t know which mandate you approved. This is what it says, and we rely on the European Commission to negotiate this too, otherwise the treaty will not be approved.

I would like to intervene in the debate, given that Mr. Van Rompuy gave me an apostrophy. I agree with you, Mr Van Rompuy.

I follow your reasoning. You say we do the same in the European Union, in our own market. At that point I agree with you, but I disagree with your assessment of the single market, which has taught us. This is about it.

Europe has been in an economic crisis since 2008 and no one asks why. Why is the EU in crisis? Because of the competition down. Because of the pressure that exists on all wages in Europe. Because of the pressure that makes 22 million people unemployed in Europe.

You hold as a practical, ideological and economic achievement the fact that the European Union and its single market have brought happiness to people. I do not share your opinion on this point.

What will happen to TTIP? We will go even further in globalization. They are the strongest, that is, the companies that have the lowest production costs, that are the most globalized, that are the least respectful – we have given the example of chicken, but we could find hundreds of examples of this type –, that will exert a downward pressure, as Mr. rightly described. by Van der Maelen.

Contrary to what you say, it won’t make people happy. This will make the happiness of certain monopolies that will be able to control the entire market. This can be seen in all sectors of the economy.

The European Union already puts us in a situation of failure and we will continue in this direction by allowing TTIP to globalize even more the two monopolistic economies that are those of Europe and the United States of America through an unacceptable social dumping.

To colleague Van Hees, I would like to point out the following. With 8% of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s GDP, the European continent, the European Union, accounts for 50% of all social spending. I am proud of that and that must remain. No other continent can do that. We demand that we have earned the merit of sometimes difficult battles. It is sometimes claimed that the Socialists had the majority in the European Union, but the Socialists never had the majority in the European Union. Sometimes we are part of a large minority.

On behalf of colleague Vandenput, I would like to admit that when a upward harmonisation of the standards fails and since we do not accept a reduction of the European standards, we will recognize their standards and they will recognize our own. I still want to believe that. But when Europe sets higher demands on companies and products, European ⁇ will come to face the complaint that they are hindered on the European market by European regulations, while American products, thanks to the lower standards, sometimes have a lower price. Then you will see the leveling down. Is that likely? This is how the free market works.

I want to talk about the health sector and I look at the CD&V MPs. I said later that, globally speaking, our system is more efficient and democratic, thus giving disadvantaged people more access to health care. I was asked what the commercialization is like. Commercialization in the United States is undoubtedly much larger and much stronger. You may not know, but in the negotiations around TTIP, the U.S. pharmaceutical industry is putting pressure on Europe for longer patent protection. In other words, in the United States it takes much longer before a drug can become a generic drug.

There are examples of this. From the last product that became generic in Belgium, the price for the consumer has dropped by 85 %. This meant a saving of 16 million euros for social security. Therefore, there is a double profit, as the consumer pays only 15% of the previous amount and the social security saves 16 million euros. Well, if the United States gets its way in favour of the pharmaceutical industry, then the patents on medicines will be protected longer. Patients will therefore have to pay the high price longer and the social security will have to contribute longer.

I will give another example. Under pressure from the pharmaceutical industry, the United States demands involvement in the pricing and reimbursement terms for our medicines.

For example, the National Intermutualist College, in which all major health funds are represented, is concerned about this. That college calls for an explicit exclusion from current and future services of general interest. We talked about the European Single Market. Belgium, indeed, when there were socialists in the government, obtained and enforced that the services of general interest in the health sector were excluded from the internal market regulation. Well, in the TTIP negotiations, the Americans demand that such a provision be included. Again, we will see a disruption to our healthcare system, which is only half as expensive and more democratic as that of the United States, and also gives access to disabled people. These achievements are undermined by the Free Trade Agreement.

Ms. Smaers asks for the word.

Mr. Van der Maelen, I have long doubted whether I would interrupt you, but I now feel obliged to do it. I can’t hear that there is so much populist talk about the free trade agreement. I fully agree that there are legitimate concerns about the ongoing negotiations, but they have been expressed by all majority parties.

These are ongoing negotiations, for which a clear mandate has been given. Healthcare and public services are excluded from the negotiating mandate. Keeping up with the danger that our healthcare will be privatized is useless, because that danger is not there. This is a prerequisite under the negotiation mandate.

If there are breaches, you know of everyone, including the majority, that the negotiations will not end well. This is a prerequisite for negotiations. Therefore, there is no point in continuing to go through this. The majority also expressed those concerns and they are in the negotiating mandate.

I come back to the pharmaceutical industry, because you keep pursuing it. I assume that you cannot resist this from a socialist party, which also advocates for as many jobs as possible, including in our region. After all, I would like to note that the American pharmaceutical industry – I come from Kempen, so I know what I’m talking about, with Janssen Pharmaceutica and Johnson & Johnson – is responsible for very many jobs in our region. It’s not about hundreds, but thousands of jobs. A lot of Belgians, Flamings and Whales get a good job there.

It is not just about the pharmaceutical sector, but also about many other sectors. I will give another example that is not so far from my home: Nike. That is a very large American company that offers four thousand jobs, including very many jobs for low-skilled people.

Who can be against more job creation and more opportunities for such players? It is also about reducing mutual costs. Who is against that companies no longer have to go through the same procedures twice, once in Europe and once in America, in order to get to the same approval of a drug? That is just a good cost-effective measure. I can’t imagine anyone would have a problem of getting such cost gains.

These are many major challenges in the free trade agreement. I have not heard that today. These aspects should also be discussed in the debate. I agree with all legitimate concerns expressed, including by the majority. However, we are only in a negotiation phase. The concerns are taken into account. I find it incorrect that the debate does not mention a number of opportunities that are undoubtedly available for all our employees, for every Belgian.

We are all proud of our social security, but it can only be achieved if first added value is created by a lot of jobs. This is also an aspect that should not be overlooked here. I would like to bring that point into the debate.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to agree with what my colleague said, that health care falls outside the mandate. With regard to medicines, the system of reimbursement of medicines remains a national competence of the Member States and is not covered by TTIP. I also refer to the statement made by Cecilia Malmström on this subject in the Wallish Parliament. She has clearly repeated that nothing will change in terms of reimbursement of medicines.

You also get the point of the generic medicines. In this regard, we are working with the United States and the EU to increase the number of generic medicines and guarantee their quality, which would benefit patients in the United States and in the EU.

I would like to come back to your point of the latter, about that regulatory cooperation body. You say you are not inventing anything. Yes, Mr. Van der Maelen, you are doing it. You have repeated three times that they will decide, but that is an advisory body. It is a advisory body in which U.S. and EU experts will sit together to effectively review this regulatory cooperation and to formulate opinions on it. It is about advice; that is, it can lead to agreements, but it can also lead to a decision to allow both systems to exist side by side. This may often be the case for Europe. You took the example of the chlorine chicken. Europe has consistently taken the position that regulatory conditions, such as a ban on growth agents, hormone meat, the process for the GMOs, are not part of the negotiations on TTIP. So please let’s talk about this a little more balanced.

Mr. President, Mr. Van der Maelen, there is often talk of right-wing populism, but I hear here now left-wing populism. You are scaring people at the Hedebouw. You frighten people from international trade, you give the impression that standards of social security and health are established in small committees at an undemocratic super-level or world-level, that one is going to intervene in our health insurance and that the social security will be compromised. I find this strange for someone from a party that has ruled the country for 25 years. The whole single market is partly the merit of Jacques Delors and Karel Van Miert.

I have also been sitting in the European Parliament for a while, when there were also discussions on standardization, on environmental standardization and on consumer standardization. The discussion then also involved the question of where the standards should be laid and solutions have always been found based on the quality. You are not like Mr. Hedebouw, because he actually wants to close all borders. Mr. Hedebouw, you are a communist. Are you against the European Union? You find that countries need to become independent again, that customs borders need to be returned, and that investments need to be nationalized because you are against private investments.

Mr. Van der Maelen, you, as a democratic socialist, have contributed to the European Union, with its international development? Are Socialists in power in France? They are also negotiating this. I hear very different sounds from France than what you bring here on the floor. You give the impression that through those TTIP agreements the social security, wages, consumer protection and the environment will all be undermined, while it will be precisely the force of change that one will undermine the international development.

For me, these are not slogans, for me, that is reality. That change will be further stimulated and will lead to greater prosperity. Your model is a model in which international development is inhibited. Griet Smaers said it. The wealth we now have is due to the foreign investment that came there in the 1960s, through the development of the customs union and the internal market, through the euro. There was also a need to develop a standardization between Member States. Trade was free and companies sometimes encountered fierce competition. That model is now entirely questioning you because you have now coincidentally fallen into the opposition.

I would like to speak for a small personal fact. Since Mr. Van Rompuy wants the debate, he will have it!

Mr. Van Rompuy, the difference is that you consider the market question as something neutral; just a neutral geographical, political and economic space.

I am not asking for the countries to retreat on their own. I am not in favour of a return to the country. I know that this is a debate both on the left and on the right. At PTB-GO!, we are not at all for a return to the national fact. On the other hand, I do not share with you the desire that the creation of a free market, based solely on private property, make the markets win for the strongest companies. This is what is happening in a capitalist economy like in Europe and the United States.

To answer my colleague, I’m not asking myself why American companies are creating jobs. I rather wonder why we have regions that have unemployment rates of 10, 15 or 20 percent while so much wealth is produced today in Europe and the United States. We ask ourselves different questions from different points of view, Mr. Van Rompuy.

Competition between different markets puts downward pressure on people’s working conditions and on the quality of production. That downward pressure will be reinforced by the signing of the TTIP. On that point Mr. Van der Maelen is absolutely right, but I, of course, effectively pass that criticism on to the European Union and social dumping. Many workers and employees come here to work for dumped prices. This is the Europe we are building today. This is not my Europe.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to say that I am amazed at how some are neglecting the danger to our health care, ⁇ to our particular organization, including through mutual funds.

I recall that not so long ago, at the European level, we had to fight with other European entities to preserve our model, which was challenged by private insurance companies. We have been far from being able to maintain protection, which is precisely to maintain a strong regulation for the benefit of patients. This has been the subject of intense discussions with the European Commission, with private insurers and mutualities, etc.

Can you imagine for a second that, if we don’t take care, in the face of competition and deregulation arguments that can be put on the table, ⁇ by the United States, we will still be able to maintain such a system? That’s why not only the left, but all the mutualities, Mrs. Smaers, have asked us to be very clear on the subject, and you are not in the resolution you are submitting. Be clearer in the resolution and we will vote with you on some elements of the resolution. But you ignore a potential danger that seriously threatens the future of healthcare in a country like Belgium

I would like to make a small clarification in view of the comments made by Mr. Hedebouw, because he always talks about big companies, about great capitalism. Indeed, there are big corporations and great capitalism. Alongside this, there are more and more small ⁇ , self-employed, TPE, SMEs. These are the companies that earn market shares. Big companies are only losing.

In the economic landscape, things need to be relativized. Large companies have fewer and fewer market shares, as opposed to TPE and SMEs that earn from them.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to answer Mr. Onkelinx’s statement.

I have already said that healthcare and public services are excluded from the mandate. That is also the reason why the majority once again calls for this attention in a resolution and once again expresses that concern. If that would eventually come into the negotiations — which cannot, because it is excluded from the mandate — there would also be no agreement. That concern is there. I do not understand why you continue to do so hard about it. It is not part of the negotiations.

We can now summarize the discussion.

Mr Van der Maelen, you put forward several arguments against the agreement. As colleague Smaers recently said, public services and health care are not involved. You say that the real problem is the wealth gap between the United States and us. Then I gave the counterargument that there are mass free trade agreements where the difference is even greater. And then we come to the ultimate question. If I hear you, that would actually be an argument to say that we should not conclude free trade agreements with African countries, because there the standards are by definition even much lower. If I follow your argument and say that the big difference is in products and in prosperity, then you would either not conclude free trade agreements with the African countries or there would be no reduction of tariffs, while everyone agrees that to get Africa out of debris, free trade with Europe is an important dimension, along with, among other things, development cooperation. If I apply your argument to other situations, it is not correct.

Colleague, if I understand you correctly, you compare the United States with a developing country. You say that a trade agreement between the United States and Europe is the same as ...

The [...]

You have said it.

This is a completely different situation. For me, a free trade agreement between Belgium, Europe and a developing country is an agreement that should ensure that products made in those countries can and can come to our European markets, even advantageous.

But if we conclude a free trade agreement with equal partners like the United States, then I do not want a country that is as strong as us to be favored. It should also not be harmed; the rules should be the same for everyone, but here there is the risk that this will not be the case.

Mr. Van der Maelen, I just file your argument.

I have not yet answered the question of Mrs. Smaers.

Let’s talk each one in turn, because otherwise it becomes a little insignificant.

I file your argument. You use various arguments to indicate that the U.S. is not going well. I neutralize each of your arguments.

You think so!

Let me speak for a moment.

Public services are not the problem.

I didn’t say anything about public services.

Health care can also not be the problem, just as little as the welfare disparity.

You then invented a new problem, in particular the different product standards. The product standards in Africa or other continents are different than in Europe, and yet there are free trade agreements or lower tariffs. Therefore, those different product standards may not be the problem.

Now you come up with your last argument, the non-equivalence.

You use arguments and they are neutralized, and so you must formulate a counter-argument for each point, but you should not come to incite with statements like I would compare Africa with the US. You must submit analytical arguments.

Here, by colleagues Claerhout, Smaers and Bogaert, we talked about health care to then stir up left-populism. I would also be unjustly worried.

Now you require me to read the Belgian report of 22 February 2016, which reads as follows: “This is why the Belgian health funds advocate that there is also an explicit exclusion from current and future services of general interest, states the NIC. These areas are already excluded from the rules of the internal market within European regulations, a line that must be translated in a coherent manner in the free trade agreements. Only by explicit exclusion can the exclusive competence of the Member States to define their health policies be disqualified. Without this exclusion, commercial players risk access to a service sector based on solidarity, accessibility and affordability.”

This is called left-wing populism. I will say to the CM that they are leftist populists.

and excluded? You hope that, you want it. But it is not excluded. Why are they still asking after February 22?

That you suspect me of not knowing the file, there I can still earn, but that you suspect the CM of it, I will tell them.

If there are international developments that are feared by trade unions, health funds, employers, consumer organisations or other potential interest groups, it is normal that they want to clarify their views, including warning against commercialization.

The question is, is it on the table? I did not follow the discussions, but I trust Mrs. Claerhout, Mrs. Smaers, Mr. Miller and Mr. Vandenput, who have experienced the discussions.

The [...]

Yes, Mr. Bonte, you are also a leftist populist, when it comes to fingerprints and radicalization, so I advise you to stay absent in the debate.

Mr Van der Maelen, you question the need to conclude international trade agreements.

That is not true!

The [...]

Mrs. Temmerman, if you followed Karel Van Miert, who was your peetfather, more often, your faction here was probably stronger.

The social market economy goes hand in hand with competition in the internal market. This is the basis of prosperity. That is the essence, and you are now questioning it.

The US market is very closed, I don’t know if you know. We are at risk of missing a huge opportunity. The Americans can export to here much easier than we can export to there. Their market is very closed. It would be good if we could open them and get guarantees regarding, among other things, service provision. That there are warnings, that is normal. If community agreements are concluded, the Flemish Movement warns of this and so on. (Protest by Mrs Temmerman)

Mrs. Temmerman, walk behind Rudy De Leeuw and behind the FGTB. You will go far with it.

I try to repeat the first two points I made. The first point is that the benefits of such an agreement are very questionable. In the best case, they are minimal. Therefore, it is not wise to take the risk of continuing this process.

I come to my second conclusion, because it is not colleague Bogaert who should draw conclusions from what I say. Nothing good can emerge from the collision between the American model and the European, social model. These models are too different. You want to create a transatlantic single market, like the European single market, but without the guarantees given by the presence of democratically elected and controlled decision-makers. It leaves too much on the market.

I come to my last point. Colleagues, if we say that we are against TTIP, against the bilateral agreement between the US and Europe, then we are not stupid or naive. We realize that we are a small country, that we export at least 70% of everything we make and that we must live from exports. After that, however, Mr. Defraigne was here incorrectly quoted by colleague Miller. Colleague Miller has just said that Pierre Defraigne in our committee has advocated a multilateral approach. That is not true. Pierre Defraigne has called for a plurilateral approach in our committee.

He said it is unwise to organize world trade on the basis of bilateral agreements. One is much better off if one tries to build an international trade system with a coalition of countries who want – which will by definition be first and foremost a large number of G20 countries. If one does this through bilateral agreements, then one will create tensions between the blocs in the world. This will not serve global peace and stability. I suggest you read Pierre Defraigne, the former cabinet chief of Pascal Lamy and a man who has worked for years in the European Commission at the Directorate-General for Trade, DG Trade. He knows what he is talking about.

The U.S. and Europe, the two continents that were the pioneers of the WHO, believed that we should all work together, rich and less rich, big and small, to build a world trade system. This is unfortunately not possible now. It is then the wrong track to make only bilateral agreements between Europe and the United States. I agree with Pierre Defraigne. Multilateral agreements must be established. That gives us the best guarantee for the protection of the interests of our country. It also gives us the best guarantee for a safe and stable world.

Mr. Van der Maelen, just one comment. You said the same thing and its opposite at the end. You tell yourself that mr. Defraigne explained that it was not possible to reach an agreement with all parties, that the Doha cycle is stopped, etc.; and then you say that it is to this that we must go. This is what Mr. Defraigne said: it should not be done from bilateral agreements.

I rather feel that we have an interest in having a bilateral agreement between the European Union and the United States and that through this we will reach a multilateral agreement.

The [...]

This is not necessary, Mr. Van der Maelen. We don’t have the same reading, that’s all.

The [...]

I suppose this was the thought of Mr. and defrains.

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to comment on what Mr. Miller said and on what Mr. Van der Maelen responded. If we are negotiating a free trade agreement between Europe and the United States today, it is because the multilateral investment agreement – that false friend who didn’t want us good – saw its negotiation suspended and then disappeared. It is because this will for global liberalization has stopped that the United States and Europe, the best friends of trade, have begun to negotiate a trade agreement.

Why Mr Miller? The WTO is a multilateral global organization with many participants, including Southern countries. At the time, within the WTO, Southern countries formed a blocking minority that was able to counterweight the United States, Europe and developed countries in general. That is why the United States and Europe entered this negotiation, with the will to impose their standards on the rest of the world. I don’t think this is the way we can hope for a balanced global governance between the North and the South.

I would like to thank mr. Van der Maelen, chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, organized this debate. Few unnegotiated and even less signed or ratified subjects have been the subject of, as here, a deep, serene democratic debate – not always, Mr. Miller – but interesting, even before these provisions are signed, ratified and voted.

The Greens have always been opposed to the transatlantic treaty since the mandate was granted on June 14, 2013. We opposed it at the European level, at the federal level, at the regional levels Wallon, Brussels and German-speaking, and also, this has not yet been said, at the municipal level. A number of municipal motions were voted in the municipal councils of Wallonia and Brussels, often at the initiative of Ecolo.

I am pleased to see that several parties have seen their position evolve, and that is so much better. We will have to be the most numerous to prevent this treaty from being negotiated, then signed, and eventually ratified.

Rarely has a treaty flowed so much ink into civil society. This is my fifty-first debate on TTIP. I have participated in debates in municipal councils, in associations, in trade unions, in employer associations, in parishes and in parliamentary halls.

It is, I recall, a treaty that is not yet signed, that is not yet negotiated, that is not yet ratified.

The public rejection is massive and obvious. But we also have to count in Belgium with the organized society that has something to say. Trade unions, mutual associations, representatives of the middle class are opposed to TTIP. This is an unprecedented fact!

Why is Ecolo-Groen opposed to TTIP? First, in our opinion, this project goes against the project of the Greens of all Europe for the European Union. In fact, we promote a local economy that allows us to feed locally. Here, of course, comes the question of agriculture. We want to promote short circuits. In other words, we want the products we consume to be made nearest to us. The distance between the United States and Europe is at least 6,000 kilometers. Second, we want to promote the reduction of CO2 emissions. This is a commitment that our country and the majority of countries around the world have made in Paris. The aim is to reduce emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases, especially CO2.

From the moment a treaty aims to intensify global trade between the two sides of the Atlantic — this applies both to TTIP and CETA — one can expect to see an increase in CO2 consumption by transport.

Furthermore – and this is a constant in view of BUSINESSEUROPE’s statements before this Chamber – from the moment that the European Union engages in a transatlantic treaty with the United States, one of the objectives is to massively import fossil energy produced in the United States according to hydraulic fracturing. This is not only contrary to COP21’s objectives to reduce fossil fuel consumption and thereby greenhouse gas emissions, but it is also contrary to the EU’s Europe 2020 strategy, which aims to equip the EU with a robust economy based on energy savings and the promotion of renewable energies.

If, tomorrow, in Zeebrugge or in another European port, these shale gases and oils manufactured according to the hydraulic fracturing, destructive of the environment as well as water both surface and underground in the United States, it is also destructive of jobs and the goal of reducing CO2 emissions and promoting renewable energies at European level.

I come to my third point. TTIP is against the future of the European Union. We have, in other committees, the opportunity to discuss the future of the European Union. There are, on the one hand, those who, like the British, believe that the European Union should only be a market. On the other hand, there are Belgium and a few other European countries, including the other five founders, who believe that Europe must be federal and a political project. The challenge for the European Union is its deepening. It is the idea that, beyond a market, we also have standards, projects.

For us, the Greens, two interesting projects of which the European Union could provide itself, it is a minimum wage to fight against social dumping, of which Mr. Trump often speaks. Gilkinet, but also an ISOC, a global corporate income tax with a minimum. This is a European project! This is a deepening of the European market. So what are we doing? We are expanding to the United States the European market, which already does not function well and which is the source of poverty and a number of environmental, social and other problems. We limit ourselves to the expansion of this only market in the United States. As Mr. said. This is not a question of the enlargement of the European Union to the United States. Otherwise, the United States, beyond the creation of the market, would have to transpose the entire Community acquis into its law. No, no, the goal of the Transatlantic Treaty is profoundly different. We are expanding the market, but not deepening it. The European market will thus become, with the United States, an immense market but without the standards, which we still need to be able to regulate it. If liberalization without regulation creates jobs, this would be known. This is what the European Union has been doing for more than 30 or 35 years.

Ms. Smaers, in your speech, you referred to the various American companies that are located in Campina or elsewhere. You have quoted Johnson & Johnson and Nike. In Walloon Brabant, there is GSK which is a major American company. by Mr. Cheron will not contradict me.

These American companies are already there, because the European market is attractive. Five hundred million potential consumers, a substantial part of which belongs to the middle class, with high incomes. That is why these American companies are here today. That is why, tomorrow, Chinese or Indian companies will come to settle in our home. Not because we have a free trade agreement with these companies, but because we are the global market; because we, Europeans, even with our standards, we are interesting because it is to us that these American or other companies want to sell products. We don’t need to bridge our social and environmental standards in order to have these ⁇ on our soil, or to keep them, because we are a strong market. We must be proud as Europeans to have these social and environmental standards alongside these incredible consumers for these companies.

What is this TTIP? It is a trade agreement, which has a political purpose, even though it is an economic agreement. He wants to give an advantage to the investor who, in fact, is a company. Advantage over whom? Simply on citizens, and this through two mechanisms: first, private arbitration, the ISDS clause that became the ICS; second, regulatory cooperation.

I would like to refer to the private arbitration system and ISDS. by Mr. Reynders and Ms. Malmström are right, as are some majority colleagues: if TTIP was negotiated, signed and then ratified, it will not overnight transform our economy, nor all our standards, laws, regulations, European directives. But with these two mechanisms, private arbitration and regulatory cooperation, the TTIP will gradually break down the standards that we have patiently built or the future standards that we may consider equipping us with. By what mechanisms? Knowing that a social and environmental rule could have an impact on the expected profits for an investor, the state or federal entity, as well as the European Union or the United States, might say, “If I take this rule, I risk being attacked before a private arbitration court and, therefore, either have to revise my rule or pay colossal fines.”

The private arbitration system, whether through the former fully arbitration system or through the International Court of Arbitration, will have a preventative effect of panic fear of federal entities and states of the European Union to legislate in the sense of regulating and protecting both consumers and the environment and workers.

Regulatory cooperation is another phenomenon. Of course, the European Union and the United States will continue to legislate. But if you consult with your business partner, namely for the European Union, the United States, before taking a standard, to check if it matches the objectives of investor protection, necessarily, future standards will systematically go in the same direction and prioritize the economic interests of large multinationals, who care to protect their investments and not to protect the health of workers, the health of citizens and the environment.

A candidate for the U.S. presidential election, Hillary Clinton, spoke of TTIP as an economic NATO. We do not need a NATO but a Europe: an Economic Europe, a Social Europe, an Environmental Europe.

The problem of the European Union today, but also of its Member States and Regions, and ⁇ in Wallonia and Brussels, is job creation. The goal of TTIP is to create wealth. According to the Commission’s study, 545 euros per household. We create wealth, we do it. The GDP of the European Union is growing every year. The problem is the distribution of this wealth created among citizens, and that an economic activity can automatically create jobs.

Today, the European Union, after several decades of European integration, despite the opening of the market, has not created jobs. Mergers and acquisitions of ⁇ , mostly multinational, have resulted in the destruction of jobs. But the challenge, for the European Union, is to create jobs, to create localized economic activity, which creates localized employment.

We have submitted a single amendment that is not ideological, but that aims to enlighten the parliamentary debate. There is a new provision in the Treaty of Lisbon, in Article 218 on the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Article 218 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union allows any state, namely Belgium, to ask the Court of Justice of the European Union for an opinion on a text that has not yet been signed but is being consolidated.

One day, in case of agreement, the TTIP will be a consolidated text that can be the subject of an opinion of the European Court of Justice if Belgium so requests. It is not about saying a priori that it will be contrary to European law, to the European Convention on Human Rights, because, obviously, a large number of actors consider that the arbitration system is contrary to fundamental rights, since it privileges multinational companies over citizens and the environment.

However, let us admit that this is not the case! Dear colleagues of the majority, let it be verified by a neutral body, a recognized body, a legal body recognized by all, namely the European Court of Justice! This is the purpose of the amendment. De Vriendt and I have filed and that the Ecolo-Groen group offers you: ask for an opinion, which the Lisbon Treaty allows you.

We did not talk much about CETA, but it is also part of our discussion, as some of the nine resolutions presented today talk about the treaty with Canada. The treaty with Canada has been negotiated and the text is under review. I heard Ms. Onkelinx say that the Regions, in any case the Walloon Region, would oppose the state. Now the text is negotiated, Mrs. Onkelinx. Also, I urge you to ask your regional colleagues to refuse what is called in legal language the ius tractati to Mr. and Reynders. The latter will be called, in the coming weeks, to sign this treaty with Canada. That Mr. Magnetic and M. Vervoort in Brussels does not give this ius tractati to Mr. Reynders so that he cannot sign, on behalf of Belgium and its federal entities, the treaty with Canada.

I will conclude with two thoughts. If TTIP was the radiant future so praised by colleagues in the majority, then the consolidated text we are invited to go to read in a safe room in Foreign Affairs would not be there. He would be here and we could get acquainted with him. If the colleagues of the majority were not afraid of the content of the text, it would be open to the public and to parliamentarians, to civil society. Today, unfortunately, this text is locked in a safe.

Previous agreements have been negotiated long and hard. The AMI was mentioned, but also the ACTA Treaty, which aimed at combating counterfeiting at the international level and which seriously violated the fundamental principle of respect for privacy.

Both agreements are dead. Like TTIP, these are “Dracula” agreements. Dracula is a vampire who sucks blood. I think the TTIP sucks the blood of our SMEs, our fellow citizens and the energy of the European Union. As soon as reality comes to light, as today and in many citizens’ gatherings, you see this vampire die. Let’s kill TTIP and let’s make Europe live!

Mr. Speaker, dear colleagues, who said about TTIP: “I’m worried”?

by Richard Miller.

by Richard Miller. Excellent response from Mr. Laaouej to! This is what he was forced to say. I think Mr. should tighten the ranks. If you are apologizing Mr. Miller begins to sow doubts. If a liberal and right-wing party like MR begins to worry about TTIP, what to say about others?

I will not be too long, Mr. President.

Mr. Van Hees, this was obviously a rhetorical trick. I said, "I am worried" so that everyone will listen to me and then express the liberal word.

I will not surprise you – and you may have read our resolution proposals in this regard – by telling you that TTIP or CETA are not really our cup of tea. Indeed, these free trade treaties pose a threat to our social achievements as well as to health and environmental standards and, ultimately, to our democratic rights.

These are powerful leverages that the European and American governments want to put in the hands of multinationals in order to allow them to blow down regulations, improve their competitive position and generate profits. It is estimated that 850 million people are affected by this treaty.

What are the problems of this treaty? First, its social, environmental and health consequences. Concretely, these two treaties threaten labour rights, collective agreements, public services, the possibilities of regulating public procurement, our health system, our social protection system. The reciprocity has recently been triggering the alarm because these treaties question the ability of States to decide how they organize and manage compulsory health insurance and supplementary insurance.

On the environmental level, these treaties can be used by multinational fossil industry companies to protect their interests and prevent the energy transition. They are also opening the door to shale gas in Europe. If we were consistent with the commitments made at COP21, that would already be enough to bury the TTIP.

There is also this discussion about chlorinated chicken, beef with hormones, GMOs. We are told that this is the poison of the associative world. When we go to the EU’s “propaganda” website on this subject, the FAQ, we are told that there is no problem, that there is no risk. We are told, for example, that hormone-fed beef is banned in the European Union, that the TTIP will not change anything. You have to believe them on word. On GMOs, it is not said that it is forbidden but it is said that the European GMO rules will not be changed. I take note.

The EU says the rules on GMOs will not be changed. To dance tango, you have to be two, but here, the second partner is the United States. Those who tell us that there will be no problem for GMOs should not only be interested in what the European Union says but also what the United States says. I don’t hear anyone from the majority talk about the U.S. position on GMOs. What is their position?

Republican Senator John Thune said: “It will be difficult to pass the TTIP unless we offer guarantees to American farmers on the authorization of biotechnology products.” What are biotechnology products in agriculture? Take for example GMOs. What do you read in the media later than yesterday? Disagreement between the United States and Europe over GMOs. Do you hear it? I take good note of the European position, but ⁇ the American position should also be taken into account. In this iron arm, who will win?

You tell us that there is no problem for GMOs. Look at the press, and you will see exactly the opposite: big problem on GMOs. Imagine that this does not happen at this stage; afterwards, it is entirely possible in the mechanism of regulatory cooperation, later, to open the door to GMOs. Even where the supporters of TTIP seem to have a strong and unshakable position, we dig a little, we will see a little behind the lacquer, and we realize that all theories of the majority collapse.

I will not repeat what I said before. and Miller. The UCM says the Transatlantic Treaty is very dangerous. The UCM, I am happy, realizes, which unfortunately does not happen often enough, that the interests of SMEs and those of multinationals are not the same. I am pleased to see that the UCM is aware of this reality. When I confront Mr. Miller on the UCM position against TTIP, he replies to me that it was before, that now, guarantees have been taken in favour of SMEs, and that it will go better. Mr. Miller, have you managed to convince the UCM to change its position? I haven’t seen anything like this lately. You have not finished, but I think it will be hard, Mr. Miller. You will need a lot of valid arguments. I’m not sure that those you’ve developed here will be enough to convince them. It was a bit mediocre.

The issues of democracy are also questionable in this treaty. How can power be transferred to multinationals? There are two mechanisms in particular: the regulatory cooperation mechanism, of which I just talked about GMOs, and the arbitration courts. It is one of the victories of the citizen movement that it has pushed the negotiators back on certain points, for example on the famous ISDS which consisted in taking power from the judiciary for the benefit of private courts.

It is a victory, but it is still very limited as all we have done is to replace one system with another that is not better: the ICS. The German judiciary has strongly opposed both ISDS and its replacement. They say that these are special courts, that this is the wrong way to guarantee legal certainty and security. They say that “the Commission’s proposal also raises serious concerns about the independence of judges, ranging from the lack of financial independence to the ambiguity of selection criteria.” In this context, the ICS looks more like a permanent arbitration court than an international court.”

The third big problem with this treaty: transparency. This transparency was null at first. Again, the citizen movement has managed, through mobilization, to gain some victories, but these are still very limited because transparency is still very homeopathic. When it is read in the majority resolution that the latter is committed to transparency on TTIP, I do not see how she can be satisfied with the current situation.

We had a debate in a committee, a debate that also prompted me to go to this famous reading room that was presented to us as the miracle of transparency. What a miracle, indeed! A few MEPs are allowed access to these texts while there are 850 million people who are deprived of them, yet affected because they are affected in their daily lives. Mr. Flahaux has been there; it is very good! I went there before him. If I had not been there, I wonder even if he would have been there! Two hours of beaches a week. It is obligatory to go there alone, without a collaborator, without a specialist to help us in the reading or understanding of all the traps hidden in these texts. We go there naked, at least without a dictionary, without internet access, without a computer, without reference documents.

There was no MP, but a lady was in charge of monitoring us all the time. We could not even go to the bathroom.

I want to tell you about my experience, Mr. Fleming. by Mr. Miller can confirm that, as he was also present. A woman was constantly watching us. It was impossible to get out of the room. Documents are stored in a safe. It is also not possible to have a notepad. Colored sheets were placed to distinguish them.

The few MEPs who went to consult the aforementioned documents are the absurd demonstration that transparency is not real. But the worst thing is the document that one must sign and in which one undertakes not to disclose anything of what one has read. In terms of democracy, this is extraordinary. We are putting all the brakes to prevent us from actually accessing these documents. And once all the dams have been crossed and a questionable item has been found, one cannot use it because we have signed this document.

The question is what we want to hide. If there was nothing to hide, why ⁇ ’t there be total transparency? If this TTIP is so wonderful, why not share it with the 850 million people who will benefit from it, who will see their lives fundamentally change and who will live in a haven of happiness? Why not tell them the good news by posting the text on the internet? We can ask the question.

While 850 million people do not have access to the Treaty, the consolidated text, others have access to it and even have quite substantial means of pressure. I’m talking about employers lobbies. Of the 560 lobbyists the EU officials discussed with, 520 are leading employers. In other words, 92% of the lobbyists encountered belong to large multinationals and only 4% belong to democratic consumer, environmental and other associations. Thus, those who represent the 850 million citizens were entitled to 4% of the meetings and the richest 1% who represent multinationals were entitled to 92% of the meetings. That gives the tone.

One point I would like to address is the question of CETA, which is more advanced than TTIP. CETA is a bit of the demonstration by the absurdity that the majority’s resolution is a cat’s pit, it’s the wind. In your majority resolution, it is stated that it is necessary to ensure that foreign investors are not subject to any discrimination or favorable treatment compared to domestic investors. The ISDS system does not guarantee this non-discrimination.

In your resolution, you want the exclusion from the scope of negotiations of public services, such as health, social services, social security systems, education and water supply. They are not excluded from CETA. The evidence is that some countries have specifically placed their railway or national social security services on the list of exemptions in the Treaty. But why would they have done so if the CETA did not threaten these public services?

Another last example. You say in your resolution that it is necessary to ensure that regulatory cooperation does not undermine the competence and responsibility of States and the European Union to legislate. BUT, BUSINESSEUROPE and the US Chamber of Commerce, the two lobbies that are really behind TTIP, compare this system of regulatory cooperation I talked about, contained in the CETA, to a means of co-writing regulations. You have heard: the lobbies of multinationals say that they will have the power to co-write regulations.

If you were consistent with your proposal for a resolution, colleagues of the majority, you ⁇ ’t be able to ratify CETA. On the other hand, you could easily vote the PTB resolution on CETA. It is not too late, the vote has not yet taken place.

I have to end with hope. There is hope in this case. The only progress achieved so far in the TTIP dossier, weak progress, completely insufficient progress, but progress yet, we owe it to the citizen movement, to the mobilization of people. The people do not want these treaties. The European Citizens’ Initiative Against TTIP has gathered more than 3.2 million signatures.

It is the most popular initiative that has ever existed in Europe. She is against this TTIP that the majority supports today. C'est vraiment un signe d'espoir car, visiblement les meilleurs arguments que l'on peut développer ici, ne suffisent pas à vous convaincre. You remain in your role as the relay of multinationals. This is a role that we see also at the level of your national policy. It is not so surprising that this. You do not follow the UCM. Vous rendez-vous compte – et vous m'adresse entre autres au MR qui a ce fonds électoral au niveau des PME – que vous ne commencez à ne plus faire illusion? Attention to the upcoming elections! Imaginez-vous si l'UCM donne comme consigne de ne pas voter pour le MR car il a soutenu le TTIP! Reflections at the moment of voting! And the farmers!

Mr. Van Hees, I cannot interrupt Mrs. Fonck, so I abstain from speaking.

I conclude by saying the positive aspect that I see: it is this incredible mobilization that is growing and that has already allowed to delay the conclusion of TTIP by several months and even several years. Initially, it was planned for this year. It is not a few amendments to the Treaty that can change it because what is in question is the DNA of this TTIP. It must be rejected globally because it is the logic of profit and the abandonment of democracy to multinationals that are the DNA of this Treaty. This truth, you will have to end up hearing it. If you do not hear it from the few MPs who transmit the message to you, you will hear it from the population that, increasingly, organizes itself against this unacceptable Treaty that organizes the dictatorship of multinationals. I have finished, my colleagues.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister, dear colleagues, I would therefore like to speak in addition to my group leader – as she announced – on the more specific but yet essential question of the arbitration tribunals that are included in both CETA and TTIP.

Following fierce and numerous criticism from civil society and progressive forces about private arbitration mechanisms (ISDS), the European Commission has developed a new framework called ICS. Some welcomed this, and among the majority, as, indeed, the request 2.c of your resolution says: "to be attentive to concerns concerning in particular the possible inclusion of provisions relating to the ICS in the agreement and, in this light, to support the European Commission's proposal of 16 September 2015 on a new transparent system for settling disputes between investors and states: the investment judicial system."

You may be wondering if you understand well what you are asking to support. Don’t worry, my colleagues, we are very careful. Neither the proposed procedure for the appointment of the ICC judges nor their status meet the international requirements to guarantee the independence of the courts.

As such, the ICS appears, not as an international court, but rather as a permanent arbitration court.

With regard to the EU-Canada Agreement concluded in September 2014 with an ISDS in its more traditional version, the Commission has taken advantage of the agreement’s legal clearance period to negotiate with the Canadian Government a new chapter on investment protection. This new chapter contains the main elements of the ICS framework. On 29 February, the Commission announced the end of the legal clearance of CETA and the effective replacement of ISDS by this new model.

The ICS was presented by the Commission as the end of the ISDS system and as a court guarantor of the right of states to regulate and with more safeguards, such as the appeal mechanism. But despite the announcement effect, independent experts agree that ICS remains, in essence, as dangerous as ISDS. Even worse, it would institutionalize arbitration by elevating it to the title of court.

No, the ICS is therefore in no way the end of the ISDS system but, on the contrary, the current proposal contributes to its perpetuation. The Commission uses the terms “court” and “judges”, but these are not accompanied by the institutional safeguards inherent in these concepts. In fact, judges continue to have financial interests. They are paid depending on the duration of the case and in a context where only foreign investors can initiate cases. And, on the other hand, there is no prohibition for them to also assume the quality of arbitrator.

So, even reformed, for my group, a parallel system is neither necessary nor desirable in TTIP or CETA.

The Commission’s proposal consolidates the expansion of ISDS in countries with developed judicial systems. Special privileges continue to be granted to large foreign investors without providing any evidence of the profits that this would bring for the general interest. No evidence shows systemic gaps in U.S. or European courts that would effectively justify a system for foreign investors.

Furthermore, this system is ⁇ not in the benefit of SMEs; procedural costs far outweigh potential gains for SMEs. Or shouldn’t we just defend those SMEs on which the Belgian economic fabric is based?

So you have visibly chosen your camp, when it is known that ISDS presupposes a market distortion in favor of large foreign investments and at the disadvantage of domestic and small.

Finally – and this is an essential point – the right to regulate states is absolutely not guaranteed. This has already been recalled during the debate: the judiciary sector is concerned. As early as the end of 2015, the European Association of Magistrates had gone out criticising the ICS mechanism. The ISDS has also, already in the past, been the subject of criticism by the German judiciary. And more recently, the German Magistrates’ Association (DRB) has strongly criticized the ICS, relying in particular on the absence of legal basis and the non-necessity of such a court. Because we are not talking about small states with unstable legal structures, we are talking about the European Union, Canada and the United States. Wouldn’t our courts be good enough for investors? Should these latter escape the justice that is ours, we poor mortals?

Of course, we must support our companies in export, without any ambiguity, but not in any way, especially on the back of our country’s ability to legislate and regulate. This is what is being offered to us today.

The Commission proposal is based on the presumption that national courts are not capable of protecting foreign investors. The latter must therefore not justify why they use ISDS without first exhausting the national path. Here is another exclusive privilege granted to foreign investors!

Belgium could, however, change its position on this issue without pioneering and without taking unnecessary risks for Belgian investors. Many countries have already undergone and understood the risks. The risks are concrete, as we have already demonstrated in discussions with the Minister of Finance. I will only cite an example: the action carried out by the Chinese insurer Ping An in contest of the dismantling of Fortis, which effectively resulted in a favorable decision for the Belgian state but will nevertheless cost the Belgian taxpayers some 3.5 million euros in honoraries and lawyer fees. The procedure before a World Bank arbitration tribunal was based on a Belgian-Chinese investment protection treaty.

Finally, my dear colleagues, when I speak of ISDS or its variants, I also think – we have already debated – of the question of our health care and our mutualties. Health is neither a product nor a commodity, but a right to which every citizen must have access. And as part of the TTIP negotiations, concerns are high in this matter; it has already been said.

For my group, health and public interest services should clearly be excluded from these negotiations – regardless of how they are funded. However, ISDS or ICS constitute undisputed threats to health care as they are organized in Belgium. In fact, a private company may consider that this is a distortion of competition.

I’m talking about health care, social services and social security systems as well as how they are organized and funded. The right of States to define their health policies, the organization, financing and management of health services and medical care shall not be restricted. We fear, relaying the fears of mutualists, that these treaties do not de facto cause an unacceptable merchandising of health care insofar as the principles of the free market would be applied to them in a neoliberal logic aimed solely at maximizing profits.

We therefore fear that this treaty simply undermines our social and mutualist model while, as some claim, it has enabled us to better resist the crisis.

I hope that, through this modest intervention, I have at least been able to draw your attention. In any case, you cannot say that we will not have warned you before going to vote. We have submitted an amendment that includes the whole of our text, which is clearly better than the one proposed by the majority.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker. Indeed, we are putting our finger on what may be our vision of the future of Europe.

In short, this debate on the Transatlantic Treaty has a great merit, that of referring us to our own responsibilities as Europeans. Europe is ⁇ more at the foot of the wall than the United States.

I would like to say a few words about the majority resolution. Not everything is condemned. Far from there! Some aspects deserve consideration. But this resolution would not exist if the majority itself was not suspicious of the ongoing process. Reading the majority resolution, even if it is inaccurate or unsatisfactory in certain aspects, is an expression of concern about what is being negotiated. The concerns are very many even though the demands are not always very strong. And if the demands really are what you say, then you should almost question the negotiation mandate given at the time by the previous government. If you were logical, you should go so far. Indeed, a number of points that appear in your resolution are obviously not in the mandate you gave at the time when the previous government authorized the start of the negotiation. There is a small problem of cohesion.

Mr Maingain, it is always a pleasure to talk with you. To correct you – and I think I can do it on behalf of the majority – I would not speak of worry but of vigilance. I share with you the concern of the accuracy of the French language. It is therefore the vigilance that we express in the resolution proposal we submit today. In addition, we answer questions that also arise within civil society and it is legitimate to do so. This is why we recently conducted this exercise in the Committee on Foreign Relations.

Second, I would like to highlight the need to understand that our mandate respects that which was engaged in the previous legislature. You remember it in part, Mr. Maingain. But the Socialist Party should especially remember this. Let us think of the major themes of the mandate that was given in advance of the negotiations for the European Union and to start the negotiations with the United States. I think everyone could get there with a little bit of goodwill, Mrs. Onkelinx.

I would like to thank Mrs. Jadin for her search for accuracy in the French language. Can I help? I’m talking about worry, you’re talking about vigilance. Per ⁇ one could agree by saying that we have the same “living concern.”

These are all style exercises. More fundamentally, I cannot understand those who agree to go to the confidential room of the Parliament or the European Commission. I cannot accept, in relation to the status of parliamentarians, what is our responsibility in democratic control, that we are bound to such humiliating conditions in the exercise of our responsibilities.

I say it very frankly: I will never put my feet in this place! This is contrary to the conception that I have of the exercise of my function.

I cannot understand that there is no much stronger protest from all parliamentary assemblies over this diminutio capitis of our prerogatives.

I will not argue. I just want to give you an example that has all its importance: the issue of arms exports. In Région wallonne, you can consult files in a closed office and you can not communicate the information because it is a trade agreement. This exists, it is a provision that is not at all exceptional.

I am not saying that it is exceptional. I am not saying that the precedent you invoke calls to convince me to accept this. Furthermore, it can still be discussed within the framework of trade agreements that target a specific sector of activity with companies that are directly affected and are individualized in terms of identification. Here, we are not linked to a specific sector of activity, with companies namely cited in the draft treaty. We are not there.

Of course, in a number of deliberative assemblies, a degree of confidentiality is ensured when privacy or individual rights may be compromised, but we are not there in the discussion of this treaty. I think comparison is not right in this case.

It must be said that all this was possible only because there was a collective pressure, even though some consider it a sufficient advance. This was not the initial design. I read the brochure with great attention and I acknowledge that the European Commissioner, Ms. Malmström, is undoubtedly of high quality.

She just released a brochure saying: “In order for the agreement to keep its promises, it must be as transparent and open as possible and involve all stakeholders involved.” Lovely intention ! But I have no problem in accepting that the European Commission takes a time of confidential negotiation. I can very well conceive it. However, it will not be necessary to say that because of the mandate, we are in any way bound by the conclusions of this negotiation. Far from there! And it is also not because some of us will have been able to consult the documents that we will be linked in anything!

When I look through this brochure by Ms. Malmström, it seems to me very revealing the heart of the debate. On each chapter, it concludes with sensitive or controversial questions. There is no chapter, where there is no, indeed, with a limited information concern, a point on what poses problem. The problem is the sovereignty of Europe. This is the capacity for Europe, sector by sector, to be able to establish standards possibly more demanding than those currently in force.

Ms Malmström, in this brochure, suggests that the European Union will not only be able to continue to maintain its current regulations, but also to continue to increase its level of standard requirements. This is the heart of the negotiation. I am not prejudicing. We are looking forward to the final version of the text. But fundamentally, it will be necessary to know to what extent, by the Treaty, Europe will be limited in the exercise of its sovereignty to establish more demanding standards for a number of sectors of activity or not. We will check!

We will check whether Europe retains its full legislative powers in a number of sectors or not. That is the real problem for me!

If this is not the case and if we are subject, in one way or another, to a binding opinion of the Regulatory Cooperation Forum – to take the terms of the texts – which will nevertheless be a place of extraordinary lobby – this is part of the game of all preparations of legislative or regulatory texts – if the European instances are bound in any way by a binding procedure resulting from a opinion of this Forum, then we will have lost the sovereignty of Europe and we will have put a brake on the integration of the latter.

Pierre Defraigne is right to ask the question of whether we are in the right operational time to make this agreement. It is right to ask ourselves whether we must not first succeed in European integration before going further on this chapter. It is not about rejecting the principle of negotiating with the United States or any other set of the world on trade agreements. The question is whether, today, the balance in the strength ratio is fair enough with regard to Europe to allow it to be a trading partner with all the same weapons as the United States. This is the real question.

I do not prejudice. We are waiting for the outcome of the negotiations. I try to know. But I will not venture into dark places where I would be bound to a duty of confidentiality when I could discover aspects so contrary to what I can estimate to be consistent with my vision of Europe that I could not keep silent.

Therefore, I will not be in the camp of those who say that European negotiators are merely the marionettes of multinationals because these statements are excessive, despicable and in no way justified in their respect. Nor will I be in the camp of those who believe that trade is the only virtue of ensuring economic growth. This is not true, given a number of realities, especially the intra-European reality.

The Union of the Middle Class has issued criticisms to which one should not be indifferent. It is also true that, in your resolution, you are not very generous for the future of the middle class. Your only concern is to advocate for the conduct of a study that tends to create, within the European Union, a compensation mechanism for SMEs. Simply funding a study is not very demanding in defending the interests of the middle classes or SMEs in the European Union. However, this is ⁇ a pleasure for those who have introduced this proposal.

More fundamentally, I believe that in fact, there will be a risk of economic concentration to the advantage of certain sectors of activity that will be able to draw some profit from these treaties, of course. But the imbalance of the economic fabric in Europe will intensify at the expense of very small and small enterprises. I understand the concerns of the Union of Middle Classes in our country. It will not be enough to ask for a study to find out how to offset the disadvantages.

Therefore, I am circumspect, cautious, reserved and I wait to know the conclusions before making a final opinion, because I judge only on the basis of certain texts. I thank you.

There are no other speakers, unless the government still asks for the word in connection with these resolutions.

Mr. Speaker, first and foremost, I would like to thank all the political groups, not just for today’s very short debate, compared to the very long conversations during the many committee meetings with hearings and discussions between the political groups.

It is very good to get some recommendations from Parliament. The Government will, as always, with great attention not only read all the recommendations of the House in the draft resolution, but also try to indicate their follow-up. I think it is very useful to say that.

The second element. I would like to reaffirm what we have done in the past few years in terms of transparency in this debate. I also note that this demand for transparency is very little present for many other negotiations that have taken place or are ongoing. We have long requested, on behalf of the Belgian government, that the Commission’s negotiating mandate be published. We finally got this publication. We demanded that the European positions be published. They are available on the website of the European Commission, not only for parliamentarians, but for all citizens who wish to get acquainted with them.

As for the reading rooms that were opened at the request of a number of parliamentarians, starting at the European level, what we have achieved is that classified negotiation documents on the US side are accessible. One may obviously not want to read them, but if one wants to disclose them, the Americans will simply not accept more than they are made available to all those who, however, participate in the work of parliaments. We are probably one of the first countries to organize these reading rooms for a very large number of parliamentarians. However, you may not want to have access to classified documents.

By the way, I asked the European Commissioner not only to come to the House, but also to the regional parliaments. She responded to my request. I would like to take the opportunity to thank Ms. Malmström in Parliament for the cooperation with all the assemblies in Belgium, the Federal Parliament and the Parliaments of the Regions and the Communities. This was not so obvious, but it was very useful for everyone.

Finally, I would like to point out that the negotiations, as many have said, are ongoing. Therefore, we are not discussing a treaty, but rounds of negotiation. I will simply point out that even when negotiations are very successful, such as with Canada – which were initially requested by Quebec – it is still possible to improve the texts. Thus, there is no longer any ISDS clause in the final version of CETA, because we have integrated the new arrangement proposed by the European Commission, which is considerably better in my opinion – but we can diverged on this point.

In any case, we will take into account all the recommendations that will be adopted by Parliament. Of course, it will be up to the various relevant assemblies to decide on a definitive text. When the negotiations are completed – and I will not take a decision today on their content – I have told Commissioner Malmström that it will only be a vote in favour of a final text if it achieves the objectives we have set forth since the beginning of the negotiation. Therefore, there is no reason to think that one could buy, in any way, a cat in a bag. It will be on the basis of the outcome of a negotiation that governments and, of course, parliaments will decide.

I would like to highlight one point in what Mr. The Minister . Regarding the transparency – or rather the lack of transparency – of the reading rooms, he simply told us that the United States did not want it. Thus, the TTIP is not even adopted yet that, already, dictates that prevent transparency are imposed on us. This seems to me to be a very bad augur.

Does anyone ask for the word? ( not )