A postnational marketplace: negotiating the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)

Abstract

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the new trade agreement between the EU and the US, has a great ambition: not only if measured by the size of the emergent market, but also the potential spill over of its regulatory standards to the global level. The cooperation between the partners is envisaged on an ongoing basis in a range of fields-such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, public procurement or motor vehicles. The TTIP differs from the standard trade agreements. Not only by the size of the market it intends to create, or the potential spill over effect of its regulation, but foremost by the level of envisaged institutionalisation. While the negotiations themselves are ambitious in its scope, the most contentious and salient issues will be left as a future agenda to the new institutions of the TTIP, such as the Regulatory Cooperation Council with rule-making capacity. This raises a number of questions. First whether this agreement may be legitimately classified as a conventional international trade instrument at all, not least for the purposes of the procedures that apply to its approval and ratification, pursuant to Article 218 TFEU. Secondly, and more fundamentally, it poses the question as to who sets the normative agenda for these far-reaching negotiations and how this specific agenda reflects EU values and standards as an aspiring democracy. The paper considers who has set the normative agenda in the negotiation of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), reflecting upon both the actors and processes thereof. We focus on the questions of 1) participation in crafting the TTIP, 2) the role of knowledge in justifying this enterprise, 3) the objectives of the TTIP and 4) the institutions that should underpin it. We argue that the parliamentary legitimation, including approval and information rights, are inadequate in light of the institutionalisation processes which forms the goal of the TTIP.