Choosing Europe or Choosing TTIP?: The European Union and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership

Abstract

This analysis presents a European view on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). It argues that the European Union (EU) needs agreement on TTIP more than the United States (US) both for economic and political reasons. Yet, a European anti-TTIP movement has coalesced that argues that the EU must ‘choose Europe or choose TTIP’: the latter threatens to ‘Americanize’ Europe and lead to lower standards of consumer and environmental protection. The choice is a false one but the EU has been late to refute it and it continues to negotiate internally on TTIP even as it negotiates with the US. The TTIP negotiations have also exposed the Union’s ‘strategic partnerships’ as ill-organized and ineffective. Nevertheless, TTIP offers the US and EU a chance to write rules on international economic exchange that could be exported to the global level at a time when a more multipolar international order is emerging.