uk.news.yahoo.com/comment/talking-politics/eu-us-treaty-overrules-westminster-094235115.html#Mrd2rB8
"It's called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Inside it is an innocuous-sounding provision called the 'investor-state dispute settlement'. This allows private companies to sue nation states if they feel a law lost them money on their investment.
Let's say a future government decides, not unreasonably, that the involvement of US firms in the NHS is a bad idea. Each and every one of them will now be able to launch expensive legal battles, potentially for billions of pounds, in the name of foregone profits.
If passed it would enforce privatisation in international politics, making it financially ruinous for EU countries or the US to introduce any legislation which was not in the interests of corporations."
Sounds like a tory wet dream, though new labour and the fib dems support it wholeheartedly.
So tobacco firms could sue the government for not allowing filterless, high tar, cigarettes ( they are rather keen on them in America apparently). Or for taxing them too highly, thus reducing sales and their profits. Oil firms could sue the government for refusing permission to turn the Lake District into a big industrialised oil field. Waste collection firms could sue the government for collecting bins, thus reducing their profits. Drug firms could sue the NHS for not prescribing ludicrously expensive drugs...
If you think this sounds like something out of science fiction, one of those films where Robocop defeats the evil corporation, then you may wish to re-think your support for the EU.
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11 replies
Spinflight · 03/03/2014 00:25
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