One of the major concerns of the TTIP is the Investor State Dispute Settlements, which allows US investors to be able to sue EU Member States in cases where their investment has been diminished due to regulatory changes made in the public interest (1). This is corporatocracy at its finest.

Interesting, the canonical examples have been removed from the Wikipedia TTIP article.

The first example is Vattenfall vs. Germany. The former, an energy provider, sued and won against the latter, for the decision to phase out nuclear energy.

The second is Philip Morris vs. Australia, because of the decision to require plain packaging on tobacco products.

I can't certainly argue against an agreement made against two parties, but the problem here is that TTIP is made in secret, between arguably corrupted representatives of populations which wouldn't certainly agree with such decisions.

(1)=I've rephrased this from http://blogg.uio.no/jus/smr/multirights/content/the-ttip-inv...

>The first example is Vattenfall vs. Germany. The former, an energy provider, sued and won against the latter, for the decision to phase out nuclear energy.

Vattenfall suing the German state makes sense considering the business impact the change had. Add to that, Vattenfall is wholly owned by the Swedish state so the TTIP should have no impact what so ever on their dealings.

Thanks! I'm signed up. Philip Morris vs. Australia sounds like it should be satire :(

There is a nicely explained article about the potential threat to democracy that is TTIP: http://mondediplo.com/2013/12/02tafta. Incidently techdirt just ran an article on how Bolivia broke their own trade agreement with similar clauses: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140712/10031927860/boliv...

Thanks, very informative - I see why this is a problem now!