On 14 December 2013, Ecologic Institute's Christiane Gerstetter discussed the potential impact of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) on environmental regulation. She identified real risks for the future regulatory freedom of the involved parties if certain clauses currently under discussion were to be agreed upon. In conclusion, she found the risks posed by TTIP from an environmental point of view to be greater than potential benefits. The presentation is available for download.
In her presentation, Christiane focused on the way that TTIP could limit future regulatory space of the parties. To this end, she analysed the environment related provisions of the leaked EU Commission's negotiation mandate. She also discussed whether environmentally beneficial norms could be included in the agreement, e.g. on the removal of environmentally harmful subsidies or an US commitment to ratify certain multilateral agreements. However, she considered the chances of these ideas being realized as slim and stressed that for objectives such as the harmonization of technical standards a less far-reaching agreement would suffice.
The presentation was delivered as part of the conference "TTIP – Hope or Hype? A Look at the Proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership", organized by the Heidelberg Center for American Studies.
The conference brought together scholars, mainly economists, from the US, German and other EU countries to discuss the potential impact and future of TTIP, currently being negotiated between the EU and the US.