Opponents of sprawling and secretive international agreements won a significant victory today when U.S. Senators voted to block the advancement of its Fast Track trade bill . The legislation would have allowed massive undemocratic trade deals like
the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Trans-atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) to be rushed through to ratification, and legitimized the nontransparent and corporate-dominated negotiations proposing restrictive digital regulations
that threaten the Internet and users' rights.
EFF is just one of several hundred organizations organizing to stop Fast Track for TPP and TTIP, and our members alone sent tens of thousands of emails, phone calls, and tweets to lawmakers to come out
against this legislation. TPP proponents needed 60 votes to proceed with a debate on Fast Track and came up short by only eight. That single-digit shortfall shows why it was so crucial that we all flooded our representatives with messages that Internet
regulations do not belong in these backroom deals.
Today is not the end of the Fast Track fight. Despite the huge blow to their efforts, TPP and TTIP proponents will not back down easily. President Obama has already blasted his mailing lists to
try and win more support for the next big push to pass the bill. It's likely a new version would still fall far short of addressing the secrecy of negotiations. But we can come away from this news empowered and energized because it's a clear sign that
we're succeeding at convincing Congress to come out against these international corporate deals.
Update: U-turn
15th May 2015. See
article from eff.org
The U.S. Senate advanced the Fast Track bill today in a rushed vote following a slew of concessions made to swing Democrats who had voted to block it earlier this week . The setback on Tuesday could have forced proponents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership
(TPP), the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), and other secretive, anti-user trade agreements to go back to the drawing board to come up with a new bill. Unfortunately, Senate leaders were able to get around this impasse within 48
hours by agreeing to let Democrats vote on some other trade-enforcement measures first before holding the vote on Fast Track.
Now the Senate will go on to debate and vote on the bill, likely within the coming week--essentially putting this
legislation on its own fast track to congressional approval. We have little confidence that the Senate would improve the bill enough to ever remedy the nontransparent, corporate-dominated process of trade negotiations. This is why we need to turn our
attention to representatives.
There is a better chance that Fast Track can be stopped in the House , where proportionally more lawmakers have expressed their opposition to the bill than in the Senate. But much of the representatives' resistance is
based on labor, environment, and currency manipulation concerns, and not on the provisions that would impact users' rights. The White House and other proponents of TPP may be willing to make some weak compromises on those non-tech issues, but they will
likely do nothing to address the restrictive digital regulations that will come with these trade deals, nor even fix the secrecy that have led to these bad terms.
Update: U-turn
27th May 2015. See
article from eff.org
The Senate passed a bill Friday night to put the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) on the Fast Track to approval . Its passage followed a series of stops and starts --an indication that this legislation was nearly too rife with controversy to pass. But
after a series of deals and calls from corporate executives , senators ultimately swallowed their criticism and accepted the measure. If this bill ends up passing both chambers of Congress, that means the White House can rush the TPP through to
congressional ratification, with lawmakers unable to fully debate or even amend agreements that have been negotiated entirely in secret. On the plus side, all of these delays in the Senate has led other TPP partners to delay any further negotiations on
the trade agreement until Fast Track is approved by Congress.
So the fight now starts in the House, where proponents of secret trade deals still lack the votes to pass the bill. But the White House and other TPP proponents are
fiercely determined to garner enough support among representatives to pass the bill, in order to give themselves almost unilateral power to enact extreme digital regulations in secret. We cannot let that happen.
In the House, we
still have a chance to block the passage of Fast Track. That's why we are asking people in the U.S. to meet with their representatives and staff to nudge them to make the right decision.
See
US campaign against TPP from act.eff.org
