{"id":8973,"date":"2015-06-10T06:03:45","date_gmt":"2015-06-10T11:03:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=8973"},"modified":"2015-06-10T06:03:45","modified_gmt":"2015-06-10T11:03:45","slug":"democracy-on-hold-president-of-european-parliament-suspends-vote-on-secretive-u-s-eu-trade-pact-as-tide-turns-against-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=8973","title":{"rendered":"Democracy on Hold: President of European Parliament Suspends Vote on Secretive U.S.-EU Trade Pact as Tide Turns Against It"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2015\/06\/09\/democracy-on-hold-president-of-european-parliament-suspends-vote-on-secretive-u-s-eu-trade-pact-as-tide-turns-against-it-ttip\/\" target=\"_blank\">Democracy on Hold: President of European Parliament Suspends Vote on Secretive U.S.-EU Trade Pact as Tide Turns Against It<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>Today was supposed to be a historic day \u2014 the day when hundreds of MEPs, representing\u00a0hundreds of millions of European citizens, were to finally get their say on the hugely contentious EU-US trade bill commonly known as TTIP. Granted, the result would not have been binding, but a no-vote would have represented a resounding slap in the face of the European Commission.<\/p>\n<p>Things began fairly auspiciously when, early on Tuesday,\u00a0<em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2015\/jun\/08\/meps-threaten-to-block-trade-deal-over-rights-to-regulate-carbon-emissions\" target=\"_blank\">The Guardian<\/a><\/em>\u00a0reported that dissension was growing in the ranks as MEPs threatened to block the trade deal unless it guaranteed states\u2019 rights to regulate over climate, health, and social laws. Now news is emerging that the President of the Parliament, Martin Schulz, has decided to postpone the vote altogether amidst fears that a majority of MEPs might reject the bill.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s more from the Spanish news site\u00a0<em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2015\/jun\/08\/meps-threaten-to-block-trade-deal-over-rights-to-regulate-carbon-emissions\" target=\"_blank\">El Diario<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The differences between the European People\u2019s Party (EPP) and the social democratic bloc on the issue of arbitration and especially the internal division among the socialists have led to the withdrawal of the report, although the official justification given by the President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz has been the huge number of amendments (over 200) proposed by the Committee on International Trade (INTA).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn view of the more than 200 amendments and requests for separate vote, President Schulz has decided, using the Rule 175 and after consulting the chairman of the Committee on International Trade (INTA), to postpone the vote\u201d. In fact, more than half of the amendments came from committee members fiercely opposed to the treaty (the European United Left and the Greens) and Schulz\u2019s last-minute decision was to head off the \u201cdanger\u201d that the TTIP would be defeated on Wednesday, according to parliamentary sources\u2026<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Democracy on Hold: President of European Parliament Suspends Vote on Secretive U.S.-EU Trade Pact as Tide Turns Against It Today was supposed to be a historic day \u2014 the day when hundreds of MEPs, representing\u00a0hundreds of millions of European citizens, were to finally get their say on the hugely contentious EU-US trade bill commonly known [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[6258,204,283,3771,6259,6257,1133,6260,1132],"class_list":["post-8973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-liberty","tag-committee-on-international-trade","tag-democracy","tag-european-parliament","tag-guardian","tag-inta","tag-meps","tag-transatlantic-trade-and-investment-partnership","tag-trde","tag-ttip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8973"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8974,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8973\/revisions\/8974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}