In recent months popular mobilizations have taken place against the TTIP and CETA which was recently signed and against other interstate agreements in several European and North American countries, with the contribution of CPs, in which thousands of people have participated showing their rejection of them. As regards TTIP in particular, this is an agreement where negotiations seem presently to be in a temporary impasse, due to the fierce antagonisms. It was President Obama who, in his speech of February 12th, 2013, announced the opening of the TTIP negotiations, with previous meetings held under a cloud of secrecy. The EU willingly lends itself to this secrecy in its countless meetings with lobbyists and transnational companies whose secret documents will be guaranteed to remain secret for the next 30 years.
TTIP is an enormous economic plan for a unified Euro-Atlantic market for the capitalist economies on both sides of the Atlantic, increasing the profits of the major monopoly groups against and inimical to popular interests and needs. It takes the form of a Commercial Treaty, concealing a huge geo-strategic agreement of a capitalist character. It basically aims to abolish all obstacles that arise from the different specifications and commercial standards and other costly impediments and restrictions on capital in various sectors of the economy in the USA and EU, so that an even greater liberalization of the two markets can be achieved, i.e. to establish the greatest possible freedom of movement for capital, commodities and services. The anti-worker measures and the medieval labour conditions implemented in all the member states of the EU and in the USA will converge, with multiple consequences for the working class and poor popular strata. Capital is forming a “safe environment for investments”, seeking to safeguard guaranteed profits, either directly from its investments, or through compensation from states. In this manner the aim is to ensure the supremacy of the USA and EU, in their fierce competition with China and Russia.
The bourgeois classes of the countries of the EU and USA seek further cuts in public spending, privatizations and reversals of labour rights, the right to unionization, collective bargaining and equal salaries - in short, in order to guarantee the greatest possible exploitation of the working class. For this reason, the bourgeois class of every country in the framework of capitalist internationalization seeks to ensure the greatest possible profit for itself through interstate unions as well as through such transatlantic agreements with the temporary or more permanent concession of sovereign rights.
TTIP expects to create new options for the accumulative capitalist process opening the area of services and public contracts to the transnational companies, meaning a serious threat of privatization of public sectors such as health and education, with very serious consequences also for food products and the environment etc.
The peoples must not be misled by the “voices” of a number of NGOs and lobbies in the EU, which are connected with specific business interests and aim, by making noise and “criticizing” aspects of TTIP, to try to win favourable reforms and changes to the text of the agreement. This position is illustrated by the stance of the local government of Wallonia, with its reservations regarding aspects of CETA, which it later withdrew.
Bourgeois forces, amongst them new-style social-democrats and other opportunists, also expressing the interests of sections of capital, declare themselves opposed to the signing of the Transatlantic Agreement, focusing their disagreement on certain isolated aspects of it, seeing TTIP as an “obstacle” to capitalism acquiring “rules, control and reforms”, which will allegedly “rein in” the monopolies. However, TTIP is not a deviation, but a very clear confirmation of the exploitative character of this system. These forces present the predatory alliance of the EU and its legislative reforms on various matters as being the most people-friendly, allegedly resisting the USA, but concealing the fact that their aim is the protection of the European monopoly groups.
The “Economic NATO”, as the TTIP is justly labeled, as well as other similar agreements like CETA, TISA and TPP cannot be corrected, only rejected. The European Communist Initiative calls on the peoples, through their struggle, to reject and fight against both TTIP and CETA, as well as other interstate trade agreements, together with the exploitative system these agreements serve. They must struggle for their own power, for control of the economy and means of production in order to satisfy all their needs.
Unity, struggle and proletarian internationalism are the historical slogans of this moment, and the task that must be faced by the world working class.

29-11-2016
The European Communist Initiative