Today, Greenpeace Netherlands released 248 pages of leaked documents from the secretive negotiations of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the proposed free trade agreement between the United States (US) and European Union (EU). The leaked documents cover 13 chapters that address topics from telecommunications to regulatory cooperation, from pesticides, food and agriculture to trade barriers, the US’ position, and internal EU documents that outline the “tactical state of play of the TTIP negotiations”.

When we published ‘The Transatlantic Colossus: Global Contributions to Broaden the Debate on the EU-US Free Trade Agreement’ in December 2013, our intention – as is the case with Greenpeace – was to draw public attention to the wide range of political, economic, and social implications that the proposed agreement could have on the everyday lives of US and EU citizens as well as on the rest of the world. Nowadays, more than ever, as civil societies on both sides of the Atlantic have voiced their concerns about TTIP and other agreements (i.e., TPP, CETA, and TiSA), it is important to continue broadening the debate with objective information and reliable analyses that include academics, experts, and civil society.

You can read and download the released documents at the dedicated #TTIPLeaks website.

Although we have dedicated and will continue to dedicate efforts to TTIP, we have also started to cover other topics, sharing our understanding on why the EU is failing to provide asylum to refugees, publishing a blog post series on sovereignty and global politics (i.e., in relation to financial markets, the Internet, and trade), and addressing some of the reasons behind environmental disasters. For this reason, we will soon welcome a new contributor to our blog, who will write a series of blog posts on the global politics of climate change and environmental diplomacy.

We will be announcing the launch of the blog post series on global politics of climate change promptly! For now, we leave you to consider how, despite the success of the Paris Agreement, the TTIP negotiations show that trade authorities within the EU and the US may not be as committed as the rest of their polities to seriously addressing the challenges of climate change and upholding environmental standards.

(Photo credit: Berlin Forum on Global Politics & Jonathan Florez | BFoGP)