European Union

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Another document leak upset the world. On Monday Greenpeace gave to German media 240 pages of secreted US documents concerning the controversial Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a controversial free trade agreement between USA and the EU.

The TTIP has been discussed for three years now. However, it is highly unpopular throughout Europe and attracted huge criticism from environmental agency because, among other things, it may open the strictly regulated European food market to less controlled and hormone-enhanced American products.

American President Barack Obama was in Germany last week specifically to promote the TTIP, with hopes to sign the treaty before he leaves office in January. However, this leak can make American’s hopes crumble.

So far all the talks and the documents surrounding the TTIP were not released to the public. The Greenpeace leak is the first time official documents are made public. German media Süddeutsche Zeitung and German networks ARD, NDR and WDR checked with officials who worked on the TTIP and they confirmed the authenticity of the documents obtained by Greenpeace.

In the first batch of the documents (available here) it has emerged that US officials were blocking European car exports into the USA in order to put pressure on the EU to remove the strict measures on food health that are a constrain to American export into Europe.

In the USA gene-manipulated and hormone-treated food is usually sold to the public until proven dangerous for consumers, while in Europe is the other way around. Products can’t be sold unless they are certified as safe by the authorities.

In addition to this, the documents leaked also showed that the US blocked EU demand to have public arbitration panels to handle corporate lawsuits. The US wants to keep the panels private.

 

The post Leaked documents show US pressuring EU on TTIP appeared first on New Europe.

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New rules that slash roaming charges for using mobile phones in other European countries have come into effect on 1 May, putting an end to overcharging from phone companies.

For several years the European commission has been battling with the big mobile providers to force through cuts to the cost of making cross-border calls and using data in another country. Following lengthy negotiations, the EU announced in October last year that it will ban these charges from June 2017. Until then, the EU has put a cap on the amount operators can charge.

That means roaming charges in the EU will fall by at least a third starting immediately. From June next year, roaming charges in the EU will be abolished completely.

This applies to cost of making calls, sending texts and using data within the European Economic Area; that is the 28 EU countries plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.

The most an operator will be able to add to what you would pay domestically is five euros cents for a call, two cents for a text and five cents for each megabyte of data. Incoming voice calls will incur a charge of one cent per minute.

This applies to cost of making calls, sending texts and using data within the European Economic Area; that is the 28 EU countries plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.

The roaming charges have event entered UK’s Brexit campaign, with prime minister David Cameron posting on Twitter: “EU roaming charges now down to near-zero; gone entirely next year. Consumers are better off remaining in the EU.”

The post Roaming charges in the EU slashed by a third appeared first on New Europe.

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