German Protest Movement Threatens TTIP Transatlantic Trade Deal

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In Bergisch Gladbach, a town located near Cologne, the city council approved a resolution opposing TTIP and CETA. A total of 310 cities, municipalities, counties, districts and regions have registered themselves with the Munich Environmental Institute as TTIP-free zones.

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Rostek says it's important for him to emphasize that he and the others at the table "aren't just against it." And he says they're not just fighting against the four letters, "but rather to ensure that democracy and European values survive." In that sense, the fight against CETA and TTIP also has nothing to do with unvarnished anti-Americanism, adds Stefanie Tegeler, who says that such sentiment isn't prevalent among her generation, anyway. "At the end of the day, the Canadian and American people are also fighting for the same rights," she says. "If we shared our knowledge, we could learn from each other."

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In order to counter claims of a lack of transparency in the trade negotiations, [Economics Minister Sigmar] Gabriel invited representatives of major institutions to join a TTIP advisory board. But it didn't take long for disputes to emerge. The officials on the board complained that the Economics Ministry was largely representing the EU position and that critical voices were being brushed over. Slowly, those voices began to get louder -- representatives of the church exposed problems TTIP would create for fair trade, unions expressed concern about its impact on the working world and the head of the consumer advice center pointed to problems with food standards. "Until then, people had just been focusing on their individual issues. But now it was clear how many areas of life TTIP would permeate," says one member of the advisory board. A good number of those members then joined the anti-TTIP movement.

Around 250,000 people traveled to Berlin for the mass demonstration in what was the largest protest in Germany since the marches against the Iraq war in 2003.

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The growth of the anti-TTIP side has a lot to do with their use of arguments that are supported by studies or external expertise, which TTIP supporters have not been able to contradict.

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The fight against TTIP began with Pia Eberhardt. The Cologne resident works for the Brussels-based NGO Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), a group that monitors lobbyists. The economist had already gained some experience examining international arbitrage during her studies, so she took on the planned mechanism in the TTIP. When she discovered the powerful possibilities for legal action by businesses against states that it contained, she wrote a report and tried to establish contact with journalists. CEO simultaneously discovered that the European Commission in Brussels had eagerly met with business representatives in advance of the TTIP but not with representatives of civil society. The first big issues with the TTIP had been found: A lack of transparency, the prioritization of business and the establishment of parallel standards of justice.

... Global Justice Now, a TTIP opponent group, recently used the Freedom of Information Act in the United Kingdom to force the release of one of the reports commissioned by the government there, which has been kept under wraps since 2013. In the report, researchers from the London School of Economics argued that the agreement contained many risks and brought few to no advantages. Prime Minister David Cameron held this devastating result secret -- and instead promoted TTIP to his citizens.