"ECONOMIC NATO"

Protests against the establishment of a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) have swept through European cities and again drawn close attention perhaps to the world's largest agreement on creating a free trade zone and investments. Attitudes to the project are controversial. The ongoing negotiations are often accused of opacity. In turn, the increased levels of secrecy and fragmentary information provide ground for speculations and various versions. 

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership envisages creating a free trade zone between the USA and the EU. In the EU-US economic relations, non-tariff barriers standing in the way of export will be removed, technical regulation and standards will be uniformed and a giant market will consolidate almost half the world's GDP, two thirds of international investments and one third of global trade. Talks about the start of the project emerged in the media in summer 2013, although it had been mentioned in the 1990s under the name of Transatlantic Free Trade Zone. The agreement is expected to be hammered out this year; then one year and a half will be allowed for its approval by the US Congress and the EU countries' governments and parliaments.

Declared as the main goal of the TTIP is growth of the economies on both sides of the Atlantic, wellbeing growing on this basis and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of new jobs with the maintenance of high standards in labour law and environmental protection. It is planned to place major accents on the supremacy of the law and availability and diversification of energy. Within 10 years, the GDP of the European Union is expected to increase by 150bn dollars and that of the USA by 115bn. 

However, the future partnership is said to have quite a lot of serious weaknesses. Mentioned among the first is a threat of deregulation in the field of trade and investment, and weakened protection for consumer rights. It is believed that large companies will able to circumvent EU laws related to environment, health care and food security. The Europeans are protesting most strongly against the penetration to their markets of US food and cosmetics that do not meet European standards, in particular, containing ingredients with a genetically modified code and some toxic substances. For example, US beef that is currently banned for sale in the EU will very soon turn up in European supermarkets. At first, the low prices of meat products may have a positive effect on the budgets of many European citizens but then they will launch bankruptcies of European producers and that will have an impact on jobs and national budget revenues. Fears are being voiced that many sectors of the EU states' national economies may be unable to compete with the USA. Meanwhile, as we know, national business is the backbone of the European middle class. 

Some experts say that, considering the time factor, the real GDP growth will not be as impressive as it is said to be. "TTIP: European Disintegration, Unemployment and Instability", research conducted by Jeronim Capaldo of Tufts University, says that, in the present austerity conditions, insignificant economic growth and high unemployment, the accord will have a negative aggregate effect on the EU. European Union citizens may lose about 0.6m jobs. The Europeans also worry that the TTIP may have a further negative effect on health care and education and reduce social guarantees. It is believed that the TTIP is mainly supported by financial, industrial and trade capital. Those are transnational corporations and entrepreneurial and lobbyist associations representing their interests and based mostly in the USA but also in Europe. It is noteworthy, by the way, that the TTIP envisages the establishment of special supranational courts of arbitration to deal with disputes that are likely to arise between states and companies. This gives rise to fears that actual power may land, for the first time in history at such a scale, in the hands of corporate structures, and the EU governments will have no influence on the situation anymore. In this context, the TTIP is sometimes described as an "economic NATO". 

No wonder that the EU's political establishment is not unanimous in supporting the TTIP. The project's major motive forces are the Christian Democrats, the Liberals and the Centre Right. The Social Democrats are rather in the hesitant camp. The left wing, the Greens and the far right nationalists, such as the League of the North in Italy or the National Front in France, are in general vehemently opposed to signing the deal with the USA. Thus, for instance, National Front leader Marine Le Pen says Europe has already given up its borders and currency and now it is running the risk of giving up its markets… Marina Albiol, a member of the European Parliament and the United Left party of Spain, expects the agreement to be a "hurricane that will sweep away the rights of citizens". It is notable that the TTIP just highlights a political trend taking shape in Europe where the systemic parties are failing to make out their case while the far right and the far left are increasingly demonstrating their ability to find common ground. Apropos, it should be kept in mind that it is these "extreme" forces on both fronts that once succeeded in turning down the European Constitution. So will the TTIP hold out? Trade unions are also set against the agreement. 

However, it is clear that most members of the European Parliament and the European Commission support the agreement. It is also backed by the EU's largest economies, such as the United Kingdom and Germany. Chancellor Angela Merkel said recently that the establishment of the TTIP will help ride out the economic crisis in Europe. German Minister of Food and Agriculture Christian Schmidt holds the opinion that the agreement will open up great economic, regulatory and geostrategic opportunities for Berlin. 

Nonetheless, on 9 December 2014, a petition against the agreement signed by more than one million people was submitted to the European Commission. On 18 April, a few days before the ninth round of the TTIP talks, tens of thousands of Europeans took part in protests. People took to the street in Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Munich, London, Lille, Besancon, Helsinki, Prague and other cities. In January, a similar protest was held in Berlin as part of the Green Week agricultural fair. Representa-tives of some 80 different organizations - farmers, environmentalists and consumers advocating healthy food - voiced their discontent. An event like this was also held in London in October last year. 

Conflicting forecasts confuse EU citizens. It is hard to say now what the TTIP will bring to Europeans and Americans. Still, it is quite clear that the conclusion of the agreement will diminish the role played by the WTO and other financial institutions and, possibly, an answer to the question what for and in whose interests the TTIP is being created, lies in this particular plane. Demands to reform the World Bank, the IMF and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) can be heard in the world, especially from China, Russia and a number of Asian and Latin American states. It is an open secret that these institutions are mostly in the hands of western financial and political elites. Parallel structures challenging the established order are being founded beyond any direct influence of the West. For instance, The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) being set up by China threatens to oust the Asian Development Bank controlled by Japan and the USA. According to many observers, the AIIB is a successful tool used by China to counter the IMF and the WB. The Silk Road Fund performs the same functions for Beijing. The implementation of the AIIB and Silk Road Fund projects will contribute to the rise of free trade zones based on China's model in the Asian Pacific region, the spread of Chinese standards abroad and internationalization of the Chinese Yuan. By the way, the UK has joined the AIIB and some see this as a bad sign for the USA. Germany, Italy, France, Australia and South Korea followed suit. Altogether, 57 countries including Azerbaijan are going to become members of the bank. Russia, whose westward movement was blocked by sanctions, is utterly interested in the AIIB. Moscow is trying to promote the EAEU [Eurasian Economic Union]. Apart from this, the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China, jointly with the RSA and Brazil, are launching the BRICS Development Bank which will focus on infrastructure projects and trade development and which is also frequently described as an alternative to the WB and the IMF. 

The appearance of these and other new structures does not really mean a rigid division into individual actors: the EU, the USA, China, Russia and Latin America. This can bee seen from the above-mentioned membership of a number of EU countries in the AIIB while one of the TTIP's main supporters, Angela Merkel, for example, recently made a statement about the importance for Germany of a large free trade zone with Russia. But one should not relax in the hope for close coexistence in global trade and investments: the West represented by the USA is not going to yield ground, especially to its major competitors - China and other Asian states working together with it. Washington is obviously trying to use accords like the TTIP to hedge its huge advantages in the management of finance and services and in IT as well as its transnational corporations against competitors. Thus, for instance, it is planned to create an international trade organization, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), in the Asian-Pacific region which is so important for the USA. It implies lifting duties on goods and services and creating free trade zones in this region which will make it an alternative to ASEAN and APEC and cover up to 40 per cent of the world's GDP and 25 per cent of global trade turnover. The organization already has 13 member states and its structure and goals are surprisingly similar to TTIP. All the pros and cons for the Trans-Pacific Partnership are a replica of the pro and con arguments in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. 

Growing tensions between Russia and the West, the unabated fire in the Middle East and other political commotions of the last few years have somewhat overshadowed global economic developments. However, the causes of this political discord should be sought just in the impending economic re-division of the world which is taking an increasingly visible shape.