Bindmans debate 2015 – The TTIP: Is it a modern day Magna Carta, but for business?

The 10th Annual UCL / Bindmans LLP Debate

The panel

• Jacqueline Minor (Head of the European Commission’s Representation in the UK )
• Nick Dearden (Director, Global Justice Now)
• Antonios Tzanakopoulos (Associate Professor of Public International Law, University of Oxford)
• Allie Renison (Head of Europe & Trade Policy, Institute of Directors)

Chair: Joshua Rozenberg

About the debate

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), currently being negotiated, will create a free trade area between the US and EU. Its aim is to help people and businesses large and small, by opening up the US to EU firms, helping cut red tape that firms face when exporting and setting new rules to make it easier and fairer to export, import and invest overseas.

Critics however fear it will erode democracy, further hardwire ‘free market’ principles into the global economy and enforce corporate power through parallel legal systems that make states accountable to corporations rather than vice versa.

Of particular interest to lawyers are proposed ‘investor-state dispute mechanisms’ – tribunals in which corporations can litigate against government, at the cost, critics argue, of human rights, citizens’ interests and the rule of law.

View the video of this event