EU and Japan leaders are expected to sign on July 6th a political agreement in view of concluding the talks for an EU-Japan Free Trade Agreement in the upcoming months.
Although indications from both sides negotiators hinted at the issues at stake (public procurement, agriculture, motor vehicles, investment protection, etc.), the recent leaks by Greenpeace about old versions of the texts in negotiation showed once again that the EU institutions failed to deliver on their pledge to increase transparency of trade negotiations.
Indeed, only a few EU proposals were made available to the general public, along with vague summaries of the negotiating rounds, by the European Commission before Greenpeace stepped in. On the other hand, the Council, despite repeated calls by the other two institutions, never made the negotiating mandate public, nor available to the Members of the European Parliament.
It is too easy for the Commission and the Member States to tell the EU and national parliamentarians, as well as European citizens “take it or leave it” once a trade agreement is concluded.
Therefore we call on the Commission and the Council to publish the relevant negotiating documents, so that both parliamentarians and civil society groups can properly express their views about the course of the negotiations before it is too late.
Members of the European Parliament coming from S&D, the Greens and GUE/NGL and co-signing this statement are:
Eric Andrieu (S&D, France), Marie Arena (S&D, Belgium), Guillaume Balas (S&D, France), Eleonora Forenza (GUE/NGL, Italy), Tania Gonzalez Penas (GUE/NGL, Spain), Yannick Jadot (Greens, France), Eva Joly (Greens, France), Jude Kirton-Darling (S&D, United Kingdom), Dietmar Köster (S&D, Germany), Stelios Kouloglou (GUE/NGL, Greece), Patrick Le Hyaric (GUE/NGL, France), Curzio Maltese (GUE/NGL, Italy), Florent Marcellesi (Greens, Spain), Edouard Martin (S&D, France), Emmanuel Maurel (S&D, France), Anne-Marie Mineur (GUE/NGL, Netherlands), Dimitrios Papadimoulis (GUE/NGL, Greece), Georgi Pirinski (S&D, Bulgaria), Christine Revault d’Allonnes Bonnefoy (S&D, France), Elly Schlein (S&D, Italy), Joachim Schuster (S&D, Germany), Molly Scott Cato (Greens, United Kingdom), Bart Staes (Greens, Belgium), Isabelle Thomas (S&D, France), Estefania Torres Martinez (GUE/NGL, Spain), Ernest Urtasun (Greens, Spain), Marie-Christine Vergiat (GUE/NGL, France), Julie Ward (S&D, United Kingdom)