Leading UK business owners today launched Business Against TTIP – a business-led initiative and response to the serious dangers posed to UK businesses by a new EU-US trade deal.
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is a comprehensive free trade and investment treaty currently being negotiated – in secret – between the European Union and the USA.
Business Against TTIP believes that due to TTIP’s agenda of unfair competition, deregulation and ‘corporate courts’, the deal is a grave threat to UK businesses, standards and democracy itself.
Business Against TTIP join similar initiatives, including similar business platforms in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, Artists Against TTIP and Students Against TTIP, and more than 3.4 million people around Europe who have signed the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) against TTIP.
Titus Sharpe, CEO of MVF Global and Entrepreneur of the Year 2015, said: “This deal has been created with predominantly large American corporate interests in mind and will have a negative impact on small and medium sized British business. This deal puts large corporate interests ahead of our government and democracy. It’s imperative we stop this deal happening for the sake of the British economy.
Ben Goldsmith, Menhaden Capital PLC, Chair of Conservative Environment Network, said: “TTIP is very different to a normal trade deal. It is profoundly hypocritical of our current government to highlight threats to UK sovereignty while also promoting TTIP within Europe. I am supporting Business Against TTIP because I believe it is vital that small and medium sized companies join this conversation.”
