Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The problem is that there is a serious lack of transparency and there is a serious concern that the public interest is not to the forefront of the ambitions of the agreements. Only in August last, the European Commissioner for Trade, Dr. Cecilia Malmström, promised another bout of TTIP transparency, stating that even more documents from the negotiations would be made available, but when the promise was put to the test a few days later and the corporate transparency body Corporate Europe Observatory received documents on exchanges between the tobacco lobby and the Brussels institution concerning TTIP and the EU-Japan trade talks, it turned out most of the documents had been redacted. It was described as an exercise in black humour.

Professor Joseph Stiglitz, a renowned economist, has stated:

The reality is that this is an agreement to manage its members' trade and investment relations – and to do so on behalf of each country's most powerful business lobbies. Make no mistake: It is evident from the main outstanding issues, over which negotiators are still haggling, that the TPP is not about "free" trade.

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