The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is a proposed free trade agreement between the European Union and the United States.

US and EU together represent 60% of global GDP, 33% of world trade in goods and 42% of world trade in services. The barriers between the two most important economies in the world are already law, but the purpuse of the TTIP is to consolidate the relations, improving the trade between the parts, facilitating the competition and creating new jobs.

This agreement is strongly criticized for the method of the negotiation and for the potential effects of it. In fact, the negotiation is held in a confidential way, that doesn't allow the public opinion to know the details of the agreement and it doesn't facilitate a public discussion.

Moreover, this agreement could bring damages to the consumers, to the workers and to the environment. From one side, there should be specific Institutions that could judge about the litigations between States and private companies outside the national jurisdiction. This could give more power to the biggest private corporations. From the other, Us didn't ratify many agreements related to labor rights and environment protections, and this could bring a sort of social dumping against Europe.

We can draft two kinds of considerations. First, more economic freedom can raise the level of competitions in the markets and this is reflected also in the prices: but which is the social cost of it? Second, the negotiations must be subjected to the public opinion, because the effect of TTIP will deeply touch our life.

The 10th of June the European Parliament had to express an opinion about TTIP in a special session in Strasbourg. Thanks to the pressure of a huge majority in the Parliament, the vote and the discussion has been postponed. We will see how much force the Parliament and the voice of the public opinion can have in the future discussion, also considering the pressure of G7 to reach an agreement.