TTIP: EU consultation

Last Thursday, tens of thousands of 38 Degrees members fed into an EU consultation on TTIP – the trade deal that would enshrine privatisation of the NHS and allow big corporations to sue our government. But the numbers of us wanting to feed in caused ‘technical problems’ and their site crashed!

The consultation deadline was extended until the 13th July, and 38 Degrees members were given the chance to resubmit to it..

But really, it shouldn’t be necessary to fill out the consultation again. 25,000 submissions were saved by the office team while the site was down. So the 38 Degrees staff team, along with a team from organisation SumofUs, members of which also fed into the consultation last week, worked with a lawyer to send a request to the EU, asking them to let the staff team submit all 38 Degrees members letters on their behalf.

It’s a fair enough request – if the EU set up a public consultation that the public can’t actually submit to then it isn’t particularly democratic.

Here’s what we sent to the EU.

Sadly, the EU didn’t agree. Here’s their reply.

The 38 Degrees team is still going to push them to accept all of last weeks submissions. And there’ll be further actions we can take together to make sure our voices are heard in the EU.