On July 14, 2014, April responded to a consultation [5] of the European Commission on certain dispute-resolution processes provided for by the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), aka Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA).
Unfortunately, this consultation was biased: it took for granted that a arbitral court would be created to resolve disputes between foreign investors and States, even though this mechanism is itself one of the Agreement's major sources of issues. Indeed, these arbitral courts, in which the judges have a financial interest, are restricted to foreign investors; they consist of investment-law experts, and their rulings are binding for the States, without any possible appeal to a nonspecialized and independent court of justice.
To answer this consultation, April and its members dove into the complex TTIP dossier or, more precisely, into the dispute-resolution processes as provided for by trade agreements. This work enabled us to form a precise opinion and start defining the main lines of our position.
Thus April responded to the consultation in order to counter the creation of a court of arbitration as proposed by the draft agreement, and to denounce the threats such an arbitral court would entail. The original response in French is available in OpenDocument [6] and PDF [7] formats, as well as the English translations (PDF [8], OpenDocument [9]).