Revelation against TTIP

Spanish lawyers rebel an against TTIP

The dean of the College of Lawyers in Barcelona proclaims treated as the TTIP or Tisa "weaken" the profession to the "new commercial businesses" The TTIP, according to Oriol Rusca, attacks legal aid for the legal profession "becomes exclusively provision of services purely mercantilist "

Criticizes the system of arbitration of disputes between investors and states, as did the Federation of Judges Germans to include judges from the private sector Professional associations of lawyers are beginning to revolt against TTIP, the controversial free trade agreement that the European Union negotiates with the United States and whose basic text could be ready this year. The vice president of the General Council of Spanish Lawyers and dean of the College of Lawyers of Barcelona, ​​Oriol Rusca, said bluntly on the website of the General Council of Spanish Lawyers that the TTIP "now is a threat to all, and especially for citizens who are lawyers who defend.

It is a clear setback. " They are novel words because they come from a professional sector so far remained attentive to the negotiations, and because they are fattened, among other sections, with the new arbitration mechanism between investors and states concocted by the European Commission (and called Investment Court System ICS) or progressive threat to legal aid which will involve the agreement. "Both agreements [TTIP and Tisa, the EU negotiates with countries like Pakistan, South Korea, Mexico and Turkey] represent a paradigm shift that weakens essentially citizens, since professions such as lawyer or doctor, will become only the provision of services purely mercantilist " starts Rusca.

The dean of the Barcelona law ensures that the "legal certainty dissipate the benefit of new market services" because the deontological control exercised schools will change substantially.

Rusca attacks the lack of transparency and secrecy as -at critics of the treaty, claims that much of the negotiated content has only been known to censor Wikileaks leaks hard "liberalization" of the practice of law proposed by the TISA (Trade in Services Agreement). "The law has not put obstacles in offices that may come from other countries and also for our offices can go to other markets," he recalls. "The essential problem is not that they can come to practice as other offices in our territory; the problem is that the lobbiesfinancieros jurídicos- which are not intended to raze all the essential principles on which is built the profession.

They want to change our values ​​and our way of understanding the profession, beyond being a simple business. ""It's not a market" With regard to legal aid, Rusca believes that "it would be impossible to fit the current model of free legal aid in the neoliberal system that are trying to impose. The defense of the rights, freedoms and dignity of the most disadvantaged people in society can not and should be a business. Legal aid is not a market, "he says.To date, no professional association of judges, prosecutors or lawyers had been positioned on the TTIP. MEP Lola Sanchez (We) sent a letter to the principal legal organizations to berate an opinion, a letter which has joined the former prosecutor Anticorruption Carlos Jiménez Villarejo and Alfred De Zayas, the UN rapporteur. The brief of Lola Sanchez recalls that in Germany the German Federation of Judges (DRB) itself is positioned.

"This group concludes that rejects the creation of a court of investments under the TTIP" because "sees neither the legal basis nor the need for a court of this kind," says the letter of the MEP. Precisely this arbitration mechanism, the ICS, is where criticism of Oriol Rusca reaches its peak. "I find it absolutely disastrous as system", deplores the dean. "The obligations and conflicts States should be subject to the Courts of Justice. How will you submit to arbitration when these arbitration courts -those that are foreseen in the Treaty are largely the enablers of this deregulation? "He asks. "How can it be stipulated in a secret treaty, which does not serve the Courts of Justice, excluding them from root to solve the conflicts of the kind we are discussing? How can you defend a secret treaty is above the sovereign and democratic each country? Laws "concludes