BERLIN, November 11. /TASS/. The EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), as well as a similar agreement with the United States that has not been signed yet (TTIP) serves the interests of large concerns and is fraught with the risk of bloc confrontation, the co-leader of the Left Party faction in the German parliament, Sahra Wagenknecht, told TASS in an interview.
"Both treaties - the TTIP and the CETA - are a crackdown on democracy, on the norms of a social state, on clear environmental standards and on the rights of consumers. These treaties have little to do with free trade. To a large extent the point at issue is giving large concerns greater rights," she said.
"Both deals have a geopolitical side to them. The CETA and the TTIP breed the risk of a bloc confrontation, putting Europe and North America on one side, and China, Russia and the developing countries, on the other," Wagenknecht believes.
At the moment the TTIP talks have been practically frozen, chiefly due to the opposition from the mighty European agrarian lobby, which fears the EU farmers may fail to withstand competition with the US agri-industrial complex, which produces foods of inferior quality but at far lower costs. The EU sees the CETA as a TTIP prototype.