A fundamental critique stems from the following effects of the policy:
Companies would be able to demand compensation from countries whose health, financial, environmental and other public interest policies they thought to be undermining their interests, and take governments before extrajudicial tribunals. These tribunals, organised under World Bank and UN rules would have the power to order taxpayers to pay extensive compensation over legislation seen as undermining a company’s “expected future profits”.
taken from: http://mondediplo.com/2013/12/02tafta . From my understanding this is basically an incentive for national governments to make their (consumer) laws as accordant with each other as possible. One problem I see with this implementation is that this will result in an accordance (of national laws) on the lowest common denominator, ie. the weakest form of consumer protection. In this specific case this would mostly mean levels of consumer protection as seen in the USA and this is in my opinion not in the interest of the general consumer (but that's a discussion of its own).
Companies would be able to demand compensation from countries whose health, financial, environmental and other public interest policies they thought to be undermining their interests, and take governments before extrajudicial tribunals. These tribunals, organised under World Bank and UN rules would have the power to order taxpayers to pay extensive compensation over legislation seen as undermining a company’s “expected future profits”.
taken from: http://mondediplo.com/2013/12/02tafta . From my understanding this is basically an incentive for national governments to make their (consumer) laws as accordant with each other as possible. One problem I see with this implementation is that this will result in an accordance (of national laws) on the lowest common denominator, ie. the weakest form of consumer protection. In this specific case this would mostly mean levels of consumer protection as seen in the USA and this is in my opinion not in the interest of the general consumer (but that's a discussion of its own).