EPHA responds to the inclusion of public health-related case studies on in the draft final technical report of the Trade Sustainability Impact Assessment on the Impact on Human Health and on TTIP Services Liberalisation on Public Health Services, with the following recommendations:
- As case studies cannot be considered as a proper public health impact assessment, a comprehensive study should be carried out on the qualitative and quantitative assessment of the potential public health impacts of TTIP, given the burden of mortality, morbidity and economic loss that TTIP is likely to cause
- As long as there are no guarantees and recommendations to governments and the EU on how to mitigate the negative public health impacts of reduction of tariffs on unhealthy commodities (tobacco, alcohol and foods high in fat, salt and sugar and low in essential vitamins and other components important for a healthy diet), existing tariffs on unhealthy commodities should be maintained.
- There is a need for an assessment of the costs of Regulatory Cooperation and Good Regulatory practices for European and national level, including the implications for public interest decision making, missing from the current Report.
- The most preferable option would be to have a full carve-out of services of general interest (SGEI) from TTIP in the same way that audio-visual services have been excluded in the negotiating mandate for TTIP. TTIP is problematic because it limits the freedom of governments to make policy decisions on they wish to organise services of general interests relevant for public health (social, healthcare, education, water) by giving incentives for further liberalisation and making it financially more difficult to reverse such a decision.
- TTIP shall not contain provisions having the potential to undermine affordability of medicines and transparency of clinical trials (IP related monopolies and exclusivities for medicines, pharmaceutical pricing and reimbursement, trade secret protection).