Trade, regulation and TTIP’s political troubles

The issue of Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) has surfaced in the EU as a focus of political opposition to a possible TTIP trade and investment deal with the United States. The ISDS issue has reinforced the fact that TTIP's key rationale – that the EU and US markets are now so integrated that common approaches to market rulemaking make sense - is also its key political vulnerability. Despite attempts by the European Commission to substantively rewrite ISDS rules, the concept may yet be removed altogether from TTIP, which may or not save the deal politically in the EU. But the wider reasons why a concept that has existed for decades has proved so controversial in the TTIP context are important.